Never a dull moment at the Sehgyeh Wehgukwoh Hagweon, Special Thanksgiving Edition

First off, no flak about the "posting every week sweartagod" thing, alright? It was the end of the month again, with all of the work horrors of grades and tests and evaluations and the like, AND I posted twice last weekend, so that like, covers this week, okay?

Never mind. No one hollered, so like, thanks for that. In fact, speaking of thanks, I got a nice little note from Dad wishing me Happy Thanksgiving, if in a slightly snarky tone. To answer your question, Dad, no, I didn't have dried fish for Thanksgiving. I had turkey. Real turkey. With cranberry sauce. And stuffing and gravy and garlic mashed potatoes and green bean casserole and ham. An honest-to-god, real American Thanksgiving spread, courtesy of Andy and the Seamen's Service Union of Busan. It was probably the weirdest thing that's happened to me in the last five months.

Honestly, I don't know if I can explain it. We (Andy, me, Robin and Ian) walked in and were greeted by Linda, who's sixty, plump, blue-rinsed, and from Oklahoma, as is her husband Earl. As was, I believe, everyone in the dining room, which itself seemed to be sixty and from Oklahoma. It had wood panelling and yellowy curtains and smelled like a grandma. Thanksgiving dinner (well, lunch, really, since we were working that day, after all, and lunch was the only time we could get there) was laid out in a buffet on three tables, from slices of turkey in a warmer all the way to slices of canned cranberry sauce on a plate. Everyone spoke English -- hell, everyone spoke American, real down-homey "Yew want CoolWhip on yer pie, hon?" Murr'can. There was both salt and pepper. It was wicked eerie. It was like we'd walked through a door in Busan and somehow ended up at a Rotarian's dinner in Topeka.

It was just so weirdly normal. I guess after five months of Planet Korea, I was a little unprepared for such typical Americana. I've been avoiding Western food for the most part, partly because I'm, ya know, in Korea and want to eat what the locals eat; partly because I didn't want to rely on the stuff I already knew; and partly because Korean "Western food" is about as American as the Panda Panda Super Buffet is Chinese. I mean, I'm finally getting used to gimchi and rice with every meal, and suddenly I'm greeted with a pumpkin-and-dried-corn centerpiece and my mind's scrambling to figure out which end is up. I think it much akin to living weightless on a space station for six months, finally getting the hang of not barfing every time you wake up, and someone suddenly switches on the gravity for an hour and gives you a meal that you don't squeeze out of a tube.

A few days ago, it hit me again. When I hit stateside, I figured out what I'm going to miss most immediately. Gimbap. I don't think I've actually explained gimbap, so allow me to enlighten you poor deprived. Gimbap is, at its most basic, Korean sushi rolls. (Though it would be more accurate to say that sushi is Japanese gimbap. Koreans, I'm led to understand, actually invented the idea of rolling up rice with bits of vegetable and stuff into rolls of that papery seaweed. The Japanese just stole it, like they do everything. The Japanese, apparently, are like the Romans of the Far East.) But gimbap is far more than raw fish and rice. They roll up everything -- carrots and onions and greens and ham and crab and egg and tuna salad and cheese and pickled radish and odeng (fish cake) and whatever else they have lying around -- and slice it and sell it for cheap. It's perfectly portable and easy bare-hands food, like sandwiches. And considering that it's a daily staple of mine, I predict I will last precisely two days in the US before I start climbing the walls. The bitch of the matter is that, to my knowledge, no Korean restaurant in the US that I've visited makes them.

*sigh* I suppose this is what they mean by "reverse culture shock." All the things that make you go "What the hell am I doing back here?" when you go home.

*sigh again* And I suppose that was kinda the point in coming out here, wasn't it?

Happy Thanksgiving, kids. I need to go find some dried fish.