Tales from the Ancient City

This past weekend I went on a road trip to Gwangju, the Ancient City, to have a fabulous reunion with the third Pinkie Circle sister, Sarah, and her boyfriend. I hadn’t seen her in over two years.  It was wonderful. Many bottles of wine were enjoyed. There was singing, there was reminiscing, and by God there was laughing!

There was another foreigner there and he was showing the others some photos on the internet. I came into the conversation belatedly, and from the awkward angle at which I was looking at the computer screen (that’s my excuse and I’m sticking with it) it looked like an artistic photograph of some stones.  I casually asked (like I’m one of the cool, arty-farty foreigners) "Oh, is that some of your photography?"  Like, you know, I’m into that.

"No," he replied. "I’ve never been to Mars."

Mars! How. Embarrassing. It was an awkward angle! I couldn’t tell it was frigging Mars. If only verbal conversations had a backspace function.

We roamed the streets of Gwangju and toured the tombs of dead kings in the blistering humid heat of a Korean summer. We had dinner at a tres cool mandu restaurant. There was kimchi-mandu (stuffed with kimchi), water-mandu (follow the trend here..) I tried to recover from my Mars faux pas and suggested everyone stay away from the Khatmandu.  

I wasn’t, however, having much luck with the metal chopsticks. I explained that I’m rather more successful with the wooden ones, as the food has more chance of actually just sticking to the wood and making it to my mouth in one move. Someone said, "The chopsticks should have little barbs or hooks on the end."   I said, "Yeah, they should have a few little metal prongs protruding from the bott… oh wait. That’d be a fork." 

On the drive home, my son was making some errors in judgement in the way he was handling a small (blunt) pocket knife I had given him. I reminded him I was trusting him to act responsibly with it, and that it was a tool, not a toy. To which he earnestly replied, "Okay. But I just want to play with my tool, Mum. Can I?" Silence in the car. For a few seconds. Then we just couldn’t stop laughing. I told him he couldn’t play with his tool. Undeterred, he then asked if he could just hold his tool, and would that be alright?

Needless to say, it was a fabulous weekend of good friends and good times in the Ancient City.

I think I can hold out in Korea for the next five months.

If I can just master the metal chopsticks!

Because it’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye.