Monday: My goal for Monday was to submit paperwork for my Alien Registration Card with the hopes of having the card by the end of the week so I could finally get my phone. I made it to Seoul Immigration and started a long wait to sit down to have an employee look over everything. Nothing exciting except that I sat next to a guy from Nigeria (I thought that was cool). Well I got to the nice woman at the desk after taking a number and waiting an hour, only to discover that I needed to bring my certificate of admission from Ewha. For the record, Seoul Immigration's website was very vague on what I needed! So I had to call it an early day.
Tuesday: Back to Seoul Immigration. I vowed to laugh when I submitted all that I needed, just as a little moral conquest over the tyrannical bureaucracy (I've found that demonizing my antagonists makes triumph sweeter). The bad news was that the website lied to me -- it actually takes ten (10!!!!) days for a student ARC to clear and only 3-4 for a worker's ARC to clear. That is 10 days without my passport. That is 10 days without my ARC. That is 10 days of bitter agony. Just today, it took an extra 45 minutes before I could meet up with my PEACE buddy because I didn't have a cell phone. More on that later.
When I left the USA, I didn't pack any computer games to bring with me because 1) I didn't want to spend a lot of time on the computer and 2) I figured I could find the games here for a cheaper price and wouldn't worry about compatibility with Korean computers (if I wanted to play against Koreans here, for instance). Well I've played enough solitaire to really miss Warcraft 3. I asked Ada over the weekend where I could find cheap computer software. For the record, I just need to say, I actually own this game. I made it a point early on that I would not confess to anything illegal on this blog to protect my future political career...
Ada told me that I needed to go to Yangsam market where there was an electronics section. She figured they would be the best bet to find cheap games. I have a system here where when I go someplace new, I write down the name on my hand so I can check to make sure I am in the right place. On Tuesday, I earnestly believed that I had the subway down and I was learning how to read so I could remember Yangsam station...I quietly regret that assumption. I finished at Seoul Immigration around 2PM and didn't have much to do back at Ada's, so I wanted to explore Yangsam and see what I could find. The problem came when I started reading the subway names and forgot the "sam" at the end, remembering only that the first letter was a Y. I also vaguely remembered that it was close to another line. Just for your information, Yangsam is on light-blue line and flanked by the light purple, but I thought it was dark blue and light blue. Anyways, I couldn't find it, but I saw Yeongdeunpo Market -- hey, it is pretty close, right? And it had "market" in the title, so 1+1 just makes sense.
Let me quickly describe every place I've been to in Seoul. Seoul is divided into large sections of similar businesses. Rarely will one find a single clothing store, but will instead find at least a dozen other clothing stores in the same location. I walked down a street today that had six stores in a row that only sold chandeliers, followed by ten stores that sold lamps and then six more with chandeliers. Yesterday I walked by twenty mechanics in a row. And finally three car dealerships.
With that said, markets function the same way. You see one meat store, you can bet there are going to be 100 more within 100 meters. I walked through Yeongdeunpo Market, foolishly searching for a store that would sell computer games (there are DVD vendors on every street corner, it makes sense to think video games might be easy to find, especially unauthorized versions). I hadn't eaten since the morning and I earnestly believed that if I followed the fish smell, I might also reach some food vendors that would sell vegetarian snacks. After all, experience taught me that smelling fish meant there would be dozens of other options as well. Well, I came across my first giant meat-market.
I used to be uncomfortable around meat when I was newly a vegetarian and was like nine. Since then, it's been around me all the time so I've just become desensitized. Oh my gosh, how I wish I was a little more desensitized. Walking down the pathway, only big enough for two people walking (or one motorcycle because at least fifteen drove by) I was quickly losing my appetite. Pig's feet with a little pool of blood at the bottom of a tub was one of the first sights. Next was the tub of frozen fish heads followed closely by the fresh fish heads. Whoa, does that store have chicken heads and feet right next to each other? Oh yeah, I had to look closer. This was all complimented by a couple of those shops cooking silkworm larvae. Thankfully, my nose was a little stuffy because it was below freezing, but damn my mouth for allowing just a little of that smell to seep into the back of my throat. Finally, the hardest sight to see, was a row of four freezers with naked, frozen dogs along the top shelf. I've known for a while that some parts of east Asia eat dog, but maybe I naively believed the dog meat was always chopped up into sections -- like how you see beef meet, but not whole cows. There was only one shop I saw that sold dog like that, but it was still depressing to see. After Yeongdeunpo market, I was content with my hunger level.
Wednesday: After talking with Ada again, I wrote down Yangsam market. Once that was done, it was a law of physics that I could actually find the place. The Yangsam station reminded me of an airport: there were hordes of people, subway times were posted on electronic screens, there were shops everywhere and there were also countable numbers of people with luggage. Ada told me that Yangsam had a giant mall which would have electronics, so I couldn't ask where to go for electronic equipment because they would point me to the giant mall. I feel that I need to add giant every time I mention this giant mall just to reinforce how big this place was.
To find the market Ada was thinking of, I had to wander around and see if I could get lucky with my navigation skills. Before that story, let me tell you about this giant mall. This place at Yangsam station, the wrong one that I wanted to see because it was so big, was called "I-market." My initial reaction was that perhaps Ada was just mistaken and this giant mall was the right place. I walked in and as far as I could see were kiosks selling cameras. Kiosks isn't the right word because they weren't kiosks, they were like those counters at Macy's that sell makeup. They have glass display cases with make-up and such inside. Well, as far as I could see (20/20 vision) there were these kiosks with cameras. Nothing else. Not cameras and MP3 players. Not cameras and camera cases. Not cameras and computers. Not cameras and make-up. Only cameras. Please see my previous comments about how Seoul is divided into sections.
So there was no hope of finding anything relating to computers on that floor. I found the escalator and went upstairs. The signs all had English and when the sign said "musical instruments," naturally, there was nothing else on this floor but musical instruments. As far as I could see -- pianos and some walls that had band instruments hanging up (saxophone, flute, trumpet and so forth). Wow. Next floor was called "Bookscan," all as one word. Yep, an entire bookstore. I read it as "book scan," but found some signs later that separated the words after the s to make "books can." Neither made sense to me. There were two "bookscan" levels with the top floor saying "computer." Success!
Except not. Computer, in Korea, means only computers. It doesn't mean computer games, it doesn't mean computer software, it doesn't mean accessories -- it only means they sell new computers. Laptops, desktops, computer towers, computer CD drives. I spent a half-hour circling this floor trying to find any hint they had computer software. Then I got thinking...a single person just needs to have a little section of this floor to sell something to compliment the new computer and this person would trick all the confused foreigners and the lazy people to believe that there is only one place that sells these accessories. I honestly would have thought that if I saw some vendor selling headphones on this floor.
Through my exploring I also found that the floor wasn't exclusively one genre. But I spent a good 45 minutes in this place believing that to be true. When I said as far as I could see, it meant that seventy feet away, the sections transitioned to new items. Phones transitioned to MP3 players (in the middle on that section, it was MP3 players as far as I could see) and computers transitioned into video games and so forth. Well I found video games, believing with all my heart that video games included computer games. I'll just let that sentence stand on it's own to lead you to the same conclusion I reached some half-hour later.
I left I-Market confused. How could a giant mall that sells electronics not have any sections that included computer games? On a lighter note, I found one place that sold Windows Vista -- that guy held a monopoly in that giant mall on Vista. I was walking along, trying to figure out where I could go next when I saw a sign for "electronic market." That feeling I had right there...that felt pretty good.
I got to the electronic market and found a second home in the sweaty smell of geeks talking about motherboards and graphic cards. Again, in the typical Korean fashion (Ada backed me up on this), there were little stores that sold only sound cards, packed in rows of eights. They all sold the same thing, but none posted the price in a way I could understand (if at all). Nonetheless, I figured I could probably find computer games somewhere in this place. The information sign did not have anything that looked like "games" in Korean (I've been learning how to read and it has been coming along nicely. I learned "game" from my phone's English-Korean dictionary). I may just be thick, but when the monitor section of stores appeared and there were games of Starcraft being played, I just figured that I would find a game store. Again, I'll let that sentence stand on its own.
That hard lesson took an hour. Again, confused, I walked back out into the freezing Korean winter to try my luck at randomly finding computer games. I started seeing signs for PS2 and Xbox games, which meant a step in the right direction! One of the first stores I went in had PS2 signs posted outside, so I walked in and saw no computer games. The woman said hello in Korean, so I felt I should just ask her about computer games so I didn't seem so rude. I asked her "computer game?" and she looked at me weird, "no this video game."
I did eventually find one store that sold computer games. Read that again. ONE store. In the heart of the video game section, this old man convinced this confused foreigner that there was only ONE store that sold computer games. His price was way too high for the game I wanted and I figured I could find another vendor that would sell computer games...
So I haven't found my game yet.
The big thing that I was really excited about for Wednesday was meeting my PEACE Buddy, Youna. Ewha has a buddy system where they assign students to incoming exchange students to help the exchange students get adjusted and make friends with Korean students. I wish "student" had a more acceptable synonym. Maybe peer would work best, but I am not one to flip-flop on my word choices. I've been passively following the election at home, so just thinking that way recently. Back on track. She emailed me Monday just to say hello. She was also worried about me because I didn't sign up to meet anyone at the airport on the 26th (the dorm check-in day). I let her know I was already here and wanted to meet with her for dinner. She had free time on Wednesday, so today was my chance to meet my new buddy! PEACE stands for something, but I can't remember what.
Anyways, so through emails, we were meeting at 6PM at a subway. Again, not having a phone, meant that I couldn't be reached. I thought we were meeting at Omokgyo and she thought Sinchon. She said to take exit three and there would be a McDonald's, but I couldn't find it at Omokgyo, so I called her on a payphone and said there was no McDonald's around the station. She felt really bad and said she must have been mistaken. I said we should meet at this convenience store right at the ticket station. This was about 5:40PM and I was early just because Yangsam pissed me off and I left earlier than anticipated. Punctuality is only a word for me and not a lifestyle.
6:00PM...6:15PM...6:25PM...we were supposed to meet at 6PM, so I was a little worried that there was a problem. I went to the pay phone again and called her -- the first thing she said, "I've been waiting for your call. Where are you?" We figured out that I was just confused -- what happened was she said to meet at Sinchon but then commented that about trip to Seoul Immigration and how I used Omokgyo -- so that name stuck with me. At 6:50, we met outside this cafe in the Hyundai Department Store. On a quick tangent, as I said before how large companies often own many things and don't change names, well this is one of those cases because I didn't see anything sold by Hyundai during my time there. This department store was closer to the mall I was used to because there were real kiosks (not the confusing ones I said before) and coffee shops that weren't grouped together, but spread out where they were a good seventy meters apart.
Youna and I grabbed some food from the food court and talked about school and fun things to do in Seoul. She made the mistake of asking me how I've been enjoying Seoul so far, so I told her stories for fifteen minutes about what I've done thus far. After dinner, I asked her if she was still free for something else. We spent a couple minutes thinking of something to do and finally decided on karaoke. For those of you who don't know how good I am, just take this as my personal guarantee that I am pretty amazing.
So this post turned out much longer than I anticipated. Nonetheless, it must continue! We found a karaoke...umm...place nearby. Because Seoul has so much packed in such a small space, it is uncommon to find a building only serving one function. In this case, the karaoke place was on the 13th floor of an office building. It was really cool. They gave us a room with a TV, speakers, couches and a disco ball. There were two catalogs of songs; most were in Korean, but a couple pages were English (so maybe 200 songs in English) and 800 in Korean. The room had this controller where we could enter the number of the song we wanted. I started off with "Part of your world" from the Little Mermaid. Set the tone for the night because Youna had trouble keeping a straight face during my passionate solos. We sang one Korean song that had parts of English in the chorus. I also got her to sing "Bohemian Rhapsody" with me...I don't think she fully understood the grandeur of that song. I snapped this picture of her while she was singing:
I tried to get a picture of me singing as well, but it was hard to aim the camera. Youna used her camera to take pictures of me during this song as well, so I hope she will upload them.
My throat was sore after "Unchained Melody, Dancing Queen and Stayin' Alive," so I asked her if there was a place to get some coffee. I sorta forgot this was also my first trip to a Korean Cafe until I arrived and looked at the menu. I ordered a yummy drink that was like "Cinnamon chip mocha." I liked it. Youna and I stayed at the coffee shop for about two hours, talking about philosophy. With so few English speakers, I've been thirsting for opportunities to have deep conversations. We left around 11:15PM mostly because the subway stops running at midnight-ish (I am still not sure).
It was a good today.
2 comments:
It's a good thing that most people couldn't understand your English music. You are about as talented at singing as Dad is at technology. That isn't a compliment.
is it just me, or does that girl look like my long lost twin?
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