Day 20 (Monday):
Translated for a family from America meeting with the adoptee's birth mother. Since the family was from the States, they were by far the easiest to talk to. We went to Cheongyechon after lunch.
(Stock photo)
In the evening, my uncle (the vet) asked us to come over to his clinic, where he showed us his awards and talked about family honor and success and all the fun stuff, nothing new. And then we had dinner, where he talked more about family honor and success.
Day 21 (Tuesday):
Met with my cousin Hyeonji. She is so sweet and adorable and cute and argh her mere presence causes mental diabetes. Usually, girls talking and acting cute makes me want to punch them, but I strangely didn't mind her being cute. Perhaps it's because she's always talked like that and I know she's not trying to sound cute on purpose. Perhaps it's because she's my cousin.
Where we had dinner.
We walked round Daehakno, ate, watched a mediocre play (that she was kinda duped into purchasing tickets, but eh, no hard feelings), took sticker photos, looked at cute things, and ran around tring to avoid the extreme rain. Yes, the signs of flood-chaos were just beginning.
Esaping the rain in a chocolate cafe - DESSERT!!!
Day 22 (Wednesday):
See FLOOD EDITION.
Day 23 (Thursday):
More rain. Cancelled the meeting with my friend Tae Yong because it was raining way too much. More or less stayed in the house doing nothing because you had to be crazy to go out in that weather.
Day 24 (Friday):
Suddenly, there was no rain. Because our place was not flooded (and was in high ground), the ground dried up almost instantly. We went to watch Captain America (which was good) and chilled again.
Day 25 (Saturday):
We FINALLY met up with Tae Yong after two cancellations. Gangnam, although flooded a few days ago, looked like nothing happened when the rain dried up, compared to Namtaeryeong, where landslide occured and people died and still looked like a mess even when we passed by it on the bus (everyone was looking out the window apprehensively). There were police cars everywhere, and soldiers were recruited to try to clear up the mess as much as possible. Gangnam only had some places where the ground was lightly caked with mud, as if someone dropped sand on the floor. Sigh, rich people sure have it well.
Tae Yong lost a lot of weight (damn, your arms are like twigs!), but otherwise he was the very same Tae Yong from the ISP days. Not extremely talkative, kind of silly, kind of brusque at times, but actually a nice guy at the core and a pretty good friend. We caught up on each other's lives during lunch and dessert (matcha shaved ice is dangerously delicious), and then went to the karaoke, where we sang to our hearts' content with our pretty crappy vocals. There needs to be more karaoke in my life. Singing (albeit crappily) is lots of fun. Too bad there are only a handful of people who I would feel brave enough to karaoke together.
In the evening, we headed over to our aunt's, which was not too far away, and we stayed, conversed a bit, and then had Samgyetang for dinner, which is a chicken stew with glutinous rice, jujubes, ginseng, chestnuts, gingko, and all that healthy herbal stuff stuffed inside a whole (small) chicken. The broth could have been a bit more flavorful, but all in all it was pretty good.
(Stock photo)
Day 26 (Sunday):
~Packing~
Day 27 (Monday):
Left for Prague. Despite being four hours early, all the errands we had to run made us barely catch the flight (which then left an hour late, grr). The plane gave us spicy squid rice for lunch and general Western beef/chicken/fish meals for dinner (which was still good), as well as snacks. I have a feeling that the plane that leaves FROM Korea gives you more stuff, since they're able to procure things from Korea when they leave.
We arrived in the evening, had pizza because everyone was too busy to move more than necessary, and lounged about a bit before falling asleep.
So that was the last week of my stay in Korea. It was a hell of a lot busier compared to last year since there were three of us instead of one of me, and Holt decided to use me a lot more often than compared to last year. Also, the atmosphere was either very rainy or sickeningly hot. But even with all that, I still kind of liked my stay.
Overall thoughts and other things coming up in the next entry.
