As a heads up this is less of a banter and more of a report on what we have done so it is a boring post

We woke up after a solid 6 hours of sleep and prepared to head to Matt and Nicole’s (Katy’s college friend). I stopped by the front desk and after a little mix up picked up a package containing a portable wifi router with 1g of data a day ($5/day). We then headed across the street to the train station and after Katy got her coffee attempted to find the right train to Pyeongtaek. It was a little frustrating and involved going to the wrong area and eventually figuring out it was the wrong area and buying a ticket, but they only had standing room tickets. We ended up sitting on the floor of the connection area between cars, but it made for a semi chilly hour (it has rarely been over 50 F since we got here).

Not sure what this means…

We then met up with Matt, Nicole, and Chloe (their 6 year old) who are 18 months into a two year army deployment. We took our stuff to their Subaru (imported from the US) and headed to a temple with a giant seated Buddha. We decided to walk up a random path that led to a semi shrine cave with a good view of town. We then headed back to town and got dinner. I fell asleep shortly after dinner around 8pm. The time zone change has really hit me hard this trip and the first night I couldn’t keep my eyes open at 7pm, second night at 8pm, and third night at 9pm. Luckily with a little Ambien I have been able to sleep in until at least 6am each day.

In the morning we headed out to a folk village with Nicole and Chloe since Matt had to work. The folk village is basically a traditional village that people still live in that has been preserved. There is a museum section that has labels with explaining different types of houses depending on class. We missed a lot of the demonstrations since we might be here a little off season and some things seamed closed

Fire burning at the folk village

Katy with a selfie stick

It has been pretty cold, but a lot of the leaves have not changed yet even though normally mid to late October is peak tree changing season. As you can imagine the fall colors are a major hit with Koreans and they tend to flock to the mountains to see the colors.

We then went to a Shabu Shabu place for dinner which is basically a Japanese hot pot place which was a lot of fun. Katy has been on the hunt for kimchi and missed the unlabeled kimchi on the buffet that went along with the hot pot. I was feeling exhausted at this point but managed to stay up until almost 9pm.