In the meantime… you may have noticed that every meal includes not only a main dish, but also rice, banchan, maybe something extra (fruit, small baked goods), and ALWAYS either soup or ramen. The meals are already more than enough food, so I basically never get to the soup or ramen. I am running quite the surplus, so I thought I’d share a pic 🍲+🍜×💯=🏔
But, on to the main event:
Turns out there’s a speaker in the ceiling of my room.
A dozen or so times a day, “Announcements from the Government Support Team” get piped into the room in various international languages.
In quarantine, all things that come and go do so in plastic bags. Bummer, but what can you do. Blue BAG Means in. Orange BAG means out.
These are the Blue bags in which all my meals arrive.
And these are the Orange biohazard bags in which I must place my trash 😳. They’re the only thing that leaves the room. I leave one outside the door once a day, around 18:00.
I don’t spend tons of time staring out the window—but knowing I’d be stuck in a hotel for 14 days, and hoping I’d have a view, I brought a pair of binoculars. I figured out that I could klugily take iPhone pictures through them.
Clementine’s Mom kindly included a kit to grow radish sprouts. And they are growing! In the distance is the corner they waved to me from.
Radishes are not the only thing sprouting. The parking lot across the street is rewilding, and some maintenance workers came through—maybe to spray weed killer?
I’ve also been teaching myself 한글 (Hangul), the Korean alphabet. To practice, I’ve been reading the signs in the distance.
This one says 순환 버스 정류장, or “Sunhwan Beoseu Jeonglyujang”. According to Google, this translates to “Circular Bus Stop”.
While all this gazing out the window has made me long for the outside world, it has not made me quite desperate enough to attempt using the emergency escape kit. Also they’d deport me. Also the windows don’t open, lol.
09 06 Dinner: Spicy pork, mushroom salad.
09 06 LUNCH: Curry! Also broccoli salad. The black bean banchan is Kongjang—soybeans braised in soy sauce.
09 07 Breakfast: Samgyetang (sort of?), ie. chicken ginseng stew with dates. Egg tofu banchan.
09 07 Lunch: Tuna okonomiyaki! (maybe more like faux-nomiyaki in reality, lol). Still, very tasty nevertheless. Sweet potato salad, seaweed soup.
09 07 Dinner: Kimchi pork with tofu, imitation crab salad.
09 08 Breakfast: Some sort of whitefish fillet. Little hotdog banchan, soy milk.
09 08 Lunch: Some sort of stewed pork. Fairly tasty. Macaroni salad. Peach is still ripening as I write this.
09 08 Dinner: Tteokbokki! ie. rice cakes in gochujang sauce—in this case with chicken. Really a treat 🌶 Also corn salad and chapaghetti, an instant version of jajangmyeon (noodles w/ black bean sauce).
09 09 Breakfast: Tofu in some sort of gelatinous sauce? This one felt a little phoned in, tbh.
09 09 Lunch: This was an odd one. The mixed rice wasn't bad, but the herb/mushroom chicken breast was just unmercifully dry 😵 Croquette banchan were pretty tasty tho.
09 09 Dinner: Back 2 bulgogi. Sadly this was like the last round, rather dry—has me dreaming of that first lunch. Or just non-quarantine food haha. Fried tofu salad.
09 03 LUNCH: Stewed bulgogi.
Maybe it was the 13 hour flight, or the subsequent 5 hours spent in quarantine processing—but it was very tasty.
Banchan. In case you were wondering, those are indeed tiny mozzarella sticks 👨🏻🍳
09 03 Dinner: Spicy octopus.
09 04 Breakfast: Chicken stew, peach yogurt.
09 04 Lunch: Spicy shrimp, corn salad. Certain those lychees were canned. Indeterminate soup.
09 04 Dinner: More bulgogi. Drier and less delicious this time. Excellent pineapple salad.
09 05 Breakfast: Juk! Not bad at all. Marinated quail eggs. Some sort of crazy tofu/noodle stuffed mochi pocket.
09 05 Lunch: Bibimbap! With gosari (fiddleheads). Added all the gochujang, it was great. Peach required several days ripening.
09 05 Dinner: More chicken stew. Tomato salad with a single tiny mozzarella ball. Cross-branded ramen.
09 06 Breakfast: Grilled mackerel, acorn-jelly banchan. Mackerel seemed like an advanced breakfast option, so I opted to save it for lunch… but then of course even more food arrived and I couldn't keep up, lol.
