Morning Run in The Land of the Morning Calm

I don’t know about the Morning Calm, but Seoul at 4AM is interesting.

After waking up every couple of hours, I decided to just get up around 3:30AM and “make” some coffee. Starbucks’ Via (instant coffee) is actually a pretty good cup of coffee, at least while I’m in between hotels/apartments. My GPS was useless since it couldn’t locate any satellites, (but it rarely did in the States) so I just did the standard 30 minute easy run. I kept having to do a double-take when I looked at the time, because by the atmosphere, I couldn’t tell if it was 9PM on a Thursday or 2AM on a Saturday. There were women walking alone with their groceries down dark alleys, just chatting on their phones, a few dudes puking in the gutter, some older men casually smoking outside their shops, several couples making-out by the subway stop, and some sobers just starting out the night, buying beer at a convenience store. They all had the same expression of, who-the-hell-runs, on their faces though.

This girl wants to talk to you!

There were hundreds of these cards on the sidewalks, some trashier than others. Slippery little buggars…I pulled a cartoony, banana-peel-slip, stepping on one. Interesting marketing, I will not be calling this girl.

My first transaction!

1 Old Guy bill ($10) broke into 1 Not So Old Guy bill ($5), 1 Very Old Guy bill ($1) and a bunch of Old Guy coins. Meaning, for less than $4 I got half a dozen eggs, two half pints of milk, ramen and a serving of rice. Breakfast and lunch taken care of :) Though realistically, I am probably going to go out for a second lunch and spend some more Old Guy bills with my roommates, who I really like!

Jennifer and I walked around the neighborhood in search of a coffee shop around 8 o’clock and we had no trouble finding one. There literally are coffee shops that share a wall here. Here’s a picture of one with a lawn! An astro-turf lawn!

Cafe Blossom