BEES!!!!

So I went to visit my family last week (warning the next few posts will be all out of chronological order). This visit needs to be broken into two parts. The first one being about bees. Whenever I go to my grandmother's house in Cheongju, I just never know what to expect. In the short amount of time I have spent with them, I have seemed to rack up quite a few wacky stories, this one not being excluded from the bunch.

I arrived in Cheongju on Wed afternoon, and was greeted by my always cheerful one-armed grandma and a little while later my slightly slower but ever adorable grandfather. Later that night, we were joined by both aunts and my mom. However, my older aunt arrived first, carrying a shopping in one hand. (Oh and Paul was there too.) After some chatting, my aunt plops down on the floor with my grandma, and pulls something out of the bag. My grandma took off her shirt and so was sitting there with her pants and undergarments on. I was curious to see what was going on, so I plop down on the floor as well. What she pulled out was a small box, maybe the size of a small hand held game console. However I was quick to realize that whatever was in the box was moving. With a closer look, I realized that it was a box of live bees!

My aunt proceeds to open the sliding door on the box and plucks a bee out with a pair of tweezers. She then quickly beheads the thing, only to be left with the abdomen, pulsating stinger and all. I was freaking out b/c no one was explaining anything to me, and then she stings my grandma with the bee butt. My grandma let out a painful, "아이고!!!" My aunt then went in for the second kill. Like a minute ago, she plucked out another bee, and beheaded it. However unlike her previous success, she dropped the abdomen this time, failing to sting my grandma. Not wanting to get stung herself, she reflexively tried to brush it away from her. In the frenzy, she swiped the thing in my direction.

We look around and couldn't find the abdomen. I started to panic, and the blood started to pulse in my head. Where else could the bee stinger have gone, but down my shirt I thought. So I quickly lift up my shirt, flashing my family, and then pull down my bra. Low and behold, the bee! So I start yelling, bent over with my bra being held as far away from my boobs as possible, and my aunt comes over to tap my cup so that the bee abdomen falls out and onto the floor.

I collapsed onto the floor and told them that this is not something that we do in the USA. My aunt and grandma went into hysterics, laughing to the point of tears. So I guess this is something that not many Koreans do, but it's a way of localizing and applying an anti-inflammatory agent to the desired body part. My aunt explained that a while ago, she had knee pain, but after 100 bees, the pain and swelling in her knee had dissipated. Well I'm just glad that my boob didn't get an unnecessary dose of bee venom. By the sounds that my grandma were making, it did not sound like a pleasant thing.