New Draft!

Alright, here's draft two.  It is, thus far, officially untitled.

*************

                We followed Julia to the car.  Like her, it was stately, expensive and a little intimidating.  The black sedan was straight to the point and though she had probably owned it for months, the interior looked and smelled as if she had bought it earlier that day.  She motioned for us to take the back seats as she slid into the driver’s.  I sat.  The awkward roil in my stomach was something that I was growing accustomed to in the three days that I had been in Korea.

“Where are we eating dinner, again?”  I felt like Julia had given Ian more details.

“I don’t know. “ He leaned forward. “Julia, where are we going to eat?”

“Uh,” then she said something I didn’t understand.  I tried to work it out in my head.  ‘Bead-um’ is what I had heard her say.  I spent the next several minutes running through every food or type of food that started with the letter B.  While I was playing my own personal alphabet game, Ian was productively narrowing it down. “Rice, vegetable, fish, soup,” Julia was continuing to Ian.

“Does she remember that we’re vegetarians?” I was letting Ian take all the falls tonight.  He tentatively reminded her.

“Oh, yes.  Okay.  You eat fish?”

“No.   No fish, chicken, beef or anything like that.  We do eat eggs and milk, though.”  His throat tensed with every explanation.  I stared at him lazily.  After the last eight hours spent making and remaking lesson plans for her approval, which I still hadn’t won, I could hardly look at her.  Shifting on the bread colored leather seat, I looked instead out the window and let the neon shop signs overwhelm my train of thought.  I counted glowing red crosses atop churches.  Eleven if you count the ones just past those hills.  I thought Koreans were Buddhists.

“Your parents are vegetarians?” Julia and Ian’s conversation had continued.

“Mine aren’t.  They eat a lot of meat, actually.  Casey’s mom is, though.”  Hearing my name drew me down from the hills and into the car.

“Oh, really?  It’s good to do.  You are nice children, obedient.”

We drove a few minutes more in silence.  She began to mumble to herself and drive more slowly down the street.  I leaned toward her a little, worried she was trying to talk to us.  She wasn’t.  She dialed her phone.  A jeweled J swung heavily on it.  I squinted at the headlights of the oncoming cars as we changed directions on the four lane street.  After less than a minute on the phone, she made another U-turn and we pulled into a nearly empty parking lot.  I tried and failed to sound out the elaborately written Korean on the fluorescent sign.  Small, blocky type in the lower right corner answered me: “Vietnam Cuisine”.

Package from Ben and Amy!

We miss Ben and Amy an irrepressible amount.  If you followed our Korean blog you know that we had a strong connection with them from the get go and our friendship grew really strong... then we left.  It's amazing, no matter how excited we were to travel and to come home, the first thing we said to each other when we got in the cab that morning to head to the bus station was, "Sheesh, I'm really going to miss them." 

Our friendship is a little unexpected in some ways.  On paper, we're completely polar.  In fact, right after we met them in Korea we looked them up on Facebook (as is the new norm in socializing).  And what we found made us pretty nervous.  We're political and ideological opposites.  Penguins and polar bears.

It made us clam up and act a little awkward during our next couple of hang outs.  The first time we went over to their place we ended up watching The Devil's Advocate.  I don't think any of us wanted to watch it.  It was just so awkward and poignant that we didn't know what to do.  

Of course, all the awkwardness was for naught.  We have way more in common than what's made obvious on the surface.  Our world views are startlingly similar.  We want the same things from life.  We share many of the same joys and rant about most of the same problems, large and small.  Our solutions may be different, but it's never really mattered.  They listen to us and we to them.

Maybe we should all run for senate?

I kid.  Kind of.

Anyway, we received our Happy New Year package from them a few days ago.  Our management had had the box for two weeks before notifying us.  That part wasn't so great.  Especially since Amy had lovingly enclosed two packages of ornate rice cakes.  They might have been alright two weeks ago.  They were definitely not when we got to them.  So, that was a huge bummer, but the remaining contents were super exciting. 

From left to right: bag full of little Korean candies and teas, choco peanut snacks, rice ball molds (featuring two sizes of kids' faces and a bear!), soap from their resort in Thailand (smells like lemongrass), mandu folder, and awesome paper wreaths that Amy made out of repurposed magazines.

Ben's contract is up in December.  We can't wait.

Skype!

We got to talk to Ben and Amy tonight for a couple of hours.  Sheesh, we miss them.

They may be counting the days until they leave Korea, but we're counting the minutes until they move their lives over to Portland (and their little dog, too!).