"It Smells Like a Zoo"

NOS is nothing if not hard working, and Thursday, being his first day back from Korea with his new Bride, was also his first day back at work. Not wanting to leave The Bride by herself all day in a new country with a new husband, The Wife took her out shopping for household things and groceries and then brought her to our house for dinner.

As we were sitting in the back yard eating our chef's salads, we quizzed her about her impressions of her new country and her new townhouse. She was not used to hearing all the birds, and the frogs in a pond near the townhouse. Seoul is very urbanized and there are not a lot of parks and open spaces, conducive to wildlife. Where the Bride had lived in Seoul was pretty much solid concrete (not all of Korea is like that; I'll tell you about our lovely trip to the mountains to a Buddhist monastery when I get around to it.) And the other thing she hasn't gotten used to are the animal smells. "It smells like a zoo," she said. We were puzzled at first, then realized their townhouse is several miles from the University's experimental farms; what are referred to as the South Farms. Kids from Chicago complain about the smell of the South Farms, and, plans are in the works to move the farms several miles further away from campus. Having grown up on a farm and having been used to the smell of barnyard manure all my life, it had never occurred to me to even notice the smells.

And we think Korea is different.