Shopping

Hello again from Korea!

We went shopping saturday, and went to E-mart.  On our way to E-mart, we went over the river and through a park, and encountered some public excersise machines.  They felt really easy and we questioned their effectiveness at providing a good workout.  Lately we've been thinking that they are for more isostatic (holding weird positions) exercises becuase those are harder. 

A view of Expo Bridge on our way back from shopping.

We then went to E-mart which is very much like Walmart.  Upon entering, you can come from the parking garage and get your shopping cart.  The first floor was full of mostly yummy food.  The second floor was appliances and the third floor was clothing.  We browsed a few things and got a few things, and then we went to check and see what sizes men's pants came in.  I looked, and thankfully, the largest size fits me.  However, the lady standing there thought we needed help shopping and she knew no english, and we had no way of telling her we were fine. 

The next several minutes were very awkward as this fine woman tried to figure out what we wanted.  We didn't understand much of what she said.  I got out our phrase book and looked up the phrase "We're just looking," but she was still intent on helping us.  Next, Margaret tried looking up "help" and saying "no help."  That didn't work eithier.  Then she said "kantaneyo?" which we knew!  We said "CANTANEYO! CANTANEYO!!" which means "We're fine! We're fine!!"  She bowed, we bowed and we went on our way.  We marked the spot in the book with that phrase in case the situation ever arose again.

Later, we passed the Rosetta Stone.  We went ooh! we'll get this and learn Korean!!  We looked closer, and it was for learning English!!! It was all for learning English!  We were kind of shocked that English was the only language offered.  Then we checked out and wandered.

The next event on our day of shopping was to get hungry.  2 miles of walking had given us an appetite and we were hungry.  We went to a toast vendor.  We tried practicing our orders, but before we could, and English speaker came out from the back of the store to take our order.  His english was pretty good.  I ordered pizza toast which was an amazing blend of cheese, green pepers, onions, and hot dogs.  Margaret got the potato toast which was a little too spicy.  We sat and ate, and the English speaker practiced with us.  We found out that he had worked for LG as a chemist in his younger years, which was pretty cool.

We walked further, and were tired.  We went by Dunkin Donuts (yes they're here too) and got some coffee.  Sadly it came with no cream and didn't have that delicious donut flavor commonly found in their US coffee.  (sniffle)  We rested for a while  and went on.

We wound up walking by a book store and going in to see what we could see.  We found a book to learn Korean with, so we got it.  Right now (Tuesday evening) Margaret is getting around to trying it--we've been busy.  We also looked around and found that about a quarter of the books were for learning English, which was shocking to us as people who only 1.05 languages. 

We then went home.