Korea Day 3: Preliminary Observations

Saturday, June 15

I end up waking after only 7 hours of sleep. Whether it's the excitement, or just a really screwed up internal clock, I felt good enough to go for a run.

Seoul stinks. Evidently the natives are used to it. The streets give off an odor not quite of an open sewer, but one lurking just beneath. Being out of shape, I stop frequently, though I do manage to go about 3 or 4 miles.

Some random observations:

Gas is about $2 per liter, and that at least one gas station, an attendant will help pause oncoming traffic to allow a customer to leave the station and merge onto a busy street.

Coffeeshops are ubiquitous. I noted one spot where three distinct, contiguous cafes vied for business.

Pets are uncommon, but I did see one person walking a dog, and one storeowner reading the paper as his tiny kitten munched on food.

There were no other runners on the streets, except for people trying to make their buses and subway trains.

ADT security apparently has some business over here, unless that sign was placed just for show outside a store.

Ambulances often get stuck in traffic; I noticed one took an extra 90 seconds to pull into a nearby hospital just because all the lanes were blocked, and no one was willing or able to either push through the intersection or otherwise provide passage on the divided highway.

There are fat people in Korea. Not many, but they exist.

There is a Chevy dealership in Gangnam! Julian later mentioned that it was because of a special partnership, and may involve the use of a Korean engine. Still, this surprised the hell out of me. I'll try to get a picture later.

The rest of the day was spent at the office, helping out where I could. It's all unpaid right now, but I felt like I owed it to Julian. I chose a SAT II Chemistry book for tutoring, drafted evaluation exams for TAs signing up to tutor economics and physics B, and helped format the existing vocabulary list in advance of printing. More lunch, more dinner (is all Korean food in soup form?), an evening stroll, and being, as Julian noted, an old man, I went to sleep early.

Tomorrow I meet up with an old friend from college to go serve homeless people. I was told that some of the attitudes toward the homeless in Korea are shaped by the observation that beggars are often "owned" by organized crime. I have lots of questions for tomorrow.