Though the last few days had been warming up as if winter was behind us, the Korean groundhog (if there even is such a thing) must have found its shadow because Seoul awoke to a blanket of white and a flurry of fluffy frozen feathers falling from the sky.
My morning study session was interrupting by a workout session, both heading out into the slippery streets to do pull-ups and working biceps and back with a pair of dumbbells back at the hostel.
A second person at the hostel was gripped with a motivation to learn Korean, and I provided some coaching to help out. (Mostly just pointing to a list of words in a text book and suggesting that they be both read aloud and copied into a notebook with their translations. I wish I could apply for a patent.)
I had some leftover tofu soup for lunch and after a short power nap headed to a cafe to get some work done. After a productive two hours, I came back to the hostel to use the restroom and head right back out. Since I wasn’t going to risk breaking my neck on a jog in the snow, I needed some sort of activity, so I took an empty backpack the 3km to the Home Plus supermarket and stocked up on food — two salads and some microwavable meals. I’m tempted to invest in a big pack of chicken breasts, but I wouldn’t have enough space in the fridge/kitchen to make it work.
I walked all the way back (earning full credit for my daily exercise) to find Gladiator on the TV. I was getting pretty hungry, so I had a bowl of curry and rice followed by about half a salad and a box of chocolate covered almonds from the sale rack (about 18 for 1,000 W, not a bad deal).
At some point in the evening, there was a full language studying session in swing, and I realized I’ve turned myself into a Korean teacher even though I can barely string two sentences together. I’m actually quite proud of myself for getting two newbie learners to feed off of each other with a simple vocabulary review game. They were still playing and laughing when I went to bed.
| Coffee + Chocolate Croissant | 5600 |
| Groceries | 12960 |
| Total: | 18560 (112 RMB) (USD 16.5) |
Running Total: 5154 RMB (USD 761)
Daily Average: 271 RMB (USD 40)