After spending Friday night out at a new bar, I was much relieved when Prairie called me at 9.30 for our morning run, asking if I'd rather wait until the rain passed before we went. Saturday is when we typically go for our long runs in preparation for the marathon that we're running in November, and running two hours after a night of drinking isn't exactly fun.
So after a delay of a couple hours Prairie and I went for our long run. We ended up running to the Gwangju airport which for those of you unfamiliar with Gwangju's geography is all the way across the city. Out and back we ran, though the out was a lot faster than the back. We've still only run about half the distance we'll be running for the marathon, but it's encouraging to see how much we're progressing from week to week.
After the run, Devon and I went downtown for some shopping. We started at Kumho World because I was looking for some speakers for my computer. It's hard to describe exactly what Kumho World is – sort of like a mall, but instead of individual shops, the vendors each have their own floor space where they set up tables and shelves and whatever else they want.
There are six floors, each with its own theme of sorts. The first two floors are dedicated to gadgets—digital cameras, GPS systems, mp3 players, cell phones, etc. Floors 3 and 4 are mostly computers and computer-related stuff (mouses, printers, chairs, etc). On the third floor you can buy laptops and computers. On the fourth floor you can buy anything you need to make your own computer—processors, video cards, monitors, cases, memory, hard drives, etc. It was incredible, I've never seen a place where you can just buy the internal bits of a computer like that. The 5th floor had an incongruous combination of tacky home furnishings, kitchen stuff like dishes and silverware (chopsticks), and musical instruments. The top floor was all furniture: beds, couches, tables, things like that. It was awesome. I mean where else can you pick up a saxophone AND a cell phone in the same building? America needs places like that.
After Kumho world, we did some more shopping at Art Street – so named because the street is lined with galleries, tea houses, and art supply stores. We can't seem to figure out the best time to go however, because every time we go, some 70% of the stores are closed.
Art street at night
After a brief stint at Art Street, we wandered into a large bookstore in the hopes of finding some English books (because hey, you never know). We asked the woman working at the cash register if they had English books, and she pointed down to the basement. We went downstairs where we found English books – but for people learning English. Oops.
It's Prairie's birthday on Tuesday, so to celebrate we all went out to dinner downtown at what's known as "The Outdoor Galbi" restaurant. So named because we go and eat galbi…outside. They put a pot of charcoal in a hole in your table, you cook strips of pork marinated in sweet soy sauce on top. Then you put it on a leaf of lettuce, put on some condiments (garlic, soybean paste, salad), roll it up, and eat it. It's deeeeelicious.
After dinner and a few beers, we finished the night out at Mr. Song's German Bar. Mr. Song is a Korean man who lived in Germany for some 15 years apprenticing at a brewery. When he returned to Korea, he started brewing his own beer and opened a bar that's become popular for the foreigners in Gwangju. We spent the next few hours there drinking Song's dark beer (pretty delicious), playing card games, and singing karaoke. And yes, the reality of me singing karaoke is as horrible as it sounds.
Singing Karaoke
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