The Adventure Gets Really Bright...and Loud...Day 7 in Korea

Remember that makgeolli that I'd had the night before? I woke up and realized the downside of drinking it:  you wake up the next day with a massive headache. I didn't even have very much...only half of a small bottle. Needless to say, breakfast consisted of lots of stick coffee.

Makgeolli is famous for its great taste and its headache-causing properties.

Hiking up a mountain in the middle of the day during the hottest recorded Korean summer no longer had the appeal that it had the day before. I decided to postpone my activity for that day and opted to stay inside with the air conditioner running and the shades drawn.

I spent most of the day updating my blog, catching up on the Olympics, and cleaning the apartment. For some reason, I wound up Googling the band dcTalk (who I was obsessed with back in the 90's). After they'd made their last CD (not counting their greatest hits album), the band had gone on hiatus indefinitely and all 3 members were involved with their own solo projects. A friend of mine had speculated that there might be some controversy between some of the members of the group, which might be why they had never come back from hiatus. I did some research and found out that one of them was now the lead singer of another band that I'd liked as a kid (the Newsboys: a bunch of Australians who go through band members like Bill Clinton goes through cheeseburgers) and one of them was now a big controversy among Christians. Apparently, he and his wife had had a divorce and he also admitted to occasional drinking. This caused him to be a social pariah in the Christian music industry. (Which I think is something of a joke, in the first place) I don't understand why people are so quick to hate other people who are on their own side.

Anyway, I watched some of their old videos and spent a lot of time being nostalgic and remembering the days when all my friend Jeremy and I talked about was dcTalk. (This is still around the age where boys would call each other gay for liking girls) I also thought about how much dcTalk influenced my musical tastes. I remember how HEAVY they sounded when I first heard them... I miss the days when music, video games, and spend-the-night parties were some of my only cares in the world.

dcTalk, in a very traditional, slightly depressed-looking 90's grunge-style band photo

Oh, to be back in the 90's...

I spent a lot of this day thinking about things that had influenced me, about a lot of the choices that I'd made in life, about the beliefs that I'd had, and about everything that led me up to my current state in life. It was that kind of life.

At some point, I decided to go outside and down to the I-Mart to buy more groceries.

Some of the new things I got included: 

At the bottom of the bottle, it says (in English) "New Feeling of Soda Beverage"

I thought these would have meat and vegetables inside of them. Turned out that they were filled with a sweet bean-paste.

Heh heh...crunky...

Ham!

This stuff makes life worth living!

I returned from I-Mart and put up all of my groceries (and tried a few). I must say, the food in Korea is great. I still haven't had anything to eat that I didn't like. Even their vegetables are awesome. They know how to spice them so that they taste great!

Mrs. Yoon called and told me that she would be having a teachers meeting and dinner the next day and asked if I wanted to come. I told her yes, and we agreed to meet around 12:30 at the gas station near my apartment.

I spent the rest of my night blogging, studying Korean, Skyping, and watching judo videos on the Internet. (Judo is so awesome). All-in-all, it was a pretty laid-back day.