I'm reaching the goodbye portion of the summer - Sunday I put Zoe on the airport bus home (she has escaped from her tiny place near Seocho); this next week sees a few other friends from the summer head back to the states.
Over the weekend, I was feeling down, so I settled on shock therapy as a treatment. By shock therapy, I mean climbing. There's this great new gym in Seoul run by a world-class Korean climbing family, the Ja's. Having never climbed at a brand new gym, I missed the memo about the holds being rough right out of the box. SANDPAPER... It seemed like every problem I got on, whoops, there went another patch of skin off my hands.
I'm also really out of shape. "Teacher, I'm sorry but I can't write that down. WHY?? Uh, my hands hurt?" In spite of this, I walked out of the gym with a big smile on my face. I missed this.
Last weekend, we tried to go bungee jumping. Classic Korean summer problem - it was raining too hard. So we went to a sketchy (is there any other kind?) multi-bang instead to play Mario Kart and watch a Korean movie without English subtitles. Also, super cute puppy (still teething)!
That night, to celebrate our achievement, we went out in Hongdae. On the way, we ran into some street musicians.
Anyway, as a going-away present for Phil, I brought some of my mom's cookies. Well, there's this director of a Korean drama who frequents this bar with his girlfriend, and somehow always ends up buying us shots (tough life, right?) I offered them some cookies, and they love them! Even got the promotional photo.
Now Zoe and I are badgering our mom to move to Seoul and start a bakery. The night before putting Zoe on the bus, we went out to dinner with Hanna at Bibigo, followed by 감빙수 at Coco Bruni. Everyone keeps asking me, "Don't you mean 팥빙수? You must mean 팥빙수..." Nope! 감 is persimmon, which looks like a tomato but apparently is sweet and delicious. For those not in the know, 빙수 is this amazing shave ice mixture with mochi, chunks of fruit, nuts, and all sorts of other stuff. To walk off our food coma, we went to the Banpo bridge light show. I think the whole thing is just an attempt to encourage marriage proposals to get the birth rate up... the park was announcing over the loudspeakers the love story of a couple where the man was currently proposing to his girlfriend... (Korean couple culture is prevalent and insane). Beautiful light show. Water from the Han River gets piped up to the top of the bridge and jetted out over the water, in front of colored lights, all accompanied by music.
