I was vaguely aware that March 1 was a holiday in Korea, having come across it on a list of public holidays in a textbook, and though it seems that, yes, everyone had the day off from work, it didn’t seem a big deal. For the record, the holiday commemorates the start of a (ultimately unsuccessful) independence movement against Japanese colonization that began March 1, 1919. Considering it is the centennial, you’d think it be a bigger deal. Then again, given the anti-Japanese rhetoric I’m used to in China, maybe its a good thing that Korea doesn’t get too nationalistic about things.
I had lunch with my classmate and his younger brother, who is thinking about applying to grad school in the US. We talked about training dogs and growing coffee plants. After lunch, we went to a coffee shop by a lake and kept chatting. We double parked and just left the keys in the ignition so anyone could move the car if they needed to. I’m still trying to wrap my head around that. I get that Korea is safe, but wow. I sometimes talk to women from the US or Europe, who say they’d never walk alone at night there, but feel safe here. I feel it too (though obviously from a different perspective and a generous helping of privilege), but seriously, why would I ever want to move to a place that is dangerous and crime ridden. American carnage, indeed.
In the mid-afternoon, duty called, so my friend had to rush back home, dropping me off on the way. Having accomplished the ambitious goal of leaving the apartment, I was content to stay in for the night, eating a salad and watching ten minutes of a movie before I realized I didn’t have the attention span for it. Strange, I’m spending hours intensely focused on Korean study, but I can’t turn the brain off and just watch a movie.
Saturday morning, I continued my studying campaign, stopping only for lunch and a light nap. After my nap, I forced myself out of the house to go around the block to a coffee shop, whose name I thought was “Cup of Inspiration” but was actually Hands Coffee. I had barely sat down when I received a VoIP call via WeChat. By the time, I got off the phone, whatever inspiration was in the long black had long since been sucked out of me. I fiddled about for an hour or so before leaving to visit the grocery store again.
Rather than buying salad mixes (which have basically been just lettuce and cabbage to begin with), I bought a couple of kinds of lettuce which were on sale and spent a long time looking over the produce section debating some fancy (carrot, cucumber, tomato) upgrades to my rabbit diet of the next several days. Ultimately, I decided to spring for a bag of apples (사과 for a 傻瓜). Craving a particular food item, I picked up a pack to make myself for dinner.
And so the hours passed.
I’ve been getting a lot of input from a variety of sources telling me what to do with my life. There is the “write about your travels” camp, which I would think this blog is fulfilling, but that’s ignoring the two unfinished travelogues in the proverbial desk drawer. There is the “be an online celebrity” camp encouraging me to go full on with Chinese social media, posting daily videos and I suppose eventually figuring live streaming and some sort of English teaching based monetization scheme. Seriously, I have two offers from friends back in China to be my agent and push content out into the interwebs. Finally, there is a camp of one who suggests different things every time I talk to him.
| Gatorade (7-11) | 2000 |
| Long Black | 4300 |
| Groceries | 15430 |
| Total: | 21730 W (131.5 RMB) (USD 19.6) |
Running Total:
8202.75 RMB
(USD 1223)
Daily Average:
241.25 RMB
(USD 36)