At the end of the semester, I had so many thoughts in my mind. Half of my college life
hadjust ended and I was about to turn 23 years old. As lots of young people would feel the
same way, I had so many worries about my career. I was quite uncertain about how to
prepare for the future. I realized that I wasn’t even comfortable with answering questions
such as, “What is your favorite thing in the world?” I couldn’t tell someone about me with
confidence because I wasn’t even sure that I knew myself well. In this sense, failing to decide
on a future career was a natural result. I thought that it was time to arrange my thoughts. At
the end of 2016, I and my cousin set off for Mokpo.
There was one special reason why I chose Mokpo as a destination. I wanted to go
somewhere I could see the blue sea. I don’t remember when, but I started to answer “blue” to
a question that asked about my favorite color. For me, it was the sea that has the most
beautiful blue color in itself. I’ve naturally grown to like the sea and treasure the time I spend
looking at the sea and being consoled. To meet the sea, I headed for Mokpo, which is an old
port town. As this trip was for arranging my thoughts about myself, such as what I like or
what I’m good at, I began the trip from choosing what I like.
What I did in Mokpo is simple: I ate and walked. For someone who is in a similar situation like
me and wants to visit somewhere unfamiliar for a break, I suggest this simple itinerary. I ate
what I wanted without worrying about being fat and walked to any place where I could see
the sea. What I’d like to do now is to briefly introduce the memories of eating and walking in
Mokpo.
There are five representative foods in Mokpo. They are called ‘Mokpo Omi’ in Korean, which
means five delicacies you can try in Mokpo. They are small octopus, fermented skate and
steamed pork slices served with kimchi, seasoned crabs, croaker sashimi, and braised
cutlassfish. Among these, this time I tried small octopus and fermented skate and steamed
pork slices served with kimchi. The small octopus was served with Korean-style raw beef,
which is my favorite. Right after the dish was served, we were a bit perplexed as the small
octopus was still alive. We did expect that it would move, but its movement was much more
intense and violent than we thought. However, we got used to it soon and enjoyed our dish
very much. For the next, the fermented skate, was just amazing. Its soft and tangy flavor was
something that I’d never experienced before. Although I don’t doubt that there must be
someone who would have difficulty trying it because of its unique smell, the combination of
the fermented skate, steamed pork slices, and kimchi was definitely a regional delicacy. In
addition to these, we tried a shrimp baguette and acream cheese baguette, which are the
representative items of Mokpo’s oldest bakery. The shrimp baguette was the best of all. It
was so good that we just didn’t say a word while eating it. We also went to one of the most
famous Chinese restaurants in Mokpo and had a special dish called ‘jungkkan’, the black bean
noodles. It was different from the others in that they put a fried egg on it and had sauce that
was full of ground meat. Each of them was really unique and we had so much fun trying
various new flavors. They made us almost forget about our biggest concern, our diets.
It was time to walk now that we had eaten a lot. We chose to go to Ongeum-dong, which is
a village by the sea. The name of the village, Ongeum, means warm silk. This village got the
name because there’s a lot of nice bright sunshine, which makes the inhabitants feel warm.
Also, for the word ‘silk’, although there’s no exact origin passed on, I guess it’s because of the
colorful roofs covering the village. When I saw the roofs in the sunshine, it looked like a silk
with various colors. While walking along the walls, we could see beautiful paintings and lots
of poems that were drawn and written on the walls. One of the villagers who was passing by
told us that the poems were written by the old people who gathered at the senior citizens’
community center to learn theKorean alphabet. He also said that the poems were meaningful
because the old poets were illiterate at first. The contents of the poems were all about life.
Reading the poems, I could see so many different forms of the hard lives that the old poets
went through. The fact that there always has been someone who has endured a hard life
without any complaints gave me the feeling of courage and gratitude.
As eating and walking all day made me and my cousin quite tired, we thought we needed a l
ittle rest. We went back to the guesthouse where we were staying. However, we couldn’t just
spend the night sleeping since we were on a trip. We agreed to do something that would
leave some traces of the day. We took out drawing books and colored pencils from our
backpacks. Then we started to draw what we saw on that day right until we fell asleep. I saw
my cousin drawing the logo of the oldest bakery where she really enjoyed the shrimp
baguette. I drew various moments of the whole day that I could remember like a cartoon.
The sunset on the ocean I saw near Ongeum-dong became my favorite drawing of that
night. Wrapping up the day with drawing, I felt like the day was being colored beautifully
as well.
Yun Daeun rosemaryd95dd@gmail.com
<ÀúÀÛ±ÇÀÚ © È«Àʹ뿵ÀڽŹ®»ç, ¹«´Ü ÀüÀç ¹× Àç¹èÆ÷ ±ÝÁö>