Korea: day 6 - recovery
After all that last night brought to my Korea experience, I feel pretty well today. I’ve been waking up at 5am for no reason most mornings, and sitting online talking to E and friends who are on at 3pm the “previous” afternoon. Then getting out and taking a walk around Anyang, grabbing donut and coffee before work. Today again I woke up at 5, and went back to bed after some water. Woke up again at 8, and had hours to kill, so I took my walk. Since the mountain hike my calves are sore, but after a mile or so they don’t hurt anymore. No place is open for shopping or anything, even at 10. So I walked and people watched.
At lunch, President Kim took us to one of the super department stores. We parked down down in a basement parking lot, and went up to the eighth floor where the fine restaurants are. His wife met us there, and we had Japanese fried pork, which is almost just like a German schnitzel. Then he left us with Mrs. Kim to go back to work, and we were stranded buzzing around the mall with her, shopping. Mrs. Kim loves to shop, I learned. We had to stop at every floor. Each floor is its own department. There’s a strange thing to note here. Every three to five meters or so there’s a store employee there to sell you on whatever they’re standing around. Show any interest in anything, and they’re there at your elbow. As an American I found it an annoyance. But it got worse when we reached the grocery level of the department store. (Get that? Grocery at a department store?) There were two guys in the middle of the store yelling out advertisements like a street vendor. I tried to ignore them like everyone, but I wanted to… to… shut them up somehow. Ach!
Eventually Pres. Kim picked us up and we were back to the office. He had earlier at lunch mentioned we should go with him to the public bathes today, but he must have changed his mind. He ordered in shrimp fried rice and we ate in the office, and then he returned us to the hotel to relax and rest up. I think he was more drained than us after last night.
This finally gave me a chance to wander the open market of Anyang alone to shop. I didn’t find what I was looking for, and returned after a couple hours. Still, the walk in the night air was good.