I was super hungry in the morning and decided to track down the gukbap place I had gone to with S & Y after the feed the homeless service activity over a month ago. It was even better than I remembered. I grabbed a Mega Coffee on the way back so I wouldn’t have to waste so much time making my own coffee.
I finally got around to nailing down my schedule for the remaining days in Korea. The (half) marathon is only about 10 days away, and I went ahead and booked places to stay.
I was sitting downstairs studying with mild chitchat, but felt an overwhelming sleepiness, so I decided to mix it up by taking my nap first and eat lunch second. I had the last packet of salad for lunch and hung out downstairs for a bit–sucked into two episodes of “Modern Family”–before heading to another new (to me) cafe.
The coffee was good, but I was dealing against the Scylla and Charybdis of my own lack of energy and distractions through the phone. It’s hard to muster my concentration in the first place, its even harder to find the flow after hanging up the phone. Jazz and rain don’t seem to do the trick any more.
I didn’t do much else that day. After hanging out in the hostel for a bit, I headed out into the drizzle to find some food. I wanted some spicy tteokbokki or Japanese ramen, but ended up popping into a North Korean cold noodle place. It was nice, and gave me the boost of energy to do a bit more studying in the evening. If was a quiet evening and I didn’t have any temptation to drink.
I slept well and was up fairly early in the morning. I only had one coffee and did the minimal studying necessary before I decided my time would be better spent taking advantage of the clean air. It was still somewhat wet and gray, but I had a good run. One shower later, I had another coffee and kept studying in the living room while a Canadian guy was watching “Vikings.” We had talked about going around the corner to a homemade Japanese ramen place the previous day, and as we were both hungry, we headed over at 11am only to find that they didn’t open until 11:30. We went back to the hostel to wait it out, but the wait was worth it.
I took a short nap before heading over to a nearby neighborhood to explore a bit and find somewhere nice to spend an afternoon. I picked a cafe that looked pretty good, but I was the only person there and it got cold after a while. It was also hard to focus on work, so I gave up mid afternoon and went back to the cozy hostel.
There had been talk about a barbecue at the hostel on Wednesday night, and having been cancelled on account of the rain, I was under the impression of it being postponed to Thursday. That wasn’t to be the case, but I had the idea of barbecue fixated in my mind and kept talking it up around the hostel hoping to stir up some interest. While talking, a Serbian fellow who was in Seoul on a visa run for China asked about book stores in the area. As he wasn’t comfortable about getting lost, I agreed to accompany him. We headed over directly, and I got a chance to really look through a bunch of Korean textbooks, paying particular attention to the way they presented Hangul. The first one confirmed my intuitions about the need for a better system, the second gave me some good ideas on sequencing, but the third was a book solely dedicated introducing the writing system, basically the Hangul museum distilled into a textbook/workbook. I’m going to have to meditate on whether the fool’s errand of writing my own introductory textbook is worth it.
After about an hour in the bookstore, it was getting into the evening and I was still antsy about getting together a group for dinner or something. By the time we got back it was apparent that I missed whatever window was available, so I headed back out to see about feeding myself, dropping a bunch of money at a banchan truck and picking up a couple bottles of soju. I enjoyed my dinner in the hostel living room as people came in and out and hung around. There was still much chatter among the guests about going out to party that night, and I was on board for whatever.
However, I was also perfectly content to entertain myself, and I put in some earbuds and cranked the volume on music for quite a while, even as I was marching along the streets with five other people off to some bar or club. At some point, there was a huddle and the group split up because someone had some bad blood with me, and I ended up a convenience store with the two French guys drinking more even though I really would have preferred to just go to bed early at that point. There was a Korean man also drinking at the convenience store and we all hung out together. After a polite enough time, I made my farewells and headed back to the hostel, which despite being well past midnight, still had plenty of people around, meaning I was up for another hour or two talking. Eventually, I was able to get myself under control and go to sleep.
I had seriously wanted to go to be around 11 so I could wake up early for another run, but that social bug seized me and just wouldn’t let go. I don’t know if it was the most volume of alcohol I’ve had in a while, but I was the drunkest, completely transforming into the kind of guy who talks to giant invisible rabbits and quotes liberally from the Sermon on the Mount.
| Gukbap | 7000 |
| Mega Coffee Americano | 1500 |
| Coffee and Scone | 8000 |
| Cold noodles | 8000 |
| Subtotal: | 24,500 |
| Ramen | 11000 |
| Hand pour coffee | 5500 |
| Banchan | 10000 |
| Soju | 3850 |
| Garlic Bread loaf | 3900 |
| Sports Drinks (2+1) | 4000 |
| Subtotal: | 38,250 |
| Total: | 62,750 (379.6 RMB) (USD 56.55) |
Running Total: 13481.6 RMB (USD 2008.4)
Daily Average: 254.4 RMB (USD 37.9)