On Sunday morning, the family and I piled into my father-in-law’s automobile and we drove off to family obligation part 2 (part 1 being Saturday’s trip to Daejeon). The second part of this past weekend’s family obligations was some sort of meet and greet luncheon in which my clan offically met my sister-in-law’s fiance’s clan (Cripes that was a mouthful…or since I am typing, a fistful).
Anywho, we were at a restaurant in Jamshil known as 龍水山 (용수산) when we met the fiance’s family. Now, I have no real problem with her fiance. I mean he’s a nice enough guy. Hell he gave be a case of Heineken for my birthday! But, if I were a woman, and not married, but still retained all my personality traits, I wouldn’t want to date / marry the dude. He’s a little boring. Having a conversation with him is kind of like pulling teeth.
And now I know why. The meeting took about three hours, and in that time I don’t think his father said a single word. His brother didn’t either. His sister talked a little bit, but it was usually under her breath, and kind of creepy…like a witch or that chick in The Exorcist. She scared me. His mom was alright; probably the most outgoing, but still on the quite side.
Prior to leaving that morning, I had recieved my marching orders like everyone else in our platoon, but I had a special top secret mission, and that was: “Don’t make an ass of yourself.” Sitting there in the opening hours minutes, was pure torture. I wanted to jump up on the table and do the Charleston, or attempt to get the entire restaurant to join me in a musical number (hey it happens in musicals all the time), anything to destroy that dreadfully awkward silence.
You know that kind of silence that is unsettling? Yeah, we had that going on. Luckily my father-in-law has the gift of gab. He’ll talk up anyone about anything at anytime. Unfortunately there were a lot of one word responses, and even the most talkative person can’t do much with that…so he started talking to me. I shot my wife a look, “Is this okay? Can I respond to him?” I didn’t wait for her to wave me on to third. I saw an end to the dreadful silence and went for it.
Luckily at this point food arrived. And man did it arrive! I’ve lived in this country more than 3 years now, and at this particular restaurant I had eaten roughly 3 out of the countless plates of food we were served. For you see, this restaurant served us traditional palace cuisine. Hell yeah dudes, I ate like a king, and oh was it good! I’m not a real artsy guy, especially when it comes to food, so long as it tastes good, but this food not only tasted awesome, it looked fantastic as well.
I can’t really remember every single dish that was served and due to the nature of the event I didn’t really think it was appropriate to whip out a camera and be all like, “Dudes hold on a second! I wanna take a picture of this lotus flower wrapped sushi!” So I’m going to attempt to recall exactly what it was that I ate, from my memory alone…and my mind is not exactly like a steel trap.
I know there was 죽, and the aforementioned sushi that made use of lotus flowers. For me though, the standout dish was 신선로 (shinseolo) primarily due to the awesomeness of the dish in which it was served. Other foodstuffs served that day included rice with 팥 (sweet red beans) cooked in a lotus leaf, 구절판 (gujeolpan), 불고기 (bulgogi), and 잡채 (japchae). For dessert, we were served some 떡 (ddeok) as well as some 약과 (yakgwa) and a cup of 복분자차 (bokbunjacha / raspberry tea).
After the meal was completed, there was some more awkward silence and a period in which people attempted to set a wedding date, and from there we said our goodbyes. The fiance’s family departed first along with my sister-in-law. Then the rest of us got back in my father-in-law’s automobile and headed back whence we came.
