Welcome back to my journey in South Korea! I have reached the end of my quarantine period and am free to discover the world (again). Today’s question is as the title states “What else can I do?” (both because I asked myself this many times in solitude and because I listened to this song literally every day of quarantine, again Encanto 10/10 would recommend).

Quarantine itself was actually not the worst thing ever. I mean I have plenty of practice spending time by myself and love embracing my introverted nature. Honestly, I would’ve considered this time a mini-vacation (keyword: would’ve). And for the first few days, this was true. I was enjoying watching my favorite Youtube videos and TikToks as well as listening to the Encanto soundtrack on repeat (did I mention I would recommend watching that movie). Then, the fire nation attacked, and by fire nation, I mean the flood of emails from my Korean university telling us literally a week beforehand that we needed to prepare every document known to man before we would even be able to step on campus. After a very long phone call with Jackie, we managed to give each other a little peace of mind that we would be able to get everything done in time (after half-jokingly, half-seriously discussing getting on a flight back home and starting the semester at home a little late).

With that stress aside, the rest of the quarantine was pretty nice. Some high points included taking the taxi to get a cotton swab shoved into my brain (then walking out and explaining “it’s just hay fever”), having a strange sleep schedule of going to bed at 8 pm and waking up at 3 or 4 am, eating a ton of rice like a TON of rice (I had a bowl of rice with every meal; soup, sandwich, fish doesn’t matter, I ate rice with them), as well as finding out halfway through quarantine that I didn’t have to take freezing cold showers because the option for hot water isn’t in the bathroom itself but actually located on the thermostat next to the floor heating by the front door, a truly wonderful discovery that I surely don’t wish I would’ve found out sooner 🙂 An actual high point during quarantine was the trailer for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness dropping (or as I like to call it Scarlet Witch being a literal goddess featuring America Chavez and others). I am actually counting the months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds, and breaths until this movie comes out and will be acting like a rabid dog after 6 shots of espresso when I see Wanda grace my eyes.

I think the food deserves a little bit of a spotlight as well, so I’ll give a brief statement on it (and I promise it wasn’t ALL rice, just most of it). Every day at around 5 am, a mysterious person came down the hall with a rolling cart and placed a 2 L bottle of water with 2 plates of food, a salad, usually a soup, and some type of porridge. Quick takes, 1. that was a lot of water to drink in one day for one person (or at least for me), 2. the dressing that came with the salads had a questionable taste and all tasted the same but came in a variety of colors, and 3. I’ve never consumed porridge and this time was no different. The food itself was pretty good on most days, average 6.8/10. I definitely needed a break from these meals, so I decided to try some delivery options as well including McDonald’s (definitely better than American McDonald’s), Isaac Toast (delicious breakfast-ish sandwich place in Korea), and Papa John’s (and before you say “why are you eating at places you can eat at in America”, as Tabitha Brown says “that’s my business”).

Well, that’s all for today! Next week we move into the dorms and will soon start school. My next post may just be me typing in the middle of a manic episode, so stay tuned!

P.S. if you’ve tried to contact me by text or call, I now have a Korean sim card so I can’t see them. I promise I’m not ignoring you (unless your name is Erick, in which case I actually am)