Thursday, April 12

It’s pretty common to find people selling fruits and vegetables on the street in Korea. These photos were all taken today in my neighborhood. Each photo was taken on the same block… The bottom photo was actually taken right in front of a grocery store.

Wednesday, April 11

Wednesday was election day in Korea. Campaigning has been going for the past few weeks. Here are a few of the posters that I’ve seen up around town.

Tuesday, April 10

It was hard to get back into the routine today after a weekend away and I’m still not feeling great. The good news is that tomorrow is election day and that is a holiday.

Dave came down from Ulsan and I met him at the Centum City subway station. Centum City has two major department stores right next to each other — Lotte and Shinsegae. This particular Shinsegae is the largest department store in the world. Both can be accessed from the subway station. Here are a few pics of what it looks like underground at Centum City.

Monday, April 9

I have felt a cold coming on for the past few weeks and it finally hit while we were in Hong Kong. I took today off work so I could go to the doctor and get some rest.

I decided to go to the doctor that’s across the street from my apartment (top left). This is the same doctor that caused me to fail my drug test when I was trying to renew my contract. If you aren’t up to date, I had a cold a few days before my medical check for contract renewal and he gave me a shot of something pretty strong that I now refer to as a “pot shot.” That’s not what it was, but it caused a false positive for marijuana on my drug test.

The doctor doesn’t speak very much English. I told him my symptoms, he looked at my throat, gave me a “pot shot” and sent me on my way with a prescription.

I tried walking a bit further away to the pharmacy near my ear doctor (top right) because they speak a bit of English, but they didn’t have what I needed.

I went back to a pharmacy near my apartment (bottom left) and now I’m all set. Four and a half pills three times a day for the next three days. Hopefully it works! I haven’t had the best luck with doctors in Korea.

Thursday, April 5

These are what the mailboxes at my apartment complex look like. It’s pretty common to have open mailboxes in Korea.

Wednesday, April 4

It’s election year in Korea and campaigning is out in full force. Dave and I went to dinner tonight and walked by a bunch of campaign staff trying to sway voters. Each candidate has a number… The staff for #1 were wearing red jackets, the staff for #7 were wearing blue, but #8’s staff were wearing these jazzy numbers. It’s impossible to tell from the photo, but there was a light up 8 on the vest as well as the candidate’s name, all in LED lights.

I had stopped to try to get a photo of them all in action, but it was hard to get a shot that wasn’t blurry because they were all hard at work. This man said hello to me so I asked him if I could take his picture. He was really nice. He posed and said, “Fighting!” That’s a common Korean exclamation that basically means good luck or we can do it. Afterwards we had a brief conversation about where I’m from. He even made a joke about George Bush being my neighbor.