Cross-Legged Floor Dining

The drive to Ansan takes an hour they tell me from the front of the car.
I can barely sit still, twisting and turning in the backseat so I can catch glimpses of a foreign highway packed with paint-chipped mini-trucks and compact luxury Hyundais. Old wrinkling Korean men stare at me through their windshields with as much curiosity as I, gaping mouthed, exude back at them. We pass pitch black car windows that shield the men and women hidden behind them, whose featureless faces stare back beneath the tint with their own quizzical pondering. "Oma! Appa! Miguk! Miguk!" their children must be saying. The backward Oakland A's hat must have given me away on the spot.
I'm in the depths of thought when I figure out Aesop is trying to ask me something.
"Why did you decide to come to Korea?" he says again, turning around in his seat to face me.
"Um..." I have to give him something. The truth might be a little too whimsical for him to handle. "I wanted to teach somewhere in Asia, and I did a lot of research, and, uh, Korea seemed to be the best fit."
Aesop translates my white lie so Stewart can understand. Who knows how Aesop reworded it.
Korea is very different from America he tells me once he's finished.
No shit, Aesop. I laugh.
"You are very brave. You must like adventure."
"I was just bored with America," I explain.
I spot Aesop's smiling reflection in the side view mirror. Stewart laughs after he hears the translation, replying in soft, incomprehensible Hangul.
"Stewart and I are very bored with Korea," Aesop quickly summarizes.
Small talk fades as Ansan approaches through the windshield, long after Aesop and I have exhausted our mutual understandings. It's anyone's guess what each of us is comprehending now.

"Welcome to Ansan," Aesop says.
My eyelids draw open like a broken bedroom boom. Sleep in the last 56 hours or so was nonexistent. I must look and smell like a dirty American.
After a brief glimpse of the bustling downtown area, Stewart navigates his modest ride down two-way streets skinnier than alleyways, then past a plethora of pedantic pedestrians until coming to a quick halt in front of what I believe to be Testimony's apartment complex.
"We here?"
"Yes, you are hungry?"
"You have no idea."

"What do you want to eat?" Testimony shouts while walking towards me and my luggage, long before my sleep-deprived eyes get a chance to focus on his features in the twilight.
"Anything you got."
"American or Korean?" he asks.
"Korean," Aesop shoots in. He understands after all.
I have some catching up to do.

Once inside the place, Testimony gestures to the floor for me to take off my shoes, but I'm already working on my left laces. I notice the pile of footwear congregated near the restaurant's doorway before he even remembers to make sure. I'd read about these places in my travel book on the plane ride over. Shoes off at the door, sit cross-legged on the floor. Good luck to any 6 foot 3 white boy that recently crash-landed ashore.

I can smell my feet shortly after sitting down to the 12 inch tall table. A 4-foot tall waitress hurries over to place a clear water plastic jug and five porcelain cups on the table in front of Testimony. He pours each member of our group a cup full until finally filling his own.
"I apologize about my feet smelling," I say out of nowhere.
Testimony laughs.
"Jeff, no problem."
He hands me a set of chopsticks and a spoon for the bean soup the server just brought to our table.
"There is story that says Mary liked smell of Jesus's feet very much."
He seems to get a kick out of my confused reaction judging how he inspects my smile.
"I'm sure Jesus had better smelling feet than me," I reply as soon as the words rip free from the cobwebs of my brain.
The whole table laughs.
And one.

Duck's for dinner, and it can't come soon enough. The pins and needles in my legs have turned the limbs into numb byproducts of my body.
"You use use chopsticks very well," Testimony points out to the rest of the table and myself.
"Thanks. I eat a lot of sushi back home. It helps."
"You like sushi?"
"I love sushi. Unagi especially."
By the look on his face, Testimony seems to have missed what I've just said. Come on, Jeff. This isn't Japan.
"Oh, right. Um... I mean eel. You know..." I hold up my right arm and move it like a microscopic flagella to get my thoughts across.
Testimony's eyes grow wide.
"Oh, chang-o! In Korea they say chang-o gives you stamina. Do you have a girlfriend?"
A little creepy, I think to myself.
"Nope," I answer, shaking my head back and forth, waiting on the edge of the floor for what he'll say next. "Why do you ask?"
"Because you are a very cool guy," Testimony finally replies after swallowing the enormous lettuce wrap he's just stuffed in his mouth.
My auto-pilot engages. All I do is laugh. If it wasn't for his three kids wrestling around on the floor behind me, occasionally whacking me straight in the abdomen, I'd think he were hitting on me.
"Thank you, I reply."
"Korean women will very much like you," he says as if he's been listening in on my thought process.
You gonna find me one? I think to ask.