A Nefarious Alarm Clock and Lots of Wandering

A really old earth wall and a temple of some sort

One of many shopping arcades

At 5am while I was failing to sleep, I pushed a button on our alarm clock with a little light on it to illuminate the display. The light in our foyer came on. We have been trying to figure out why some of our outlets randomly fail to work, and I think I've solved the mystery. Our “alarm clock” also controls all of the outlets, lights, and climate control in our room. Knowing this does not fix our inability to make outlets work on our command, but now I know we're not dealing with an electronics imp. Incidentally, our alarm clock appears to also call for a maid or tell them not to disturb me. Who knew such an innocuous device could be a technological overlord.

Today we went to Daelsong Park, which houses the oldest standing piece of earth wall. I imagine it once kept barbarians out (to support this, Bobby and I shook our fists over the side a couple of times, saying "damn you Mongolians.") There we also encountered an animal gulag, to my dismay. I was so excited to tell Bobby that Daegu had a zoo, but it depressed him to see it. We went searching for lunch and stumbled upon a gigantic market, which seemed impossible to get out of. I hope eventually I will be going to the market to find cooking ingredients, but I am definitely not ready yet! I never saw so many dried fish.

While we were wandering, we found a massive underground clothing market and a really tall department store with different levels for every store. We took escalators up to the top while I gripped the handle and tried not to look down.

Daegu seems to be a city with tons of stores. The shops are divided into districts: the one we saw today must have been the clothing district. We also wandered through the tools and industrial implements district and the electronics district. I can see how this may be handy. If I am looking for something in particular, I have plenty of places to look before I find what I want. On the other hand, going to one store for all of my needs seems fairly impossible.

Last night we wandered into a restaurant, and the friendly owner talked to us about his trip to New York and urged me to try the dalseot bip bim bap, which was fantastic. I still haven't encountered the famous Asian sushi conveyor belt, but hopefully it's a matter of time.