Moving from one country to another is very expensive. So much money is spent because there is the overwhelming sense that there will never be other opportunities. Saturday Dave and I shopped for furniture.

We began in Itaewon, the foreigners area, where we found a couple of pieces we liked. We decided to think about it awhile before finalizing since it is difficult to spend so much money so quickly. In the "thinking time" we decided to catch a cab to the antique market in the east end of town. I had been there only once before, with a friend who had a car and driver. It was hard for me to remember where it was, so we had to find a tourist map before catching a taxi. It’s a good thing we got the map since the driver didn’t know where it was either. The market is located in a very poor area of town. At one point we drove through a neighborhood where a flea market spilled out into the main thoroughfare. Traffic was honking and lurching along slowly which gave us a good opportunity to see people flocking and crowding and yelling and pulling carts and riding bikes. Old apartment buildings were missing large chunks of their concrete integrity; some entity had come along and pressed "spackle" into the larger cracks, but the undersides of balconies and porches showed bare re-bar where the old cheap concrete had fallen away. Dave said it reminded him of China and he’d forgotten that Korea could still be like that too. We’ve gotten used to our Kangnam lifestyle.

We found the market well enough. Fell in love with an old bookcase sturdy in thick wood and steel pins in the joints. Bought two tables made from the old floors of traditional houses, the planks of which are worn smooth and shiny from multiple generations of slip-sliding socked feet.

We were still thinking about the other two pieces, so we returned for another look. After much time, we decided not to get them because one of the pieces didn’t have original hinges and the new ones looked poorly antiqued. We had this overwhelming feeling the guy was just ripping us off worse than the other antique dealers, so we walked away.

It was an exhausting excursion that left us tired and hungry. We stopped to eat American food at the Outhouse Backsteak. Blooming onion gave us grief through the night and into the morning.