TODAY, SATURDAY. While you guys were all out partying until the wee hours I was awake and shopping. I met Elizabeth, Joseph, Tiffany (also a teacher at my school and also on the same curriculum as me so she's basically my biggest resource!) and her husband Bryan (or maybe Brian I'll have to check) and we went to lunch. Well Elizabeth, Joseph and I went to get Korean food and Tiffany and Bryan went to McD's. The food was spicy but good.
Then I went to a store called Daiso which is the Korean Dollar Store but its more like a 5 and Below store because everything is much nicer than should be in a dollar store. Here I spent very little money and got everything I need for my kitchen (pot, pan, silverware, cups, knife, you name it!) and a few things for my bathroom and bedroom and some items I used to hang things up around the house. So basically a lot of stuff.
I'm so used to: 1) having my own car and 2) having a cart to roll out to said car. Carrying it all around is not so much fun. I caught a cab home and lugged all my haul into the house. Unpacked a bit then headed back out for the second leg of my shopping extravaganza. Are you still with me? Are you hanging in? I've got a great fan story I PROMISE if you just bear with all the gritty deets.
At the E-Mart I needed some things I couldn't find at Daiso. I hit rush hour in the E-Mart with a throng of crazy Koreans rushing at the sample ladies, standing in the middle of aisles and just leaving their carts all willy-nilly. I headed to the second floor to track down the items I was desiring. One was a curtain. It was expensive but totally worth not waking up at 6 am with the brightness of day shining directly into my eyes. I also jerry-rigged it to hang, like so totally awesome. It will probably fall on me in the night but hey, its doing well so far.
The second, and probably most important item I was to obtain at the E-Mart was a fan. I sleep with a fan on. Always have, always will. I need that lovely white noise and the added benefit of air circulation. Before I came to Korea, and was doing all my research, I came upon stories of how Korean's used fans, but NEVER used them at night while sleeping. No reason was given only that they believe they will die in the night if a fan is blowing air on them. I laughed at that, thought it was some silly superstitious thing in tiny villages of Korea and forgot all about it. Then, while talking to Elizabeth about the things I wanted to buy and where to buy them she too mentioned that Koreans, hard core believe it to be a FACT, that you will die if a fan blows on you while you are sleeping. The way it was explained to her was that somehow you will die of either carbon dioxide/monoxide poisoning from the fan either running or blowing your hot air back into your body. All I can think is that Korea is super technology savvy (you should see the cabs!) and they don't know that a fan running while sleeping won't kill you? I just don't get it.
Anyway, I bought way more things than I could carry, including my delicious new fan, and arrived back at my apartment comically trying to carry all these things into the house. A wonderful lady came up to me in the street as I'm struggling and helped me carry the things up. It was so super nice and I gave her a hug. I immediately began putting the fan together. Of course the directions were in Korean but I figured it out pretty easy but struggled on one part and opened the directions to see if there were pictures that might help. That is when I saw it. On the directions. On the do not do list. Among the don't get water near the outlet, don't knock it over etc, I saw, this picture:
Apparently, if its in the manual its a for real issue and you shouldn't do it. It is ALSO an actual wikipedia entry found here. I'm having a really hard time no telling every Korean I meet that I am letting a fan blow on me at night while sleeping and there is NOTHING they can do to stop me.
Haha, that is fascinating!
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