See, I'm smiling..

Strolling down a side street in Seoul yesterday afternoon I was hit with a powerful sensation, one that out weighed even the stench of the nearby boiling silk worms (and if you've ever had the pleasure of smelling boiling silk worms you know exactly how strong of a sensation this must have been.) Korea feels like home. It was ridiculous really. I was standing there in the middle of this dirty, crowded street, inhaling air thick with the stench of drying seafood and rotting garbage, being jostled and pushed aside by people who all look the same but don't look like me, surrounded by hundreds of conversations none of which I could understand, and I had this big, silly grin on my face. I couldn't stop smiling.

I looked to my right and saw a vendor selling socks, hundreds of pairs of multicolored socks. Next to him a woman sold dried squid and the bloodied bodies of freshly skinned eels. Next to her an old man with a long white beard was bent low over a table painting elaborate calligraphy onto long paper scrolls. To my left was a stand selling guitars, next to it was a stand selling back scratchers, razors, and toilet paper and next to that a heavy set man was rolling out large balls of green dough into paper thin sheets and hanging them up to dry. Stepping back and looking at all this I had to admit it was the strangest collage of random shit I had ever seen thrown together. It made no sense at all. And it made perfect sense. Who wouldn't want to shop for new socks while simultaneously picking out the still swimming seafood you want for dinner? Who wouldn't want to dodge an oncoming moped only to step into a pile of rotting cabbage and then get a great deal on guitar strings? Who wouldn't want to dry heave each and every time you walk by the cart selling ice cream cones full of boiled silk worms.....ok that's a lie, I could definitley do without the silk worms. My point is, I never imagined I could feel so comfortable in a place so incredibly different than everything I've ever known.