We woke up around 5:15am and washed our faces and brushed our teeth. Then we headed to the field, to see what was in store for us for the day. We ended up planting soy beans all day. First I would put the little seedling in the hole that was poked in a mound of dirt that was covered with plastic, then Kyle would pour in water and then Insook would finish by filling the hole with dirt. We did this with four trays of seedlings for a little over two hours. Then we went to the house for breakfast. We had two kinds of bread one with chestnuts in it and the other just a white French bread, we put peanut butter and homemade blackberry jam on it. We also had bananas and left overs from the night before. After we ate we had a cup of coffee and went back out to the field until around 11:30am. Then we went in to rest and wait for lunch. It is a very simple life here, the only worry seems to be if the crops will grow well. We had a long break in the middle of the day when it is hottest outside, so we didn’t have to go back to the fields until 5pm. Youngmi washed some of our clothes and then we helped her hang them up to dry outside. We also sat on the porch and shelled beans. Well they were what we would call peas but she called them beans. She asked us the difference between peas and beans and when you really start to think about it, you can’t figure out the difference. We even googled it later that night and couldn’t really find the true answer. So now I will call them beans until we can find the answer!
P.S. When Angy stood up to grab another stem with peas and when she stood up she ripped ass. Very funny for me. Young-mi and the old lady didn’t seem to care at all. Oh well, I thought it was funny.
We spent some time writing and dozing a little, and then went back to the fields. We worked for less than 2 hours during the last part of the day. I really feel like I am not doing enough work, but we are doing everything Farmer Lee tells us to do! We went back to the house to shower and have dinner. It was an interesting experience to shower in the house. You basically get the entire room wet when you do it, and there is no way around it. Oh when we came back for dinner the house smelled like sour kraut, I asked Youngmi about what was cooking. She was making Kimchi stew, so I told her all about sour kraut and dumplings. Dinner was good, more homegrown rice, kimchi stew that had pork in it, raw veggies, kimchi, and for dessert Korean melon that looks like a little squash we would put on our table in the fall, but this tastes like cantaloupe but it is white, I really like it.
After dinner we sat at the kitchen table and drank a little Korean blackberry wine, and talked. Something about the lighting or something reminds me of sitting in my grandma’s kitchen, maybe it has something to do with it being a farm, and my grandparents did a lot of sitting at the kitchen table bullshitting! Anyway, Kyle and I looked at the Southeast Asia book a little and then went to sleep. Not a very exciting day but we learned a lot about Korean farm life.
