It all began, obviously, when I woke up. I may or may not have been hung over from the beer and whiskey I may or may not have drunk at the dinner-party-slash-night-on-the-town I may or may not have attended with the rest of the gang. That's immaterial. Miss H and I had a lovely lie-in, punctuated by a bowl of honey-nut frosted flakes (my new favorite Korean cereal—it's the shizz). Then we looked at the clock and noticed it was 4 p.m. Concluding that we'd had enough of our lazy morning, we cleaned up, got dressed and caught the big red Samhwa Express (bus number 1300) into central Incheon.
We were aiming for the Shinsegae Department Store. Miss H had some clothes shopping to do, and we'd heard from the girls at work that there were some likely stores there. We shopped around H&M, took a longing peek inside Tiffany & Co., searched for a liquor store that apparently didn't exist, and then left. We bussed ourselves back to Bucheon and headed to NewCore, a large outlet/department store not far from Estima. It is notable for having a large faux rainforest tree planted straight through its atrium, which goes up for five stories and has lots of plastic jungle animals concealed in its branches and packs of screaming Korean kids running around its trunk. We played some games at the arcade, took a look around the electronics and music stores, and split.
Then it was dinnertime. We moseyed across to Han and Yoon's, a tiny, charming barbecue restaurant run by two brothers who speak a smattering of decent English. We ordered the marinated pork, a bargain at ₩8,000. We grilled it up and ate it with lettuce slices, onions, garlic and ssamjang.
To assuage our sweet teeth (tooths?) we adjourned to the Strip, a long alleyway filled with bars and restaurants paralleling Gilju Road. There happens to be a Coldstone Creamery there. Let me tell you: after a huge dinner of Korean barbecue, a Like It-size bowl of Chocolate Devotion goes a long way toward assuaging one's sweet tooth.
We moved two blocks southeast to Jungang Park, and joined a lot of assiduous Koreans in working out on the exercise equipment. We pulled, pushed, strained, yanked, rotated and stretched, going at it like pros. Not even our rotator cuffs were spared. We resolved to visit more often, as a twosome, and continue the regimen. We shoved off for home, pausing to watch three old men play janggi (Korean chess) in the dim light of an incandescent lamp.
On the corner of Gilju and Seokcheon, just across from Estima, we were accosted by a couple of Christians. Neither Miss H nor I are particularly religious people. More to the point, we were tired, footsore and needing badly to collapse in our apartment for the night. This was not the best time for two clean-shaven Korean men in suits (one black, one grey) to come up to us and ask "Do you have two or shree minutes?"
Mr. Grey did nothing but stand in the background, adding a word or a nod to his partner's spiel. Mr. Black took a more proactive role. He whipped out an LG Tabletphone and treated us to a video (captioned in English) about "God the Mother." It explained how human and animal families are but shadows of the Great Family in the skies above Jerusalem, or something. Mr. Black stood there, tablet in hand, while Miss H and I stared in blackballed perplexity, watching the little green man disappear above the crosswalk we'd been about to walk home over. Mr. Black added a few words here and there as the video progressed. The word "Jerusalem" seemed to figure very highly. Apparently his sect—which, he proudly proclaimed, consisted of 2,200 parishioners—believed that God was a woman, and that the most apt model for Her worship was the human family, and that just as we are born on Earth with mortal mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers, so the Heavenly Host sits above us in a similar arrangement—
After that it got kind of murky.
Mr. Black started to show us another video, which concerned some rather vague pronoun use in the Torah (the use of "us" instead of "I" or "me," and the literal definition of Elohim meaning "gods" instead of "God," singular). This, I felt, departed from the comfortable realm of annoying-but-familiar evangelism and jumped straight into kookery. So I said "Sorry, we have to go," and scooted in the direction of the little green man, Miss H in hand. I caught a glimpse of disappointment and surprise on Mr. Black's face—the merest hint of a frustrated sigh—and then we vanished into the crowd on the crosswalk. Three minutes later Miss H and I were in our apartment, grousing about how some things never change, even if you travel 6,000 miles and wind up in a country where the police cars go everywhere with their lights flashing, even if they're just heading down to the 7-11 for coffee. Even in Korea, it seems, you can be waylaid on the street by creepy people in their Sunday best, and bombarded with leaflets and pamphlets and (apparently) tablets with strange videos.
And now I'd like you to take a moment to consider this:
Why did I buy a bucket of dinosaurs at Homeplus for something like ₩8,500, you ask?
Well, why not? I like dinosaurs. I bought them with the vague idea of putting them on my desk at work. Then I realized that my desk is already occupied by a firefighting helicopter, a large rubber Parasaurolophus, and a small yellow plastic frog which Miss H and I won at a Californian arcade.
So now they're on the windowsill in my apartment, and I must say, they do spruce the place up a bit. Every living room could use some of the old Mesozoic charm.
That's what I think, anyway.
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