Our Seoul and Tokyo Adventure: Day Ten

We had planned on heading into the country today to take in some sights and eat some yummy food, but cancelled our plans early this morning, partly because it was supposed to snow quite a bit in the part of Korea that we would be driving around, but mainly because poor Bob was having quite a terrible bout of stomach trouble, and neither of us got any sleep last night with all the "drama" that went on. With Bob in bed for most of the day, the rest of us stuck close to home, puttering around and taking care of the patient. Since the only thing that Bob and I ate differently yesterday was our lunch, my dad figured that there must have been some bad mayo or something in those California rolls, and we all hoped that Bob would be feeling better soon. While Bob tried to get some sleep, my dad roped me into helping him edit some abstracts for a while:

Although the living-room plants looked very happy in the morning sunshine,

when we out to the Saturday market, we realised how cold it had gotten overnight!

Bob held down the fort while we were gone.

We ended up buying a lot of fish, fruit, and vegetables from the vendors,

and I just stood by while my parents decided what to get.

There was even an oden stall in the market, and my dad suggested we warm up with some steamy treats and a cup of hot broth.

My parents hadn't brought down enough cash for all their purchases, so while I carried the fish upstairs, they arranged for the produce seller to bring their heavy purchases up to their apartment--and, in a moment of no-one-would-ever-go-for-that-in-Canada-or-the-UK, my dad collected 3,000 Won in change from the seller before he even paid for his purchases! When the man came upstairs shortly after we left, my dad paid him and tipped a small amount for the delivery, but I still couldn't stop thinking about this strange transaction that involved my dad leaving with extra cash in his pocket without having paid. The cold weather was perfect for another scrabble game in the comfort of home, and you'd think that my dad's big smile was because of a particularly good play or something, but in fact, this was his face after I won!

"It's my pleasure to lose," he said, adding that should always be a teacher's reaction to being surpassed by his or her student! For dinner, we had leftovers, which had the added benefit of not creating too many new cooking smells to set off Bob's super-sensitive stomach.

And what did poor Bob have today? One piece of dry toast, one spoon of rice, one strawberry, four bottles of Chilsung Cider (a Korean pop which is like 7-Up), and one bottle of Gatorade. Since I hadn't slept all night either, we both went to bed early and hoped that all would be better in the morning . . . .