Saturday Shopping

My schedule involves me getting about 3 to 4 hours of sleep every Thursday night and I end up putting in a 12 hour day on Fridays due to other obligations, so when I decide to get up early on Saturdays, it is usually a struggle. I did end up getting up about 9:30 yesterday. JJ was a little curious as to why I would leave so early, but I just replied that I really wanted to spend all day taking photos. Having lied successfully, I made my way to Gangnam via 1550-2. I transferred buses and took another one to get me to Seoul Station. The female bus driver on my second bus was unbelievably kind. Not only did she help me with directions, but also woke me up when my stop came up. I was exhausted and had grabbed a quick power nap that could have turned into a round trip back to Gangnam. I got to Youngsan and headed straight into the electronics market to find the an Iriver P35.

I had spent all week trying to decide on which PMP to buy her. I knew that I wanted one that had a DMB player and WIFI. Well, there are not that many that have both and I found that the only one that matched what I wanted was the Iriver. Since we are only going to be in Korea for another 5 months, it would be pretty useless to shell out a lot of money for a DMB player that will not work in the States. I had no idea that DMB was really only used in Korea, until I read about it here.

I acutally had a couple of older students who spent their break time looking at all of the Korean specifications and breaking them down for me. They all said that it looked pretty cool and that JJ would love it.

It took me awhile to fine the exact model that I wanted. There are three different models. Basic/DMB/Wi-Fi with DMB. I was looking for the Wi-Fi with DMB. I got shuffled around by a few vendors.(Not that uncommon at Youngsan) I had already printed off a couple pages from Gmarket and Danawa, so I knew the price range and had some evidence to barter with. The few vendors that I wasted time with told me that they had every PMP made, but as usual the one that I wanted was out or they only had the 36GB model. I really would have preferred to buy it over the Internet, but really didn't have the time to wait on delivery, but I did eventually find a guy whose English was great and was willing to negotiate on the price.




I made the purchase and then was getting ready to leave when I saw a promotion for a new media player that was happening outside. They were also using racing/promotion girls. I ended up taking a bunch of photos that I can't post right now. My CF card has some kind of format error and it is not being read by my camera. My card reader is also broken, so I have been using my camera to directly upload my photos to my computer. I think that I can recover the photos if I go buy another multi reader.

I met up with my friends Troy and Joanne in Namdaemun where we went shopping for some gifts for their trip back to America. We had lunch at a great Sal-Gook-Su restaruant that was basically a two for one deal and we ended up ordering way too much food. The restaurant was a hole in the wall and I was actually nervous to drink the water. Apparently, it was a pretty famous place and had been featured on a bunch of different TV shows. We ended up heading back to the peace and quiet of Dongtan not long after having a late lunch. They had driven into Seoul for a wedding, so I was able to ride back with them. Public transportation is convenient in Korea, but riding back in the comfort of their car was nice.

I have a ton of things to do today:
1. Buy a card reader
2. US taxes
3. JJ visa work
4. New teacher interviews
5. Process some phtos

I would much rather do number 5 than 2,3, or 4...