Grand Adventure Day 8: Bears

First day in Korea! I woke up feeling sick, even debated about checking out of the hostel and finding a place with my own room in case whatever I had got worse. It would've been really shitty to start the next part of my trip having to lie in a bunk bed for the next couple of days. Several hours later, I would decide that I wasn't sick, but instead that it was my ... nervousness ... dread ... at being in a foreign place without any language skills or sense as to what I should be doing. I would hang around my room for almost the entire morning: getting my stuff stored either under the bunk bed or in a cupboard, cleaning up the bottle of shampoo that spilled in my bag, charging my phone (which took over 3 hours, fuck the electricity in Korea). I would also need to figure out the shower situation: it was just one room with three shower stalls. Each stall had all the normal stuff, and a small shelf above the showerhead to put your clothes. Except the stall was so small that by the time I was done, there wasn't a dry spot to stand to put my clothes back on, especially since those clothes were usually the sweatpants I wore to sleep (so much colder than Japan) or in today's case, the jeans I fell asleep in the night before. Also, the issue of remembering to bring all my stuff into the shower. Luckily for me, this time, there was another person showering in one of the other stalls since I would forget my towel, so they tossed one of the free hostel towels over the top. The included breakfast was toast and coffee (thank god that we had coffee that first day). I chatted a bit with two other people, one from Monteal, Canada and the other from someplace in France.

I decided to walk a couple blocks around the hostel in either direction, just to kind of get my bearings on being in a new country I did no planning for. I'm going to let you know now, a lot of my days are spent walking around and looking at things. Thanks to my weird imagination, relentless daydreaming, and PokemonGo, it never feels like wasted time, you know, until later when people ask, "So what did you do today?" and I shrug my shoulders knowing that they don't want to hear "I don't know" because I wasn't really paying attention. I would find these interesting walls though

Eventually, needing to eating something more than toast and coffee, I stopped at a small shop that sold gyoza/mandu (is there a difference? I don't know). The shopkeeper and I charaded our way to an understanding that I couldn't buy just a couple pieces, but that he sold them in a set number. So I got a bunch then sat down. As he set them in the steamer, he brought out some side dishes (including those addictive radishes) and pulled a set of metal chopsticks (which I dislike) from a hidden compartment inside the table. Caught up on my journaling/reading while practicing eating. Yes, I know, I really should be better with those things, but my chopstick skills still leave a lot to be desired and it's unfortunately worse with the metal ones.

After lunch, I walked back to the station and took it a stop over to the Hongik University area. Bought a cup filled with fried chicken, tater tots, toppoki and all covered in that red sauce. You know the one. No, I have no idea what it is. I spent the rest of the day walking around. There were a couple of points of interest on the map I picked up at the hostel, but with my shitty sense of direction I never found them. I followed a billboard advertising "live-fire" to a gun-range, though it turned out to be air-soft guns. I didn't do too well with those. I did do a little better on the archery range, especially since the bows had that stick-thing in the front that supposedly helped with aiming, I guess.

and I know what you're thinking, but no, they didn't let me walk over there and shove the arrows into the target. I needed to shoot them on my own. So this was the ... third, I think, attempt. Also, I won a prize (though I think they just wanted me to leave)

It was also an opportunity to practice and get comfortable saying "Kamsamida" (I've probably misspelled that, and I guarantee that I mispronounced it a bunch of times too). I also meant to learn the phrase for "Could you take my picture?" but it's a lot faster to just hand people my phone. I found an arcade close by and played Point Blank and King of Fighters. I also came across this cool looking building

They sold ... artsy stationary stuff and books. I visited a couple of stationary stores as the afternoon turned to night, searching for a notebook(s). It turns out, like how some people might collect mugs or shotglasses or dirt from wherever they are on vacation, apparently I collect notebooks (so many notebooks). Maybe one day I'll do a post about the collection. I would pick up one with a picture of Brown from the Line Store as well as this picture with the giant Brown, though from all the money I spent on that Line Rangers game, I feel like they should've given me that Brown

Got a Bulgogi hotdog (a regular hotdog with thin strips of beef and sauce) from a vendor and walked back to the area I explored earlier to find people busking. Being the cheapskate I am, I decided to take the free entertainment and watch. The most entertaining ones were this group of highschool kids dancing to kpop songs in the middle of the street, having to stop every so often when a car needed to drive through. I seriously debated just standing in the road to block the way ("sorry, I'm just a dumb foreigner, I didn't know that I couldn't stand in the middle of the road"). Another group, while taking a break, brought a couple people into their spot to dance to a song. I also ate more food on sticks.

I headed back early to the hostel in the hopes that I could catch the caretaker and ask her how to use the washing machine. She wasn't there so I sat at the dining room table trying to catch up with my writing. The house manager showed up with cake shaped like a bunny as it was her assistant's last day and another one's first day, coming from ... Taiwan, I think (I'm bad a geography ... and listening) so this was also her first day. As much as I hate taking the time to take pictures of food, I really should've got a picture of that cake. I guess since I was already at the table, they invited me to have some of the cake to celebrate though I hadn't met either of these people until just now but, you know, cake. As we ate, eventually the dialogue switched over to Mandarin between the three of them, which, like my knowledge of Japanese and Korean, I know nothing of. But, since I still had cake and coffee, I just smiled and nodded like I knew what was going on. I am apparently an expert at this, or at least in an advanced class, as they asked me a couple of times if I actually understood anything that they were saying. Lucky, "smiling and nodding without understanding what is going on" is really the only trick that's gotten me through life.

Oh, but in the end I did find out how to work that washing machine, so mystery solved.