西洋오랑캐

So Saturday evening I headed off to a wedding, and it was the single oddest wedding I have ever attended. To begin with on as we were riding the subway to the wedding venue, 진희 asks me, “신분증 있니? (Do you have your identifaction card?)”

“Yeah I have it. Why?”

“Oh we need it to get into the wedding.”

“Are you kidding?”

“No, see here, “진희 said and then showed me the wedding invitation. The invitation proclaimed that we did indeed need our identification cards.

“That’s odd. Why do we need id to get into a wedding?” I asked scratching my head in confusion.

“Oh…that because it’s at the Korean military college.”

That’s right we were headed off to a military college here in Korea to go attend a wedding…insanity was sure to follow, as if getting there wasn’t insane enough. First off the subway was having some sort of problem so a ride that would have normally taken 15 to 20 minutes ended up taking 30 or 40 minutes. After getting off the subway 진희 and I met up with one of her co-workers, and from there, the three of us got on a bus…a bus none of us had ever ridden before.

Eventually we got off the bus and began our trek towards the wedding hall…er Catholic church located at the military college. The weather was bitterly cold, and in reality we had no idea where we going. Eventually we found the school. Before we could go on campus we had to go through a check point with gun weilding dudes. They then motioned us over to a bus, since we couldn’t walk up to the church…we had to ride the bus.

After a short bus ride we arrived at the church and entered, fashionably late. Since this was a church wedding (and involved one American) it was a pretty standard issue wedding…until the priest, minister, mini-boss pope, whatever the Catholic church’s wedding overlord is called announced, “And now the bride’s brother is going to play a song.”

I assumed that said brother would sit down at a piano or organ and play some sort of classical music, but instead her brother sat down at a chair weilding a saxophone and began wailing on “Hey Jude.” During the “na na na nananana” outro part, 진희 leaned over and asked me, “When we get married will one of your siblings play a song.”

Now, the only person in my immediate family with any sort of musical talent is my brother…and the instrument with which he has some ammount of prowess is that romantic instrument, the drum. So I ask 진희 if she really wanted to hear the drum solo from “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” at her wedding…she did not, though I can’t imagine why.

The wedding was nice, and at the conclusion of the wedding, there was traditional wedding nonsense: food, drinks, food, photos, and throwing a bouquet (a bouquet which was caught by my girlfriend). During the reception, various people approached me to inform me that I now had 3 months in which to get married. This is the first time I have ever heard of these sort of time limits attached to catching a bouquet at a wedding. I had always been under the impression that catching said bouquet just meant that you, the catcher of the bouquet, would simply be the next one in that group to get married. So dear readers please enlight me on the post-bouquet catching protocol (or tell me that I am right in my understanding of this procedure).

Back to the wedding, following the bouquet catching, we seriously chowed down buffet style. The spread was awesome: meat, fish, spaghetti, 탕수육, 회 (raw fish…more commonly known in the west as sashimi), and then there was 육회. 육회, my dear readers, is a dish which consists of um…raw beef. That’s it. It’s raw beef, and I ate it. The taste of raw beef wasn’t really that unfamiliar to me, since I was used to eating steaks my father “cooked.” However, unlike those steaks, 육회 was served ice cold…so it was kind of like a meat popsickle. Anyhow I personally prefered raw beef to the raw fish, but that’s just me (if it’s not just me bellow about it in the comments section).

After throughly gourging ourselves, 진희, her co-worker, and I bid the married couple adieu and congratulations, and then headed home. Unfortunately there was no bus back from the church, so we began the long frigid hike back to the bus stop. As we were walking a car pulled up along side us, apparently thinking that 진희 was a different girl, which worked to our advantage as they ended up giving us a ride to the subway station. Thanking them, we boarded the rails and headed home to our respective homes.

The End.