LIBRARY ADVENTURE, EXERCISED IN THE TIME-TO-SPARE METHOD

Nestled deep in the heart of boredom, amidst a half-month of all-encompassing downtime, lay a dilemma of gargantuan proportions: .... man, books are sorta expensive in Korea.

So I figured, check out a library!

 

 My vacation was like this. Only just the foreground, ignore all those other grounds.

I had previously been going to the pretty great English book store called What the Book? and they have a good used section for paperbacks and new paperbacks if need be (usually between $5-$8 bucks a pop, $10-$20 for a new paperback usually), but I had been going through two to three books a week and that's just not economically sustainable....well, preferable.

Through the grapevine last year I heard various whispers (slash words, in sentences, from my friend, who told me to my face) of the Ilsan public library and their respectable section of English books. Not super psyched to trek for an hour up north, I searched 'libraries Seoul' on and found out that there was one in Dongdaemun, which is on my same subway line as Hyehwa and only one stop down. Seen here, center of the map-ish, for kicks.

One morning, the last morning of break, I got up early -- like 8 AM early, which converted into vacation clock is 5:15 AM exactly -- and headed to Dongdaemun, ready to read me some free books! Yeah!

***EDITORS NOTE***

I started work yesterday, Wednesday, but I don't have classes until MONDAY, 

so let's get long winded yeah? Nice.

The English website I found had a list of all the libraries, and if they were close to a subway station that was indicated. There was no subway station indicated on that list for the Dongdaemun branch, so I knew that it might not be close to the subway. That's all the info I had.

 Now I decided to stop my research at that point. There's a certain way of doing things I like to utilize every so often and that's the way of the purposeful minimal preparation, or the Time-To-Spare Method. That's where you are in no rush and open to figuring things out the slow way. This makes finishing tasks a little more, let's say, interactive? Because you have to find clues and more often then than not, seek help. Quick reminder, I like in South Korea so asking for help takes time effort, and usually a ton of hand gestures.

So I get to Dongdaemun station at pretty much 9 AM on the dot. First thing I went to the subway map each station has of the surrounding area.

Best case scenario, I would have found the library on the map. That didn't happen after a few minutes of studying. Back up plan, there is a "Tourist Information" station a few blocks out of exit 14, maybe 10 minutes at most. So I'll plan to head that way. Last step, take a picture of the map. That way I can keep the picture on my phone and have it for refference wherever the travel takes me.

Even better news there was a information center, pictured below, RIGHT outside of the exit! So of all the 14 exits for that particular station I lucked out and picked the right one. It was 9:05 on a Tuesday morning at this point, and raining pretty hard, so I doubt that the wonderful woman inside expected much traffic.

She was fluent in English, and probably Japanese, and she was really nice. She hadn't heard of the Dongdaemun library so we just sort of starred at each other for a minute. Then she remembered the internet. She looked up where the library was located, so much easier when you surch is in Hangol (Korean) and showed me on the computer. Next step as always: take a picture.

It's one of those blue balloons on the bottom half of the screen.

*** EDITOR'S NOTE PART II ***

My school has a government funded private school in house, next to my classroom, that's cheaper for the parents from other private schools. They have a new foreign teacher starting this week, who is from Seattle area and isn't quite enamored with the provided lunches. AND who just brought me his left overs from lunch!

Back to the library odyssey. I was set to head out into the rain and walk to the library when the woman at the tourist information place decided to phone the library to make sure they were open. The results of that conversation with the librarian on the other end of the line were:

1. "Don't come, we have only started our English book section and there are only 20 or 30 books"
2. And, "Try the Jeongdok Public Library, they have a much larger selection"



Okay, back to the map! We called Jeongdok and they said something like 'yeah come on down!' and I took the next picture.

I was sort of familiar with the area so I hopped back on the subway, and one transfer and 20 minutes later I headed up to the library which I found eventually. The grounds were great:

There's the famed Namsan Tower through the clouds. After I got in I didn't ask for help and just decided to wonder the rows and stacks of books hoping the English section would be (expansive! illuminated! full of new releases! classics! hardcover, paperback! All kinds of wonder and joy!).

But I couldn't find it anywhere so I finally asked the librarian and he pointed me to the furthest reaches of the collection. Here are the four shelves of English books (from the top down, starting after the brown encyclopedias):

They were almost all social science stuff along with some corky pics: What Not to Eat, Chicken Soup for the Soul, there was not a Twilight book but instead they had this classic. There were no novels really to speak of. I remember there was one book called How to Read Foucault but there were no Focault books to speak of.

Eventually I picked out a few books and headed to the check out desk. Out of the four librarians I picked the youngest one, a man, who took me to the computers to sign up for a library card.

Long story longer, we tried for 15 minutes, he made a few calls but in the end he typed some thing in to his phone and showed it to me and the transalation app read: "borrow." He looked at me and said, "You cannot."

SO NO DICE. At all. And I left.

After walking outside I let out one, massive, sigh. I exited the complex and went across the street to get food, coffee, and to finish the awesome book I had with me.

THE END.