at FIVE IN THE FREAKING MORNING feeling kind of disoriented and wondering why in the world I was curled up on a tiny twin bed in a strange room. For the brief moment before I looked out the window, I could easily have pretended to be in some strangely set-up hotel in Toronto...nothing sounded different outside (I'm pretty sure car horns sound the same most everywhere...correct me if I'm wrong), but the second I looked out the window, it was apparent that we simply weren't in Kansas anymore, Toto.When we finally dragged ourselves out of bed and got up the gumption to actually shower and make ourselves presentable to the world, our first task was explaining to whomever was (wo)manning the front desk that we'd really like to switch to a room with one LARGER bed, and that we'd like to stay for three more nights. Bryan had originally booked us rooms at the Jeonju Tourist Hotel, but after the magical times we'd had last night, we'd come to the conclusion that moving our stuff over there and back again was just going to be too daunting (to be completely honest, I think I'd rather have filled my ears with peanut butter and jelly, and become the owner of a successful child-minding service for unruly toddlers, which, as you all know, is something I consider akin to HELL...well at least the part where I'd be in charge of minding poorly behaved children!) I tried to mentally prepare myself for the possibility that communicating our needs was going to be significantly more difficult than I was used to...but really, I don't think you can prepare yourself to communicate with someone when you speak very little of their primary language. I've always thought it was more than slightly ignorant of anyone to go off traveling without learning at least a few key phrases in the language of the country they're visiting, but here I am! I've become exactly that...a stupid, blubbering idiot, and I'm sure I'm offending EVERYONE! Bryan seems to think I did okay. It's not like I got frustrated, angry or stomped my feet and simply gave up the ghost. After about three tries and numerous hand signals/one word exchanges between myself and the lovely woman at the front desk, she handed me the key for the room above ours (the 1207 to our 1107) and, pointing at the key in my other hand said "bring it back...after". With that and after a few little bows (we seem to have unconsciously adopted this in addition to saying "thank you". I think we're hoping that whomever we're speaking with can understand that we appreciate what they're doing even if they don't understand the words we're saying) we went upstairs and
moved our mountain of stuff to 1207. The house keeping lady was just cleaning all of the rooms (including 1207) and we had a bit of an adventure explaining what we were doing. Lucky for us she was able to say "you are here?" and we were able to meekly nod our heads... pathetically. In any case, this is our new room. It's much bigger-seeming than the other one...I think because it has FEWER TINY BEDS (am I right people, am I right?). You can see how well our excessive piles of stuff fit into the new room (surrounding me on all sides). I mean...they fit much better in this one, but I suppose none of you would know that since we didn't take pictures of the other room...just trust me, it's better.
This room (like the last one, one floor down) also has a lovely view of what I'd refer to as mountains out our window (I can't take a picture for you guys right now because it's snowing...a lot! Damn it earth, I thought it was spring...everywhere...
what are you DOING!?), but probably most other people (at least here) would call "hills". They look pretty big to me though...so...MOUNTAINS! I mean, they're definitely more mountain-like than the escarpment, Hamilton, so...well I'm just going to call them "mountains" until someone corrects me, and that won't be until the school picks us up here on Thursday night since I'm beginning to think I've very little hope of having any sort of real conversation with anyone unless I can get some sort of space age, ear insertable translating fish or machine a la Doctor Who or
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. More on my feelings of helplessness when it comes to communication later, but for right now...look at our sexy sexy bathroom!(Yes, that is what Cora so affectionately refers to as my "area" there on the counter. No matter where I go, I have to lay out all of my "Sarah things" on some sort of flat surface and make a little space of myself. I can't help it, I love stuff, I have stuff, I need to put my stuff in some sort of order so that I feel like I AM someplace...you know?)We've got a little tub (complete with "old person bar"...you all know how much I love old people! Swoon. AND a lovely seafoam green vanity around the sink. I'm pretty into this place.)with a detachable shower nozzle...just in case you want to sit down I guess. The one thing that I find kind of odd (now that Bryan has pointed it out at least) is the fact that the sink is BESIDE the bathtub. I mean, think about it...have you ever seen that before? It seems kind of weird, I think, once you think about it, as in most bathrooms I've seen the sink is right beside the door and then the toilet is by the tub. I guess it does allow you to wash your hands while you're in the shower...but do you really need to wash your hands in a separate little basin while you're washing the rest of your body in the other, slightly larger basin of the bathtub? I think NOT, but you do whatever your heart so desires when you come to the Core Hotel. I will neither quash your dreams, nor attempt to stop you, I promise...Moving on...
Our next big task for the day was obtaining something substantial to eat. We'd both woken up completely ravenous (and ready to kill and eat anyone or anything that crossed our path...seriously...I have NEVER been so hungry in my life! Bryan gave me a granola bar and I could swear nothing has EVER tasted so good!) After our little blips and communication difficulties from the night before, we were both a bit apprehensive about leaving the hotel, so we decided to check out the cafe one floor up from our room. When we walked in, the two waiters behind the counter greeted us in Korean and (I think) asked what if we'd like to eat. After seeing the bewildered looks on our faces, one of the waiters said "eat" while lifting his hand to his mouth (that might seem like a silly thing to do, but I must say that I'm really beginning to appreciate small efforts like that, because without them, EVERYTHING would be impossible and we'd definitely STARVE!) We enthusiastically shook our heads and were seated by one of the large floor to ceiling windows, which gave us a FANTASTIC view of the city.
After considering the menu for what I'm sure was an abnormally long time (I was so befuddled that I didn't even realize the menu had more than two pages until Bryan flipped through them...it's not like they weren't obvious...I'm just ridiculous...so that kind of slowed things up) we settled on shrimp fried rice for Bryan and Seafood Spaghetti and "Strawberry Juice" for me. Now, the reason that I've put the latter item in brackets is this: (similarly to the "strawberry pudding at Sushi Star)the item did not arrive quite as described. While I had ordered the beverage out of a desire for some sort of reasonable priced source of fruit (the fruit platter was 20 won...that's like $18 people!), it would have been more suitable for a dairy craving...it was a smoothie...or maybe even a milkshake, but in NO WAY juice. Maybe I'm just tired, maybe I'm just cranky, but gd it, I wanted JUICE! Whatever...over it...it tasted GREAT! The best part of the meal though (although considering how freakin' hungry I was at this point, the whole thing was AMAZINGLY tasty) was the soup they brought before hand. It was some sort of creamy yellow broth with...wait for it...CORN FLAKES floating on top (cream corn soup?) I LOVED it! I even tried to scam the remainder of Bryan's, but he was having none of that! As I'm sure some of you have heard, there are smaller side dishes served with every meal here in Korea. In this case, they consisted of some sort of yellow, rectangular, definitely pickled stuff and the always enchanting Kimchee. We both made a valiant effort to at least eat a bit of each item, but I really do fear that we're going to offend someone at some point here, because we were too utterly pathetic to choke more than a bite down! Once we finished up, we had a bit of an awkward moment as the waiter tried to ask us if we'd like coffee, tea or desert. I think he forgot that we were pathetic non-Korean speakers for a couple of seconds and went through his full question before realizing neither of us had any idea what was going on. Finally Bryan said "coffee?" and he agreed and went off to get it. We did only slight better at paying and retreated back to our room to recuperate. I know it's my own fault for not being better prepared, and I do hereby solemnly swear never ever to be one of those stupid people who emphatically exclaim "why can't they all just speak English?!" no matter how stupid I feel trying to obtain something to eat, but trying to get what I need is really really tiring right now!
I really do feel like a clumsy space-person visiting another planet and failing miserably at fitting in or at least communicating with the residents unoffensively. And the thing is, I fully recognize that I AM THE WEIRD ONE HERE! And I really do feel very badly for stressing people out. I think I'm going to go figure out how to ask for delicious corn-type soup in Korean...I want more of that...NOW!
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