2nd day here

OKee dokee, so I have been here 2 days officially. I don't have pcitures because I haven't uploaded them and I am going to wait a few days...I need to take more. So we got up yesterday and had breakfast: mong told me koreans usually (ok, i just ga ve up on grammar, the keybpard is slightly different and i keep pressing the button that changes from korean to english) eat normal koeran food for breakfast like rice, kimchi, peppers, fish, and other dinner-type dishes. They bought me "toast" which, just like in germany, it is pre-slices white bread that is specifically for toasted, but they call it toast before its toasted. I told mong I'll eat Korean breakfast too, but until the corn flakes and toast are gone, I'll eat that.ㅠㅕㅅ, ㅠ But morea than wiling to try! (thatㄴㅇㄹㄴㅇㄹ what an accident). After that we went to the rehab h0spital where Mong's sister (Hwayon) is staying for her spinal cord injury. When we got there a lot of the patients were in teh physical therapy room with the pads and bars, and stairs and such. She is definitely much further a long than many people--some she said had been there for a few years. One man had fallen from a crane thing (the little box the people stand in when they fix telephone poles) when moveing furniture to an apartment from teh 7th floor--and although he c0uldnt yet, he was acutally learning to walk again with braces and a walker. It was pretty amazing. Most of the people were injured from car accidents. After that we went to Lotte, which is a massive department store: like macys, walmart, best buy, and safeway all in one. Hwayon was getting a swimsuit because she swims mon-fri now for therapy. They went back to the hospital but Mong and I stayed and wandered around. We then wandered a couple blocks away to Changwon's downtown and tried on $10 glasses frames ...made FOR prescription glasses. That sure beats the $200+ frames I was selling at Lenscrafters! CRazy! We stopped randomly at a street food stand and mong bought me tradtional street food: ground boiled fish on a stick, 30 cents each. Tasted interesting...not sure if I liked it so much though.ㅜ \\ They had pieces of tempura also for the same price. COol. ㅉㄷWe went back to the hospital but Hwayon was at the dentist and then we went there and that was one really nice dentist office.It was on the 7th floor or so, and the dental rooms poked out of the building and had windows on 2 sides. They had free coffee from a swiss espresso machine, and tea and mints, and a cpu with internet if you were bored. Then we came back here (oh I forgot, we ate at Lotte and I had something called bulgogi with rice and starch noodles--also tried the cooked octupus with red pepper sauce, it was tasty---the live octopus is set for sunday), and mongs best friend, Jongwon, came over and we all just sat in here and mong's mom made kimchi soup, which was spicy but really good. Oh, and it rained all day, but it wasnt cold, just humid.

Some things I've noticed: KOrean's, like Germans and Finns, also drive fast and make me slightly sickly...but I will get used to it. There are lots of random clusters of huge apartment buildings--near seoul there is a bit of countryside but then you will see in the distance about 5-20 5 block long 15 story buildings, all symmetricaly lined up and inside the cluster its like a tiny downtown--a market and other stores, and lots of neon lights. All Koreans use umbrellas, ALL of them. The only person I saw yesterday without one was a Buddist monk bowing on the side of the road. Ok, I gotta go shower, bathroom is free--we are going to meet Mong's aunt today. BYE!