Getting Settled and Venturing Out

I decided to put on a couple of pictures on here. Nothing too great. The fist one is my view out my hotel door. The next picture is a picture of where I am staying. I hoping that I will be in the dorms the first part of this week.



I am not looking forward to the dorms. I ran into the guy who I bought my explorer from a couple of years ago. He is in the same dorm as I will be in. Here are a few pictures of what his dorm room has to offer. Once I get in I will be going door to door to figure out who has what problems in their rooms and see how long it takes to get them fixed. His shower is moldy and his vent is basically falling out of his ceiling. Another I guy I knew from Mtn Home has a hot water leak. His bathroom is a sauna and because of the hot and humid moisture, almost his entire bathroom has a thin layer of black mold in it. They complain about the guys not taking care of the dorms, but from what they have all said these problems have been here since before they moved in. Why should someone take care of something that should be condemned.



This picture is my small pox vaccine. I thought I would just blog about this mainly for myself to keep a running journal of what happens to this spot. A couple of days ago it looked normal. This has now formed and from what they say, it gets even worse.


So last night Vinnie (one of the guys I work with who just got here) and I decided to attempt going downtown to the EMart. EMart is like WalMart, but on steroids. It is like 3 stories tall and has escalators made for taking shopping carts up. Instead of steps it is like a moving sidewalk. The store is filled with many, many employees. There are literally 2 employees for every aisle, and these aisles are about 1/3 the size of WalMart aisles. So yes, many people to help you out. What Vinnie and I came to quickly realize is that no one speaks English here. What is also nice about EMart is that there are many samples throughout the store. Just about one on every aisle. The meat and fish and vegetable areas are the largest filled with fresh foods. In the seafood area you could buy literally anything to include octopus, squid, crab, fish, and so much more. In the produce section they have a large area of different seaweeds some salted and some not. We even decided to try some seaweed and it was quite good. After walking around for a bit we decided to go ahead and eat. We attempted to eat in their food court, but again no one speaks any English. Frustrated at ourselves for not being able to speak Korean we decided to go to the next food place which was none other than.... you got it....McDonald's. We recognized something and were excited about it. To make things even easier they had an employee who came to the counter instantly when we walked up who you got it, spoke English. Finally someone who could understand us, and we could understand them. I had a hard time deciding between the Bulgogi Burger or the Shrimp Sandwich, but we both ended up deciding on the Shrimp Sandwich. To our amazement it was quite good too. So after that fun trip, we decided we needed to learn some more Korean before we venture off into town next time. I now have a vocabulary of about 7 words, but I can now at least sound out their symbols which will make life a little bit easier. To make it also better I have bought a dictionary to take with me too. It might be a couple weeks before I go back to town. Hopefully I will have a vocabulary of about 25-50 words by the end of the month.