Another Chuseok has come and gone. While last year the Lees left me to fend for myself in Gumi, this year I participated in a family-style Chuseok. Chuseok eve was spent frying food in obscene amounts of oil. No matter what the food was, it got the same treatment. Meat? Dip in egg, fry into oblivion. Peppers? Sesame leaves? Sweet potatoes? Fish? Fake crab? Egg and fry. It’s taken so long for the scales to fall from my eyes when it comes to Asian cuisine. I used to imagine that Korean food was all delicate little morsels of rice and cabbage, maybe with a light, watery sauce, and that Japanese food was primarily raw-fish based. Ha! Only in Korea do people go hiking and then break out their thermoses in order to eat their instant ramen noodles and consider it a healthy snack. And judging by my brief tour of Japan I would say that Japanese food is pretty much deep-fried pork chop-based. (Granted, there’s a lot less bread over here, but what Koreans lose in bread they more than make up for in rice. There are SO MANY ways to prepare rice, and each gets its own name and usually it’s own restaurant. Of course, some of these preparations seem a little short on imagination—I’m thinking here of the much-coveted nu-rung-ji, or boiling water over burned rice—but there’s no shortage of variety. I think my favorite use of rice has got to be found in ads for Lotteria, the fast-food arm of the Giant Korean Company Lotte, in which four boy-band members thrust toward the viewer burgers sandwiched not in a bun but between…two pressed rice patties. Shockingly, I hear they don’t hold up so well.) Anyway, the next morning I my host mom woke me up at 6:30 so that we could go over to my host uncle’s house and deep fry some more things (mushrooms, leeks) and watch variety shows on television. What little counter space available in my host uncle’s kitchen was taken up by freshly watched dishes, but Korean women understandably seem to consider the floor a more spacious, convenient cooking space, so it was no problem. Either the kitchen floor or the living room floor does fine, as neither are encumbered by much furniture. The living room, despite the room where people hung out, watched TV and ate was basically just a big empty box. (As Bianca once put it, her host mom seemed happiest when her house looked like no one lived there at all.) Come mealtimes, my host-aunt just pulled a little fold-out table out of the closet. I wish I were better at sitting with my legs tucked under me for long periods of time; I think my awkwardly protruding knees really disrupted the seven-people-eating-around-a-two-foot-by-two-foot-table balance. The major benefit of this system is that when it comes time to do the dishes, rather than shuttle cups and plates from the table to the kitchen, my host-mom and –aunt could pick up the entire table and bring it into the kitchen. So much easier. (Jen and I have discussed the inevitable fact that we will be incredibly, incredibly annoying people when we return home. Our houses will have no forks, only chopsticks (“oh, let me show you how to use those properly”), and we will have given up our beds for yos. When achy overnight guests complain the next morning—not over coffee but over green tea, of course—we’ll explain that really a yo is just better, so much more convenient and really very healthy, good for the spine and inner organs.)

This weekend I went to my host-mom’s hometown. Actually, I though it was just a short trip; I only found out after we boarded the bus that it would be an overnight affair. My host mom probably didn’t bother to tell me because as far as most Koreans are concerned, one packs the same for a day trip as for a week-long one, which is to say not at all. Everyone wears the same clothes for every day, anyway…what else is there to pack? My host mom grew up about two hours from Jeonju in the tiny farming town of Yeonggweon. First we visited some of her high school friends in the back room of the tomato juicing business that one of them runs. (I actually drank two full cups of essence of tomato…these are the lengths I go to in order to keep up good relations.). The three of them talked for an hour while I sat and let my mind wander. Actually, I haven’t been requiring as much sleep as usual lately, and I think the large number of situations like this is the reason. While we sleep, doesn’t our brain sort through the days’ experience, filing things away? I think I read that somewhere. Anyway, I think my brain is able to get a lot of important sorting and filing done during the daytime, as it’s otherwise completely unoccupied during much of the time I spend with my host mom and her friends. (My host mom has taken to inviting me out with her friends fairly regularly to drink beer and to chat…I can’t really chat, but I don’t mind the beer.)

My new province, Jeollado, is the “rice bowl” of Korea, and it really is beautiful. I’ve been taking pictures, dutifully documenting every cosmos blossom and field of rice, but my camera is at home, so you will have to do without. Soldier on!