Golden orb and sky,
Time slowly passing as keys
Tick tack tick tack tick.

A pretty lazy day as days go. The packs never left their posts next to our beds. The farthest we walked was to a cafe for some wifi and relaxation. The nearest we got to an oreum was thinking about climbing Sunrise Peak, and then deciding we’d rather sleep.

We still ate like starving cows, though. I woke up around an hour before Evan and started fixing our breakfast of a pumpkin, half a cabbage, and 4 eggs. He was in the men’s dorm, still snoozing, when it was nearly ready, and since he has no sim card I had very little hope of reaching him in there. Except that he had Wifi. So I started a Google hangout with him, pointing my phone’s camera at the sizzling cabbage and eggs. Needless to say, he was up and dressed pretty fast.

We lazed around the hostel as long as possible, coming up with excused to avoid stepping into the oven outside, but eventually dragging ourselves out to see if we could catch the haenyo show. We couldn’t, and in fact there was no sign of anyone doing it. We remembered the haenyo yesterday saying that they were on a month’s vacation, since there was some kind of fish in the water that made them want to stay out.

Defeated, we swung back by our hostel to pick up our laptops, then went cafe-ward and fooled around on them for as long as possible, wasting away the heat of the day. I sipped a kkangkkong (kumquat) tea, made from Jeju kumquats, and Evan had a fruit smoothie. It’s awesome that tea here doesn’t just mean caffeinated, steeped beverages, but basically any kind of flavored water.

We grabbed some bread for tomorrow’s breakfast and hoofed back to the hostel, where we wasted yet more time and finally decided to try going for a snorkel. We returned to the area we thought the haenyo show was in, assuming that there would be something of interest there, but the water was murky and totally devoid of fish. Twenty minutes or so in, we decided we’d had enough and again went back to the hostel to waste time.

Eventually came dinner, and today we decided to join in on the Korean BBQ offered by the hostel itself. Everyone was doing it, it seemed. On offer was a heaping helping of bbq pork (a fatty cut, as is popular here), kimchi (of course), rice, bean sprout soup, makali, and soju. We decided to go for a glass of makali each, and were pretty silly thereafter, but the rest of the hostel crowd plowed through all the soju and, once it was gone, tucked into the makali hardcore. We saw people walk out to the nearby convenience store and return with bottles of beer. It was quite a party.

But we are boring, and we have to hike. We explained as much to the fellows and ladies at the table as they tried to foist more alcohol upon us. We still got to laugh and share stories with them, so it was a great evening. A wonderful end to a totally nonproductive day. :)