Pretty good weekend. Friday night, I stumbled home from work, shoveled some kimchee ramen (nectar of the gods. really) in my mouth, and, practically without swallowing, fell asleep. Not a spring chicken anymore. Cannot stay up all night partying without consequences.

Saturday I went through some classwork, organizing stuff, then felt I had to get out, and called a couple people. Janet was with her church group, which had just greeted a bunch of Poles who are Korean Studies majors and really, really excited to finally visit Korea. Eamon didn't answer; probably still in Ireland. Gyungli said she'd had a really bad fall on her new inline skates and besides, she had something to do.

Finally, my coworker Soonji said she was free, which turned out to be really great, because her job at the Foundation is taking foreign visitors around Korea and showing them the sights. So we wandered around Insadong, where she showed me some great artisan shops, including a shop selling the artwork of a young (and, I must admit, kinda cute) Buddhist monk (really great stuff), bought some ppondaegi (silk worm larvae) for me to try, and introduced me to a great tucked-away restaurant with wise-cracking old servers and rock-bottom prices. We sat in a park, wandered around the historic house district, and finally ended up at a very European-feeling gallery, where we sat outside and drank the best cafe au lait I have ever had, while listening to Nina Simone, admiring the photos of girls going to school in Afghanistan and talking about the universal difficulty of finding a good man.

Soonji told me that she had considered trying out Duo, the most high profile internet match site in Korea. It costs clost to 1 million won ($850 or so) for women (according to laws of supply and demand, the price is lower for men). For that price, you get about 10 matches. If none of those suit, you pay more money to get more matches.

She opted to vacation in Singapore instead.

On Sunday, I went with Masaru, the Japanese chef, to Dongdaemun, where towering buildings are filled with tiny stalls featuring cheap name brand ripoffs. Man, that's an adventure. First of all, the kill-or-be-killed pressure tactics are intense, to say the least -- all you hear are the cries of the sellers (mostly women ranging from their 20s to their 50s) exhorting you to "Buy it here! I'll sell it to you cheap! Everyone is wearing this! You can't find this anywhere else! It looks great on you! It's supposed to look that way! It's the latest thing! Yes, of course you can wear it to the office! I'll cut the price for you!"

Second, the clothes and styles are actually extremely similar, so it all starts to blur very quickly. Third, if you do want to try something on, there are no dressing rooms, so you either pull it on over your clothes, or step inside the stall and have the employee hold a cloth in front of you while you change.

I felt badly for Masaru, who patiently picked out stuff for me to look at and didn't mind that I rejected all of them. I finally bought a shirt and a skirt, and am fairly certain that I didn't get ripped off, though I really shoulda bargained with the first seller about the shirt I'm wearing -- I'm sure I could have talked her down a few thousand won.