西洋오랑캐

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Originally uploaded by wdunn.

The weekend rolled around again, and once more I was up to my eyeballs in wedding related adventures. Saturday morning began with a trip into the city with my wife, sister-in-law, and father-in-law. The crux of the trip was a visit to the hanbok shop. For you see, several weeks back the wife and I had ordered some hanboks and they were allegedly ready to be worn as was my sister-in-law’s. My father-in-law had to place an order and had the wheels so he came with us.

The trip into Seoul was fairly unremarkable, though I did learn that my sister-in-law hates the saxophone, though no reason was ever given as for why exactly she loathed it. Anyhow after the drive in we met up at the shop and after selecting some colors for my father-in-law’s hanbok, the rest of us went into another building to try on the hanbok.

For those of you that have never worn a hanbok, the pictures don’t really do justice to just how roomy the pants are (I can only speak for the male hanbok, since I didn’t wear the female one). I could seriously gain 150 pounds and still be able to wear the same hanbok I have now. Anyhow the hanboks were all in order, and my sister-in-law’s boyfriend snapped a couple pictures for us (I particularly enjoy the fact that I’m sporting sneakers in the pictures), and then we went back to the first building to pay and get some bonus gifts…at least the women did. They were given handbags, shoes, hanbok underwear, and so on. I got nothing.

From there we all parted ways. The wife and I headed to 인사동 because she had to meet a friend and give said friend a wedding invitation. I had to kill some time alone so I grabbed some lunch, bought a couple CDs, and then checked out the 농악 (or whatever version of Korean traditional percussion I actually saw) in 인사동. If you have no idea of what I speak, check the short film I shot located below.

Now if rockin’ traditional drumming is not awesome enough, there was that made this event even more awesome. At the end of the drum performance, a woman got on the microphone and declared that now there would be free 떡 (ddeok / rice cakes) and 막걸리 (makkoli / rice wine). Free food, as everyone knows, is just about the most awesome thing ever, but free alcohol?! That’s like awesomeness to the nth degree. So I sat on some bench and drank alcohol with old men and homeless guys…it was pretty awesome. At about that time the wife called me to let me know that her meeting was over and we could carry on with our wedding shopping.

So we walked from Insadong over to Myeong-dong to go shopping for shoes…for me. While shopping the wife confessed to me, “Shopping must be so boring for men…look at these shoes you have two choices: black and brown…they all look the same.” Yet somehow we still couldn’t find any decent footwear. A big part of this was the fact that very few stores carry shoes large than the size 275 (which is not really a size that fits me well). Eventually we scored a pair of shoes, and then did some non-wedding related shopping before calling it a night and heading home. So for those of you keeping track at home: hanboks and complete and shoes are complete. Next Week: studio wedding photos!