Lara Zielin

STATUS: Very, very, very awake.

FAVE LINKEY-POO RIGHT THIS SECOND: The Interwebs is pretty slow here in Seoul, so it’s hard for me to find one and paste it in. Why not just visit Publius.org and get smartified on the candidates before election day?

A few years back, there was an Economist cover showing Kimg Jong-Il with his sunglasses and crazy bouffant, waving at the crowds, and with “Greetings, Earthlings” as the caption.

At present I’m in South Korea and a mere hours away from the DMZ and Kim Jon-Il, who is reported to be pretty sicky-poo. It’s amazing to me that one day of being on a plane can get you so far away from things. The same amount of driving time would get me to my parents’ house in Wisconsin, if we went through the U.P.

It’s been a while since I’ve been out of the country — 2o05 was my last trip, I think, and that was to Italy where, even if the public transportation sucked and people weren’t super nice to me, I could still sort of grasp the Latin-based lingo. And order a glass of wine, thank you very much. That’s not really the case here.

Last night, half asleep and starving, I stumbled into the Korean restaurant that adjoins my hotel and asked for “hot tea.” I didn’t see a picture of it on the menu, so I couldn’t point. Oops. They brought me kimchee, which I’d only seen on the Travel Channel (thanks Anthony Bourdain). I didn’t expect to like it but I found myself really into it. It’s the hotness that does it, I think. One hotness relating to another, I think. O snap.

After much non-communication that made me think I had a hand in placing my order when really I didn’t, I was given a steaming bowl of yumminess with chunks of bones (with beef and fat clinging to the bones) floating in the broth. I figured these were just for flavor but, no. Graciously, my waitress showed me how to eat them, which I obviously wasn’t, by using your chopsticks to pull them out, then dip them in a sauce, then gnaw the hell out of them to try and get the small fibers of meat and fat off them. It was a little visceral but, I gotta say, hella good. I felt kinda dumb doing it, but so was everyone else so I figured, when in Rome … or Seoul …

My hotel is lovely. I laughed when I pulled out the ironing board and it was short. Like really short, even on the tallest setting. The coffee in the room is some Korean version of that Nestle international coffee stuff that was so popular back in the day, but I did see a Starbucks and a Dunkin Donuts when I came in so I may adventure out for a pumpkin spice latte. Or maybe just a tall house coffee.

I’m here for a week and, tomorrow, will be joined by a work colleague. I expect we’ll have some bumbling adventures to share but I gotta say, I’m excited not to look like an idiot alone.

For the time being, farewell, Earthlings.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 1st, 2008 at 10:21 pm and is filed under looks like life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.