My third day in Seoul, exploring an alley off the main shopping street of Insadong, I was—what should I say—lured? Seduced? Neither of those words quite fits, so let’s just say that I was pulled by instinct into a restaurant, and I was gifted with the traveler’s treasure of discovery.
Looking into the front window from the alley, I had seen a large tray of dumplings. They were like a fleet of perfectly spaced fat boats sailing across the silver surface of a pond. Each was the size of a small fist. Each was astonishingly overstuffed and crowned with a crenulated crest of pinched dough.
Nancy Penrose writes to capture the ephemera of travel and to explore the moments that resonate in memory. She has been a traveler since 1957 when she was four years old and her family moved from a farm in Oregon to spend two years in Teheran, Iran, for her father’s job in agriculture. Her writing has appeared in publications that include Memoir (and), Passager, Marco Polo Arts Magazine, Drash, the essay collections of Travelers’ Tales, and the 2011 anthology Burning Bright: Passager Celebrates 21 Years.Her most recent award is from the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition 2011. Her website is www.plumerose.net.
