Once upon a time before Liz…

When I was little and still living in Korea, I remember going to a foreigner’s church. My family sat in the second floor that was like a balcony overlooking the sanctuary. From a child’s perspective, the services were ghastly and dull. Heather and I spent most of our Sunday mornings playing under the pews and occasionally taking naps under there as well. It was the year we lost our baby.

Mom had been pregnant but the baby was a stillbirth due to complications. Her name was Mary. She was buried in the cemetery behind that church. Liz was born a year later and, as far as I know, none of us have been back to see Mary since. I don’t know if it has anything to do with Dad dying this past year but I figured since I was in Korea, it might be nice to go see her. So Mom told me the name of the church, I looked it up online and found myself there this afternoon.

I was glad to arrive at all since the directions had been rather confusing. It said to take a left at a park. *laughs* The Korean definition of a park is obviously not the same as my own. It was just a little sitting area with a mosaic wall. It was nice but not what I would consider a park. I was nervous until I found a road sign that confirmed I was going the right way. The church was a surprise. I didn’t recall it being the giant cement monstrosity.

A very nice man at the office tried to give me direction to the infant portion of the cemetery. Luckily for me, not a lot of people had been buried here so Mary’s grave wasn’t as hard to find as it might have been. After wandering around and trying to look like I knew where I was going, I found the right section. It was startling to see all the tiny graves lined up side by side. Most of the children had been buried for years and it looked like no one had been there to see them since.

The writing on a lot of the headstones was illegible. The names and dates were engraved into the stone but over the years the color had faded from the lettering, leaving it all the same color. I had to get creative and take pictures of each of the gravestones then zoom in to see which one was hers. I did eventually find it after about fifteen minutes. *laughs* I kind of wish I had taken flowers for her. But since I had been to church there, they had erected a little fence around the cemetery so I couldn’t have laid it on the grave anyway.

I was six when she died. Mary Theresa Blood. My parents named her after the Virgin Mary and Mother Theresa. I hadn’t even known what date it had been. September 8, 1987. I had just started third grade. I still remember my mom staying in the hospital for a long time, my teacher crying in class over the note I had brought and sitting on a bench in that very cemetery after they had buried her. I think I was angry about it for a long time. But I’m glad we have Liz and I love her to bits. Even though we still tease her about finding her as an infant in a garbage can that had been floating down the Han River. *laughs*

Upon returning back to the apartment from my expedition, I was delighted to discover that my mom had bought me a convertor plug. YES!! *jumping up and down with joy* I was finally able to check my email and recharge my camera battery. And it was a good thing too because we had a VERY interesting dinner.

It all started when we drove the wrong way down a one way street that was only big enough for half a car and parked in front of chickens. *scratches head in confusion* CHICKENS?!?

Anyway, the main dish on the menu this evening…octopus! (Oh, god. More seafood.) *cringe* But it was really, really good! They started out by serving us our side dishes and a veggie pancake type of thing. The only thing that seriously grossed me out was the silkworms. *barf* I’m all about trying new things but that was just so EW! If you look at the picture closely, there is a round white dish with what looks to be bugs in it. There are. *faints*

The first dish we had was spicy! The octopus was laid out on a bed of veggies, mushrooms and yummy spicy sauce. The waitress then cut it up for us and set in on the propane burner at our table. SUPER YUM! The other dish was even cooler. I wish I had gotten a video of it when she first threw the octopus in the boiling broth but I was a bit in shock. The tentacles were like ‘save me!’ I know it’s gross but it was kind of funny too.

Once again, we engaged in a serious bout of overeating. Koreans have a special knack for somehow making one meal big enough to be three freaking meals. This is the secret: Add Rice. The spicy octopus dish was nearly gone when the waitress materialized out of nowhere with a couple bowls of rice, stirred it into the remaining mixture and VOILA! Enough food to feed an army. Not to mention the OTHER octopus dish. After most of it was eaten, there was still a lot of broth left.

The waitress materialized again. Not only did she have the prerequisite bowl of rice this time, she had…ink sacs! *eyes popping wide open in disbelief* She made an ink rice stew!! She cut open the sacs until the broth was black, stirred in the rice and then cooked it until it was thick. For the benefit of my sorely lacking adventurous spirit, I had a bite. It was pretty good but I couldn’t get the image of the ink squirting into the bowl out of my head so I stuck with the spicy dish. *laughs* Gawd, was I full…