Just a couple errands?

As the Saturday morning hallway traffic got going this morning, a bunch of us ended up checking in with each other to see who wanted to join up and go do errands/exploring together. I needed to go to Carrefour (the everything store-- like a Fred Meyer, only bigger =) and 2 of the newbie teachers were going there, so we took off about 11 am. They needed to go to Itaewon (some cities in the US have a Chinatown, well, this is the USA-town in Korea). It's the only place we can withdraw money from banks back home or credit cards. For some reason, it is taking a long time to get all the paperwork through immigration so that we can go open checking accounts here, but hopefully Monday we can!

Anyway, after our quick stop at the ATM about 45 minutes out of our way, meeting some of our giggling students on the subway, and coming out the wrong end of the right station, we finally made it back around to Carrefour. Now it was past time for lunch and we had walked an extra mile because we got turned around at the station, so we stopped at the foodcourt just inside the store before starting our serious shopping.

It's official, no matter what country I'm in, shopping always takes longer than I expect-- especially when there are 3 floors of endless stuff to look through. So we finally finished our shopping and had to pack everything very carefully so we could lug it back on the subway.

I'm thoroughly enjoying not having a car to deal with, someone else doing all the driving for me, and not having to fight with traffic or parking spaces-- except on errand days! We looked like 3 white idiots waddling down the road back to the subway station with our bags bulging (you can only have 2 bags from the store-- and you have to pay for those!), backpacks loaded, and legs bowing under the cumbersome load and hot sun. The short subway ride back to our home-stop was too short to really rest up and before we knew it, the last leg of our journey brought us to the base of the hills leading up to the school. What crazy architect thought it was a good idea to put our school on the top of a hill? There are many ways to get home, but ALL of them are very definitely UP!

When we finally got home at about 5 pm, it was unanimous: #1 we would never do this again and #2 when we do this again (it's inevitable =), we will allow the nice man with the taxi to charge us the $16 to take us to our front door and call it a bargain! The subway ride is less than a dollar, but by the time we got home, we were less than human, so it's a trade-off =)

I won't bore you with my purchases, but let's just say I finally own enough hangers for all my clothes, I have a lamp to see my way to the bed after turning off the light switches at the other end of the apartment, and I don't have to wait on the very unreliable bread-fairy to come for breakfast in the morning (I'm starting to doubt her existence!)