Becoming Locals

So, yesterday was huge, imho, to our becoming a part of this steadily growing westernized but still fairly Korean burg. It's Sunday. We have few goals. One: One of the two transformers I had bought immediately began spewing electrical smelling smoke when Andrea plugged in her hairdryer. We needed to return it. Two: Andrea's glasses are no longer much help to her eyesight, but her contacts dry quickly and hurt her eyes. So she has been left with a very difficult dichotomy. Wear the glasses and struggle to read even things a foot from her face, or, wear the contacts and potentially damage her precious eyes. Terrible! Especially when faced with a new engaging career and a brand new city to explore. Three: We needed food.

In my wanderings the previous night I had stumbled upon another eyeglass store. (The first one we found was unable to help Andrea on account of the corneal damage that was done by wearing the dreaded contacts.) After a quick bite for breakfast we set for the glasses shop. We had a lot of fun communicating with the three store keepers through an online translator. When the man who was obviously the senior practitioner had taken his assessment we were very relieved to hear that Andrea's eyes would heal just fine on their own (How wonderful is it that the eyes are so resilient?) and we could come back in one week and get a prescription that would better fit Andrea's healthy eyes.

We left the shop and caught a bus to Yonsu, a nearby district of Incheon where I had purchased the transformer earlier in the week. We quickly found the store and were preparing a few Korean words from our dictionary when a woman walked up an asked,
"What can I do for you?" It took us both a second to realize we could just reply in English. So we returned the transformer easy enough and left. Yonsu has a little more going on than our neighborhood so we wandered around awhile. When we were ready to go home we made for the narest bus stop.

Now by this point I've learned some hangul and knew enough to know we wanted to go to �۵� (Songdo) I had no Idea what the words next to that meant. Well it wasn't too long before I remembered that there is an old Songdo pretty far from where we lived and that was where the bus was now taking us. Before, I basically knew the way home, it was just a little far to walk, and many street signs were also in English. Now we were far from home, headed in the wrong direction, and everything was in Korean. My only hope is, the bus will not kick us off at the end of the line and we'll ride it back to Yonsu. We know there's a subway stop in new Songdo and we spot descending stairs in the sidewalk so we exit the bus.

When we go down the stairs it's a long underground mall. with no sign of a subway. Andrea is sure that this is just like the shops outside the subway she was familiar with, so we continue to walk the underground bazaar. After what seems like quite a ways, Andrea sees the name of a church that she is familiar with. We go topside to check it out. She continues to recognize landmarks until she realizes this is the area where she had visited our friend Eric a year ago! Desperately lost, we head down the narrow alley toward the bar Eric frequented and where Andrea had made some friends. It was really cool to see this totally different side of Incheon. The road here was one lane, with no sidewalks. Crude American graffiti, sketchy street vendors, the works. We came upon the bar and discovered it closed. hmmm.

Andrea insists that there is a subway somewhere in the underground mall. We go back down. This time I ask a man, "Subway?"
He points and says 5 minutes. As we walk away he and his friend chuckle. I think it's funny too. Obviously I shouldn't have doubted that there would be a real subway station after five minutes walking through what appears to be nothing more than an underground mall. Andrea knew it. :)

So we get to the station, have tickets bought for us because we still have no idea where home is. (Although the stops are in english as well, none of them say Songdo and we don't know the names of our stops.) So we're on the subway platform, tickets paid, and don't know which way to go or which transfers to make. Finally, one of the platforms has a real map, with the lines laid out on it, and we're able to plot a course home. I can't leave out here, that these subway stations are amazing! At the time I said they were like underground palaces. Huge, very nicely finished with fancy looking stone. There's no "Watch the gap" because it's all walled in with doors that correspond to the subway doors when it stops. Just the size of it all was what was amazing to me. We'll post pictures I promise.

So we made it home. We're both really happy to have figured out the subway and to have stumbled upon a familiar place where Andrea can introduce me to old friends. Before we went home we found a nice little grocer that had some good stuff for cheaper than we had previously seen. I was able to buy a big plate of fish for 2500 Won! (Like 2 bucks) It's really good fried up and mixed in with the noodles. Andrea is not big on the fish yet. We'll see. We also found out that the ramen we'd been eating, (Which is awesome btw, so many flavors, so cheap and good.) doesn't have MSG. It's funny because the only english on the package is "MSG". We're thinking, is this a mandatory warning, advertisment, what? A kind man showed us the korean word "mu" (no). A very happy discovery.

Ok, sorry so long.

Love you guys,

Stephen