Guess I abandoned my blog for a month and 10 days. It's just wrong. I can't believe I could have fallen so far. I will go hide my face in shame now.
But first...
I am in South Korea for now. Have been here for some number of week. I don't really remember. They all blur together. Not that Korea is boring. It's just hard to have a sense of the passage of time on the ship. I'm sure you've all experienced something similar.
I have a story to tell, but those involved in this event were quite embarrassed, so I will change their names...
One good friend of mine is from South Korea. I met him when we were both working at Camp Tejas, the summer of 2004. We'll call him Uykni. Since I am now in South Korea, I emailed him so that we could meet up one day and see each other again. Last Tuesday was a national holiday, so he came to the city the ship is now in, bringing with him his two friends, Nosaj (man) and H.Y. (lady).
They took me to all kinds of famous places in this city. They had never been to most of these places themselves, but found them on the internet. The most remarkable part of the day was lunch, which Nosaj insisted that I forget about, but which I intend to remember for the rest of my life. It wasn't what they were expecting, and they were embarrassed to have taken me to this place. That's mostly why I find it so amusing...
There is a very famous fish market in Busan. We walked through it and saw all kinds of sea food, most of which was alive. H.Y. often would ask me what the English name for different things were, but usually it was things I'd never seen before. Different ladies kept trying to get us to go into their shops for lunch. It was all in Korean, so I'm not really sure why, but we refused to go into several of the shops. But finally, one was deemed good enough.
Nosaj negotiated for our lunch, so we could have a better price. He also ordered. Once the waitress was gone, he told me that we were having eel. It was fine with me.
It took a long time to bring the eel out, though, which was odd. They bring it out and put it on a burner on the table, so it cooks in front of you. It shouldn't take very long to bring it out if they don't cook it first. Once she brought it, we realized what had taken so long.
She put the burner down and turned it on. Then she put the pan of eel on it. There were onions, some kind of bean, and pieces of eel, which were twitching. She had just killed, skinned, and chopped up the eel. She served us everything but the head.
It took forever for it to stop moving. H.Y. didn't think she'd be able to eat it. Nosaj begged me not to look at it. Uykni kept stirring it up, which agitated the already twitching eel pieces. I laughed, which may have made it even more embarrassing for them, but I couldn't help it. I told them it was my adventure.
