Today marks two weeks that Katie and I have been in Korea. As of yesterday, we have been in Changwon for one week. We are now relatively settled into our new apartment, and have had a little time to being adapting to life in Korea.
One of our primary concerns was to find out how/where to buy groceries, and where to go to eat. So far, we have found that the "ramp store" and E-Mart are great places to buy household items such as toilet paper, cleaning supplies, paper towels, and certain other items. But there is an open-air market not far from us in downtown, and it is generally better to buy produce there. The produce looks and tastes better, is cheaper, and on "market days" (every five days) there is an overwhelming selection. Other items can be bought at the market as well, such as the pottery you see here.
As far as eating out, we were not disappointed to find an Outback Steakhouse within a five-minute walk of our apartment. We have learned that eating "western" food out can be a very expensive pastime here. Korean restaurants abound, and a meal can be purchased for around $5 or so. However, most restaurants either specialize in seafood, or have many seafood items on the menu -much to Katie's disappointment.
Restaurants are in the habit of keeping live fish tanks in front of their establishments, presumably so that passersby can see what might be had for dinner. These tanks might contain any of the following: Fish, crabs, snails, eels, octopus and squid (I'm sure I'll be able to add to the list in time).
There is a veritable seafood palace downtown, and the whole building is very quaint and European-looking. Walking to school one day I noticed what was written in Gothic script on the side of the building:
The same restaurant also features a rather odd statue near the front entrance...
Here, an innocent octopus awaits inevitable consumption by a Korean diner in his tank in front of a restaurant.
Another phenomenon worth commenting on is the abundance of scooters that we have seen. Don't misunderstand; there are plenty of nice, new cars always zipping around when we go out. But we have also seen a lot of scooters.
Scooters are used for practically everything here, and we have seen lots of examples of makeshift trailers being attached to maximize efficiency.
We saw this garbage man one day, and were amazed at how much stuff he was able to pack into his scooter/cart... and how dirty he was.
I also saw what has to be the world's biggest scooter a couple of days ago downtown. I had no idea they made them this big:
We will certainly post more regarding all the interesting cultural curiosities that we encounter. But these have been among our first impressions.
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