LIfe These Days in South Korea: May 5-15, 2025

Monday, May 5

Happy Katie’s Birthday! My baby is 34 today, which is RIDICULOUS.

Tuesday, May 6

Ooh, I’m being so productive! I mean, relatively speaking. For ME. It’s so nice to start rushing hrough a project to Just Get It Done…and then I realize. No. You can slow down. You can take more time. You can put in more effort. You can learn how. You can practice. Wow. That’s nice. I’ve been writing more. I spent HOURS making a couple stupid graphics…and they’re both so bad…but at least I had the time to DO them. To spend as much time as I wanted. And learned a couple little things along the way.

To me, THAT is what retirement is. As much as money had been an issue for So Many Years…nothing feels as valuable to me as my time. And to have UNLIMITED time (ykwim), is…priceless.

Wednesday, May 7

Fun Fact: You know in tennis, how the two players shake hands over the net at the beginning and end of the game? In Korea they bow.

I love bowing culture.

Ooh, the wheel! At the light of speed (well, my brain) I just went from tennis to bowing to should I write a blog post on Korean ettiquette to asking you guys what you want to read about Korea over the next three months to Oh, Yeah! The Wheel! BRB.

Oh, shoot. I forgot, what I did was the winter edition…so everything is indoors. I should save those things for monsoon month (June 25-July 26). Oh well. Now I have time to do a spring/summer wheel!

Thursday, May 8

Today was “git’er done” day. Ferry booked, train booked, school drop-out papers submitted…all that took all day cuz NUTHIN IS EASY.

Friday, May 9

Woke up to an email from the train ticketing place. My train did not really exist so they put me on trains that totally don’t work with my schedule…so in the end, I just cancelled the imaginary tickets and booked myself on a bus…even though the bus terminal is still almost an hour away from the ferry. The bus is more within my anxiety/comfort level anyway, so I’m okay with it.

Saw a Korean fried chicken place that offers (licensed) Cheetos Chicken, and then I became obsessed. The place isn’t in any of the delivery apps. There’s a store not THAT far from me, but too far to walk to bring chicken home. So I found another place I’ve never ordered from that had a 3-variety box of fried chicken bites and one of them was a cheese flavored.

YUCK. Such a disappointment! It was SWEET cheese. Sweet. Cheese. That is Not A Thing. Did I manage to eat it all? Yes. Yes, I did. But I wasn’t happy about it. The regular fried and the spicy yangyam sauce flavors were not that great, either. I’ll just have to make a point of next time I’m in that area, grabbing a box of the legit Cheetos Chicken and bringing it home on the bus or uber or whatever.

Fried Chicken should be our friend. It should never disappoint.

After school (not that *I* went) building friend and I went to a nearby cafe to study/do remote work/work on blog. That’s where I’m writing from. But my back has about had it with this unfortunate chair:table height ratio.

Saturday, May 10

This morning I woke up with the realization that, while I have THOUGHTof it many times, I had not yet gotten myself a sim card for Japan so I’ll have cell phone use while I’m there! Well, THAT was terrifying…deja vu from when I was first in Korea and my phone wasn’t using the data and I had no transportation, gps, translator, currency calculator apps. I could not consistently get directions and call an uber, so I’d get stranded. Not a fan.

So I spent much of the day anxiously trying to get that sorted out. I think I have, but not without several hours of OH CR*P!!! I Can’t Do This!

Master Traveler, right here.

Originally I had MANY paragraphs written detailing MUCH whining about this situation, but…in the end I decided to spare you.

You’re welcome.

Sunday, May 11

I can’t seem to leave the house. And by house I mean the room. Sleep is my friend. Listening to audiobooks with my eyes closed is my eye’s friend. If I wasn’t already on anti-depressants I’d say I’m depressed. I don’t FEEL depressed…but I don’t know that I ever did. I keep coming up with things to do every day, to get out…and then I just let the day slip by without leaving the room.

I’m going to HAVE to go out this week cuz I have to do some things before my trip AND I have to go on my trip. And I mean I HAVE TO. I can’t even change my mind, Korea thinks I’m leaving on May 16, so I gotta leave on May 16.

PS: Happy Mothers’ Day.

Monday, May 12

Woohoo Bonus Days! I only have a few days this week in Korea so I’ll just add them here. Friday I leave for Japan.

I had plans today. Really I did. I had my route mapped, my clothes picked out, my bag packed, batteries charged, alarm set. And suddenly it was evening and I’d spent most of the day in bed.

In my defense…some days my one eye is very uncomfortable and my eye and I are happiest when I can just keep my eyes shut. So while I did GET UP in time for my journey…pretty soon I lay back down with my current audiobook.

Tuesday, May 13

We Have Breaking News!!!

I left the house! Ha. I HAD to exchange my Korean money for Japanese money. Fortunately my Korean bank was able to handle it and I didn’t even have to take a bus. Then, as a reward for a) adulting and b) leaving the house, I got a bagel and my favorite Starbucks drink (Grapefruit Honey Black Iced Tea) and sat inside to eat/drink. Stopped at the convenience store on the way home for milk for cereal.

It was so fun when I first came to Korea and exchanged my USD for Korean won because won comes in such small increments (relatively speaking) that I had SO MANY BILLS, I felt rich. And now, exhanging Korean won for Japanese yen…I’m back to very few bills. Sad. Also, Japanese yen not different sizes like Korean won are.

I’m continuing to check things off my list in preparation for leaving the country.

Late in the day, when the sun was low, I went for a short walk to where the roses are blooming over the fence in my neighborhood. And stopped on the way home at a new kabob place near my building – they had the best fries I’ve had in Korea, YUM.

Wednesday, May 14

(this whole day is me complaining about one things after another, feel free to skip to Friday, when things might be better)

Well today was a blend of stupid and productive. The morning was stupid, when I took a bus an hour-and-a-half away to see a street with roses. Walked 3/4 mile from the bus to the roses. There were no roses.

Well, there were these roses. But in the pictures and videos I’ve been seeing over the past few days, there was like a whole street length of overflowing roses of all colors. Dated yesterday back to the weekend. They’re supposed to be growing along the fenceline around an apartment building…and I could only walk along/see two sides of the building. Sigh.

So then I was going to walk a bit more to a really good looking breakfast place. But when I got there it was on the second floor…and I was just not up to that. So I came home and had a weird meat sandwich.

The stupid continued with a whole lot of mistaken information from the Korean insurance people…and it looked like I did NOT have to go Japan this week (I’m really sort of dreading the trip more than anything and I’d rather not have to spend the money) and I did NOT have to spend hundreds of dollars on health insurance out of pocket…and my final (hopefully) eye procedure would be covered under the Korean insurance and I could even get the other cataract removed also under the insurance and OH WHAT A WORLD WE LIVE IN.

But no. Or…PROBABLY not no. No one can give a definitive answer. Korean Insurance Lady says yes. Dean says no, not not pass Go, do not collect $200, DO go to Japan, surrender your residence card, pay for expensive insurance and out of pocket for your upcoming eye things. I tried calling immigration but apparently THAT is not a thing. So I guess I have to go with the safe but expensive route…and continue my plans as they were up til 3:00 this afternoon.

THEN. Then I tried filling out the international insurance form and holy moley who created THAT language?? Back and forth and back and forth via email with this poor woman with the insurance co (international, not Korean). Everytime I changed something based on what I thought she was saying, I’d get an error message. It was taking forever, finally she said STOP. Let’s do a call tomorrow and I’ll walk/talk you through it.

I really was hoping to get these couple of things done today because tomorrow is a whole NEW To Do list of preparations for the trip on Friday. I was really trying to NOT have a million things to do on the day before I leave, but. Here we are.

Waa Waa Waa.

I’m TRYING to book my flight back to the US in August…but the fares vary so widely from day to day, I keep giving it One More Day. All the flights are weird in one way or another. There’s the direct flight (VERY uncommon from Seoul to the US with no transfers…and I HATE transfers) BUT…you can’t pre-select your seat (til you get to the airport, and then it’s first come, first served). I’m trying to decide which I hate more: transfers or (potentially) sitting in the middle seat (for an 11 hour flight). Or there’s lower-priced flights that have 12 and 14 hour layovers, UGH. There are the flights that have 2 stops. There are flights where you have to SELF-TRANSFER (what fresh hell is THAT?!?), meaning get yourself and your luggage to a secondary airport during your layover. No Thank You. That goes on the VERY bottom of the list for me. So I keep watching every day, checking multiple days…for one flight to jump to the top of the list…so I can book this flight already before the flights start going up even more than they already are. I’m juuuust outside the 3-month window right now. It’s only going to get worse from here.

Sorry, this was just a lot of me complaining.

Thursday, May 15

Yeah. So. I am ending this post with some sad news from earlier today. My sister passed away, peacefully, she just…stopped breathing. My brother-in-law was right there next to her so she wasn’t alone.

I always used to joke and say “my sister and I were both only children,” because she lived as a single child til she was 14, when I was born. She left for college and never returned (met husband, etc) when I was 4, so I have no early memories of having lived with her, and then I lived as a single child.

I am an only child once again. I’m the last Rainwater – I mean, in my family.

I’m a little numb and distracted as I try finishing up all these things for my trip tomorrow so I’ll end this here.