I’ve Got Seoul pt. 1

Dalian City, China.

 I felt, coming in off the plane, much like I do when I get home for Christmas. Only this time it was hot and sticky and Christmas comes every four years, and only twice so far in my life. But it kind of felt like home, strangely.

The layover in Seoul was pretty brutal, I’m not going to lie. Dorothy and I bought some donuts (Yung Hai loves his coffee and donuts) at the dunkin donuts in the airport. We decided to try one of everything (which was about a dozen) and concluded that contrary to popular speculation “Rice Dream Starshape Sweet Cake” was not at all delicious. “Green Tea Original” and “Sticky Rice Stick”, however, were out of this world. That adventure was followed by a lot of duty free window shopping, lounging in these snake shaped chairs (on which we sat upside down to get some of the blood out of our feet from the 13 hour flight) and some guitar serenading by our own John Young. We laughed a lot and called each other names that we thought the Koreans might say in native tongue: “Fat Americans!” “Look she’s taking up two chairs!” “Crazy white girls!” and John Young proved to be the most PK of all PK’s I’ve met with his buzz phrases. (PK being Pastor’s Kid).

Connie is my roommate. She’s the daughter of the couple heading up this whole thing. I was somewhat relieved to find that I will be rooming with her instead of the young chick with the bad attitude. We can’t be having two young chicks with bad attitudes in one room. That would only make for elbow and tongue sharpening. But I can already tell I will need a break from the constant forced conversation. Sometimes, rarely but still, sometimes I just don’t want to talk. I don’t want to explain to you why my five year relationship ended and I certainly do not want to explain to you why I ever seriously dated an atheist (GASP!). I don’t want to explain to you why I chose Kansas as my home, because that only means I will have to explain to you why I felt as though I needed to escape a life I ruined in Fort Collins. I especially do not want to explain anything at all after having traveled for 30 some hours.

They are taking us to dinner tonight. I predict hot pot. Boy oh boy, can’t wait to slop a bunch of thinly sliced meats and strange vegetables into a vat of cloudy boiling water. Mmm mmm good.

2 hours later: Dinner was only worse than I could’ve expected. I ate a thousand year old egg and live eel. And the water tasted like the dishes had been cleaned in it before it was brought to a boil.