I got myself a Cone Pizza on the streets of Buppyeong. The machine that bakes it is like one of those ornate Swiss clocks where a tiny, pot-bellied, handlebar-mustachioed man takes a neat little turn around in his lederhosen, except instead of him it's a cone of cheese, meat and tomato sauce with a surprise at the end. (The whole thing tasted like a crappy microwaveable pizza snack. The unadvertised surprise is that the tip is filled with sweet bean paste. A built-in dessert! It's like a Drumstick in a parallel universe!)

These machines aren't for exercise. They're for making friends.

My Korean is coming along very slowly.

The other day I spent almost an hour deciphering the entries on a menu I took a picture of. This consists of painstakingly entering the Korean characters into a free online translator, which is mostly trial and error as I don't fully remember the keyboard layout yet (it's roughly vowels on the right, and consonants on the left).

After finally assembling the name of an item and hitting the "translate" button, I am given phrases like: macro kim bap (kim bap are rice and seaweed rolls, not unlike sushi. Maybe macro means big?), nude kim bap (maybe nude means plain?), and sixth chapter (huh?).

Only sometimes do I get a result that I can trust is accurate (Unglazed earthenware bowl thin sliced barbecued beef).

Maybe I'll put together a Korean food dictionary. (Oh, found one).

We climbed the mountain and met with these creatures.

We think shrimps are cute. *shrug* I like mayo.