Day 4 - The Welcome Tour!

We didn’t get out anymore day 3. I felt too sick to do anything.

Day 4: Monday came at 5 am. We are doing better, slowly inching closer towards normal waking hours. Unfortunately, I still felt like crap but we decided to get the ball rolling on stuff that needed to be done.

Weather forecast in Bundang: scattered showers through the morning. And guess what, we were out of milk for our breakfast cereal. Stacy offered to walk to the store at 6 am to get milk. While he was gone, I looked out the window to see if he was on his way back and saw an old Korean woman vigorously brushing her teeth in the parking lot. I don’t know what to say about that. Within 15 minutes he was back empty handed. The store wasn’t open yet and it sprinkled on him. He wasn’t in the apartment 20 minutes when it started raining. It was a beautiful cooling rain but you can’t walk anywhere in the rain with out an umbrella which should arrive with our other stuff August 2nd. Now the dilemma of breakfast. We had eggs, cheese and toast. Cheese omlettes and buttered toast has been the daily special for the last couple of days and Monday was no different. The cereal was supposed to break it up for us. :)

After breakfast, we decided raining or not we were not staying in the apartment. We were going to handle our business and then set off to do some more shopping. Isn’t that what you would do? Exactly! So we had to call Keith at KIS to find out when the cable/internet was going to be connected, when the welcome committee was going to welcome us, and how to work our washing machine.

I will start with the cable/internet issue. Obviously if we had it connected on time this post would not be a day late but we were told that they are crazy busy and will be by Tuesday morning sometime. This is Monday evening at 6:40 my time and my fingers are crossed because something happened to the internet that we were piggy-backing off of.

Second, we received a welcome call from a young lady named Norli who was going to be our tour guide for the day. A school bus driver, who I can’t remember the name of, was our driver for the day and he was very friendly. We were officially shown around our neighborhood, introduced to the neighborhood cleaners store, taken to the school, taken out to lunch, taken to an even BIGGER E-MART and given tips on the bus system.

We were already pretty familiar with our neighborhood so that wasn’t exciting but the school is AMAZING! It is set on a hill and very modern looking. I just know we are going to love it there. I met the school nurse and she hooked me up with some meds which were exactly what I needed. We will be taking a longer tour the end of this week. I’ll catch you up on that in a photo blog soon.

Our tour was mainly showing us how to get to the different parts of Bundang. We scoped out other American chains such as Quiznos and Starbucks. Found the best places to shop (and burn several holes through my pockets!) AK Plaza is a very upscale mall that they show in the school video and I kept wondering where it was. We were taken right next to it and the interesting part is that many of the large shopping malls have subway stations in their basement floor. So convenient! Just wait until we explore that mall. You will definitely hear all about it!

Norli took us to lunch on KIS’s tab to a place called DailyKing’s Diner: The Original American Dining. We probably should have selected a Korean restaurant but we wanted some sustenance. It was definitely comfort food. I would describe it as a modern-retro restaurant that served a lot of American comfort food. I don’t know where you would find a chili cheese omelette in the US but you get the idea. Stacy and I ordered burgers and fries and Ethan wanted chicken strips. Norli ordered for herself and the driver. I have to tell you that this restaurant was on the 8th floor of a building and we parked in the last parking spot in the underground parking garage. The parking garage had 5 levels going down. From the very bottom to the very top! Ethan loved the view we had in the restaurant too. When our food arrived they set it in the middle of the table. I assumed it was because they didn’t know who ordered it. Nope! It’s because in Korea, when food is ordered it is shared by all. All the food gets grouped in the middle and you get individual plates to take what you want. It’s like a mini buffet. When Norli explained this, I had already put mayonnaise on my bun, stacked it with the veggies and cut it in half. She explained that she and the driver were going to share and that they didn’t expect us to follow the same customs. Stacy was nice to offer to split his and share with them but they politely refused.

While we ate, Stacy and I asked lots of questions. We found out that Norli came from the Phillipines with her sister seeking a better job. She found one at KIS just like us. In her home country English is taught all through school. It is the 2nd language spoken there. Stacy asked her which language was easier to learn, English or Korean. Yep, you guessed it…English. :) She has been in the country 3 years and knows quite a bit of the language but there is still quite a bit she is learning.