tea diaries ~~~~~ groooooovy

Bad mojo in Jeju City (or, the chicken that fell from the sky)

So today my host brother Kyeong-Hwan and I went into Jeju City, across the island, to see the new Harry Potter movie. We took the bus and were just ducking into Dunkin Donuts to get some movie munchkins when all of a sudden something large fell from the sky and hit my shoulder on the way, leaving a trail of feathers in its wake. We looked down to see a ... chicken! It was still kind of alive though it looked like its neck had been broken, it wasn't moving its head but its feet were still thrashing around. It was large as chickens go, not your average mottled brown and white little dirt scratcher, I think this guy's daddy was turkey. It was all sorts of different colors. We looked at it dumbly for a good minute, not knowing what to do. Should we put it out of its misery and kick it in the head? I wanted to help it, but I sure as hell didn't want to touch it. There were no open windows or anything from which it could have fallen or been thrown, and my mind raced to try and see if I could remember any snatches of prophesy or omens in the depths of my memory -- perhaps my crops will fail this year? Will my first-born child be born with webbed feet? It has been my policy never to touch almost-dead birds falling from the sky -- it's been a good policy thus far, and I'm sticking to it. One of the onlookers though, did not share my revulsion.

This woman picked the chicken up by its wings and started talking to Kyeong-Hwan in Korean. At this point I'm completely lost. She looked like a fairly normal person, and now she was holding a dying chicken up to us, speaking with a kind of fervor that communicated to me that since it had fallen on us, the chicken was somehow our responsibility. I caught little snatches - my host brother saying that we were going to see a movie and no, we did not want to carry a dying chicken around with us for the afternoon. Finally he ushered me into the store, we bought our munchkins, and when we got back the woman was still standing there waiting, with "our" chicken. Somehow we got out of that entanglement and went to the movie theatre.

The Harry Potter showing was dubbed in Korean and the next subtitled showing was in 2 hours so we decided to go see the Brothers Grimm instead, which turned out to be great but exactly the sort of creepy spooky mood that would amplify our already bizarre evening. We get in the theatre and there are only a few people with us - one of which, of course, is the middle-aged Korean woman, now obviously some sort of witch or conjurer. She's following us. I know it. After the movie we stick around and look at some of the video games, get lost in some of the stores (it's on the fifth floor of a mall) but of course the instant we get back on the street and turn a corner, we almost bump into Her again. I would laugh, cause hey -- it's funny! but I'm wayy to creeped out. My host brother asks her where we should wait for the bus, and she decides to lead us there. I warm up to her a bit now that she's helping us out and not trying to foist some diseased chicken on us, and we make a little small talk on the way. This of course evaporates when she leads us not to the bus stop, but instead to the chicken, dead now for over 2 hours, on the side of a flower bed. This time my brother picks it up and starts babbling about how we can cook it at home. The witch had clearly infected his brain with her foul magicks. He carries it back to the bus station and the witchwoman ducks into E-Mart and gets him a big bag to put it in. Would YOU eat a neck-snapped turkey-chicken that fell from the sky and then lay dead on the side of the road for hours? Am I being culturally insensitive here? No, I'm not. Luckily, after much frantic stammering on my part, I convinced him to throw it away. Makes that raw horse liver (yes, you read that right) I ate last week seem like comfort food. ;)

Okay, time to google for folk tales about chickens falling from the sky. I'm worried about my crops.