After that short commercial break...

Josh:
Hello again! Sorry for that short break. Unfortunately we still don't have internet so while I can sign onto a few things at work, I am unable to blog because it takes so long. But hopefully I can update a few days right now (I am in another PC room) and more will come shortly after. Anyway, I feel that owe it to the audience to begin this post with some more Konglish. I don't have as many gems as I did last time but I have one to whet your appetite for the moment. Imagine this on one of those plastic drawer type cabinets for holding clothes (this also has cutesy cartoon characters all over it):

Snowsweety
Always the kids gives a love and joy!
They gives a dream always.


I personally always enjoy getting a love and joy.

Forward!

Day 5: Friday 4/3/10

So as many of you already know, I spent a good portion of the day blogging. However, unbeknownst to you who read the blog, there was more to my day. So after I left the PC room I finally decided to give those crane machines a try while I was waiting for Audrey. After trying them for just a day I already know they will be the death of me. You will most likely find my corpse frozen and clinging to a machine trying to get that stupid cute rabbit thing that I have absolutely no use for. I made myself limit how many times I played because we haven't even gotten paid yet but I can see that becoming a very real scenario for me. There is an evil genius to these machines; you easily can grab onto whatever toy or thing you are trying to get and you see the crane lifting it triumphantly and one of two things happens: when it reaches the top it shakes and the toy drops or it starts to pull it toward the drop bin and it hits the side of the bin and it falls. Super frustrating right? I am always so close to winning whatever it is but it always falls just before I get it. Not only is it a devil machine but it also has really strange and cool prizes. Many have cute stuffed animals or weird cutesy keychains but just as many have really strange objects laying about. These objects only make it that more addicting! Here are some of the things I have seen in crane machines: standard cute animals attached to giant lighters (I'm assuming for weight but lighters? Really?), mario/luigi/spiderman/superman glass hangers (they have suction cups on their hands so they can hang on glass and of course they all have a backpack with a giant lighter in it), watches, belts, wallets, wallet and belt combo packs, American five dollar bills (most of these objects have strange brick weights surrounded by a cage so I'll just stop mentioning they have them), a big bottle of brandy, gold painted statues, "love handcuffs" (rrrwarrrr), two bottles (standard beer size) of booze with carved penis toppers (imagine winning this), "fast pass" cards (lets you get over bridges without paying a toll), nudey playing cards (at least I assume that's what they are), Mp3 players, plane tickets to jeju (famous island tourist place in Korea) and of course lighters shaped like bullets. How can a mere human resist trying to win these prizes? One last thing about these satan spawns/gift from the gods: many of these machines start talking to you as you walk by. Now I want you to imagine the most whiney, high pitched voice calling out to you. What makes it even worse is what she is saying. I only heard/understand "Oppa! (Korean words)" In Korean, Oppa means "older brother" and it is what young girls refer to either slightly older males or sometimes (playfully) their boyfriends. Now if you can imagine that the standard clientele is a bunch of older (mid 50s) men who are most likely somewhat perverted you can only guess what she is saying. Here is my guess. "Oppa! Come play with me!" I'll leave that lovely thought in your head. To quote Yahtzee, "I love (the crane games) like an alcoholic loves alcohol."

I mostly walked around taking pictures of the city as this would most likely be my last time in Dogok (Audrey's city) because we would be moving to our new house near my school this weekend. I saw some interesting sights and hopefully I can post pictures very soon (hopefully). I met up with Audrey after her work and we saw her students playing a strange game where they had string in a square and the game was to walk by and step on it without tripping. I don't really know how to describe it other than it was interesting. We were quite hungry so we decided to go to a pizza place. Never again will I think that ordering pizza without cheese gets me weird looks in America. We went to this small pizza place owned by a man and woman. We sat down and ordered a pizza without cheese and this just blew the woman's mind. The man took our order, she saw it, we heard loud Korean and she came over to us and confirmed that we didn't want cheese. We confirmed and she went back to the kitchen talking to herself (loudly) in Korean while shaking her head. We occasionally heard the word "cheese" thrown in there so Audrey and I just laughed and apologized to her. She brought it to us and it was quite good. She still seemed amazed that it didn't have cheese even as we were eating it. We thanked them and left fat and happy.

One thing that I didn't mention earlier when I was wandering was that I found this amazing cute puppy in one of the alleys. I figured Audrey would want to see him so I remembered where he was and decided to show her. I saw he was a little dirty but I didn't think too much of it and I brought Audrey over to him (I have pictures of him). I had nicknamed him Professor Kimchee (with a PhD in Cute [oh yes, I made that joke]) Bad move. This has been one of the most depressing moments for me in Korea. This dog was very sick to say the least. He was dirty and he almost lept for joy at the idea of us giving him attention. As we got closer we saw that he backed away from our hands as we reached to pet him (meaning he got beat) and when we did pet him, he peed on the ground slightly out of excitement (or some kind of problem). He then proceeded to hack up this gooey white thick substance. We backed off and he coughed again and out that strange liquid came. When Audrey felt him she saw that he was nothing but fur and skin. He was clearly emaciated and very sick. We didn't really know what to do. I regret taking Audrey over to see him because we both left very unhappy. What could we do? I wanted to take him into our home but what good would that do? We don't have any money and that dog needs medical attention and we are in an apartment. We left feeling quite unhappy. I honestly hate the dog situation here. I have a feeling that situations like that are quite common here and I have seen stray dogs at our new house wandering looking for food. I absolutely hate it.

Onto something a little more happy. After we left that area, we went back home and we finally decided to explore the town at night. As I said before, night Korea is a lot of fun. We wandered a few feet and ran into some kind of carnival game building. Audrey played the game where you had a rifle with a scope and you were supposed to shoot a small plastic cap at these stuffed gorrillas. Needless to say, Audrey was great at it and she got several prizes. I then decided to try my hand at throwing darts at balloons. I almost hit all of them and the lady allowed us to upgrade our prizes to this little heart pillow. It was a lot of fun and maybe when we have plenty of money to blow, we will come back and just play little carnival type games all night. We then wandered a little bit more and went to a coffee place with a Korean girl working the counter. She spoke nearly perfect English so we got to talk to her for a little bit. It turns out she spent a few years in Canada and learned English while she was there. It was nice to be able to speak to a stranger (especially a food service worker) in English. After we wondered the streets a little more (it was freezing), I tried a few more crane machines (almost won! I was robbed of my prize because a special door opens up if the prize falls after your turn is up to prevent people shaking the machines) and we decided to go back home. On the way back we passed a guy standing in front of a store. He shouted at us and we looked over. He ran over to us, gave us a flier and ran back to the entrance of his store. We decided to try it out and we went inside. Apparantly grilled toast is a huge thing here. We picked the "burger" one for both of us. He put egg, a burger patty, some kind of coleslaw, ketchup, barbeque sauce and other things. He would ask us before he put anything in and if we said no he would make a dissapointed noise and we would end up changing our minds (it seems that if you order something without some ingredient they almost take it personally such as the pizza lady). We paid, took a bite in front of him, said it was delicious and went back to our apartment. It turns out that it was actually quite delicious and we ate until we were full and decided to finally crash. Our first and last night out in Dogok was quite eventful and fun.

It looks like our time is up. Hopefully soon I will update more days. I will eventually stop updating day by day but since this is full of our firsts I decided it would be best to document it day by day. I leave you with this thought:

There are some cookies that we found in the store called "Mother's finger." Anybody else find that a bit strange?