Larva's in the air

LO: We have been waking up pretty early every morning, but also been going to bed early, as well. I guess we are still getting over the jet lag. Every morning we sit by our living room windows in awe of the mountain chains not far away and the light fog lifting off the peaks. No wonder this country is known as the Land of Morning Calm. Even the morning rush hour seems to go quietly, no honking, no beeping.
This morning we went out in search of forks. Yes, you read it right, forks! We have brought to South Korea some chopsticks my parents got us in China last year, but nothing else. Instead, we should have brought our forks and knives. We did ship our set of big kitchen knives, but not a single fork or knife. Most of the stores here sell packs containing one large spoon with a long handle and a set of stainless steel chopsticks. Spoons and chopsticks are sold either individually, or in twos or threes. Four is not a lucky number so nothing is sold in sets of four.

We walked for an hour and a half in the sun to Daiso, a Japanese cheap household goods store. It may seem like a long way, but we were excited to see a completely different part of Wonju. We came across a wonderful Buddhist temple overlooking the entire city and a small Korean war memorial, right next to the large sports complex that houses the soccer and baseball stadiums and basketball arena.

After locating Daiso, we did find some forks, but they were part of a set that also had a spoon and two chopsticks ... the sets clearly designed for Korean children just getting the hang of chopsticks. Most of the handles have slogans engraved in English, or pictures of bunny rabbits, or Hello Kitty. Luckily, we managed to find a couple of sets without anything written on them. So we bought them and declared mission accomplished before continuing our wander through that part of the city.

The long walk made us both hungry, so we decided to go get some food. This time we skipped lunch/soup kinds of places and stopped in for some famous Korean barbecue at a place called Choisim. Within minutes, the bucket of coals in the middle of our table was glowing nicely and the waitress - a middle-aged lady whose daughter approached our table to ask where we were from and went on to inform us she was a student at a university in Seoul but was currently having a 'rest' from academia - had brought out all the little fabulous dishes to go with the pork and beef we were about to cook at the table. We grilled the meat ourselves before stuffing it into fresh lettuce leaves, topped with kimchi ... and beondegi, which pretty accurately translates as SILKWORM LARVAE! We weren't sure what these small, brown, slightly cruncy, quite sweet and very tasty tidbits were until we got the confirmation from our new student friend at the end of our meal, but we knew that it was some sort of a worm. I do have to be honest and say they were awesome! We finished them all. At the end, the waitress brought out little bowls of a half-frozen yellowish drink made, we were told, from pumpkin. What a feast!