Winter Vacation, Day 2

The perfect vacation:

• Start with a breakfast made by the hostel owner; the owner, Korean-New Zealand woman, and I have a talk for 2 hours
• Visit 오죽헌, the birthplace of the woman painter who is on the 50,000 won note and her Confucian scholar son who is on the 5,000 won note; find one small boy staring at me even though the only foreign part of me showing over a mask (I would say coronavirus but really it was due to pollution) was my eyes so I stared back and said 안녕! His mom and I laughed then a delayed minute later a tiny 안녕하세요 came from behind me; another young boy kept insisting on scooting in front of me and stepping on my toes at each glass walled exhibit until I stared at him with my foreign eyes and he retracted his foot to walk gingerly around me
• Spend an inordinate amount of time on observing a diorama of ancient Korea life that frankly should win an award
• Get lost and ascend a pine covered and oddly slanted stone staircase that leads not to the lake but instead a family tomb
• Pass the same mother and daughter several times as it turns out we all were lost
• Make it to another historical site 선교장 without any further accidental tomb discoveries
• Fall asleep in a 14th century pagoda
• Touch the East Sea
• Eat too much raw fish at a local restaurant and accidentally get tipsy on high proof wine
• Drink coffee and eat cheesecake at the coffee shop next door while probably making terribly nostalgic faces at the reality show about Korean actors running a food truck in America
• Discover an adult store named “Banana” en route to the bathroom
• Run and catch the local bus, remind the driver he owes me change
• Crash in the hostel bed with enough time to read and play around on the internet

👍