After talking to mom and dad on Skype (video calling = like being in the next room) AJ and I took the afternoon to walk around Jukjeon, which is our district of Yongin. First we checked out Shinsaegae (Shin-say-gay), an enormous department store with designer crap everywhere. We even found something called “Bling water” that had a bottle covered in rhinestones…

We decided to go next door to the less upscale E-mart to buy our groceries. Apparently Koreans have an obsession with mayonnaise because they put it in everything. (They like Spam, too). We bought thousand islands dressing that tastes like, well, mayonnaise, mmmm. We also found spaghetti sauce, but it tastes like they may have put some spicy pepper/chili powder in it.

What we’ve learned so far is that Koreans will often try to mimic western food’s appearance without really investigating what the flavor should be. This is why one of the other teachers said she was once served nachos with whipped cream. Apparently, they just didn’t take the time to find out that the white stuff was sour cream.

Later we hiked up the hill behind our apartment and happened upon the Dankook University (AJ thought it sounded an awful lot like Dane Cook university — a Korean school for western comedy?). Either way, we climbed a lot of stairs for this picture of the area.