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At that moment, I could honestly say that I felt more “Korean” and proud to be Korean than any other time in my life.
The festivities ended with the reverberation of the jing. We hugged each other and patted each other on the back with appreciative, “ Soogo het-seo!” and “Good job!” People who were strangers at the beginning of the day now seemed like life-long friends. After hamming it up for a final photo shoot, we quickly untied our instruments and tti and started putting away the instruments. There was a promise of good home-cooked Korean food in Dongseok-hyung’s house and we could not wait. I fell asleep on the way there and awoke as we pulled into the drive-way already packed with cars.
The living room was already crowded with children and other older Korean men and women that I had not met before. The aroma of spicy beef soup and kimchi drifted from the kitchen, filling my mouth with drool. It had been a very long time since I had homemade Korean food; restaurant food, no matter how good, never had the same belly-warming taste of homemade dishes. We quickly changed into street clothes in the upstairs bathroom and hurried into the kitchen for large helpings of yookgaejang and rice. There were several low tables assembled side by side in the living room with an array of side dishes, some that I had not seen or smelled in years. There were also makgeolli, soju, beer, and soda scattered on the table and stacked on the side of the couch. Even after we stuffed our faces until we could barely breathe, there was a ton of food left over, and Haejin-unni kept encouraging us to eat more, ruing that she had no way of disposing of the leftovers.