No more day by day?

Josh:

I think today I will start with two of my favorite quotes I have heard so far:

Imagine a very high status London accent saying this (referring to how Korean's eat):
"They eat like peasants!"
I still laugh to myself because this is fantastic on so many levels.

"Korea - the country that logic forgot."
Perfect for many reasons because it seems like Korea is, in many ways a "weird stereotype" (to quote yet another teacher here) of America. Things here are close to how they are in America but off in some way. It's not like these things are particularly hard to fix. Anyone, and I mean anyone, can come up and say, "Uh hey, it works better this way." and everything would work more efficiently. But no, that would be too simple, wouldn't it?

I think now is the right time for me to stop listing day by day. I might list a day when a lot happened but I'll just start listing general events or thoughts that I experience.

I feel kind of bad for having this thought (key words: kind of), but I can't help but giggle like a little school girl. I'm really tempted to teach the kids certain phrases mean different things. I would teach them something that sounds like it might be correct but in America it means something entirely inappropriate (I have an example but I think it is a little too inappropriate to type out). Later on in life they might use that phrase I taught them and have an American do a double take when they say it. By the time they actually got to use it I would be long gone and all I would do is laugh sadistically to myself at the thought of that actually happening. It's not like they would track me down and say, "You told me this phrase meant this! I accidentally offended my boss because of you!" It would be like an investment where I would never see the return but I could imagine the riches I would have.

On Wed. 4/8/10 we went to Lotte Mart for the first time. Lotte Mart is one of the big grocery/home/electronic stores in Korea. It has pretty much everything you could ever need. It's like five different American stores all smashed up into one. The shopping experience was cool because we explored the floors and found some amazing things. The second (ground) floor has a food court and an area for clothes and other similar things. The third floor is where the party begins. This is the "home improvement" section. When you first enter you are greeted with a nice DVD section mixed with an animal store! It's like they thought, "Yeah, small animals and DVDs are basically the same category, right?" We found a little "VCD" (Video-CD) section that had Porco Rosso, Spirited Away, Howl's, Grave of the Fireflies and other Ghibli films. We got really excited because we left all our videos in the States (they were sent to us shortly after though, thanks a bunch again). We weren't sure what VCD was so we bought Howl's to test out what it was (We guessed correctly. It turns out to be a somewhat low quality video that is only playable on the computer. There is no menu so there are only Korean subtitles with Japanese dialogue but we mainly wanted the music so it works out well). There was a nice DVD section with another smaller section for music but unquestionably the best part was the animal section. They had all sorts of critters such as birds, bunnies, guinea pigs, hamsters, lizards, turtles and (drum roll please) chipmunks and hedgehogs! Audrey fell in love with the chipmunks because they kept being ridiculously cute. I'm sure she would have swooned over the hedgehogs but they were asleep in a hedgehog pile (still very cute though). I will post some videos of them playing later. We spent a good 10-20 minutes just watching the animals. I love being in a place that doesn't have pointless "exotic" animal laws. After pulling ourselves away from cute we wandered around and found this floor also had microwaves, fridges, washers, computers, HD TVs, bedding, dishes, bathroom objects, trash cans and the like, laundry things, wall paper, other electronics, bikes, guitars and pianos. It's like they couldn't decide what they wanted to sell and just threw a bunch of things onto one floor. The fourth floor (we would find out later) had a dog and cat pet store, cell phones, a spa/nail place, another PC vendor and a place with food. The higher floors are all for the parking garage. Finally, the first floor is a full grocery store with a small "dollar store" in the corner. I think we need stores like this in America. Why drive to five different stores when I can get everything I would ever need in life at one store?

I leave you with this:


Isn't it amazing how one little letter can change so much? I love Konglish.