on the street

This past Friday, I had dinner with my buddy Tom. We had intended to hit Seorae, the galmaegi-sal (grilled, boneless pork chunks) restaurant that Tom had introduced me to last year. To our horror, we discovered that the entire block where Seorae used to sit had been torn down. No more Seorae. And that sucked. So Tom switched to Plan B: another grill house called, patriotically enough, Uri Nara. We sat down to a modestly sized plateful of raw, trimmed beef galbi (rib meat without the rib bones, in this case), and it was pretty good. Not as good as Seorae would have been, but good enough to stop the hunger pangs. Tom's an ice-cream hound, so it's our postprandial ritual to head over to the local Baskin Robbins to sit down to cups of ice cream—a huge pint in my case, and two scoops in Tom's case.

After dinner, we went our separate ways, at which point I took the following selfie in my favorite part of town:

So that was how I capped off my ultra-busy Friday. Exhausted, I trudged over to Gwanghwamun and took the 7119 bus back to my neighborhood in Goyang City (nice to know that such a bus exists). I had promised myself that I'd finish everything up on Saturday, but Saturday—very monsoony—came and went with nary a thing done. So I'm finishing up what I can tonight, then likely taking a trip over to the Seoul campus on Monday to physically turn in some last bits of paperwork and clear out my desk for the next chump to occupy it. After Monday, it's Goodbye, Dongguk! and Goodbye, teaching! for the next little while. A very different life, and lifestyle, awaits me on the other side of this sweaty summer.


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