"Today's discomfort index will be 87.2."

...so said the weather forecast on TV this morning. And they weren't kidding: the first thing I noticed stepping outside was the heat. The second thing I noticed were the cicadas: they're out in full force, an almost deafening sound that makes you feel like you could be attacked by a swarm of locusts at any minute.

Against my better judgment, I hiked up (part of) Bomunsan, a local mountain. I got a decent view of the city but was wiped out afterwards. So I wandered the streets looking for someplace to eat that looked (a) air conditioned and (b) big enough to have an English menu. I eventually wound up in a barbecue place that was really tasty.

Apparently I'm failing to communicate the Korean line for Do you speak English? While I guess it's not strictly necessary, as I'd find out quickly enough by throwing English at people, but I wanted to learn the Korean phrase for this so I don't come across as assuming that everyone speaks English. As it turns out, all I'm getting across is that I don't speak Korean. This phrase has been met with confused looks every time I say it...I suspect I'm not pronouncing English correctly.

My linguistic (mis)adventures continued when I ducked out of the heat midday into a supermarket. A couple of friends requested specific items from Korea: kim chi-flavored seaweed, and barley tea. This turned out to be harder than I thought. The place was unnerving enough with store workers at every turn shouting out some sale. But I eventually found the seaweed. I was hoping at least one of them would have some little kim chi icon. No dice. I even memorized the Korean characters for kim chi, but couldn't find them on any of the bags there. The barley tea it turned out was conveniently labeled in English, but the only English words on these packages were self-evident ones devoid of meaning, like flavor and quality.

So I asked someone in my fractured Korean. The problem was I didn't know the word for seaweed. So as much as I pointed to the seaweed, she thought I was just confused and took me over to the kim chi. It turns out that the word for seaweed is kim. And somehow I couldn't quite get beyond "kim chi type kim".

Other discoveries: yes, the video game channel is real. But there's also televised Go. Even more agonizingly slow to watch than to watch someone planning their Starcraft moves.

Tomorrow will be just as hot. And I'll be in a suit. But (hopefully) in well-air-conditioned buildings...

"I pray to God for an affordable car"

Lately I've been growing increasingly cavalier about packing for domestic travel. When visiting my parents, I could always count on them to have an extra bar of soap; even the most podunk of Southern rural towns has a Wal-Mart to get forgotten items. So it was somewhat impressive that I should get everything packed up at the last minute on Sunday, given that I only discovered at 9 PM that I needed to bring a suit. I swear, next time I'll plan ahead.

The flight was amazing. From the moment you sit in the terminal and listen to the Singapore Airlines agents making uber-polite announcements, the United agents next door sound like heartless bastards. I had twelve hours of being pampered, and got kim chee fried rice on the plane. All of which makes American airlines even harder to go back to.

Getting off the plane we all shuffled into health inspection, everyone trying their hardest not to cough. H1N1 paranoia is high here; masked inspectors took everyone's temperatures (though calmly in the terminal, not in hazmat suits on the plane like that one YouTube video shows). I've already been given three pamphlets about the warning signs of the flu.

In the terminal at Incheon, I saw four car commercials, conveniently subtitled in English. Hyundai and Kia apparently own this place. The most amusing showed a series of scenes where people say things like, "I pray to God for a minivan I can afford", and of course the punchline, "Thanks to Hyundai, you don't have to pray any more!" Something about claiming your company is answering people's prayers seems just a little sacrilegious.

So far, my feeble attempts at speaking Korean seem to have gone unappreciated by the locals. Maybe the airport staff are just more jaded, but no one seems impressed by my impressive vocabulary of "hello" and "thank you". Fortunately the conference staff has had student volunteers to meet me at the airport and at the bus stop.

But now I'm here in Daejeon, in a nice hotel with a great view of the city, and I'm intent to go roam around for a day, armed only with a phrasebook and a collection of tourist maps. I hear there's a free "foot spa" down the street. Rock on.