All posts by Claire

About Claire

Wandering (and wondering) development professional and aspiring aid worker. Contact me on anticipationofwonder[at]gmail[dot]com

Dust in the wind

Daegu, ,

Saturday’s exploring was of a slightly different nature. Most of the places I’ve visited so far have been parks that, while they often have some historical and/or cultural significance – and signboards telling people about it – are really most important for their current purpose as a place for the community to be outside. Because the houses here have no gardens and most are apartments high-rise apartment blocks, the space for children to play and people to walk is crucial to the health of the community. The place I went on Saturday is different. It’s not a park constructed as part of the somewhat chaotic urban planning of the city. It can’t be. It pre-dates the modern city of Daegu by a very long time.

I’ve been scouting out places to see through tourist and travel information on-line. On Saturday morning (well, early afternoon), I headed off to catch the 401 bus to a whole new part of the city. Most of the places I’ve visited have been in the South or centre of the city. My destination on Saturday was to the North. Because of the bus system set-up (which I’m finally figuring out) it is difficult to find a bus that goes directly from South East to North East. Fairly logically, most of them go into town and then out again in another direction. This meant quite a long bus trip but the bus wasn’t crowded and the day was calm, a perfect opportunity to watch the world go by from the window of my bus. A blogger I follow intermittently recently wrote a piece on the terror of buses. I also have a love-hate relationship with intra-city buses. They’re terrifying because, in a city or even just an area that you don’t know, their routes are difficult to figure out. Also, destinations tend to be just off the bus route, so it’s always complicated to figure out where to disembark. At the same time, however, there is no better way to see the side-roads and suburbs, the ordinary places than by taking the same transport that local people use to get from place to place.

As the bus wound it’s gentle way towards the centre and then through downtown and back out towards the mountains in the North (as opposed to the mountains in every other direction), I watched the scenery change. Daegu is a city built around and in between geographical features, like hills and mountains. One of the things I often forget, is that several smallish waterways also wind their way through the city. The area where I live is mostly hills and high-rise buildings, so I don’t see the rivers all that often, and I’m always a little excited when I do. Of course, these are generally glimpsed from a bus window as we cross the many bridges but the sparkle of light on moving water always makes me happy. One of the prettiest bridges is towards the north and is lined with pink petunias and geraniums in pots all along the bridge. I keep meaning to stop there but I always seem to pass it on my way to somewhere else.

After a good half an hour or so, the bus passed the airport. This is the first time I’ve been past the airport (at least that I’ve been aware of) since I arrived there. It seemed larger and more modern in the daylight and without the fogginess of 24 hours travelling and fairly significant jetlag. Just beyond the airport, the bus drove along a road lined with flower-sellers. There are certain streets in Daegu where businesses of the same type cluster together. This is the place where all those who sell flowers, to flower-shops and arrangers, work side-by-side. The result is a street of flowers. Unfortunately I didn’t get a picture because I was, by this time, looking out for the next bus stop, based on the on-line instructions that said to get off just beyond the flower-selling area.

The problem with instructions like this is that it’s quite hard to make them clear in a city that doesn’t have street names (even in Korean) and where the reader is unlikely to recognise any of the landmarks. These ones said to get off and walk along the road until the overpass and then turn right. After walking two or three blocks I finally saw the overpass. Unfortunately, it was not situated at a road along which I could go right. Having reached the point where I’m now less obsessively tied to instructions than I used to be, I backtracked a little and took the previous right. I found myself walking along a suburban street. Suburban has a somewhat different meaning here. Nowhere are the white-picket fences (or in the case of Gauteng, 6-foot walls topped with barbed wire) surrounding gardens where children and pets play freely, and one or two story houses with curtains and windows looking out over trees and flowers. Houses are multi-story and narrow and cluttered together and courtyards open right onto the street. The streets don’t even have pavements out here. Walking along means walking between parked cars and moving aside for the moving cars that try to squeeze between those parked on both sides of what in other countries would probably be a one-way street.

At the end of the street-that-should-have-been-one-way, I crossed what looked like the road at the edge of town (it petered out into dirt not far away) and walked up a grassy bank towards the signboards about the Ancient Tomb park. Things looked a little run-down and like that part of any town where urban slowly fades into rural. To my right was a rather run-down place growing vegetables and with plastic replacing missing roof tiles. The grass was quite long. The paths that started on the other side of the little fence were worn down and eroded.

The paths, however, wound between two grassy mounds that I knew, from pictures, were the ancient burial mounds of the park. I walked past a granny and her granddaughter eating corn-on-the-cob just inside the entrance and set off to find the past. The Bullo-dong tomb park is a place where 211 burial mounds lie scattered across the hills like huge, ancient mole-hills. Over the years, they have excavated a few (1937 and 1963) and found pottery, iron weapons, gold and bronze ornaments, horse bits, arrowheads and items still used in local funeral rituals, such as shark bones. Bodies and other funeral items were placed in four-sided stone crypts and a large capstone placed on top, onto which dirt was piled, giving these tombs their distinctive ‘mound’ shape.

Although I knew before I visited the park that there would be many of these tombs, and I even had an idea of their size – the website said 15-20 metres in diameter and 4m high – it was no preparation for seeing them. Most of the mounds really are quite large – like small hills – but they vary in size. Some are much smaller, perhaps those of lesser rulers or children, while others are really like little mountains all on their own. They’re big enough that, when walking between them, the view disappears. And there are so many. It’s difficult to visualise over 200 mounds that size until you’re there. There are hillsides covered from top to bottom with mound after mound, tomb after tomb. I walked for nearly an hour, up hills and along meandering paths between the tombs without reaching the end.

The tumuli or burial mounds are thought to be the final resting place of the aboriginal rulers of the area during the Three Kingdoms period, probably in the 5th and 6th century. Every information source I have found has pointed out that they are assumed to be the tombs of the aboriginal rulers. There is something humbling about walking through this huge area filled with the head-high burial mounds of what were obviously important and wealthy people, with gold and metal and enough strength in numbers to have burial places lined and topped with stone and built metres high and yet people whose identity and names are lost in the mists of time. All their wealth and strength and yet their children’s children are forgotten. Each tomb is marked with a number. Most of the markers are still intact, a few have broken off. The grass is cut regularly and the paths are there for those who want to walk around, but all that remains is mounds of earth. Families picnic between the tombs and children catch butterflies with no thought to the ones who were.

As I wandered around and watched birds flying and landing, I found myself wondering what my people – both in Africa and Europe – were doing in the 5th and 6th centuries. I wonder if they have burial mounds or monuments somewhere and children catch butterflies around them too. I wonder, too, if we in South Africa found a place with over 200 burial mounds, if we’d mow the grass and put up markers and info boards and then largely forget them. Korea is a country, like many others, that reveres the ancestors. Chusoek, one of the most important national holidays, is in a week’s time. During this harvest festival, Koreans travel to their ancestral home towns to celebrate the harvest with their extended families and participate in various celebratory meals and activities, including visiting and tending ancestors’ graves because it is a festival that shows reverence for family present and past. I wonder if anyone will be visiting these tombs.

As I started to head towards the exit, the funereal quiet, birdsong and sounds of insects and frogs were interrupted by the voices of children. I walked down a slope and came upon a group of women picnicking with their families. When I said a polite 안녕하세요, they asked me to join their picnic. I considered it but I was, by this stage, a little tired and rather introspective and didn’t relish the idea of trying to make myself understood and trying to understand others who didn’t speak English. I politely declined and walked on.

The exit I headed to is, it turns out, the real entrance. There is a smart Tourist Information Centre (closed on a Saturday afternoon) and an information board which, unfortunately, contained only the same information as the other boards I had seen. There was also a field of Cosmos. Cosmos always makes me think of my cousin’s wedding and of roadside flowers in Gauteng, on the road from the Airport to Pretoria or from Pretoria to Johannesburg on the back roads. It is starting to appear all over in Daegu at the moment. It appears Autumn is Cosmos season here.

I walked back to the bus stop, stopping on the way to buy a bottle of water at a small café. The owner told me the amount in Korean and I handed him a thousand won note. His eyes lit up when I seemed to understand (I’m finally starting to get a handle on numbers in Korean). He asked if I spoke Korean. I was almost sad to disappoint him and for some odd reason found myself wanting to say ‘ndithetha isiXhosa esincinci’. Strange how non-mother-tongue languages sometimes get confused. I was chatting later that evening to an American who speaks fluent Spanish and had been having a conversation with a guy from Peru she had met in the market and found the same problem, with her Spanish and Korean getting all mixed up.

The bus home was a slightly unusual experience. I have never seen a Korean bus overloaded. Sometimes buses are a little full when it’s just the time when all the schools are getting out but generally it clears out quite quickly and only occasionally you have to stand for a stop or two. This bus was more full than any I’ve been on since getting here. I am used to taking buses on routes that are very well served but this area has only one or two buses running and is the route to several popular weekend hiking spots, so it was completely packed. It wasn’t until after we reached downtown that the majority of people, most of whom were older Korean men and women in hiking gear, hopped off the bus and I was able to sit down and think about the things I had seen.

Park-hunting

Daegu, ,

I teach several classes that revolve around helping teenagers learn to answer questions articulately in their second language. One of the questions they always seem to struggle with is the question of what there is of interest to see and do in their own city. I’m sure the question is included because it seems like it should be easy. Their struggle to find something to talk about always reminds me of how little we pay attention to the places where we live. We all do it. People who live in Johannesburg look a little bemused and generally resort, after a long pause, to suggesting a favourite restaurant or perhaps Gold Reef City. Cape Town people get stumped, too.

It’s difficult to pinpoint the moment when life in a completely new and foreign place stops being filled with the sheen of strange-ness and becomes familiar, but I think that is probably the moment when it becomes hard to think of places and things that are exciting about the city you live in. It’s also the moment when it starts to take definite effort to go out and find things to see and write about, not because things have become less interesting but because their familiarity makes them seem less spectacular. The fact that the place feels familiar, because it’s the place you live and not a place you are visiting, means there is less urgency to go and see things, instead of sleeping for another hour or sitting in your flat.

I’ve been very aware of that tendency in myself recently. It has taken me a long time to get back in touch with the fact that I want to live deliberately, consciously and, to quote something I once wrote “experience each moment before it is gone”. Choosing to do that, not just on exciting, brief trips, but in the place where you live and work, requires effort. One of the reasons I was originally so pleased with the idea of my rather odd working hours was because it would give me the opportunity to see the world I am living in. Recently I have been forgetting that and allowing myself to be dragged back into the mundanity of office politics and the stress of new classes and the sagas we create for ourselves to occupy the time that we would otherwise have to fill with things that take effort, like exploring. Today I dragged myself out of the house, determined not to drown in the lethargy of feeling like it’s too much effort and the excuse that I only have a few hours before work.

I really did only have a few hours before work, but I’ve been meaning to visit one of the parks slightly further away from home for a while now and this was the day. I hopped a bus and headed for my usual subway stop and down into the depths of the Daegu subway system. The bus was marvellously without the masses of school-children who usually crowd onto it on my way to work (they were still at school) and the train arrived almost immediately and was also pleasantly empty. The train-ride to Duryu from Manchon takes about 15 minutes. I am clearly becoming inured to subway travel because my mind drifted and I nearly missed my stop. Nearly but not quite.

From the platform I headed up and sought exit 12, as recommended in the directions I was following. I emerged from the subway exit and found myself on the usual busy intersection, except with slightly smaller buildings and a little more open space, which is always a welcome relief. The instructions said turn right, which was a little unclear as right would have meant walking into a brick wall, but I assumed (correctly as it turned out) that they really meant ‘go right along the big road crossing the intersection’.

As I walked up the road, I was struck by the feeling that this was a somewhat different part of the city to what I’m used to. For one thing, there weren’t signs for English academies everywhere and the shops didn’t all have fake-English names. I got the sense that here I had found a corner of the city not designed specifically for foreigners. This might make it slightly less attractive to occasional travellers but it’s somehow comforting to know that it’s not all one giant amusement park for the ‘others’.

A block or so up the road, I saw lots of trees and headed in that direction. This park (Duryu Park) is different to the ones I’ve visited so far. The parks I’ve been to have been tiny, perfectly manicured, carefully designed tourist attractions. This is just a park. A park with far more trees, well-maintained benches and old people playing board-games than I’m used to, but an ordinary large park on the gentle slopes of a hill. This means that every patch of ground is not covered in lawns and flower-beds. It really felt as if this is an ordinary place that is an integral part of the life of an ordinary community.

I wandered the paths for a while, enjoying the shade of the trees and the people living their lives and the gentle ordinariness of it all. At one point, I sat down on some stone stairs under some huge plain trees and just sat listening to the wind in the trees and the birds singing (or squeaking – strange birds) to each other. Down the slope, people were having quiet picnics or sitting in groups on benches chatting. It was wonderful to hear the wind.

At the top of steps, the world opened out into an open-air stadium. I assume that the stadium is used for sport, based on the soccer goal-posts on either side, but it looks more like a dusty school playground in rural Limpopo (in the middle of perfectly clean and maintained stadium seating) due to the distinct lack of grass. Perhaps this is because the stadium is also used for other things. I know there is a concert there next month as part of the Daegu Opera Festival. In the distance, I could see Woobang Towerland, an amusement park with rides and roller-coasters and the big swing/boat swinging from side to side.

A little more wandering brought me to a pond with purple and white water-lillies. I had astrange moment of trying to remember what Waterblommetjie Bredie is called. I also passed some fruit trees I was unable to identify the fruit of (the fruit of which I was unable to identify?), although one of them may have been a crab-apple tree. Near the exit of the park there are some fountains. Nothing spectacular or huge, but pretty water, arranged in a pretty way in the pristine light of an early Autumn afternoon.

On the way back, I stopped past the entrance to Woobang Towerland – the entrance is shaped and coloured like a Disney fairy-tale castle – and was taken by complete surprise by the sight of a scurrying grey-brown squirrel. It was rushing around, as squirrels should, I suppose, in Autumn, and wouldn’t hold still long enough for a photo but I saw it several times so I’m dead sure I wasn’t imagining it.

On the way back to the subway, I walked across a large pedestrial bridge. It was one of those that winds up the one side and then stretches across a busy road and winds back down the other. I’ve always thought that there is something ‘twirly’ and a little insecure about these bridges. At the same time, I love standing in the middle watching the traffic pass under you. It feels as though you have a unique opportunity to stand still just for a moment and watch the whole world rushing by.

Back on the platform of Duryu subway station, I saw a sign that said “origins of the name” and went to go and investigate, keen to find out all I could about the area. Unfortunately, the extent of the explanation was that the park was called that so the street was called that so the station is. Sometimes Koreans can be rather unpoetic with their explanations.

On the way back, I’d thought about stopping at the major downtown station to try and find the bookshop there that reputedly carries an English selection, but time was passing quickly and I still had a lesson to finish preparing so I decided to leave it for another day. I got off one station sooner than I normally do, just for the sake of variety and walked the two blocks or so to work.

At this point, I realised I was feeling a bit hungry so I went into the K-Mart downstairs from the office (school). This is one of the most mini-super-market-like shops I know in Korea (sort of like a Kwikspar only not sophisticated) but nothing looked appealing until I noticed that they were selling single apples. Daegu is famous for it’s apples, so they tend to be everywhere. I bought one and headed up to my desk. It seemed doubly appropriate to have an apple for the teacher. Most teachers, though, probably don’t end up with apples that take ages to eat because they are absolutely monster-sized and sweet and juicy all the way through. By the time I finished the apple (in between lesson prep), the afternoon of exploring was gone and my first class was beginning.

It wasn’t until I got home this evening that it dawned on me that a disproportionate number of posts on this blog so far have involved parks. It is a little odd that parks would be the places I seek out, although it’s probably appropriate given the excessive urbanisation of the place. I think the attraction is partly that and partly that parks are easy to find, always-open places which don’t involve conversing with any gate-keeper or teller who can’t speak English. Also, I happen to be a fan of parks, so it all works out for the best. Perhaps I have founded a whole new hobby – park-hunting, anyone?

Costco – like Makro for Americans – and yummy Indian food

Daegu, Food, ,

Sundays are generally quiet days for me – either because the ridiculously late nights of the week have worn me out or because I don’t really have anything to do and have run out of the energy for exploring. This week was different as my colleague and I headed off for a long-promised visit to Costco. Although we’d planned to head out early, he and I both live on nocturnal time (he even more so than I) so he picked me up at 11:30am and we went to get something to eat before heading to the shop.

Unlike most of the places I’ve visited in Daegu, this is not that close to where I live because it’s situated near the main American military base in order to capitalise on the foreign market. This meant that lunch needed to be somewhere on the way, which is how we ended up parking on KNU campus and heading for an Indian restaurant. In all my years in SA, I haven’t eaten all that much Indian food, and particularly haven’t spent much time in Indian restaurants – as opposed to meals shared in people’s homes and at parties or from street vendors.

That said, Indian is practically South African as far as some part of my brain is concerned and walking into the Indian restaurant brought on strange bouts of feeling terribly at home. Terribly because it could have been designed to induce homesickness (given that I don’t come from an Indian community) but also wonderfully, comfortably familiar. I felt myself relax and take a deep breathe of calm. This was perhaps exaccerbated by the fact that I’m finding Korea particularly noisy at the moment and this was an oasis of calm and quiet with nothing but gentle music with rhythms that made me recall the occassional belly-dancing class and a smiling, non-Korean waiter (who rocked).

We poured over the menu. Or rather, I poured over the menu, as my colleague knew immediately what he wanted to order – a spinach-based vegetarian dish. I eventually settled on a North Indian Chicken and vegetable curry thing (which has a name, which I currently cannot remember) and rice. My colleague also ordered Naan bread with cheese (real cheese!). After seeing me struggle with Korean food, I think he was a little taken aback to see how easily I took to the Indian menu and food. I struggle to explain just how comfortably multi-cultural home is and this was one of those situations. The food was fantastic. I honestly found myself having to stop eating because I was full but wishing that I wasn’t because it tasted so delicious. Of course, it also had the advantage of not requiring chopsticks – which at this point is always a bonus. But I was seriously impressed. The atmosphere was great, the staff were amazing and the food was marvellous. It sounds odd that in Korea the place I now want to take visitors is an Indian restaurant, but that is a little what I’m feeling.

I also wondered a little if the waiter hadn’t spent some time in South Africa. The accent sounded so familiar and I felt that he smiled a little wider when he noticed the SA rugby jersey I was wearing (in honour of the Boks Tri-nation victory) but apparently they’re all from Pakistan and India so perhaps that is just wishful thinking. Either way, this is another place to add to my list of amazing discoveries in Daegu. When I mentioned later that I want to travel around Korea, my colleague said that all Korean cities are the same. Thinking about it now, I should have pointed out to him that it’s gems like this place that make every city different. I also failed to explain – because I don’t know how – just how much this place felt closer to home than any Korean restaurant I’ve walked into since I’ve been here. Perhaps having so many wonderful cultures at home prepares you for foreign travel not just in terms of dealing with other cultures but because you can always find a piece of Africa, even if it comes from India.

The cultural differences came up in conversation again when we reached Costco. This colleague, as an American, has serious issues with people not respecting personal space. Coming from Africa, I have a far smaller concept of personal space, so this doesn’t really bother me. In fact, I sometimes find it difficult to understand the extent to which it bothers other foreigners. I did, however, still feel a little claustrophobic on a lift with nearly 20 other people. We parked on the roof so there were several floors to go down and at each stop more people kept getting on. I think some of them were getting annoyed with me because I wasn’t moving back but I was very aware of the mother with a small, energetic child standing directly behind me.

When we finally reached the actual shopping floors, we had to go to the information desk and sort out membership. Like Makro, you have to have a membership card to shop at Costco, and because I don’t currently have my alien card (because my boss needed it to do some paperwork) we needed to renew my colleague’s. This involved a stop at the information desk and then a somewhat-meandering trip back up the stairs one floor (avoiding the overcrowded elevators) before it was finally sorted out.

And then, membership secured, we walked into what could be an American replica of Makro. Except American. I’ve heard a lot about Costco since I arrived here. It seems to be the place that keeps most foreigners happy. It was easy to see why, walking through the place with an American. I didn’t recognise as much stuff (except from American TV programmes) but I can see how it would make anyone from North America feel like they’d rediscovered home.

The first aisle we stopped at was the stationery. I am desperately trying to find the Korean equivalent of ‘prestic’ and have so far failed (including today). In the process of  searching, we both got distracted by the large packs of white-board markers and the multi-packs of gel-pens in many, many colours. I definitely had a moment of being reminded that whatever else we are, when we’re here we’re all teachers first and foremost.

Once we dragged ourselves away from the stationery, we found the very small book selection. Apparently the store used to cater far more for foreigners than it does now (presumably because they’ve discovered a lucrative Korean market just dying to buy American-style products in bulk) and their book selection is now extremely limited. We did find an audio (casette) kiddies version of Aesop’s fables but other than that nothing of interest – which is a little frustrating for two book people.

On our way out of the maze of books and stationary and house-hold items, we found a shampoo/toothpaste/multi-vitamin section and I picked up a huge pack of multi-vits (400 per pack), so I should be good for a year or so. I also looked longingly around the shampoo/conditioner section while my colleague tried to find an Omega-3 supplement that wasn’t all fish oil (don’t ask) and then had to explain that the reason I wasn’t buying any shampoo was because none of it is made for curly hair (which I think he still doesn’t believe in spite of all the straight-haired people as evidence to the contrary).

So, on (up the horrible moving walkway) to the food. Costco is known for having a wide variety of the type of foodstufs that Koreans just don’t eat and which, as a result, are not available in Korean shops. The first stop was the vegetable storage walk-in fridge. I was on an (unsuccessful) hunt for Rocket (Arugula in the States). I did find a variety-pack of lettuce which is a welcome relief from the ice-berg lettuce I’ve been reduced to so far. My colleague found pine-apple, which was very exciting – don’t laugh, it’s unusual here. There were also some very tempting packs of brown mushrooms, which I resisted on the grounds that they’d just go off in my fridge before I finished them (and I don’t have an oven to cook stuffed mushrooms), as well as some rock-hard New Zealand Avos, which I (sorrowfully) rejected for the same reason.

On to the meats and cheeses. Costco is apparently the best place to find meat in Daegu and there was a better selection than I’ve seen elsewhere, but it still wasn’t anything like what I’m used to. I don’t think we, as South Africans, really appreciate the variety of reasonably-priced meat we have easy access to at home. Here finding good meat, especially in the cuts we’re used to, is a struggle. And even this place didn’t have the lamb/mutton I’ve been craving.

They did have cheese. As a wholesaler, they sell to restaurants so it was good to see real Parmesan, Edam and some Munster and Gorgonzola. I was a little frustrated (perhaps something approaching frantic) not to be able to find Cheddar. At which point, we both got distracted by the wines. The wine selection in Korea is erratic to say the least. Some places have some great wines at reasonable prices but always mixed up with some extortionately priced rather unexeptional ones. And, of course, they’re always foreign (to me) so I’m never sure what I’m getting. I was happy, today, to find a less-extortionately priced 2006 Cab/Shiraz/Merlot from Australia. And then I noticed the Amarula and nearly wept for joy, and spent several minutes (unsuccessfully) trying to explain Amarula to an American. And then I saw a South African wine. This is the first time, despite much searching, that I’ve seen a South African wine in Korea. Unfortunately it was a rather mediocre semi-sweet red Simonsvlei (try explaining how to say that to a foreigner) but it has excited the hope that I might find more soon.

We then moved on to find other good things. I was very excited to find Olive Oil and Balsalmic, a feeling which my colleague of Italian heritage appreciated, and eventually Cheddar Cheese, and took great enjoyment in his excitement at the most amazingly huge Apple and Pumpkin pies (which we didn’t buy but were excited about nonetheless) and a huge variety of candy (to use the American term) from the States and other places, as well as a variety of biscuits – sorry, cookies – and cereals and other foods. We both got excited about finding cranberry juice until I read the packaging which said that it was a juice blend including cranberry, made from a concentrate, at which point I lost interest. There was also Ceres Apple and Mango juice but only in monster-packs so it seemed excessive so I didn’t buy it.

Finally we paid for our meagre wares – I will never get used to paying hundreds of thousands for what would cost just thousands in Rands – and headed out. This required us to get our trolley checked by the nice receipt-checking lady (oh, how I miss SA security guards) and getting onto the moving walkway to go up and up and up. My colleague is, by this time, aware that I’m not a fan of escalators. Moving walkways (they are called travellators at the airports) are even less fun, especially when they start out moving flat and you can feel through your feet when they start to go up the slope. On a busy Sunday afternoon at Costco, the women who check the till-slips also make sure that there aren’t too many people and trolleys (shopping-carts), ie weight, on the moving walkway. The first flight was fine but I was decidedly less than happy when, half way up the second, the moving walkway suddenly stopped. I realise that there is no rational basis for my paranoia about escalators and moving walkways but they still make me decidedly uneasy, so the 10 minute wait while the Koreans tried to figure out how to communicate with each other between floors (in the abscense, of course, of walkie-talkies or other radio devices) made me very unhappy.

Eventually we reached the parking lot and – box of happy foods in hand – took the steps to the roof parking instead of waiting for the elevator. Once there, we stopped for a minute to enjoy the beautiful views. It had rained while we were inside, so the world had that newly-washed feel to it, and from the rooftop of Costco we could see across Daegu to beautiful mountains all around (in between the apartment blocks).

We stopped for a coffee on the way home. I am reminded regularly of how good it is to get reasonably coffee all over the place. All in all it was a good day of exploring and discovering and my kitchen is now significantly enriched by olive oil, balsalmic vinager, cheddar cheese and proper italian pasta (which I wouldn’t even have at home) for when I get really hungry for proper food.