Naju

Don't forget to read Lyn's post below mine!

Once again I was kidnapped by my Korean friends. What was different about this weekend was that I actually knew where I was going and who I was going with in advance. I went to the city of Naju and spent the night at a place dedicated to natural dyeing. It was part museum and part workshop. It explained how all the natural dyes were made, sold handmade crafts, and offered you the chance to buy a blank item and dye it yourself. It was me, my friend, two mothers, and 4 children ranging in age from 14-5. Out of this group only two of the people seemed to speak English, my friend and 10-year-old Yu Bin, who you may remember from my entry at the Buddhist temple. It made things difficult, I was frequently asked if I was enjoying myself/what was wrong because I was spacing out, but I couldn't follow the conversation to any degree, so I just gave up at a certain point. This whole weekend was full of observations about cultural differences.

The first huge thing I noticed was when I was picked up at 4pm. I got into the back seat of the car with Yu Bin and her little brother Tae Jin (the 5-year-old). Neither child was wearing seatbelts and they spent the entirety of the 40 minute car ride standing up, wresting with each other, leaning into the front seat, crawling into the trunk, and all sorts of other things that are so not legal in the states.

When we got to Naju I found out that we were staying at the actual Natural Dye museum. It has several guest rooms, which are all nicely sized, as well as a refrigerator and kitchen. The first order of business was to unpack the food. There was a large group of us, yes, but I had never seen so much food unpacked for an overnight trip! I wanted to ask if we'd really need three containers of spam, but I refrained. Koreans always seem to be eating. They eat before meals, they eat their meals, and then they eat after meals. I still haven't adapted to "eating like a Korean" and am always afraid I'm going to offend my hosts by looking like I don't like the food. Usually I just get full faster than everyone else! The exception to this is breakfast. I'm served a giant meal, and all I really want is the rice. Breakfast in Korea doesn't have its own special set of food, it's just normal food, rice, kimchi, "Korean pancakes," and whole fried fish. I always pass on the fish because as delicious as it is, it is impossible to eat with chopsticks. This particular morning also included spicy meat soup, which was way more than I could handle first thing in the morning, so I just ate my rice. It led to a lot of questions, but really, I'm just not that hungry in the morning, especially not for spicy things. They do know how to soup up their ramen! (pun intended). There is also Soju and beer served with every dinner.

So, moving on from food. The next day we hung around the museum before having the chance to dye our own item. The color of the day was blue, so I am now in possession of a fantastic blue scarf. Also available for dyeing were pants, t-shirts, slippers, aprons, and visors. The blue dye was made from some kind of leaf, but I'm not sure which kind. It was fun though.

From the dye museum we went to a traditional cultural center, that had displays of important Korean traditions, like torture devices, games, and arts. We walked through that and then went and picked GIANT PINK BEANS in a garden. You steam up the beans with your rice and eat them, but first they needed to use my height to pick the beans. Korean gardens are really cool because they over trellises and then the fruits and veggies hang down. It's really neat, but also strange to walk through a hanging gourd garden.

And now for a quick and speedy CULTURE ROUNDUP:
- Korean rooms are heated through the floors! The floors get pretty toasty pretty fast, and it makes sleeping on the floor kinda like sleeping in a pool of lava.
- Anime is STRANGE. I watched one with the kids that related entirely to a mutant psycho rabbit killing people. It was defeated by the power of love.
- Casual physical contact (as in, the hitting kind) is very common. I've seen it among the children at school but I didn't quite realize how common it was even for adults. The five year old hit me in greeting every time he saw me (I have a bruise on my hip). Also, rock paper scissors (or scissors rock paper) is a huge game here, and the punishment is a literal slap on the wrist. Again, I'd seen this with the kids, but it was strange watching a mixed group of adults and children wailing on the losers wrist.
- King Kong Refill. I don't know what is is, but it exists.
- I bought a sweatshirt at Zara's, which is a high end department store. It has a raccoon with a top hat and antlers on it. Only in Korea.