I am sightseeing tomorrow, and really excited for a day to hopefully have fun and see the culture. Seoul has been a whirlwind of malls for me and I’m tired of it. I’m happy that no one really approached us and got super sketched out by what we were doing, though; it was pretty nerve-racking to have someone watching you every single step of the way, since there was someone on every corner meant to help out. In honesty also, I’m a bit sick of people who don’t smile when you approach them, and are really overall a bit unfriendly and cold; aside from the realtors that I met; all of them were very nice, especially Linda and Julie. Edit called me tonight and she had a wonderful day in Pusan where she nearly finished the survey in one day. I’m really hoping that my last stop in Ulsan will be like that. It would be nice to end with an easy survey and get to look around a bit; see the real Korea that I have heard so much about since everyone should be very friendly here, because that is what I was told and why I wanted to come in the first place. Plus, I haven’t really tried too much of the local food because I have been nervous about what I’m eating. Some of the local stands we have walked by have an awful, awful smell to them that I can’t place. (Reminded me a bit of Taiwan….) Some sort of cooking meat probably, but I thought that food was suppose to smell good. This smells fried, stinky and unhealthy. I really don’t want to accidentally eat it. I have tried some of the local food, and I’m surprised at how unhealthy a lot of it is. Fried, thick and heavy. How do these people stay so thin?
A lady asked me what I was doing (in a Gap, I couldn’t believe we found it, and a Marks and Spencer’s!) I told her I was doing a study. She hesitated and said OK, but no cameras. What made her think I wanted to take pictures? Edit is learning how to speak Korean with her new dictionary. Top of her priority was to learn “may I please have a train ticket to Pusan?” so the lady gave her a student ticket; Edit is almost 30 years old! But, she certainly had no complaints. The department stores here are at least 10 floors with high-end brands branched throughout the floors. If you want to find Tommy Hilfiger, GOODLUCK. And the malls are a pain in the ass confusing. They are usually in some sort of building (an office building) and you need to figure out how to get to the mall. And they are huge, and normally you end up walking around in circles trying to get to where you are going to because they are so confusing. The weirdest thing I found was that availability of many products (including some groceries and random things like DVD players and microwaves) was so much better in Taiwan. Some of these things were just impossible to find in Korea, and they were so spread out. It was so strange; grocery stores were organized in the weirdest way I have ever seen. But at the end of one of our shopping trips, we got our nails done. What a typical thing to do in Asia, but it was nice to pamper ourselves, we needed and deserved it!
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