Song of thanks

Last weekend was one long stream of consciousness poem of existence. After the evening I described in my last post, I went home with a full heart and an invitation to join some of the musicians on the following day at 1 pm in the Hanhakchon, the reproduction of a traditional housing complex on campus. When I arrived I found out I was gate crashing a wedding. My new friends were dressed in their dance uniforms and their cowhide drums were getting damp in the rain. After the ceremony was complete and family portraits taken,

the musicians did a fine set of songs which made up for in enthusiasm anything it lacked in finesse. They were really quite good.

When the bride emerged from the house, she climbed into a wooden box called a kama and was carried by three or four men by long poles threaded through it somehow (to prevent her escape??) trailed by a dozen rowdy musicians clanging and banging, her husband, dancing behind in his sumptuous red embroidered robe, and Grandmother, having the time of her life in her traditional hanbok, dancing and waving to everyone with a little handkerchief.

The kama stopped outside of another building, where the poles were unthreaded and the music and dancing continued until the bride had safely climbed out (think: clown car for one) and been helped up the steps and through the door. I can only imagine that some real bridal processions of the past must have lasted much longer, from the woman's father's home to her new husband's.

My new friends clustered together and swept me up with them to the banquet hall, really the same cafeteria where I eat every day, but it had been rented out for the wedding--and what a feast! A beautiful buffet including lots of vegetables. Note to myself: crash more weddings!

While we ate, I was introduced to a Canadian woman who has been in Korea for only 3 weeks. She was fun and wide-eyed, interested in everything, excited about her new home. It was fun to remember how I'd felt when I first arrived 9 months ago.

Sleepy in the rainy afternoon weather, I went home for a nap, then dressed up and hopped a subway to meet some friends downtown. This was one of the only times I've been out "drinking" in Korea, such a popular activity here, and was also my first visit to a dyke bar. Looking less bar than coffee shop, it was a small, low-key place with low tables and floor seating on red cushions, kind of boudoir decor, but tastefully so. There were also a house dog and cat which were charming to have around. I drank the mildest fruit punch, before they added extra bottles of soju (potato vodka). It was an entirely pleasant experience.

The next morning I woke around 9, a nice lazy hour, and went swimming. Hurrying back home, I packed my bag to go early and set up for music practice. The drumming was lots of fun this week--we've actually started some interesting rhythms and sequences that take my whole focus, after weeks of more repetitive drills. I left drum practice quite high and hopped on a bus, where I met a fellow drummer and we introduced ourselves. She turned out to be a very interesting person, a Korean teacher with hobbies like classical painting and traditional music. She invited me impulsively to visit her family's "weekend farm", which turns out to be a community garden plot located outside the city in a green and peaceful place. Ahhhhh! That was me sighing as I stepped out of the car.

Her kids were both really neat people, and I enjoyed the time with the whole family, thinning lettuce and chatting in slow, patient Korean-English patchworks. The daughter, age 14 and the best English speaker among them, asked if I liked her haircut. I said I did, and it was the honest truth. (I didn't tell her it reminded me of some of the women at the bar the night before.) She told me she loved it, but her father hated it. She also said she wanted to go to Japan, but her dad hadn't let her go so far as Seoul yet, something she envied me for.

Between rounds of harvesting, I drank a prepackaged milkshake which was out of this world. How can something taste so perfectly like summer? Then I got a call from my close friend in Switzerland and chatted looking out over the gardens and watching the sun fade from the greens. Afterwards, we all went for raw fish and side dishes. I waved goodbye, filling my bike basket with bags of tiny, earthy lettuce leaves, and rolled home under streetlights, counting my blessings--beyond imagining, unbidden, and perfect.