26/ Gunsan and Engrish

Ok, so I didn't get around to posting as soon I wanted. But that's ok, the engrish should make up for it.

On Friday we walked around the Gunsan shopping area, and kat just kind of showed me the city in general. I should post this more after the fact so I can remember more details...

First we went to the big department store in the area.

Lotte Mart

A couple notable things are:

• Koreans really like orange juice (it's the go-to juice here)
• Cereal is extremely expensive (2-3 times more expensive than in the US)
• Milk here comes in flavors anywhere you go (which is a lot more common in the US where maybe there are two flavors-chocolate and plain). It comes in flavors like banana, chocolate, cereal, strawberry, and different coffee flavors (these are all delicious)
• Cold prepackaged coffee flavored drinks (like the prepackaged starbucks' ones in the US) are popular here (coffee in a shop is also popular just like the US, but its around $5 for a drink which is absurd)
• The escalator things are really cool. They're inclined but smooth (not like steps), and are magnetized to your cart so you can bring it up and down the floors

Mmm... baby Einstein milk

Cool escalator thing

On the top floor there was a food area where we ate. There was a huge display case where you could look at plastic versions of the food and decide what you wanted. When you paid you got a number that would show up on an screen when your food was ready (shown below). The cups, trays, and everything were all reusable. You grabbed a metal cup from a UV sterilizing machine, and put it below the machine when you were done. Korean living seems to be very sustainable like that. It isn't too common to find things that are disposable.

Coffee shops and little food places in Korea take a lot longer to get your food/drink than in the States. If you get a coffee or pressed sandwich it can take up to 10 minutes. If that happened back home, I'm sure 9/10 people would be enraged.

Coffee is the best medicine

Next we took a cab to the main shopping area. Cabs are a very reasonably priced in korea. Kat and I could go pretty much anywhere in the metropolitan area of Gunsan for under $5 for a cab ride, and usually the distance we use it for is closer to $2.50-$3, which makes it very cost effective compared to the bus ($1.10). There is no subway in this city. A lot of cabbies have a screen to watch TV in their cab. Safety advocates would go nuts if anyone tried to do this in the US.

GPS next to a screen to watch TV. The counter is near his hand.

The shopping area has this strange ridge and recession zigzagging throughout the center of pedestrian mall. This was great for tripping when you weren't looking at your feet.

There was also a knock-off Starbucks

Ok, onto the engrish. We happened upon a small dollar-store type establishment, which is where we found most of this.

Good question

I trip. I frill.

It's the most comfortable way to move

This is a little extreme

I always forget the capitol of Morth Carolina

That classic NY tycoon

Zebra is deep

Hopefully we will go visit a PC Bang soon (I'm told bang is the korean word for room), where people go to play computer games. Here's a picture of the Starcraft 2 box from Korea:

I would really like to know what the syringe is supposed to represent

And that's all the interesting stuff from that day. Coming soon: Reuniting with my friend BC in Seoul.

-Harrison