Monday, November 10, 2008

Sunday is a Day of Rest

I had been looking forward to Sunday all week. Since we decided to work Saturdays, Sundays have become the most beautiful, wonderful, precious day of the week! We headed out at about noon to wander around Daegu. Now that we have gotten over the initial shock of the major weird things (old women pulling large carts of cardboard, everyone making huge horking sounds and spitting, public burping, farting, sneezing, coughing, strange food being sold in any tiny squishy spot) we are now able to focus a bit more on the smaller weird things. Everytime we wander the city we see new things. I love it.

Yesterday we didn't find anything strange that invovled public expelling of bodily fluids or gases. We did however find some very bizarre stores. In Korea, many stores (especially the 4 million cell phone stores) have employees that stand outside and try to get you to come in. The cell phone people are the worst. They will even go so far as to tell you how beautiful or handsome you are, or simply grab you by the arm and pull you towards the store. They don't often bother us, since foreigners are not allowed to buy their own cell phone plans here. But they are annoying!

After visiting the hello Kitty store, some stores with "couples clothing" (yes couples dress the same here), and a loud loud store (we now refer to as the "Rude Store") where a girl wearing an employee badge that said "captain" told me that people could only try on pants (as if I can ever buy pants here) not sweaters, we decided to hit up a coffee shop...something that involves no trying on or dealings with captains.


We were very happy to find a Starbucks. Please do not hate us, all you anti-starbucksers. The signs were in ENGLISH! The coffee smelled DELICIOUS! And the decor was...CHRISTMAS. We just had to go in. Mmmmmm. Two tall, fancy, expensive coffees later, we were high on caffein and ready for the next task....finding a place for dinner. This is a big job. It involves finding somewhere with people in it (my rule), pictures or signs we can somehow decifer, and food that we know is not dog (and now octopus as well..Brett's rule).


Under a popular bar, we found a groovy little restaurant that served stangely American food made by two girls that looked to be about 17. It was weird...but in a good way. With bellies full and caffein addictions satisfied, we were then off to the next part of our day. We had signed up with our Korean Class to attend a performance of some kind. We did not know what we were going to really. That happens a lot in Korea. You have no idea what you are attending, but you are going anyway.


The theatre employees must have been thrilled to see a large bunch of foreigners walk in with tickets that they cannot read and wander around lost trying to find their assigned seat. A small amount of chaos later, we were all ready for the show nobody knew anything about. After hearing that the last show had involved men dressed as sperm dancing around a woman dressed as an egg, we were sure we were in for something interesting!

Although we are still discussing the exact storyline of the play we saw, we both agree that it was fantastic! There were "B-boys" who performed amazing dance moves while dressed as superheroes, warriors, puppets, and even Transformers. A young beat-box guy wowed us, and the narrator threw in his own little funny comments like "I like hamburgers" when he saw foreigners in the front row. We were pleasantly surprised!! It was supposed to be about a marionette, but we think they deviated from the script a great deal. It is kind of hard to fit Transformers into a play about a puppet in France, but somehow they did it!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That sounds like a great day off! Glad the show was enjoyable. It sounds much better then sperm and egg dances. I can't believe you went after hearing that was the last one!
Leanne

Anonymous said...

mmmmmmm, seems like you guys have almost got these koreans sussed. Really enjoyed reading this, dont know where you find the time to write, but then you do only work half a day dont you, lol,Graeme