“So there’s magnanimity in these people, too!” Shatov thought, as he headed for Lyamshin’s. “Convictions and the man – it seems they’re two different things in many ways. Maybe in many ways I’m guilty before them! … We’re all guilty, we’re all guilty, and… if only we were all convinced of it! …”

Fyodor Dostoevsky, “Demons”

A little over a week left in Korea. Too many things to do. Writing should probably be on the bottom of my list. But I can’t not do it. I still feel bad about not finishing my Tokyo post. I can’t leave Korea like that.

2 July 2023

Back to Nowon

I woke with a giant hickey on my neck. Tokyo Pride vibes.

After writing about last night in bed, I checked out at 13:00, later than I was allowed to. The owner was never in the hostel anyway. Check in and out was by yourself.

A girl really wanted to chat. Blonde, energetic, German. We’d spoken last night before I’d gone out to Itaewon; she was discussing a recent Formula 1 death with another guest. She’d spewed out car-racing facts as if she’d studied it in uni.

Now, we discussed leaving this hostel to couchsurf in Seoul. After a very long time, during which I coughed and spoke with a sore throat, acting like a zombie while she eagerly went on and on, we exchanged details. I took the metro to Nowon, to return to my original Seoul host.

What a reunion! It felt so good to see her again. Hugs and excitement. I’d caught her in the middle of cleaning the entrance to her studio, which had flooded in the last few days. Mold had grown on the wall of the small bedroom, where I’d slept in May.

Instead of cleaning, we just stood by the entrance and talked about everything that had happened to her since then. She’d returned a few days ago from a long and eventful trip to Singapore. Amazing developments at work, on the one hand, and boy drama on the other. Nothing new under the sun.

She wanted to have dinner together today, but two potential engagements barred me from that.

First, a zoom meeting with the Israeli tour company I’d been interviewing for. This happened in the early evening.

Second, the Barbie press tour, or watching the lights at Banpo bridge with the Dutch volunteer, whichever worked out.

I sat outside her studio all afternoon to use the public Wi-Fi, while she was away on a meeting. The British guy ignored my texts. After thinking I’d get to meet America Ferrera, the star of my favorite TV show, who had come to Seoul to promote the Barbie movie, I found myself clueless what to do with the time I had.

At least a couple of neighbors saw me and gave me coffee, Pocari Sweat, and the password to the building’s Wi-Fi. Now I could use the internet from inside my host’s studio.

After my meeting in the evening, the Dutch girl cancelled at the last minute, feeling unwell. So, for the rest of the day, I sat on the floor of my host’s kitchen and wrote, and wrote, and wrote.

The shower I took was ice cold. She’d forgotten to turn on the water heater. But no matter; I was staying here for free. No longer at a host’s. Now, we were friends.

Today’s highlight: reuniting with my original host.

3 July 2023

• 14:10-14:35 Nowon station to Dongdaemun history and culture park station metro, 14:40-14:55 transfer to Hongik university station
• Meerkat Friends animal café (1h)
• 17:45-18:00 Hongik university station to Dongdaemun history and culture park station, then 18:05-18:30 transfer to Nowon station

After going to bed at 3:30, writing on the floor into the wee hours of the night, I woke at 12:00. My host pointed out my bloodshot eyes.

We ate breakfast for me / lunch for her at a local curry restaurant, the only place I could think of that served a meatless dish. It was my first curry in two months, and my first bite in nearly twenty-four hours. Without realizing so, the only food I’d eaten yesterday was a granola bar, and seven mini taiyaki.

She offered to pay, so I paid for the both of us instead.

“What are your plans for this month?” she asked.

I showed her my list and talked about everything in Korea I still wanted to cover.

“You have a rainbow again over your head,” she laughed. Back in May, whenever I’d talked to her about my travel plans, she’d made the same observation. That I’d become so bright and cheerful, it was as if a rainbow had extended above me.

Meerkat Cafe

After lunch, the Romanian guy asked if I wanted to hang out. Still in the dark about the Barbie press tour’s location (today was the last day), I took the metro to Hongdae, a 1-hour ride from Nowon. Back in my favorite hostel, I met a Japanese girl from Saitama who was living in Turkey, as well as a Turkish girl. They were both speaking in Turkish.

Shocking discovery of the day: Japanese, Korean, and Turkish belonged to the same family of languages. All placed the verb in the end.

The Turkish girl had been studying Korean for a decade now, and just landed in Korea. She joined the Romanian guy and me.

Before heading out, though, I began to feel very bad. Weak and fatigued – not as usual, in these past five months, but the way one felt before developing a fever. I found it very hard to get up from the couch and put on my sneakers.

While walking in Hongdae, I asked if we could check out a place on my list. An abandoned sex museum, which the Kazakh girl had sent me.

We couldn’t find it. It had once stood on the main street. I supposed it made sense for a deserted establishment in such a location to be replaced. My previous two abandoned sex museums in Korea had been in the middle of nowhere.

Slightly disappointed, we continued to an animal cafe.

Foxes, dogs, bangal cats, racoons, kangaroos, and baby meerkats. It smelled like a jungle in there, and I was a bit concerned about animal cruelty, but could not resist the cuteness.

We waited in line to enter one of the meerkat rooms, where we sat down on the mats and covered ourselves in blankets. I was grateful for the opportunity to not stand, for I was growing weaker and weaker by the minute.

One of the baby meerkats went straight to my crotch.

“At least someone is interested,” I said.

“Oh my god,” the Romanian guy facepalmed. “What is wrong with you?”

Then a meerkat lay down on my arm, hugged it, and did not let go.

It was the cutest little experience, and I never wanted to part with it. This one was sleepy; the other two, running amok, standing sentinel, emitting the oddest squeals. They gave my two companions minimal attention.

“NO!” I flinched. A meerkat was reaching inside my underwear.

Afterwards, we watched the racoons being released, one of them climbing all over the staff and refusing to get down. A dog was barking at them nonstop, perhaps jealous of the racoon’s attention. They got into a fight.

I was shivering by this point, certain beyond doubt that I was developing a fever. We left the cafe after one hour. I could barely walk.

A Feverish Night

After a 1-hour metro ride back to Nowon, I collapsed on my host’s yo, and went to sleep at 19:00.

What ensured was among my worst nights on this trip. I couldn’t fall asleep, despite being exhausted. Tremoring, a sudden, forceful migraine making me moan in pain. I was coughing, nauseous, shifting positions, strange thoughts and images coming to me in a state of delirium. Moaning so much, that the neighbors must’ve raised a brow. Good thing my host had gone to her hometown for the night.

Not to mention the fact that I was staying alone at a friend’s apartment, rather than in a hostel, surrounded by people.

I changed my clothes again and again. My skin was boiling. I knew my fever was too high to ignore. But I didn’t want to use my thermometer. I just wanted to doze off.

At 22:00, I drank some water, and took melatonin.

At 4:30, I took some painkillers. The last time was probably after my COVID vaccination, in early 2020.

Then, despite feeling myself growing delirious, some clarity about my next steps rose as well. Should this remote position work out, and I would be able to continue traveling, I realised where I would continue to, and when. Despite all the troubles and frustrations of the last two months, this included a return to Korea.

Today’s highlights: curry with my host; the meerkat hugging my arm.

4 July 2023

Tragedy and Fever

I woke at 12:30 after who-knows-how-long hours of sleep. Probably 13 or 14. I was still a wreck. Sore throat. But no fever or headache.

I spent the day writing on the floor again. It was pouring nonstop, so I wasn’t really missing out on anything. My entire body hurt; my shoulders were in permanent pain nowadays, after nearly five months of carrying a backpack.

My host treated me to an early dinner. Mung bean stew, perfect for my current condition. Also, a sweet pumpkin sikhye. Cold and refreshing.

She apologized for my cold shower two nights ago. It might’ve played a role in yesterday’s sickness. My sore throat and couching could have been accredited to screaming in Itaewon’s clubs on Friday and Saturday.

In the evening, I called the Ukranian girl I’d befriended in Kyoto. Having not spoken for several weeks, it took us an hour and a half to catch up. She was going through a hard time, partially owning to the escalating war, and partially stemming from an on-and-off relationship for three or four years now. They’d ended things very recently. But today, a potential trip abroad had lifted her spirits up.

After we hung up, I wrote on the computer some more and went to bed, when she texted me again. The on-and-off guy had died in the war.

I immediately called her. She had just heard the news.

Needless to say, she was a wreck.

Her habit of blaming herself when things got bad wasn’t new to me. But she kept saying, “I feel so guilty. I’m becoming insane.”

“I feel like an insane reaction is the sane reaction,” I said.

She told me some details about him. I was tired and unwell, coughing, as she pointed out, more and more by the minute. But I wanted to be there for her. So we talked again for over an hour.

“Whatever you feel now, tonight, tomorrow, in a week – it’s valid,” I said.

She wasn’t used to hearing that. On the contrary: she was used to the people around her dismissing her problems.

It was only one of the many things we shared in common that arose in this conversation. Our tendency to both over-feel and overthink. To have extreme reactions of joy and sadness.

“Is it human nature,” she wondered, “or are we acting immature?”

While I did admit it was somewhat juvenile, I also found the opposite – indifference – to be the worse choice.

“How did we find each other?” she asked. “We are so alike. Life is… strange.”

I didn’t write down her usual nuggets of wisdom that she churned out. Like a poet, with great insight into life and nature. We talked about writing, and how it helped us to release our emotions, when we didn’t want to burden others with our problems.

“I have this web plugin, and the sentence it gave me today was ‘It will pass’,” she said. “At first, I didn’t want it to –” she was referring to her excitement about her upcoming trip – “but now, I do. Everything passes,” she finished by adding, “both the good and bad.”

The Closed Korean Club

Trying to recover from that phone call, I joined my host, who was painting in the other room. She’d sought my company, preferring to be around people while hard at work.

She told me more about her professional and romantic life. With her traveling abroad more and more for work, and me thinking of returning to Korea, the conversation turned to the good and bad aspects of this country.

“Koreans can be quite… closed,” she said.

The word she used shook me. I hadn’t mentioned to her my impression of Koreans being a closed club. Nor my frustration with trying to approach them. Again and again, I’d been hearing the same thing about them, from foreigners and locals alike.

“I have friends who want to talk to foreigners,” she continued, “but are too shy to talk in English. When they go abroad, they spent time with other Korean tourists.”

Neither Korea nor Japan was teaching students how to speak English; only to read and write. It was no wonder that the locals were shy in that sense. Yet I’d never experienced this “closed-club” phenomenon in Japan. Was the language barrier truly the biggest hurdle that separated foreigners from the local population? In Japan, I’d made friends, travelled with locals I’d met. That feeling of un-approachable-ness, I couldn’t recall during my time there.

Plenty of foreigners I’d met in Korea had felt this way about both countries. The vast majority of the population, even the youth, could not speak English.

The most bizarre thing to me was those Europeans I’d met who spoke Korean, and still felt this way about Koreans. Even without the language barrier.

It frustrated me, because almost two months in Korea, and 99% of the people I’d hung out with were foreigners. My day in Miryang with Seonsaengnim might have been rare.

I grew even more grateful for my couchsurfing hosts who had welcomed me into their home and befriended me. Yet, more than any other emotion, I also grew adamant. Befriending Koreans was a challenge for me to undertake.

I could not visit a country for this long and not get to know its people. I’d be missing out on a central aspect of its culture.

After experiencing this in Japan, I made up my mind. If I returned to Korea, I would do so with basic knowledge of Korean.

Today’s highlights: mung bean stew and sweet pumpkin sikhye.

5 July 2023

Writing All Day Long

Today was spent entirely in bed again. Writing about my trip. I was still feeling weak – my throat was so sore, that I sought to avoid conversations – and decided that catching up with writing was worth sacrificing potential sightseeing.

“Writing helps me makes sense of things, process things that happened,” I explained to my host. “When I don’t write, I feel bad.”

To her, the same was true, but with painting.

My body needed to rest – my vocal cords, to not speak; my shoulders, to not carry – and my mind needed to write. So my trip at present was pushed aside for my trip in the past. I wrote nonstop, from the moment I woke, to the moment I dozed off. This was how I’d passed the last decade, since high school, and before this trip.

Today’s highlight: dedicating all my time to writing.

6 July 2023

Writing in Sickness and in Health

I woke at 12:30 again. My host saw me getting up and recoiled.

“Why do you look sick?”

My throat was so sore, that it hurt to swallow and talk. It stayed like that the entire day. So I decided not to do anything today, either, but write on the mattress.

In the afternoon, I left my host’s studio for the first time in 3 days for the grocery store on the other side of the road. Carrying my small and light Luigi sidebag for twenty minutes was painful for my shoulders.

I returned with two giant bags of groceries, three days’ worth of budget. Among my desperate, sickly splurges: cucumbers, kiwis, and oranges. I needed vitamins.

Then I checked my bank account.

The horror that clouded my face. My financial situation was much, much worse than I’d imagined.

I called the Israeli company. They were itching for me to start working.

We discussed payment. It was much, much worse than I’d imagined.

In the evening, I mixed rice my host had cooked in a rice cooker with nattou, seaweed, soy sauce, and a raw egg. A proper Japanese dinner, and my first full meal in forever.

After several weeks of thinking I was doing okay, budget-wise, and on the verge of a decent job offer, the prospect of being left in the middle of this trip with no money whatsoever returned to haunt me. I’d been holding off sightseeing these past few days, opting to catch up with writing and regain my strength instead. Yet if I could not return to Korea, as I’d already resolved to…

The possibility that I’d been wasting my precious time here began to haunt me as well.

Today’s highlights: fresh fruit and that dinner; making progress with writing.

7 July 2023

• Clubbing in Itaewon
• 7:15-8:00 metro back to Nowon station

I woke at 12:30 again… my throat still hurt, as if there was an open wound inside it.

I’d been texting the Ukrainian girl every day now. Uttering poetic nuggets of wisdom even in her worst time. She knew what she had to do, to get through this, but couldn’t decide what she wanted to.

“The worst thing about my current state is that I’ve nearly lost my intuition,” she texted. “I’m too heartbroken to listen to my heart.”

I couldn’t have articulated it better.

After passing the day again writing on the mattress, I finally regained my strength, and decided it was time to do something before this whole week blew over.

Today being Friday, the choice was a no-brainer.

Itaewon’s Homo Hill

Itaewon was half dead tonight. If it wasn’t pride, queer nightlife in the far East did not add up.

“Are you gay?” the guard to my favorite club asked me at the entrance. I was wearing my usual red-and-black checkered button-down and gray denim.

Inside, I was the only foreigner. Not even one other non-Korean there. My experiences with Koreans’ closed attitude barred me from approaching anyone. They wouldn’t speak English anyway.

Instead, I stood with my phone in a corner, when an American guy walked past me. He’d landed in Korea at 15:00 today. An extremely short, tight, and feminine black outfit, with cutouts all over. The guard hadn’t asked him if he was gay.

We talked for a while. He said he was moving on to another place.

A few more minutes of solitude, and I noticed he’d gone to dance with a group of new foreigners here instead. I joined them. They ignored me.

For two minutes, I tried to dance with them, while they gradually turned their backs toward me. Finally, they left.

While crossing the trans street in search of another club, three middle aged trans women grabbed me and forced me to sit inside their empty bar. They talked to me in Korean and refused to let me go. It took a very handsy (VERY handsy) few minutes for me to escape. Another trans place tried to do this as well.

At the entrance to another place, a Taiwanese guy emerged, sweat dripping down his forehead.

“Don’t go in,” he said. “Better to come at around 3:00.”

So I returned to my favorite club, and danced with myself.

“I think I’m ugly, and nobody wants to love me,” an oldish K-pop song played. “I’m always all alone.”

I put on a smile, even though I didn’t like the way I looked, torn between attracting attention and hiding in a corner.

At 2:40, I was about to leave the club, when the Taiwanese guy approached me and introduced me to his friends. We danced a little. Then they disappeared. I didn’t think it was to get rid of me, like that group of foreigners, because he was quite handsy.

Back in the dancefloor, a Korean guy grabbed me forcefully. No longer a shy local.

I was musing on the idea of being groped in a club, when he went back to his friends.

At 3:15, I left again. A bottle of water almost hit my head while walking down the stairs. Almost as if someone had thrown it.

Out in the street, the Taiwanese guy approached me. He invited me to join him and his friends at another club, and go out with them tomorrow night. Yet I’d had my eyes set on the place where we’d bumped into each other, and for tomorrow night, I’d already made plans.

Finally, at 3:30, I headed to that place.

What ensued was dim, dirty, and messed up. Silent and loud, intimate and far, all at the same time. Like last week in Itaewon, I’d stumbled upon a scene that made me pull back.

At some point, I noticed a barely-lit yet familiar face. I recognized him at once.

“You gotta be kidding me,” he said when I approached him with a judgmental smile.

The American expat from Jinju, who I’d met at a bar in Busan.

It was a laugh out loud moment, especially because of the absurdity of the situation. I knew he’d been travelling in Japan in the last few days. Evidently, he’d just made it back.

Eventually, as things tended to go with me, tonight’s Itaewon experience took twists and turns. Instead of the image in my mind, I ended up staring at the faint yet only source of light, while the scene around me was too much to ingest. A Russian guy and I spoke without words, just eyes, sharing a similar reaction, and what struck me as a similar sorrow.

In this low moment, the rabbit hole I’d gone down made me contemplate my life choices, tonight’s decisions, and the past weeks’ frustrations. Itaewon was foul, fascinating, dirty. Instead of partying, I mulled over my present moment.

Faced with an unexpected alienation that instilled a desire in me to get away from everything – just like in Somaemuldo – I picked cogitation, appreciating this feeling more than any other activity.

This 5:00 AM scene in Itaewon couldn’t have been more different than my afternoon return ferry from a tiny, 50-people island off Tongyeong. I wanted to write about it right away. But I was so tired, that I dozed off.

At 7:00, I took the metro back to my host’s. A guy was sleeping on the platform floor. Not even on the bench.

I went to sleep at 8:30, my latest ever.

Today’s highlights: a weird, handsy night of clubbing; staring at a faint purple ceiling lamp.

8 July 2023

• 18:20-18:50 Nowon station to Seoul station metro, 18:55-19:15 Seoul station to Guru station train, 19:25-20:20 transfer to Seodongtan train, 20:55-21:00 transfer to Byeongjeom station, 21:05-21:30 transfer to Pyeongtaek station (there’s a direct line from Seoul to Pyeongtaek I could’ve boarded, as well as faster trains, but I picked the cheapest one) 22:25-23:15 Pyeongtaek station AKPLAZA bus stop to Pyeongteak port bus number 98
• Clubbing at night

Pyeongtaek

I woke at 14:30. My host said that on the mattress, instead of asleep, I’d looked dead.

At 18:00, after eating, writing, and recovering, I took the train south to Pyeongtaek, for a friend’s birthday.

It was the Kazakh girl I’d met in Gyeongju. We’d been texting ever since. She’d invited me to her birthday several times.

I wasn’t planning on coming, because her area was so far from Seoul. Pyeongtaek port, where she worked at an IKEA factory. But after talking for so long, I wanted to be there for her.

So I took the slow train from Seoul to Pyeongtaek. For the umpteenth time in Korea, I made a public transportation mistake. The line split into two destinations and I arrived at Seodongtan, the wrong last stop. Quite literally in the middle of nowhere.

An uncle had made the same mistake. We sat on the platform, long after sunset. It was dark and silent. The only sound was flies being electrocuted to death on the station’s lamps.

After a tense half-hour, during which I worried I would not make it to my destination safe, the train arrived, and I corrected my mistake.

Pyeongtaek station. For a city devoid of tourist attractions, Pyeongtaek was not bereft of foreigners. Known for its large American military base, most of those were American soldiers.

Naver instructed me to take a bus from a bus stop that no longer existed. I was able to verify that the stop further down the road was the new one with a Hispanic expat working here at a Mexican restaurant.

Finally, at 23:30, I reached the Kazakh girl’s apartment.

It was a happy reunion; she was thrilled (and pleasantly surprised) to see me. Neither of us had imagined I would make it.

We ate dinner at midnight with some of her expat friends: a middle-aged Russian woman, a middle-aged Uzbekistan man, a thirtysomething guy from Biafra (a country in Africa whose status had been under dispute since 1970 due to an ongoing war with Nigeria), and a 23-year-old Kazakh guy of Korean descent.

Nearly all spoke Russian, including the latter (who barely knew a word in English or Korean). Only she, the African guy, and I didn’t. For me, it was slightly unusual, but as it turned out, the port area’s population was 90% Russian speakers.

“This is my husband,” she introduced me to everyone. She’d started calling me that ever since my fake “bitch ring” proposal to her in Gyeongju.

I was slightly pressured by them throughout the meal to drink more soju than I ever had.

Afterwards, she paid for everyone. Even though it was her birthday, it was a Kazakh tradition to pay for the person you invited.

Friend-zoned at a Club

At 2:00, we went to her favorite nightclub. It was Russian-style, as I was told, and my first club in Korea where nearly everyone wasn’t Korean.

The guys in our group disliked dancing. So the birthday girl and I danced together. A British lad couldn’t believe we weren’t a couple. Every time she went to say hi to someone (she was a regular at this club) or have a drink, the lad encouraged me to kiss her.

It was a thought that had crossed my mind.

So I plucked up the courage and tried. She insisted that we were just friends.

“There is no such thing as male and female friendship,” the lad yelled in my ear after. “Trust me, I’m proof of it.”

He really wanted to kiss her.

This turn of events didn’t really depress me. I was okay with it. I’d come to Pyeongtaek to test the waters, limiting my expectations.

What got to me was the deafening music and cloud of smoke. The pressure to drink and passive smoking.

I hated it. Clubs in Korea could be really gross. I grew tired and annoyed and sat with the guys in our group. I’d always avoided being that person who sat straight-faced while others partied. But I grew sick and tired of doing so.

Going over my messages and seeing that the Israeli company was offering me peanuts, and refusing to discuss payment, didn’t exactly ease the situation.

I felt angry and underappreciated. Their tour guides contained embarrassing errors in translation and information that wasn’t up to date. I spoke the language and accumulated travel information the internet didn’t have. But only tech and finance people earned a buck in Israel. Or, perhaps, everywhere on earth.

It was 4:00, and I was tipsy, tired, frustrated, and over everything.

It was a moment of déjà vu. At a birthday party for a girl I’d befriended, wishing the night would end. My host’s studio in Seoul was three or four hours away, and public transportation would resume in two hours.

In the end, the birthday girl escorted me to her apartment, a five-minute walk from the club, and let me sleep on the Korean mattress. I felt bad for interrupting her celebration.

“No, baby, you’re my friend,” she said, “and you came all this way here.”

She couldn’t have been nicer about the whole deal. She refused to party until I was well.  

“You can stay here any time,” she said. “Whenever you come back to Korea.”

Her plan was to drink and party until midday (just as she’d done yesterday). I went to sleep at 5:00, while she returned to the club.

Today’s highlights: reuniting with the Kazakh girl for her birthday.

9 July 2023

• 15:20-16:25 the port area to Pyeongtaek station bus number 98, 16:50-18:10 Pyeongtaek station to Yongsan station express train, 18:30-18:45 Yongsan station bus stop to Seobinggodong stop bus number 400
• Jamsu Bridge Tttubeok Tttubeok Festival + Banpo bridge in the evening
• 21:55-22:20 Seobinggo station to Sangong station train, 22:25-22:40 Sanbong station to Nowon station metro

I woke at 13:00. My Kazakh friend arrived soon after.

She hadn’t slept a wink. We went to lunch with her friends (the African guy had also went to bed in between, in his apartment). It was a pork barbecue restaurant, so I didn’t eat anything.

Neither of us mentioned last night. She might’ve thought I was just drunk. And I knew there was no point in discussing it. There was no awkwardness between us. 

After meeting her Thai friend last night briefly at the club, we got around to talking at the restaurant. Her ex-boyfriend was from Jerusalem. We talked about Thailand and Israel and how nothing in Korea was spicy for her.

“There’s a lot of Israelis in Thailand,” I said.

“Too many,” she said.

It was one of the top three destinations for newly released soldiers to include in their big trip.

Before I knew it, and before I had time to eat breakfast, I had to get going. Having made plans in Seoul for this evening, I bid everyone farewell.

The birthday girl repeatedly invited me to stay with her again if I ever returned to Korea. She was so fun and caring and good to me. I had a feeling we would meet again.

I would like that.

Banpo Bridge

Three hours later, back in Seoul, I got off directly at my next destination: Banpo bridge.

The bus dropped me off on a highway on the north side of the bridge, with no apparent way for me to cross to its underside.

A British girl going there was just as confused as me. She’d been to the bridge before, but not from this side. It took us an hour to cross the bridge and make an annoying but necessary detour from the western to the eastern part of it, to go under. We chatted the entire time. Once there, she didn’t want to join me and my friends.

I met the Dutch volunteer from Pride at the car-free Tttubeok Tttubeok festival. Held on every Sunday since spring, today was its last day.

Instead of cars, there was street food, musical performances, and chairs to sit on and watch the fountain. Banpo bridge was famous for its rainbow fountain every night.

She’d brought along some new guests from the hostel, including an American guy who was now living near Osaka, having recently finished one year of foreign exchanges studies there. I ate patbingsu for the first time (shaved ice with red beans and various toppings) and chatted with him most of the time, while we all sat on the stairs facing the fountain.

As the sky turned dark, the fountain glowed like a rainbow. Nice to see cool things like this on a cool summer evening with friends for free.

When I returned to my host’s studio, I discovered I’d accidentally unplugged her fridge before leaving yesterday in the afternoon.

Oh, no.

I freaked out. What an awful mistake. And right when I’d left her studio for a full 24 hours. A vile smell had attracted her this afternoon to open the fridge. By now, she’d already cleaned everything and discarded some of the melted food in her freezer.

I felt abhorrent for causing this much trouble to someone who had invited me to stay at their studio for free, for an entire month.

“Do you want me to leave?” I asked, picturing myself finding a hostel tonight at the last minute, and paying for accommodation for the rest of my time in Korea.

She was a bit upset, but not angry.

“Everyone makes mistakes,” she said, going into a worse one she’d made on her first day of couchsurfing in Ireland.

What a relief. She seemed like one of those people incapable of indignance. A ray of sunshine. A selfless, generous person.

I went to bed soon after. Yet another weekend of partying had gone by. This one was probably crazier than all my previous ones: staying later than ever, going down dark rabbit holes, taking trains and buses for five hours to a remote, immigrant port town, finding myself friend-zoned.

After spending most of the week sick in bed, my two nights of clubbing had felt like a fever dream. Not unlike the night when I’d developed an actual fever. Those nights were strange and confusing, vile and off-putting, guilty and alluring.

I was determined to live life to the max, refusing to cool this fire down. More and more things, I tried for the first time. This weekend, I might have gone too far – yet the way I’d marked two months in this country exemplified my time here. It truly represented my trip to Korea.

Today’s highlights: patbingsu and the colorful (shall I say queer?) fountain of Banpo bridge.