too tired to hit the office

I had planned to go to the office after my time with the older couple, but I'm just too tired, so I'm home and chilling. I'll go into work tomorrow. 

When I got to Goesan yesterday evening and crawled into bed early, with a 3 a.m. wake-up time, I couldn't sleep. This wasn't anxiety: I was itchy. And it was a weird itch—appearing in one place, getting scratched, then appearing somewhere else: next to my nostril, on my leg, on my cheek, wherever. It felt like one itch that kept moving around, and it drove me nuts. I couldn't sleep all night, and when 2:45 rolled around, I didn't wait for my 3 a.m. alarm: I just started getting ready for my walk up the Joryeong-san hill to Ihwaryeong.

I left Saejae Park Motel at 3:05 and made it to Ihwaryeong by 4:55—a speed of around 3.2-ish kilometers per hour. Very slow. I stopped frequently on my way up, and I heard the weird sounds of animals yowling in the night. It wasn't completely pitch black: the valley below was full of electric lights, and the stars were out, too; the only thing I couldn't do was see every nuance of the road's surface, so there were a few moments where I almost tripped when my foot sank into an unseen depression or caught against some weird and invisible bulge in the road. There was also a devil-horned crescent moon hanging low.

The couple didn't make it to the top until after 8 a.m., but I didn't mind waiting: the first few hours, it was only me at the mountaintop. I'll talk more about my interaction with the couple in a separate post, but for now, just know that it went better than that phone conversation had gone. I've had worse mornings, and I think I parted with the couple on friendly terms: they want me to come visit them in San Diego. (Kind of a hard sell: I hate California.) A lot of old people find me harmless, charming, and cuddly.

More soon, with pictures.