A couple of weeks ago, while we were still in Korea, I walked over to the pension office to file for my refund. I took my camera with me because I knew it was a beautiful day, and since I was going by myself, I planned on taking a bunch of pictures.

My walk was lovely. It was a bright, sunny day and there weren’t too many people out and about. It was bittersweet though, because I knew we’d be leaving soon and it was quite possibly the last walk around Sanbon that I’d be making. I meandered through our neighborhood, taking it all in. I wanted to take a lot of pictures, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I’d stop, see something interesting, watch it and then walk on to the next thing. That morning will forever be imprinted in my memory… and thankfully I have a few shots to remind me.

I had a really funny run-in right before I went home. I was coming down some stairs when I saw three old men lounging on a bench. I could see that they were all watching me, but I didn’t think anything of it because, well, that was normal. As I got closer to them I could tell that the one wanted to talk. I’ll be honest, I would always weigh whether I wanted to talk or not based on what I thought the stress level would be during that conversation. In my experience, the kids could all understand/speak some English, young people, up to 35-ish could too. Lots of old men could speak English, but there were tons of people aged 35 and up who couldn’t. I decided to chat for several reasons. They were three old men, one obviously wanted to talk, it was too early for them to be drunk and I was going home in a week, so, seriously, when was I going to have another situation like this in the near future?

The man in the blue shirt was the talkative one. He asked me all the usual questions… Where are you from? How old are you? Where do you work? Do you like Korea? The other two grandfathers just sat there nodding and smiling. They were so cute! Then Blue Shirt asked me how old I thought the man in the middle was. Oh crap, I thought, I can never get a Koreans age right! He looked fairly young, he had no wrinkles and he seemed lively enough. 65? He shook his head. 70? Nope. 75? “He’s 87 years old,” he told me. “Do you know how he stays young?” I shook my head. “Lots of women. He likes beautiful women!” At this point I started laughing really hard. Here is this 70-something telling me that the key to his 87 year old friend’s youth is women. Nice. Haha.

Then the man proceeds to tel me the other guys age (I forgot) and all of their jobs before retirement. He imported something or another and the man in the white shirt was a doctor. My second belly laugh came when I learned that the man in the middle was a minister. Too funny! Before anyone made any kind of proposal for the old man, I told them that I had to get going but wondered if I could get a picture. Blue Shirt talked the other two into it, so I was able to get a picture of them. Aren’t they cute?!?