Gyeong-Ju: Flour Sackies

Woke up in the dead wreckage of Optimus Prime's left calf.  It smelled like someone was cooking pancakes with mothballs.  I got up and creeped over the Australian girl who seemed to have been sleeping for 12 hours.  I find Oliver from Australia in the lobby and we agree to search for some breakfast.    We settle on Paris Baguette--a fairly common bread and coffee chain;  if Starbucks is 70 percent coffee, 30 percent food, Paris Baguette would be the opposite.  I actually liked the curry bun I got and the coffee was good enough.  I most love how the girls at the counter wear beatnik apparel.
The hostel man recommended checking out some 'athletic competition' at the University.  We couldn't really get any more specific information about it except that there could be free food;  my expectations were not far from the reality.  It was fantastic and hilarious.   It was basically an amateur tack and field event and all the older people in town were spectators.  They sat in sections by color (red, green, blue, and white),  are directed by scantily clad cheerleaders (and possibly an older drunk man).  The best event was the flour sack relay race--it speaks for itself.

After the event we ventured for food: this is always an adventure in Korea.  Most restaurants are basically just an extension of a kitchen at someone's house, so there are lots of them, but they aren't very well marked, and they usually aren't that busy.  It seems like more often than not, we are the only table of customers.  We walked into some lady's 'kitchen', checked out the menu and got confused, so I showed her the chapter of food in my phrase book and nodded to the first thing she pointed out.  It was good--it was triumphant.

For the next few hours we hit up our usual watering hole, the plastic seats outside the 7-11.  A couple from Holland (also at the hostel) joined us, and together, we watched the Korean world go by for a few hours.  We spied the coffee girls, oilbanks, vehicular tetris, and silent bank thieves.  After we had had enough, we went for pizza at a pizza joint that apparently only women are supposed to go to.

On our way back from pizza I ran into 2 girls from Israel who were staying at my Hostel in Sokcho.  I decided to accompany them for more food (it was the lure of adventure, not that I was actually hungry again).