kangnam ka bo ja!

destination according to yesterday.

last time here in korea i became friends with the youngest analyst at the mutual fund i interned at (my cousin's firm). and by youngest, he's still 5-6 years older than me. i can never be sure precisely how old someone is with the korean age numbering system, which adds 1-2 years to date of birth depending upon present month vs. month of birth.

so that makes him 28 or 29 at this time, also depending on how you calculate my age, and i hadn't seen him in 3 years or so. we didn't keep in very close contact or anything like that, but somehow i knew going to see him that nothing would be awkward, or would have changed all that much. you know, there are these people who just intuitively know you, and even if they haven't been there to watch you change, they sense it, because when you do actually get together, they really osmosize who you are as a person. and when they fumble upon something in your person they don't understand, instead of being confused, they merely shrug and love you the more. he's one of those people. so despite sporadic at best email communique over the past three years, yesterday was an absolute blast.

we met at king sejong's art center, and then took off to kangnam. for those of you new to seoul, kangnam is across the river from where i live, in pyongcheong dong. kangnam is sort of a upper crustish area of the city with many restaurants.

of course we went to eat at a hole in the wall student place. of course, he chided me for being misanthropic and antiboyfriend. and for my peculiar tendency to go out til five am in the US. despite my assertiveness in the US, for some reason, i slide into a much less so person here almost immediately. i know it's uncomfortable for some people to do like the romans do when in rome; i don't know any other way to do it though. don't think i could be completely american overseas even if i tried. of course, i argued him, but gave in to this older brotherliness when right. peppered him with questions about work and future goals.

minor side note: we went to this AMAZING cafe in kangnam. all of you be warned, if you ever come to korea, you must go to jumanji cafe. it's a normal cafe...except it has like 60 board games. so we rocked jenga, a german version of rummicube, etc.

i don't know what makes these people, but there are those people that you can just talk to, for hours and hours. about whatever. if you have nothing to say for a while, the silence serves as a nice precourse/appetizer to the next topic of conversation. definitiely one of those people.

great night, great company. i love the city here at night. the heat dies down, and the twenty somes come out to play. so many lights. the kwh's per day utilized must be sky high. i have missed the city pulse here, despite how disgusting it is during the day with the heat and smog and all.

i did feel terrible though because he drove me back, and we got so lost because i couldn't recognize anything yet in the dark. oy, stupid girl.

and explaining to my aunt and cousins his age and how we had met was a little awkward too. unfortunately, korea is definitely still a place where male and female relationships are largely viewed as potentially or consummated non platonic.

끝