Today is Day 11.
I just brushed my teeth with brand new, mysteriously clear, less than a dollar, Korean toothpaste! It tasted like what one would expect less than a dollar toothpaste to taste like...
And I've recently discovered that the shampoo I bought is actually conditioner. Yay.
English in Korea - Stating the "obvious":
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| Good name |
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| Or... are you? |
Updates on Korea in general:
MONSOON SEASON IS HERE! It has not been raining nonstop and flooding like the monsoon in 'Jumanji' (and what I was expecting) but it does pour pretty often. It would actually be pretty similar to Oregon weather except that it is fifty bagazillion times more muggy/humid. I have somehow managed to make it through the rain without an umbrella, but this brings me to my second Korean Adventure story...
Day 9 - A Drenched Adventure
Some Harvard students and I set out after our classes to run some errands like paying for our dorm room fee, buying shampoo, toothpaste, and whatnot (I even intended to buy an umbrella). It was sprinkling a little bit when we set out, but I had my "summer rain jacket" on and was fine. We went into a bargain store inside the subway but soon heard some mysterious booming noises. Was it thunder? Was the Democratic People's Republic of Korea attacking... with cannons? Was it all a dream?
Well it was thunder (I know, boring) as we discovered, climbing up out of the subway. And it was raining, not just cats and dogs, but whales and elephants and hippopotamuses and moose and... other big animals. I thought that the horizontal rain that the Oregon coast can attack with was as bad as it could get (I was wrong). People were running into the subway for cover, dumping their umbrellas in our faces, and making it generally hard to get out of the station. I pulled up my hood, took a deep breath, and gave my other rain jacket-ed comrade a nod, and then we set off running into the rain for the dorms.
Just about everything went wrong.
My sandal/shoes broke after running one block. My water-logged, cotton pants determinedly sought to make me half nude, so I tried to hold them up. But my hood also persistently flew backward, so then I'd try to hold it in place over my head - and then my pants would slide off again. And finally, let me just say, "summer rain jackets" are not meant for monsoon season. I might have been dry for the first few seconds, but that was it. If anything, the jacket made it more difficult to run in the muggy, hot weather. So the jacket was sticking to me soaked through with both rain water and sweat.
I did make it back to the dorm eventually. The three layers I had under the jacket were also soaked and it looked as if I had come back from the dead (a drowning death of course). And yet, somehow, magically, my wonderful rental phone's case was mostly waterproof, as was the fancy-shmansy leather clutch that had my wallet and other papery things inside. Yay for the little things...
Also, as I'm sure you have inferred, I did not buy an umbrella while at the bargain store. I doubt it would have helped.
When it has not been pouring down rain I have seen a lot of Korea. A bunch of us went to 이태원 for dinner and tried to not be mistaken for hookers (simply because we were in that type of an area wearing dresses and were foreign, a lot of guys eyed us). Earlier that night I went to see the Krokodiloes perform in Seoul and was chosen for the first time to be their Name Girl! Yay! It was doubly fun because... well, I love all the Ewha girls in my class but have recently realized that I have not met any Korean guys at all. So it was nice to talk with a bunch of boys who I know well and are fun to be with. And don't look at me like I'm an exotic fungus growing on their big toe.
Another night a bunch of us went to a 노래방 (Korean karaoke) in 신촌, where I discovered I do not know KPOP songs as well as I thought it did (lyrics? what are those?). That night I also saw my first completely blacked-out girl, dragged into a cab by four guys. I've been warned about Korea's "drink till you're dead" motto, but this was the first time I saw it with my own eyes. That chick looked like one of those cartoons where all the bones disappear and the character flops around helplessly. Yup.
Another day I went to 남대문시장 for filming footage for one of our projects. It's a pretty cool traditional market where the vendors are expert tourist-nationality-guessers. They would just look at me and say, "We have English menu!", "Hello lady!", "Real Korean tradition!" and would change instantly to Japanese or Chinese when the next potential customer who was either Japanese or Chinese walked by.
Okay, this is a bit too much to expect most people to read so I'll stop here. Look out for a Korean food update coming soon! (But actually, I've eaten so much. And have no time to work-out. This is a disaster. A really delicious disaster.)
안녕!
Gahbi
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