Sunday, March 08, 2009

Marathoning has become my default

Whoa. I didn't think I had it in me, but I gave one hell of a tour to my friend Maho today. We had three years together in NY when her dad was sent on business from Japan, and the last time I saw her was at her wedding in Guam in early 2007. This was her first trip to Seoul, and I carefully wrote out everything I wanted to do with her, along w/the location and number of her hotel, where I was supposed to meet her at 10am, and then left it on my desk when I left my apt this morning. Classic.

But I got her to a palace, art exhibit at Kukje Gallery, non-spicy lunch at a famous Korean home cooking place in a gentrified hood, the requisite tourist drag, a dyeing session w/my teacher (I did bug dye today; she did the red wood), a two-second meeting w/the owner of an art book cafe/gallery, tea at the bird cafe, a long hike through a traditional Korean hood, errands at a ginormous book store, and dinner w/her Japanese friends in a market district. Where I refused to eat Korean-style beef tartare.

(Bugs + iron mordant). I even managed to buy tights and tank tops on my way home. Now I have a huge pile of Korean homework to do before class tomorrow morning. But thankfully, I was able to get out of going to my other teacher tonight. So I'm feeling slightly human again. On the escalator out of the subway tonight, I wondered if what I'm experiencing right now is not abundance, but excess. I'll think about it while squeezing out a Korean composition.

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