Sunday, January 4, 2009

The Red Blanket Arrives in Korea, Napping, and The Dangers of Eating Non-Korean Food After You've Been In Korea For A Long Time

Julianne and I wanted to try and avoid taking insanely long naps on Saturday (if we aren't in Seoul or traveling we're napping, lol). . . so hours later after we woke up starving--lol, so much for avoiding naps--we headed out to find food. Outside the apartment complex we saw flashing lights and fire trucks . . .

We didn't smell smoke, and when I walked down the street a bit to see what was going on I didn't see anything . . . false alarm?

At GS Mart we got some food . . . at one point Julianne looked around to see if anything interesting was happening and saw these two little guys chilling out on their own . . . I think this pic can be left on it's own as a 'self-explanatory' comment about a major cultural difference between Korea and North American culture . . .

Julianne likes to do puzzles so she got a giant globe puzzle ball thingy. I thought it'd take her at least six hours to put together.

25 minutes later . . .

45 minutes later . . .

Less than an hour later--wow! If it was me I'd still be working on it TODAY, lol.

Julianne got a package from her parents in the US. Apparently there's a red blanket that her family has had for 21 years. They sent it to her when she was living and studying English at a university in England--and now they've sent it to her in Korea, cool.

Saturday night Julianne and I didn't get to sleep until something like 4am . . . so Sunday was pretty much a write-off in terms of doing anything. We had considered checking out some places around Chuncheon that we haven't been to yet, but nope . . . nap, napping, napped, nap-uh . . .

Later when we came out, as usual in search of food, we saw a nice early evening sky . . .

We decided to go to the Olive Garden and ordered chicken fajitas. It took FOREVER for our food to be cooked. I couldn't believe how long it was taking and even got up and with a friendly smile asked how much longer it would be . . . and got several "Soh-ree, very soh-ree" responses when all we wanted was our food.

Finally, it arrived.

During the meal I wanted a refill on a little sour cream container--4 minutes after the server took it away I was still waiting . . . I don't think it's unrealistic to expect that taking a tiny container, grabbing a spoon, scooping some sour cream into the container, and then walking the 25 feet back to the customer's table should take less than a couple of minutes . . . or am I just being stupid expecting that a simple task shouldn't take very long? I donno . . .

Later on, while walking home, Julianne and I were having 'gastrointestinal issues' from eating non-Korean style food . . . ohhhhhhhhhhhh!

It was pretty tasty going down, yet oh so painful coming out . . . lol, yikes! Kind of reminds me of this scene from Dumb and Dumber,



It wasn't quite that bad . . . although I have experienced the effects of eating undercooked Korean bbq galbi a few times too many.

J

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