I'm in Zane's apartment. It's sort of small, as it is an efficiency, but it is neat. He has a washer / dryer, which is one up on my apartment. The strangest thing is the bathroom. It looks normal enough, but there is no stall for a shower. There is simply a drain in the ground.

It's around 8:30 local time. We went to sleep last night around 2:30-ish. He doesn't have an airbed or a travel mattress, so I made do with a comforter and the floor. However, I sleep light, and was probably awake every hour or so. I feel like I'm lucky that the time passed as quickly as it did. He had intended to sleep in, as he's had a lot of work at his job lately, and has gotten barely any sleep.

Last night Zane met me at the airport alright, and we took a bus to his apartment. Korean people thus far seem nice, though I need to pick up a bit more of the basics. Zane lives a few blocks away from a subway stop. The area he lives in is nice enough, and he knows several of the local shopkeepers (he introduced me to a husband and wife who ran a local convenience store). It strikes me as just kind of your usual city neighborhood, filled with apartments above small family-owned shops. There is a metro station nearby, and several restaurants and bars.

Koreans apparently like to drink a lot, enough that there really is no word or recognition of a condition like "alcoholism". He regaled me with several stories about students going out to drink with their bosses until three, then showing up the next morning for class. We saw evidence of that in the subway, as the crowd moved aside to avoid a large pile of vomit in front of the escalators. Zane: "I've seen more people throw up here than in four years at Ohio University" (one of the largest party schools in the country). He also mentioned how Soju, the alcoholic drink of choice in Korea, is the most consumed type of spirits in the world, despite being sold almost exclusively in Korea (haha, the wiki article says that the average Korean drinks about 90 bottles a year). The restaurant we ate at last night stocked solely water and soju as beverages. As one who drinks only rarely, my hope is that I do not give offense by not drinking to the point of senselessness.

Last night, shortly after dropping my stuff off at his apartment, we went to a small soup shop, and ordered the BONE SOUP. Zane had said this menacingly, and I had no idea what to expect from Bone Soup. Truthfully, I was imagining a wan yellow broth with fibula and tibula and finger bones just floating about in it. Anyway, this is what it turned out to be:



It was a sort of meat (beef, I believe. And hope), that simply boiled in a vat of broth to the point where the meat simply slipped off the bone. It was very easy to separate. The soup was delivered to us literally boiling (and it continued to do so for like a minute as it cooled down). The broth tasted like vegetable soup, but a lot spicier than expected. The little cubes in the middle of the table are a type of Kimchi (I forget which), and there are various sauces for dipping.



The food is spiced a bit more than I like. The meat tasted good, and the sauces were fine, though I preferred the meat plain. I found that I enjoyed the broth best when I ate it with rice to take away much of the heat. It was still tasty, though I would've enjoyed it a lot more had it been a little cooler. However, food here is cheap. That total cost of the meal was 9000 won, or, by the current exchange rate, $6.72 (for both of us).

Anyway, today we plan on going to the lantern festival and touring some temples, woo!