I'm coming home from Korea early!

First, I have to say that I am a bit biased towards liking Korea. The biggest customer of our most successful products is a major company in Korea so basically, Korea pays my bills.

I don’t feel as at home here as I do in Germany (and to a lesser extent the Netherlands) but I actually like that. When I go out to a pub in Dresden it doesn’t feel like I’m visiting somewhere exotic. I’m not going to claim that my German is perfect, but I can usually understand most of what people around me are saying and I can order my beer in German. Most of those beers are the same ones available in Boston. In Korea everything is different.

Actually, everywhere in Asia, everything is different. Even in Singapore where everyone speaks English. The beer is different, the food is different, the clothes are different, and the cars are different and so forth. I like to visit exotic places but there is a point where I draw a line. The diagram below explains why I like Korea so much.



This is true.

The Korean Barbeque (or as they call it here: barbeque) is really good and if I was writing a food blog I would have plenty of fodder to talk about the raw chili crab, the live octopus, the black bean-paste sauce on noodles, the acorn gelatin, and the dried anchovies: all very delicious.

There is a downside to Korea though and that is the dehydration. The coffee here is the best coffee I have ever had (better than Peru, France or Italy so that’s saying something) but the problem is that I drink too much of it and not enough water. The result is dehydration and a rapid decrease in my ability to keep running the miles I had planned.

The moral of the story is that Korea is awesome. You should visit (but not in the winter, it’s about as cold here as it is back in Boston). Just be sure you’re not coming here right in the heart of marathon training or else you won’t be able to enjoy as much of the coffee.

I’m on my way home on Thursday so here’s to hoping that I can get enough water back into me by Sunday to get after it at the Jones 10 Miler!

May your training miles be ever hilly and may all your races have free beer!