Over the three day weekend we ran around town looking at and buying small things. The best purchase by far was two new pairs of headphones fromYongsan Electronics Market. Dangling from wire carousels in clusters. Contraband from somewhere. Looking for ones with volume control on the cord, the kind surprisingly hard to find in the Seattle. The old pair was dying when I left here in June. Then Julie’s cat chewed on the left speaker, puncturing it. Thereafter, only a crackly bass sound erupted from that side. I can't believe I tolerated that for months. Now moving through a stereo world again.

Riding buses here and there, sometimes the subway. Bus 12. Veered over into oncoming lanes then merged in the middle of the intersection just to move us through faster. A welcome home gesture, I thought. Others: 78-3, 83-1, 46. Fare hasn’t changed, neither has the scenery, nor the time it takes to get from point A to point B. So long, hours in fact. But the buses are always moving and lurching and jerking and merging and not stopping to let off people but just pausing and braking hard enough that the people are more flung from the bus than dropped off. It always feels like I’m getting somewhere even if I’m not.

Eating at favorite spots I’ve missed. Lots of chon, of course. Soojaebee in a little box of a building in Yongsan-gu. I was the only woman in the house among men lunching. My leg fell asleep from sitting on the floor and I could not help giggling from the tingles, barely able to keep myself upright as we walked down the street afterward. On Chongno Dave took me to an insanely crowded chicken kalbi place where we had the chengbanguksoo, which is micronoodles and vegetables in a cold broth tinged with wasabi. All around us carnivores cooked parts of chickens at formica covered plywood tables constructed around immense frypans. Gas lines checkering the floor connected them all one, and when patrons squeezed between each other toward some beyond vacancy, they tripped over the rubber tubing and T-shaped connectors carrying the fuel. I was no exception. Cups of beverage dropped, bowls of kimchee too, spilled onto those engrossed in eating as waiters and customers both failed to mind the pattern on the floor. Three near misses too many and we decided our luck was about out. We left there before we would have to wear the food home, before someone kicked free one of the joints all together, which, despite the obvious likelihood, doesn’t happen very often. We ate at Pul Hyang Gi, my favorite traditional vegetable food house. Each bowl placed before us picked clean by spoon or stick.