I was reading J. a book about Korean customs tonight and it reminded me of a funny story from our first trip to Seoul to pick him up.

We took a tour of Seoul on our "off" day between the day we met J. and the day we picked him up to go to the airport. The guide was very nice and took us to a number of places including some shrines, a couple of museums, lunch at a Korean restaurant and the open-air market in the city. We went into a gift shop at one of our stops and saw dozens of pairs of ducks of different sizes available for sale. We asked the guide what all the ducks were for. She told us they were wedding ducks and were traditionally given to a Korean couple as a symbol of good luck.

Then we asked the next logical question: How do you know which duck is male and which is female? We were told that the female duck had a string around it's beak to keep it's mouth shut! :-)

Needless to say, we bought a set of ducks...