Our Last Day

Thursday, February 25, 2010

We awake to rain and a traditional Korean breakfast, which, with the addition of a porridge made with wheat, is almost identical to last night's dinner.

The porridge is good, and I would have loved it for lunch, but I'm more of a cereal and yogurt breakfaster, and I'm not usually ready to eat right away when I get up.

Bernie, who usually wants to eat right away, is just not up to having fish as the first meal of the day.

We feel terrible about wasting food.

Bernie whispers to me, "I know that's what Koreans eat for breakfast, but I didn't think that's what they'd give us."

I point out that he paid for us to have an authentic experience.

When they discover we haven't eaten our breakfast, our hosts take it off our bill.

We'd planned to explore the neighborhood some more, but with the rain we decide to visit the folk life museum.

It's located in a former palace and turns out to be a real gem, showing life as it was for common people in an agrarian society.

Bernie says that what's depicted here is the Korea he saw in the early 60s in a rural village.

One of the exhibits that fascinates me is the process by which fiber is made into the gauzy cloth used for summer garments.

I enjoy all the homey things about the folk museum. I learn about farming, fishing, cooking and laundry, making kimchi and storing rice. Bernie actually saw these things in 1964, so it's not new to him. But he gets a kick out of showing me the things he's talked about all these years.

I love the houses with boardwalks outside where shoes are removed before stepping onto the warmed floors in the cozy, compact living quarters.

What makes our experience here today so much richer is having spent the night in a house just like the ones that have been rebuilt here. The roof is the same, except that ours was tiled rather than thatched.

Bernie is delighted when he sees the three-man shovel he's told me about so often. It was used by villagers to irrigate rice paddies. And he's excited to see the buckets that were used to collect manure to spread on the fields (that's human manure, folks).

He remembers the special clothes that children wore on their first birthday (celebrated on the Lunar New Year), and the ceremony in which the child chooses from a selection of objects indicating what path his or her life will take: wealth, learning, etc.

Bernie's told me about the annual testing of students and how important it is. Here in the museum quite a bit of space is given to that civil service test, which allowed any boy who studied hard to secure a place in government administration that would allow him to rise to the top of society.

Again, as in the National Museum of Korea, we see the great emphasis that Koreans place on learning.

Bernie really steeped himself in this culture while he was here in 1964 as an American soldier. He came away loving the beauty and morning calm of Korea as well as the people of Korea. So much in this museum confirms everything that he told me.

I'm so grateful to have slept in a traditional Korean house and to have visited this place today.

Our last official tourist activity is shopping at the Namdaemun market to find something suitable as a souvenir for our hardest-to-buy-for family member: Evan.

We meander through the stalls weaving in and out so much that at one point Bernie loses track of where we are in relationship to our hotel.

I know I saw some leather goods here and I want to get a belt for Evan.

We never find the place I was looking for, but we do find a nice Gucci knock-off with a G (for Galdeen, in our case) belt buckle. Really, the Chinese make such good fakes that are of high-quality.

We do find an item we haven't seen anywhere else - a T-shirt with Korean writing. I pick up a key chain with a Korean mask for a fob, and even a baseball cap with the Korean flag.

We climb the hill to our hotel, where we eat our final free buffet dinner, and take a last tour of the hotel.

Back in our room we pack and repack our bags for an hour, then take one last look at Seoul at night.