After breakfast this morning we went to pick up the rental car and set out on our road trip. As with car rentals everywhere there is endless paperwork, and an attempt by the car company to prove that the car is pristine and that any damage is your fault. In this case they weren’t far wrong because we set out from an underground parking lot and scraped the car on a concrete wall. Oh well….
When we left the city, Youngik set the navigation system to take us to his parents’ farm. It has a horrible voice, a nasty combination of whining and nagging. Anyway, after turning this way and that way, it took us up a very small side road and led us to a burial site and told us we had arrived at our destination. Guess we need to bring a navigator with us next time.
We arrived safely at the parents, eventually. They live on an island, Narodo, off the south coast. It’s extraordinarily beautiful, protected from the ocean by another island, Big Narodo, which happens to be where the Korean space station is located, and where their satellite was launched. The parents live at the top of a hill overlooking a small bay. The drive up to tuheir house is a winding land with a rock wall on one side and a sharp drop off on the other. This part of the hillside has been terraced over a period of at least 300 years, and the houses and roads have just fit in around the farms.
The neighbour didn’t want us to park on the road because it is time for the millet harvest. Originally, they would dry the millet in the sun and then beat it with sticks to crack the hull. Now they dry it in the sun on a tarpaulin, and when it is dry enough, drive a tractor back and forth on top of it. This means that it works best if it is spread on pavement.
When we arrived we had a snack of figs and two kinds of persimmons, all from the farm. The trees grow in front of the house on a terrace that is only about 6 feet wide. One of the persimmons was the kind I have had before, about the colour and texture of a peach. The other one was a lot redder and the inside was sort of translucent… and vaguely jelly-like. This allowed me to add one more to the very short list of fruit that I don’t like. It tasted the great, but the texture – ugh.
For dinner we had the same kind of fish cooked three ways: grilled, raw and in soup. Living this close to the ocean means that fish is the mainstay of the diet. Since their combined government pension is about 100 dollars per month, and many things are near the same price as they are in Canada, free or cheap fish, and growing their own fruit and vegetables is a necessity.