Day 2 With Grandma

Bored stiff, I walked back up the one street in Grandma's tiny village. People were starting to trickle in for the upcoming Chuseok holiday. A few of them were out and about. That made for more than a couple steady stares at me. Along the walk I snapped a few pics of some of the local urchins. Some already dressed in their holiday garb.
Once word got around that there was a whitey lurking, a group of kids started to gather and follow. Soon I was surrounded by 10-12 elementary age children. They shot questions at me like a firing squad. And with my 3rd grade level Korean skills, we hit it right off. It was the first human interaction--besides Grandma--that I had in 2 days. So it was welcome. At first.

Once they got comfortable that I was not a ghost or a monster, one obnoxious little boy decided it was time to initiate me into the local game of gochu grab. He would stand right in front of me and then reach out and smack me in the manbits. I was not a fan so I told him not to do that anymore. I trusted he got the memo and let my guard down. Smack, he junkpunched me again.

No matter how I chided, he kept after me until one time he missed and hit the pink coin purse in my pocket. He asked me what was in my pocket. Me, hoping it would distract him from his punch fetish, I pulled the coin purse out. Upon seeing it, the jaw of one girl in the crowd just dropped. Then, when I opened it and pulled out her photo ID, those kids lost their marbles. They jumped up and down and ran in circles and squealed and yammered. How could a foreigner end up with her coin purse and her picture? They couldn't wrap their heads around the fact that I had found it on the side of the road in their very own village. I handed it back to her and the kids all ran off screaming.

I walked back to Grandma's by myself.