I kinda fell off the 4HB wagon today and I’m not proud of it.  But it’s okay.

There’s a little something called a Hangul language barrier that goes hand-in-hand with a fried chicken and beer barrier which is a little farther down the road from a carbohydrate goodness barrier that has been erected all over Korea.

It took every ounce of self control I had not to gobble all the carbohydrate goodness that has been presented in front of me since moving to the RoK from the Rock.

There are an abundance of coffee bars on not just every main street, side street, and alleyway, but they are sometimes hiding on the second and third floors of what look like office buildings.

And in addition to having the life saving nectar of caffeinated ambrosia, they all have pastry.

Not just any pastry, but what looks like the most delicious of deliciousness.

This might come from Starbucks where they have the cookies and pieces of cake and brownies to accompany your soy chai latte or half-caf almond milk iced cappuccino.

In addition to the mermaid, there are Paris Baguette shops, Tous Les Jours shops, Dunkin Donut shops, Baskin-Robbins shops and other stands and sweet-selling and sweet-smelling shops all over the place.

All of the places below are within spitting distance of each other…

There is more pastry and sweet here in the RoK than I could possibly imagine. It’s everywhere. And it all looks so damn good.

At dinner earlier tonight with four other teachers, we hit the FryPan Restaurant in Sunae.  They serve fried chicken tenders and potato chips and a salad covered in sugary dressing.  I was going to pass on eating b/c I had my usual 4HB breakfast of (homemade) egg whites, spinach and black beans for breakfast, and a spinach salad with black beans and chicken for lunch and knew that I shouldn’t have the fried chicken tenders for dinner.  But something switched inside of me and the hunger got too much.  Poor planning on my part.

So we decided to make the most of it and have a dessert called a patbingsu.  Ashlea and Natasha had one last week at Paris Baguette with tons of fruit in them, but you know how anti-fruit Jenn and I are, so we had one at Tous Les Jours of the green tea variety.

Then it was cookie time.

I’m down to my lowest weight ever as an adult and I think I’m gonna cut myself a little slack…