::A Geek in Korea::

Yoshi!

Since today is a local election day in South Korea, everyone has the day off. My wife and I went to the voting booth early in the afternoon. She went to vote, I went to look. After she voted, she went over to her aunt’s house. Together with her mom and aunt, they prepared some of the grandmother’s maesil for juice later in the summer.  The wild maesil plums are put into a air tight jar with brown sugar and  white sugar and sealed for fifteen or more days. The resulting syrup will make a refreshing drink this summer when the temperatures get hot.

While they were preparing the seven jars for the summer, two cousins came over to play with Yoshi. They adore dogs, but their aunt doesn’t currently allow them to have one. They played with Yoshi, who took to them well. These are the first "new" people he’s gotten to play with since we took him home. They ran him around the veranda for a while. Then we got out Yoshi’s transport box, some food, cleaning supplies. We took the dog with us for a picnic at their father’s landscaping nursery in the country.

This was Yoshi’s first trip outside that wasn’t a trip to the vet. He still needs three shots to be allowed outside completely. We were careful about where he walked and what he could interact with since he wasn’t immunitized. Who knows how well we did.

We ate some very nice pork on a homemade grill out beneath the trees and sky. I’m not sure what it is with Koreans and barbaque grilling, but we had a ridiculous amount of meat. Two or three kilograms or more perhaps. They kept telling me to eat more and more, but eventually I got to the stage where I couldn’t even look at pork without cringing.  We put Yoshi back in the box for the night to keep him from being eaten by mosquitos. Everyone enjoyed peeking at the dog to see what he was doing. He seems to be popular with the relatives.

We got dropped off at our apartment and planned to wash the dog. I got deputized into shampoo and wash duty. Yoshi doesn’t fight too much, but he hates getting his face washed. For reasons unknown to me, my toothbrush was relagated to his "face brush". I get a new brush to myself, thankfully, and I made sure the old brush stays far away from the bathroom just in case.