The Pringle Effect

When I was home in April I hung out with a lot of friends old and new. One of them was Stormy. She was really interested in what I was doing all the way over here in Korea sooo I told her all about it and she decided it was for her! She arrived on Monday and we've been hanging out the past few nights, just talking about what she should expect and how to deal with culture shock and making yourself at home in Korea.

We happened to be sitting at one of the bars a lot of our foreign friends frequent with about ten people. All of us were talking about things that make you feel at home or what you did when you first came to Korea and how you felt, but I told them about my little theory... The Pringle Effect.

Now, I'm not the biggest fan of Pringle's when I'm back home, but when I first came to Korea I went to the grocery store and bought like two cans of Pringle's because I knew what they were and I knew what they would taste like. When Scott came I noticed in his first week he did the same thing and we were laughing about how it was unusual for us to buy Pringles but they're comforting, like a little chip of home.

When I brought this memory up and my Pringle Theory, everyone at the table knew exactly what I was talking about and they all confessed that they too had bought Pringles their first weeks in Korea. I love it!

I've had some pretty unusual experiences over the last week that I thought were hilarious!
1. I bought some ear buds with a microphone for my iTouch at a shop in Seoul last weekend. I wanted these so that I could use my Skpye from my iTouch! When I opened them on Sunday I found a pair of gnarly used up plain ol' ear buds that someone had replaced the new ones with...EXCELLENT! No big deal, just $25 lost :(

2. Sunday Mark, Scott and I went to eat at an Indian food restaurant here in Iksan and an unusually outgoing Korean girl came up to us and told us how much she hates America because we think we won the Korean war for Korea and now we won't leave. This is really uncommon because even if they feel that way, most Korean girls don't just walk up to foreigners and start talking about just anything...really strange.

3. After dinner we decided we needed some Gelato!!! MMM! We went to a little place and got these huge, beautiful desserts and I went to take a little bite of what I thought was a maraschino cherry only to find that it was a cherry tomato cut in half. Thanks Korea! Scott assumes that they saw a picture of what they thought it should look like and opted for the tomatos over the more expensive cherries :)

4. Last night I was riding my bike home and was stuck on a street in traffic with no way around for 20 minutes! I say there was no way around because it is a one way street and there were people trying to go in opposite directions at the same time. Now picture this, on one side of the road there is a wall or boulders with some trees planted in at the top that line the parking lot of the hospital and on the other side of the road there is a drop off. There is no barrier wall, if you fall off this drop, death will ensue. I was caught between two parked cars (illegally parked I'm sure) trying to get around all the madness. An older Korean man came riding up on his bike and found himself in the same position. As we waited I became more and more impatient and decided to scale the boulder wall with my bike and leave from the hospital parking lot. I motioned my idea to the Korean man and he was totally opposed. But I couldn't stand to wait there any longer so I started climbing and he helped me get my bike the rest of the way up. After that I helped him get his bike up and we said our goodbyes :)

5. This one takes the cake. I found a human tooth in my apartment. Yes, a HUMAN TOOTH. I was doing a little extra cleaning on Sunday, just trying to get the little spots that are normally missed when I noticed the top of my refrigerator. I found the user manual for my fridge, a paper with Marcus' workout plan and a little white envelope. I was just going to throw it away, but I was curious so I opened it only to find a rotting human tooth! It was definitely a molar as it was about an inch long and thick! I immediately thought it was Marcus' because he lived in my apartment before me. When I asked him about it Monday, he had no idea. Creep-tastic! Oh Korea!