12:30pm

All the exercising and healthy eating I’ve done since the beginning of the year is null and void. I had no idea so much butter was a requirement for mac&cheese, you know? Last night I sucked down a big fat milkshake and let’s not forget (though I’m trying) the clear-jelly (don't want to know) filled donut I scarfed down in a bakery on Chongno yesterday. I guess all the walking around I’m doing could count as exercise, but it doesn’t seem to do the trick. I think maybe the kinds of snacks available on the road counteract all the energy spent. I don’t know. It’s like some weird force of nature that simply walking around or walking associated with shopping actually contributes to unsightly blubber deposits. All I know is my tummy is in full pooch and I’m hoping I can get in at least 5 good days of exercise after the current tour group departs and before my uncle arrives on the scene. After all, I got summer clothes I have to wear soon.

And I have been busy. Super tired actually. Yesterday I took Cris, Jessica, and Maria to the fabric market at Tongdaemun. I bought an iridescent green piece of acetate - the new silk - which I hope I can have made into some kind of fashionable muumuu for the horrible, humid summer months. They bought stuff too, but not too much. The market is always tiring: It’s dark, crisscrossed with narrow alleyways filled with moving and loitering people, and the air is foggy from the cig smoke. Afterward I took them out on the street where they had a quintessential Asian moment. The street heading West from Tongdaemun, Chongno, is all market, it seems. It’s not market really, just a street, but Tongdaemun never seems to end, instead just having gaps between different markets or different sections of the same market. I don’t know, tough for me to tell, really: The streets are so packed and so small and littered with just stuff that it’s all just one tangle of product and humanity. Oh, and filth.

We walked, we got tired. They started begging for rest, but I made them veer into the gold market for a few minutes just so they could see all that shiny stuff glittering under the lamps. We didn’t go deep inside, just browsed the perimeter so that all they got to see were the finished products and not the little people hunched over piles of gold carefully shaping each piece into chains.

Oh yeah. We took some picture/stickers that turned out pretty well.

I had some things to write about what I’d been thinking on the bus or just things I’d thought about what’s going on here with visitors, but I’ve forgotten. I was going to write last night but I was just too tired. We went to Hard Rock Café after we got home, which was another 30 minute bus ride each direction. I was wiped out when we got home and totally brain dead, so I didn’t even try to write.

Oh, but here’s something:

You want the red carpet treatment in Korea, you better bring along a non-Korean child. All kinds of people have been enchanted with Maria (Dave’s youngest sister). They talk to her on the street and sometimes just walk up and give her candy. They always have big smiles and are, like, super friendly. I can’t believe it. Yesterday on the bus she stuck her arm out the window and the bus driver, at the next stop light, actually got up out of his seat and came back to tell her in the calmest, nicest voice that she can’t do that. He was even smiling and I could hear that his language was very polite. Wow. Then on the dance floor at the Hard Rock Café, everyone came up and complimented her on her dancing and wanted to dance in our group. Unbelievable. I figure our lives here would be so much easier if we had a kid to use as a lure. Need a plumber? Take her to the playground. Need a cab? Hold her hand on the street. It would be great. Maybe we should just keep her?

We slept in a bit, leaving in the afternoon for the War Museum. It's a grand new structure housing the entire war history of the peninsula. Makes me sad and angry to think of all the violence. How, at the beginning of the exhibits it's all sad and such a travesty this country has suffered forever. But by the end it becomes one huge propaganda machine for the nation's military might, with exhibits solely consisting of shiny new mortars, uniforms, and other weaponry. Can they not see the connection? A celebration of one is a celebration of the other.

Afterward we signed onto Yongsan Main Post where we ate Mexican food. I wasn't prepared for the sheer quantity of it all. I ended up bringing a lot home. I love that though: the choices, the comfort, the abundance.

One side effect of having guests, that I have noticed, is that their connection to the homeland makes me feel homesick. They bring the smell of it with them even. I can see in their eyes the discomfort of being here and it reminds me of how I feel. The way they live, the things they know, the things they like, are all the things from a life I liked better and it is a glimpse of a life I can have again if I would only go back. I’ve noticed yesterday and today that familiar bile rising up into the back of my throat: I am sick of this place.

And then we went to Chongdong Theater again, where we saw the most incredible expression of the Korean spirit and suddenly I loved being alive and being here where I could ride home on a speeding bus down a black street lined with moving lights. This time, during Samulnori (farmer’s drum performance) when the beat of the rhythm had found its place in my heart, I didn’t try to contain it in that one small spot. Instead I gave my body over to it and found that the beat made my arms move, my head sway, my face smile. I clapped with the beat and marveled at the passion of the performers. Afterward, when we were free to dance with them, I did. I felt alive and happy to be connected to the dancing others. We reached out for one another, seeking that connection, smiling and laughing in unison. I am in love with the knowledge that this kind of communication is so universal and honest; there seem to be no cultural barriers.