dreams

I had weird, very complex, very vivid dreams last night, which I can't really recall completely or explain, but one part that was very vivid (and possibly the only part that was related to Korea) was when I decided to adopt these dogs. One of the dogs was a Burmese mountain dog, though for some reason it's alternate name was Lhasa Apso (spelling?) which is of course a completely different breed, and anyway the dog looked nothing like either breeds, it looked sort of like a husky but brown. I'm not sure why I was acquiring this dog, I was also adopting like three others and it was for some purpose. The creepy part was when I walked in on a kitchen full of ajummas, older Korean women, and they were creating this soup with these long strips of fresh, red meat in them. They had these pans of cooked noodles and vegetables they tossed this meat in and I watched it turning brown as it cooked. Thinking about it, it reminds me of when I was in Vietnam getting noodle soup from street vendors. But seeing this alarmed me, and I ran into the other room, where my new dog was sitting quite calmly, except that his right foreleg was completely gone. There was even a bloody stump. They'd cut off his leg and made this soup from it. I ran back into the kitchen and started yelling at the ajummas in broken Korean, "Anio, boshintang, andeyo!" Boshintang is 'dog soup' though I've never seen it and I'm sure it doesn't resemble the soup in my dream at all.

I'm not sure why I had this dream about boshintang now, since the eating of dogs in Korea has never really been an issue for me (though I don't think I could bring myself to try it). I do associate Burmese mountain dogs with the dog-eating practice in Korea, since a friend I met up with in Japan, Vince, told me that his grandmother breeds those dogs and once declined an order from a Korean buyer when she discovered they wanted them for eating. But according to my students and anyone I've asked in Korea, only mutts are eaten in Korea, because I guess purebreed dogs are seen as too valuable to eat. Maybe some people have more discerning palates. As for the image of the severed foreleg, I attribute that to my recent viewing of "Sin City." I wish I could tell you that my dog was okay, but I don't remember.

So I'm finished with school. Yesterday was very sad for me, not just saying good-bye to the students but saying good-bye to certain teachers who have been very kind to me even though we can't communicate well. We had a particular way of relating to each other that's impossible to continue once I've left, so maybe that's why it makes me sadder. The computer is incredibly slow at the moment, so maybe I'll write more later.