B and E

My best friend Lauren is visiting me for the rest of the month. She got in on Thursday evening and she's staying until I check out of this place. We had a pretty good first weekend but thanks in part to her jet lag and in part to our partying habits our sleeping patterns have gotten really erratic. On Sunday night we found ourselves conking out at about 10pm. After a lame attempt to stay awake for Sex and the City we gave in and turned off all of the lights.

A couple of hours later I was somehow pulled from what must have been the deepest sleep I've ever been in. I mean I was dead in the middle of a REM cycle, when for some reason I rolled over in bed. I could tell it was late although I couldn't see the clock. I looked up and saw Lauren over by the window. Suspecting that she was having trouble sleeping through the night because we went to bed so early, I asked her in a very sleepy tone "what are you doing?" She stopped dead in her tracks and didn't say anything. She was stunned into silence and she just stared at me breathing rather heavily. Then she slowly started to get down from her perch on the windowsill. Annoyed and disturbed by her lack of response I said more authoritatively "WHAT are you DOING?!" This louder attempt at getting an answer roused the REAL Lauren from her slumber in the bed next to me. She rolled over and having noticed the figure formerly suspected of being Lauren, said in a very scared voice "get out of here!" The figure turned on a flashlight, stepped onto my desk chair and ever so creepily guided itself to the front door of my apartment. Without panicking or hurrying, it unlocked the door from the inside and escorted itself out.

Totally confused and shocked by what just happened I got up and locked the door right away. After returning to my bed Lauren and I were finally able to find our voices and immediately started screaming and freaking out by what just happened. What did just happen? I live on the second floor! There's no way some stranger was just in my place! Is there?

Upon closer inspection and having replayed the incident over and over again we have come to this conclusion. A man, who may or may not have been wearing something akin to a TEVA sandal, scaled the wall of my apartment building using the one inch thick pipes that snake up the walls as foot and hand holds. The figure slid the screen to the side and pulled himself noiselessly into the window from a pipe about three and a half feet down. It is unclear what the man came for but he was seemingly prepared to look for it since he had a flashlight. It was pouring rain at the time but he left nothing more than two wet footprints. Had he been casing the neighborhood or out walking around I'm sure he would have left a puddle by the window. This leads me to believe the man is from the neighborhood and has an apartment nearby or he came in a car. It seems unlikely that if the man had spent any time in the neighborhood that he could somehow not be aware of the fact that I lived there. I mean, in a country with very little physical diversity I find it hard to believe that everyone doesn't know where the big, tall "yellow-haired" American lives in an all-Korean apartment building and neighborhood. Compounded by the fact that my locked bike was stolen from in front of my building a few weeks ago, it is hard for me not to think that I was targeted. Although it can be assumed that the man had to know someone would be home at 4am on a Monday morning, it is unclear as to whether or not he knew that I had company, nor if he knew that I live in a studio apartment and therefore am more likely to hear or feel the presence of an intruder.

I called my boss immediately after it happened. She seemed much less concerned than I and instructed me to lock my windows and try to get some sleep. Neither was an option given my state of panic and the lack of air conditioning in my overheated apartment so we opted instead to stay awake all night. The next day I went to work and demanded that something be done. Here I am two days later having had two companies come out to measure my windows for bars without any actual progress being made.

Behaving Shellfishly...

My friend Ray has been staying with me for the last couple of weeks and I've been having too much fun and I haven't even thought about writing a post. I've been too concerned with my own happiness and entertainment to be bothered with updating you and I'm sorry. I've also been pretty busy though. In the last couple of weeks I have sought out my replacement, mailed some winter clothes home, finally sent out about half of last year's Christmas presents and did my best at nursing my best friend through a broken relationship over the telephone. In addition to that I have been trying my best to keep Seoul interesting for Ray. Considering his stay is so long that is a pretty difficult task. I mean even the lonely planet travel book stops making itineraries after two weeks because it just doesn't take that long to see everything here. You could probably walk from the DMZ in the North all the way to Busan in the South in that amount of time. Anyway, so while I was at work during the day Ray did a pretty good job of seeing all of Seoul's usual sights of palaces, temples, shrines and museums. The weekends were where it really got interesting. I wanted to see stuff that I hadn't seen yet as well. Last weekend we went to a pretty cool aquarium, the weekend before that he went down to Jeju island. But this past weekend we got really adventurous.

On Saturday I threw a party for my friends, (all three of them), at my place. Some more people were going to come but got lost so it ended up being pretty small. Probably a good thing if you've seen pictures of my apartment. The theme was the all-American BBQ minus the grill. I made pan-fried burgers, mac n' cheese, corn on the cob, nachos and sangria (for a little ethnic flare). The party was a success and there were tons of leftovers to fuel us for days to come.

On Sunday we decided to take a trip out to Incheon. Incheon is an island Northeast of Seoul. It is the third largest city in Korea and is where the international airport is located. The main island is surrounded by a bunch of smaller islands that you can get to by ferry, which is what we decided to do. We took a bus to the ferry terminal and got our tickets. As soon as we walked out of the terminal we noticed that all of the foot passengers had started to jog down the ramp towards the boat, indicating that the announcement that was just made in Korean said something to the tune of "the ferry will be leaving in one minute", something that everyone around us obviously understood. We too started off at a jog down the ramp. Soon it became obvious what the advantage of having long legs, generally athletic builds, no children, no luggage and no high heels was as we started bypassing our fellow passengers on the race to...what? We found ourselves neck and neck with a family of four. The dad was leading with the two kids a few paces behind and the mother bringing up the rear. Just as we were about to pass the little girl her shoe clipped an uneven part of ground and she took a dive. Phew that's gonna slow them down and we're gonna beat them for sure. Uh oh! The only problem is I can't stop laughing. I'm rolling, I think it's hysterical. I'm slowing down. Oh no! I couldn't stop thinking about this jog to the ferry being some sort of cut throat race for survival and that little girl was destined not to make it.

When our ferry landed on Muui Island about five minutes later, we found ourselves in a little fishing village that also catered to tourists, mostly of the Korean variety. While on the ferry I had the distinct sense that most of these people hadn't seen a white person since the author of my lonely planet guide visited there for business reasons back in 1993. No matter, we set out on the 25 minute walk over to the other side of the island where the Keunmuri resort was located with its pool. We knew that the sea water would probably still be too cold for swimming so we thought we might try the pool instead. About halfway through our walk it became instantly clear that my body is no longer accustomed to all things natural and outdoorsy. My 10 months in Seoul has really taken a toll on my immune system and my eyes and nose started watering ferociously right away. When we got to the resort I headed straight for the beach. Ray, having spent the last couple of months living in Australia and backpacking around New Zealand was shocked when I told him that I hadn't seen nor touched a beach since I left Florida.

The book told us that at low tide mudflats stretch from the beach out into the water and I guess I didn't believe them. I suppose I didn't understand how there could be a sandy beach and then muddy sea bottom but there really was. I wanted to feel how cold the water was so I plunged toes first into the mud and instantly regretted it. It was cold and slimy and riddled with sharp shell debris. I decided to put my flip flops back on only to find them suctioning to the mud and then flinging mud chunks up onto my back when they were finally released. The water was cold, the mud was muddy so we decided to stick to the beach part for the rest of the day. Clearly there would be no swimming in these conditions and the pool was devoid of water.

Koreans behave rather differently at the beach them most cultures that I'm used to. First of all no one, not even the kids had their shirts off. Everyone was fully clothed in normal street attire. It's not like it was a bit nippy and they were just wearing their beach coverups. Oh no! The women were wearing high heels and the men wore business suits. The beach environment also didn't take on the same relaxing atmosphere that it does in other places. Nobody was laying down soaking up the rays or casually reading a book by the water's edge. Most of the people there were busy. They were all busy as hell trying to harvest all manner of sea creatures from the mudflats before the tide came back in. This was a pretty serious business. Some people were into the mud up to their calves digging around for stuff. At least one member of each family had a trowel for digging and some sort of collection receptacle. I peeked in a couple of different bags, buckets and baskets to see what they were getting, but they were all collecting different things. One family had a bucket full of those tiny sea snails with the curly shell. An older woman had a bunch of small clams in her bag and somebody was making off with a ton of tiny little black crabs.

We spent much of the rest of the day trying to walk around a smaller island next to the resort. You can get to the island by walking across the mudflats during low tide but you had to be sure to cross back over by 7pm, when the tide came back in. I say that we tried to walk around the island because we weren't successful at doing so. We were able to casually walk across sand and shells for about an hour until the terrain started getting a little bit more rough. We soon found ourselves boulder hopping and trying like hell not to end up filleted by the barnacles. After about two hours, some close inspection of the map and a heated debate, we decided that despite the fact that for the past 45 minutes of rounding the "final tip" of the island, that it was in fact nowhere in sight. We (and by we I mean Ray), thought it best to turn back before we found ourselves at an impassable rock face with the tide creeping in and cutting off our escape route.

After making it safely and sweatily back to the main island it was clear that it was time for dinner. Having passed numerous seaside shanty style seafood restaurants on the bus on our way to Muui Island, we thought it best to go back by on foot and give them a good perusal before picking one. Since I've given up all hope of learning Hangeul, the Korean alphabet, I was a little bit worried about how we would know what to order or how to order it. All of the restaurants being of the seafood variety, had giant saltwater tanks out front with a selection of delicious looking fish and mollusks. I was hoping that we would just be able to point at what we wanted and then they would just sort of run with it. Feeling a little nervous about getting a foul-tasting mystery meal, we set off down the strip of restaurants. They were all basically identical, the only distinguishing factor being the manner in which they solicited our business and the numbers painted consecutively on the outside of each tent. I think we finally chose number 9 but for no other reason than I was beginning to feel uncomfortable being the focal point of all eyes in the vicinity. Keep in mind we were the only foreigners we, and everyone else had seen all day.

We walked into the restaurant and past a couple of tables surrounded by jovial soju-soaked fisher types, bored looking couples and raucous families. Having eye-balled the fare on the tables as we passed it seemed pretty clear that this place had a specialty. The woman came over and immediately started jabbering away in Korean. I politely waited until she was finished and then pointed to the table across the way. She got the message and then in her best combination of Konglish and sherades said "brown sauce", waved her hand in front of her mouth to indicate spiciness, pointed to the gas grill in the table and said "fire" and I said "Ne, ok", which means yes, ok for all you non-linguaphiles out there.

No more than ten minutes later the lady came back. She turned on the grill in the middle of the table and on it she placed a bunch of clams on the half shell. There were about twelve of one variety and six of another. The clams were sprinkled with chopped onions and some other stuff and then were drizzled with two different kinds of sauces. In addition to the clams she brought out a bowl of ingredients that she indicated to me was to be stirred with my chopsticks as it was allowed to stew over the flame. She left and we looked back and forth from each other, to the deliciousness in front of us, to each other again with two big shit eating grins on our faces. It was pretty clear from this that we had made a good choice to stop and eat no matter how scary the ordering process might be. But it wasn't over yet. She came back over after a couple of minutes to monitor and shift the clams around. She picked a couple of them up and slid them over to our side of the grill indicating their doneness and edibility. We complied and as soon as I excavated that little clam from its shell it made a bee line for my mouth. It was everything it was cracked up to be and more. The sauces were spicy, the clam was slippery, the veggies were cooked to perfection...(sorry I had to clean up the drool). The whole thing was doing a flavor jig across my taste buds and down my throat. Not being especially keen on shellfish, due mostly to the amount of work that generally has to go into eating them, I have rarely had the opportunity to experience them in such divine excellence before. Most of my shellfish exposure has happened at the hand of my grandmother who used to cook a boat load of clams and oysters for the whole visiting family at least once per summer. I remember it always being the big "to-do" of the season but was fully honest with the fact that my favorite part was when she gave us the shells the next day and told us to spread them over the driveway to fill in any potholes. This shellfish experience has turned me into a flag flailing fanatic.

While we slurped up the clams and began to dig into the scallop stew our lady brought over the rest of our meal. First she came over with a suspicious looking tinfoil package, which she placed on the far side of the grill, out of reach of our curious and prying chopsticks. Next she came out with what can only be described as a mound of seafood. The platter was stacked high with closed raw clams of various sizes. There were probably about 15-20 big clams of different varieties and another 30 little clams, we'll call them clamlets. Intermixed among these were about 15 mussels and beneath the whole pile were hidden two giant spiralled conch-like things. My jaw dropped when I saw it all there, precariously balanced on the platter. As she started placing different things over the flame I began to worry about how the two of us were going to conquer all of this. The next thing I knew those little suckers were sizzling and popping open left and right. Before I even had a second to worry about how we were going to finish it all we dove right in. The shells were spewing their salty, fiery venom at us as if threatening us NOT to eat them. Just when I was thinking about leaning back in my chair and taking a break I would see a mussel start to shake on the verge of explosion. Just before it exploded, spraying its skin-searing juices in my eye I would reach forward with the tongs and pull it to my plate and down yet another one.

With our bellies near explosion we still hadn't cracked into the mystery package on the far end of our table, nor had we braved the conch-like things. We threw the conchs on and figured we would take a breather as they cooked. Unsure of exactly how long something like that should be allowed to cook on a grill, we guesstimated and went forth, tongs in hand about five minutes later. I went first. With the protective glove they gave us on one hand I gripped the giant spiral. In the other hand I held the contorted two-pronged fork firmly albeit nervous on the inside. With my teeth gritted and sweat balls beginning to form on my nose, I tore the fleshy beast from its encassing. I cut off the trap door, dipped it in several sauces and popped it in. After all of that work I was disappointed to taste the bitter, runny liquid sloshing around in my mouth. In an attempt to be brave for Ray, and so that he too would experience how disgusting it was, I swallowed the mass and smiled. He claims his wasn't that bad but I don't know.

Confident that we couldn't possibly eat anymore the woman came over and shifted the tinfoil parcel to the middle of the grill and cracked the cover. Immediately we saw the treasure hidden within. Six perfectly crusty and odd-looking oysters peered back at us from inside their steamy container. I nodded my head in acceptance of my defeat the way an athlete would after a truly well-played match that resulted in his loss. These restaurant ladies knew how to work the game. They saved the best for last, knowing full-well that there would be no way, despite how full we were, that we would leave those six oysters there for the birds. So, we looked at each other, took a swig of beer, wiped our greasy hands on our aprons and took the plunge.

We waddled out of there almost two hours after our tentative walk down the restaurant-lined street. We were full and delerious from the utter awesomeness of the meal, and the whole thing, including drinks, cost us less that $45.