One Day in Shi-Nae (Downtown)

I was resolved to spend another weekend alone, but then Angie decided to come to Daegu on a whim. She arrived Saturday morning, and we spent the day wandering around downtown Daegu with my coworker, Ted. We hit up the jewelry market where there are precious stones embedded in the street. We drifted through the army surplus section where a Korean man approached Angie and I to say "Hello. Shop here." We indulged him by browsing his wares for a brief moment before Ted came back and rescued us from the obligatory perusal. Probably the most interesting of the themed market areas was the foreign goods market. It was full of American wonders like Skippy peanut butter, Spaghetti-O's, Downy fabric softener, and Lancome mascara. I was in need of mascara so I inquired about the price. For a mere 24,000 won (about $24 USD) I could be the proud owner of a new tube of mascara. And if I wanted a lesser brand of mascara I could pay just 18,000 won. I think I'll wait until I go to E-Mart again so I can pay something more like 7,000 won. I did buy a beautiful traditional Korean-style dress, though. I will admit I paid too much for it, but I fell in love with it when I tried it on. I know it'll be a hit at home...no one else will have one like it, that's for sure.
We also found the music market and putzed around there for a bit. Ted was looking for a keyboard so he could annoy me at odd hours of the day through the thin walls of our adjoining apartments. How sweet of him.

For dinner we visited The Holy Grill, where we shared a plate of Four Skins (get your mind out of the gutter, it's potato skins with cheese and bacon), and I had the cheesiest, most delicious plate of Mac and Cheese ever to grace God's green earth. Nothing tastes like home like a plate of Mac and Cheese.

We also found a guy selling bootlegged copies of DVDs that are still in theatres. I got New Moon, Avatar, and Angie got 500 Days of Summer. They were going to $5 a piece, but I got the guy to sell all three to us for $10. Thank you to my Bourret lineage for teaching me how to cut a deal.

Ang and I came back to the apartment to watch our new copy of New Moon, and then we headed back downtown to experience the Daegu nightlife. We went to Club Frog, and even though we had no ID we were able to get in (my employer currently has my alien card, but it's common knowledge that I couldn't be in the country alone unless I was 18 so it wasn't really an issue). That was actually the first time that anyone has even asked for my ID since I've been here. Anyway, we got a drink and headed into the crowd of people. It's a big floor with a couple of balcony levels, but people were packed in like sardines. It was interesting to see because it's way different than clubs back home. Everyone faces forward to watch the dj, and people just sort of nod their heads and dance in place. The Korean girls are really good at rejecting guys. If a guy tries to dance with a girl, she turns around to check him out. If he meets her approval, she allows him to dance with her. If not, she simply says "anneyo" (no), and he moves on to find another girl. Also, the ladies room was full of girls smoking cigarettes. It's taboo for Korean women to smoke in public (it's synonymous with being easy), so they all smoke in the bathroom where no one can see them. It's definitely a different sort of atmosphere than at home, but it was kind of nice to know all the words to the songs, despite the fact that I'm in a country on the other side of the world where very few people speak my language. So yeah, I spent several hours shouting over the music and the throngs of Koreans so Angie could hear me when I spoke to her, and this is the result. My throat still hurts :(

Oh, and this is from last weekend at Angie's. Pyxis was trying to sneak a bit of my sangria. No such luck though. Much too good for bunnies.