I love my small town. I love that I have to know Korean in order to function to a certain extent. For example, Saturday when we a couple of us were taking a cab from our apartment complex to a restaurant, and we hopped in the cab and told the driver the restaurant name and he didn't seem to understand so I gave him the neighborhood and then a landmark in the general location. Then when we got close I told him straight, in Korean, twice and then told him the same restaurant name as before, but now that we were closer he understood and dropped us off on the doorstep. The person I was traveling with was asking what I had told him and I was like, just straight. Then when we got to the restaurant the people we were meeting asked if we had just told him the shopping center and then just walked, and I replied that I had indeed told him the shopping center, but the I had redirected the cab from there.
Fast forward to a day off from work and I decided that I was going to pick up a birthday present for Heana and I found the perfect one. Well I wasn't in Suncheon and had gone to a close larger city and when I went to the register it took me for a loop when the girl goes “That'll be 13,500 in perfect English.” I wasn't at all expecting it, and in Suncheon I don't know of any place that that'd happen. She then told me to ”have a nice day”. Definitely not something you hear in English in Suncheon.
One of the other things that I saw while I was taking care of shopping in this area was traveling Mormans. Nothing really too interesting to note about 'em, just that I saw them, and yes they had white short sleeve shirts, black ties and name badges.
When I was picking up a few presents for lucky people back home I was telling them exactly what I wanted and what I needed and the first person that gave me a quote said “this is how much it'll cost”. The whole arrangement took place in English. He then asked how much I wanted to make as a deposit. I handed him some 10,000 ₩ bills and he said “oh you're paying in won”. I was confused for a short bit. He works in Korea, he is Korean, he lives in Korea, but I guess he deals mainly with US military personnel, but still are we that arrogant as a society that when we leave the US base or American soil that the American Dollar (which let's face it has seen better days dependently speaking) should still be accepted? He then tried to drive the price up for me in won using some brutal conversion rate that I was like PASS. Plus he didn't even know who the Oklahoma State Cowboys were. Anyways, I walked out of there and went to a similar establishment where I was upfront with the individual at the very beginning that I was not military, I do not have American dollars, and that I needed all quotes to be in Won. When I showed him the picture of the Oklahoma State Cowboys jersey I wanted he instantly was like BIG 12, Big 12. I got a chuckle out of it. He had some Notre Dame jerseys that were pretty fantastic looking so I will see how he does with this test run and he might have a repeat customer.
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