We were taking an after-dinner walk when we stumbled across a huge street fair happening just a few blocks from our place.  Sweet.  I love stuff like this. There is something kinda magical when the place you live in suddenly pops up hundreds of tents and new foods.  I adore walking through the crowds to see what everyone is getting excited over.  I get excited over it too.  

Because we live in Korea the stuff they get excited with over here is a little different than the stuff we get excited about back home.  So we taped it.  

I played hostess/narrator and ran from booth the booth.  We both wanted to get film of the different foods you can get over here.  Shark, chicken feet, stuffed squid, and then there are the beetles.  

I found a booth that was firing some up.  Hundreds of brown, slimly looking beetle-like things getting cooked in a big skillet.  They were being fried in hot, brown oil and they danced and oozed and wiggled like they were still alive.  Which they could have been.  They didn’t smell very good either.  Imagine frying your used gym socks in dirty peanut oil.  Yeah…that’s what this was like.

A few weeks ago D. and I, in an surge of adventure and curiosity, tried some of these treats.  They tasted about as great as they smelled.  Only a little nuttier.  We both gave them a shot, shrugged and declared that we probably wouldn’t eat them ever again.

Until we were standing in front of a vat of them with a video camera and a nice Korean man was holding a freshly skewered one on a toothpick at me.  From behind the camera D. chuckled:  ”Go on.  Try one.”  The Korean bug-man giggled too.  

So I took it, blew on it, and popped it into my mouth.

And it popped in my mouth, squishing and spilling all over my tongue as I chewed it’s squirmy little exoskeleton.  

“So how was your first bug?” D. asked over the camera in his interviewer voice.  

I shrugged and because I’m classy and have no willpower, I was filmed making a face as I tried to get the gritty bug taste off my teeth.  

“It popped in my mouth.” I critiqued.

Out of the side of my vision the Korean bug-man laughed again and then pointed at me while he motioned his cupped hand at his crotch and said something I couldn’t translate.

“And I think he just said I have big balls.”