SUN 8.8.04 Racing through Homeplus

Well it seems that there are no ill effects on my system due to jetlag. FINALLY being a night person has paid off!! Wonder how long this will last? Anyway, after I got home Sat night I did some minor unpacking and by that I mean I pulled out some clean clothes to sleep in, the rest of my toiletries and clothes for church in the morning. At which point I needed another shower and felt no motivational desire whatsoever so I went to bed. When I woke up I really was surprised that I didn’t feel super tired or out of sorts, the only thing I noticed was how stinkin’ hard my bed was! Holy Cow!! Apparently Korean’s are new to this whole sleeping in beds thing so they still like “firm” beds and boy you ain’t kiddin’ me. But yeah, got ready for church, called up Crystal, we grabbed a cab and made it to church with plenty of time to spare. Church, well, it was church. Maybe another posting will go into that dynamic, but for now let’s leave it at that.

After church we went to Manna House, this great Korean Restaurant in the city. Not exactly sure where, but hey you wouldn’t know even if I told you where it was! Check the pics, the seating layout is similar to what I have seen at Japanese steakhouses where there is dugout seating with 4 people at a table. The waitress, who are super attentive, leave a pot of boiling broth at the center of the table and bring you thin slices of meat that you put into the broth, cook and then eat with some rice and lettuce after it is cooked, super good and fun to do. While your meat is cooking though so is everyone else’s so you pretty much just fish out a piece of meat whenever you are ready and just pretend it is yours. After this the second dish was a squash and noodle dish, but I had stuffed myself on the first that I wasn’t very hungry so I just tried the noodles and a little of the squash, not bad I must say. Once again I thought we were done but low and behold here comes course three which is a porridge like dish made from the broth that everything up to this point has been cooked in. I know it sounds pretty scary, but really it isn’t. Yeah, so the porridge was rice, some seasonings, the squash and then it just cooked down to a slurry. Now understand, I was full when the second course came by now I can eat no more and what do I get but a HUGE bowlful of this dish! Good grief, I try a couple of bites and pretty much reach my threshold. Thankfully this is the last dish and dinner is simply a small cup of a grapefruit drink. AAAHHH! Refreshing. So as they rolled us all back on the bus I was ready to go home and nap, but instead decided to go to Homeplus, a Walmart like store, to go shopping.

Once we got there Dr. Penland gave us an hour, some store directions and told us to have a good time. Let me tell you it’s pretty funny seeing all of us “white folk” running around this store trying to figure out how much something is, what the product label reminds us off and that toilet plunger ou can get for $0.84 at Wally world in the states is worth the ₩2,400 won ($2.04) that you would pay in Korea. Some things I figured heck no! (₩19,000 or 16.10 for a basic fan) On others I just threw in the towel, found the one I liked and happily paid WAAAAAAY TOO MUCH! (₩39,000 or 33.05 for what amounts to a 15.00-20.00 hairdryer in the states.) So you guys know me, I wanted to wander around the store for hours checking prices and seeing what they had where, but being as we had only an hour and I spent 20 minutes analyzing EVERY hairdryer they carried I didn’t really have the chance to do that. All in all I got out of there and only spent about 80.00-90.00 bucks. Not bad for setting up home And check out all the stuff I got, see pic. So I went home to my sauna, put stuff away, showered of course, decided at this point that the cost of an AC didn’t matter I was going to buy one or else somebody was gonna get hurt and headed off to school for dinner at Pizza Hut.

Now I know your thinking, “Pizza Hut, Wow, you’re stylin’ now!” But the funny thing is that here in Korea Pizza Hut is like going to The Cheesecake Factory or something pricey like that. A pizza with “the works” cost somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 bucks! Pretty crazy. Especially considering it tastes just like Pizza Hut at home, or maybe that’s WHY it cost so much. Yeah, just thought I’d share that with yaJ.

I’ve officially rambled so let me put this post to bed by saying that dinner was great, I made it home safely, my apt was still a sauna and my bed was still hard. On a side note the cats have decided to go on a hunger strike in protest of being drug half way around the world, left on the patio for 24 hours, having to take a bath, being left alone in a HOT apartment and just generally being ignored. Hmmmm, wonder how long this will last?