Korean culture is practical. Cars are small. People are small. One thing I didn't think was practical was not being able to use all my change to refill my subway/metro card. Only 15 coins per transaction what a fuckin crock baby! Anyway both my cards got declined when I tried to take out some bills but I'll try again later. The cards works fine 80% of the time but keeping 50 dollars cash is always a good idea. Most ATM transaction fees are about 4 dollars Canadian ~3 US so keeping those to a minimum is preferred if you can store some in your room to restock. Most ATMs only allow 150,000 Won per transaction.
On the train right now writing this. Bought an iced coffee from the venting machine on the waiting platform. Fucking 7 hour layover in China is the worst because they don't have wireless. Well actually they have "free wifi" free to connect to the captive portal and be asked for login credentials for a pay by the minute system.
Dropped my phone and did a little damage to it. My phone is too big to fit in the pockets of the shorts I brought to change into. I had some cool techwear long sweatpants on before I hit China but it's a hot mess of a country. Anyway I had my phone in one of my backpacks pockets and didn't zip it up. It was at the baggage claim so i made it 99% of the way into Korea before breaking it. Just cosmetic damage to the top glass on the Pixel 2 XLs back around the camera. I'll be ok. Might even do that clear mod now that I have a reason to. It was about a waist high drop I'm pretty sure the glass in that window is shit because of the way it smashed. Didn't break like a screen would have imo. I'll be careful not to break it past here. I brought my iPhone 6s as a backup of I do something really stupid like forget it somewhere.
Last time I came I bought a 30 day pre paid simcard at the Airport. 71,000 Won for unlimited 4G data isn't a bad deal at all compared to Canadian plans but I'm living the frugal lifestyle. Adding 85$ a month to my tab isn't something I'm down with right now. I'm staying in a new place this time so hopefully I can find my way with some map screenshots.
I've been using a language learning app called LingoDeer. It's so good. Compared to Duolingo for Asian languages it has a lot better teaching style and format. If you're looking to get into Japanese or Korean I HIGHLY recommend it. While you're in the app store download Blumail because it has no ads and a dark theme to make your life a little less anonying. Why Google wants to push ads in my inbox in the default Gmail app on their own phone I can't be sure.
Posting this a week late but I'll have a better writing schedule now that my first week is dialed in. Thanks for reading!