Two weekends ago, jim and I spent the afternoon with a former student of his and her mother. We love these people. Swan is totally one of the smartest, spunkiest girls I’ve ever known. She is brilliant and funny and truly unique. She’s a collector of things. At her house, she has this whole set up on their back porch that resembles a botanist’s laboratory. Small trays and bottles and compartments of all sorts of different plants, rocks and choice finds. She has such pride for these collections, and anytime we’re outside together, she’s always rooting around on the ground for something interesting. On this afternoon, we visited the “bodies” exhibit that happened to be in town for the month of
April. You know this one—the strange plasticized bodies and body parts set up in action with musculature, nervous systems and circulatory systems persevered for study and gawking. I never caught it in the states. Wasn’t really my kind of fun, but how cold we resist exploring the Korean version with a 7 year-old girl? Well, it certainly was more than we bargained for. Overall, the whole place was really random in only the way that Korean experiences can be. It was kind of shoddy looking—bad carpet, cheap bamboo fence as decoration for the walls, bad cases for the specimens and general kind of minstrel show-style feeling. It very really voyeuristic to be there staring at these formerly living, breathing humans in such states of derma absence. Truly weird at times. The space wasn’t very big. Definitely not big enough to justify the 10,000 won entrance fee. And scattered throughout the space were these tiny islands of nature—stuffed game, fake trees
and various flora and fauna. Truly incongruous with the rest of the exhibit, particularly the fetus section. Riiiiight. Ew. Not cute. We did have some fun talks with Swan over some of the circulatory specimens—lots of organs like kidneys and livers and such had their capillary and venous systems preserved, which was actually really cool. But then there was the partially bisected infant and the rows and rows of fetuses and newborns in plexi cases. Truly weird. Truly not ok. So we steered clear of those sights as much as we could and made our way towards what looked like the gift shop. Right. Not so much. A strange collection of balsa animal puzzles, rose oil products and a candle-making station for kids. Oh, and a Wii system set up with a tennis game just because. Because while you wait for your weird fruit or “under the sea” candle to cool, you need something to
do that doesn’t involve viewing small plasticized babies, because of course the “gift shack” was located directly adjacent to the wee ones. Right. So weird. I really don’t know what this experience was about at all. Just strange. But Swan had a decent time and she got a bizarre “under the sea” candle that has this little LED light inside that blinks when a light goes on. You can do a cool trick with a lighter and make it blink, but we quickly learned that it just won’t go off when you go outside.
From the plasticized bodies, Swan’s mom took us to a place out of town with this incredible green house. The garden was incredible. They make their own pottery there—these great ceramic pots with arches and different compartments so the flowers and plants grow in all sorts of directions. The place was just a total paradise of vegetation. Little ponds, rows and rows of
artfully planted flowers, so many colors, vines and flowers growing everywhere. So beautiful. So many new things to see. The succulents were my favorite – little beads of water clung to the inside of their concave petals. I loved this place. Complete heaven for me. Made me wish I had such a place in my life. Though my garden is definitely bursting—the purple radishes are popping out of the ground, the chard, kale and arugula are all growing like crazy and all the other veggies are getting bigger by the day. The flower I planted that looked like a stargazer lily ended up being this totally brilliant shade of crimson. Incredible and such a wonderful surprise. Looking forward to making an
arugula and radish salad for our going away party in two weeks.
After the green house, we got dropped off downtown and stumbled on yet another gem in our little town. While wandering around looking for an open pharmacy, we walked right by an acupuncture supply store. In the window were two large mannequins displaying acupuncture points. I spotted a gorgeous bagua in the window that I had to find out about. We ended up spending about $80 collectively in there. The bagua was way too much,
but I found the incense and the clay burners that my acupuncturist used on my belly. Jim fond a funny little electric shock pen-like thingy that seriously sends some jolts to your body. And if you happen to be touching the person who’s shocking themselves, you get a residual shock. Current just keeps flowing. It was a great store. The owner got a real kick out of us. We were just so excited to be there and so thrilled to play with all the fun toys!
We left the shop and headed to the tattoo parlor where badkitty was sitting for her last session with Miho. Made it just in time to get some good shots of the final product. Truly spectacular. Loved it.
Badkitty wasn’t feeling too well—she had some pain in her side and a bad cold—so we all called it a night and headed home. She bagged out on our girls’ trip to Boseong Green Tea Fields the next day, and by lunchtime when I checked in with Jim about my plans for the evening return trip, she had been admitted to the
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