Ah, Sunday, a day of rest. Well, everyday is like Sunday. As the title suggests, my activity for the day can be summarized in two words: brunch and run.
The idea for brunch (i.e. having a lazy morning breakfast) was slowly “incepted” through passing by a number of restaurants advertising brunch as well as all the cafe/bakeries. On Saturday night, I did a bit of research in Naver Maps to see what I could find. I’m really liking Naver Maps because it usually pulls up a menu when you click on a restaurant. Although it is funny, how all my apps follow my phone settings to default into Chinese, meaning I have to search for locations in Korean, but they are translated into Chinese for display. Anyways, a place called “Travel Maker” American breakfast fit the bill of order.
I spent most of the afternoon plugging away at the Korean studies. My vocabulary is growing by leaps and bounds, my reading is speeding up, and I’ve got enough grammar under the belt to form interesting sentences. However, I’m super weak in listening and practical communication.
Late afternoon, I laced up my running shoes and headed out into the cold gray for a jog. I brought a jogger’s bag with me, hoping to swing by that supermarket at the World Cup Stadium for another affordable and healthy salad-based dinner. However, for some stupid reason, the supermarket was closed. That did give me the opportunity to check out the other box store market on the other side of the street. There was a whole farmer’s market in the giant hanger that also housed some sort of discount warehouse store (like a Costco). I was surprised that vegetable prices in the farmer’s market weren’t really any lower than the various neighborhood marts. Fruits and veggies are so expensive here. Apples start are 2 dollars each, a small head of broccoli is a dollar, even kimchi starts at 3-4 dollars (which is strange considering most restaurants give you unlimited kimchi for free). The discount wholesale market didn’t have ready mixed salads, which is just as well, since I couldn’t quite figure out if the store was membership-based or not.
After that short diversion, I finished my jog heading back to the hostel, totaling a new record of over 8 km. (I’m thinking I might need to start tracking total mileage ran while on this journey). I cleaned up and tried to write, but it was a bit distracting in the hostel with some very talkative people around.
I was pretty hungry, so I figured I’d just grab some cheap-ish Korean food, but the place I had in mind rests on Sundays. So did my backup option. I found a little dumpling shop and made do. Hunger sated I was a bit more productive before retiring around 11pm, but tossed and turned for a couple hours before I could finally drift off to sleep.
| 4 more nights @ hostel | 244 RMB |
| American breakfast | 13,000 W |
| Dumplings | 9,000 W |
| Total: | 377 RMB (USD 55.88) |
Running Total: 3888 RMB (USD 576)
Daily Average: 277.7 RMB (USD 41)