Saeng il chuk ha ham ni da!

Today we celebrated Shayne's birthday a day early. We had a lazy morning: sleeping in 'til noon, some french toast, and some tv. By four o'clock, though, we thought we should probably make more of the day, so we decided to head downtown for a meal and a movie.

When we arrived at Lotte Department Store (in the heart of downtown), the square in front of the building was full of people and there was a stage set up in the corner. This was what everyone was watching:


We're not sure what was so special about this group, but they weren't doing anything other than dancing to a Korean pop tune. Well, kind of dancing. The chicken dance would have been more complicated - they were just standing in place and moving their arms about. The strangest part was that the audience was really into it. People were going crazy for parts of it. Either these girls have really big families, or we're still not getting the culture here.

Anyways, after discovering that the only movie playing was Miami Vice and only if we stuck around for 5 hours, we passed on buying movie tickets and headed over to Bennigan's (an American chain although neither of us has heard of it), for some well-deserved western fare.


Here's Shayne holding up all the veggies and cheese that came with his fajitas. As you can see there's no shortage of meat, but there's only enough of the other fixin's for one or two tortillas. Strangely enough both cheese and lettuce are fairly expensive here. Despite this, the fajitas were really good, and we both got our fill. As one might expect, however, after finishing the 5 tortilla wraps, there was still half the meat left over, so we got a doggy bag. When the server came back with our left overs, we were expecting a small package with the remaining scraps of chicken and beef. This was not, however, what we got...


Here's Shayne with the contents of our doggy bag. The plastic tub on the bottom contains what we actually didn't finish from our meal. The rest is an entirely new meal to go with those left overs: Two packages of dinner rolls, two small pots of whipped butter, a plastic tub of lettuce, cheese, guacamole and sour cream, and a foil package of tortillas. We were planning on making sandwiches or a stirfry with the leftover meat, but I guess fajitas it is. Odd. Next time we will just order a doggy bag and skip paying for the meal. Being Korea that just might work.


After we got the doggy bag we asked for the bill, and the strange generosity continued. I was given a sample aerosol of room deodoriser with the bill. I would say "we" but the server specifically said it was for me. I guess in Korea the men don't use room deodoriser. Who am I to argue?

Anyways, we paid the bill and as we got up to leave I asked one of the dozens of wait staff milling about if it was okay to just leave the money on the table. This poor kid probably thought my gesturing toward the bill meant there was some sort of problem, and he called over a few more staff members, and they all huddled together trying to figure out what it was we needed while we stood helplessly by. Finally after five minutes of deliberation the manager was called over, and as she spoke English we were able to get it all sorted out.

In what was increasingly becoming one of our stranger nights downtown, we stopped by the washroom on our way out the door. I found this to be a run-of-the-mill experience, but Shayne (in the way that only he can) managed to stumble his way through another Korean oddity.


This is a picture of a mouthwash dispenser, which was right next to the soap dispenser in the Bennigan's washroom. Unfortunately Shayne thought this was the soap and began to lather up with it. After some barely concealed laughing by the other men in the washroom, and the fact that his hands smelled minty fresh, he discovered his mistake. Well, at least he managed to operate the toilet this time! :)

After Bennigan's we decided to head home, and we went to hail a cab. After a few moments with no luck, a woman in a minivan pulled up next to us and gestured for us to get inside. Being a little confused as there was nothing on the minivan to suggest it wasn't just a normal family vehicle, we asked "taxi?" to which she nodded, and we got in. Now most taxis are pretty clean on the inside, but this had a basket of laundry in the back seat, and what's worse, there was none of the official documentation to indicate that this woman had a taxi driving lisence. In fact, the only hint that this even was a taxi was the meter. Luckily for us she wasn't kidnapping us with a clever ruse, but managed to get us home safely.

Anyways, that was our fairly low-key celebrations in our neck of the woods. All in all a pretty good day, even if it was a little on the strange side. What would make it perfect, though, would be few happy birthday greetings to Shayne - just to remind him that there's more than one person out there helping him celebrate his big twenty-four. Happy Birthday Shayne.

Jo