As far as transportation is concerned, we are very impressed! The buses are extremely frequent, clean and cheap. The drivers do not speed and the buses are in great condition (unlike other countries we have visited, haha). We have a bus stop just outside of our apartment building and we can catch a ton of buses there to go to many different places. The funny thing about the bus however, is that if you don't pay the right amount, the driver does not seem to mind. At the begining of the week I asked my boss how much the bus cost to ride and he told me he does not ride the bus but he was pretty sure that it cost 1000 won (a little over a dollar) so when we went to get on the bus we put 1000 won in the box where the money goes and the bus driver never said anything so we assumed that we had paid the right amount. We have done the same thing all week and it wasn't until today when we were sitting near the front of the bus that we noticed someone else put 1100 won in the box. We felt bad about the mishap and we will now be paying the full amount to ride the bus everytime, however it is nice to know that if we are for some reason short then it's not a big deal.
Cabs so far in Daegu have been amazing! The cab drivers speak varied amount of English ranging from absolutely none to a couple of words, to phrases and expressions. No matter how much English they speak however, they have all been very polite and helpful. Since we don't know how to say our address in Korean, we carry around a laminted piece of paper with our address on it and just give it to the cab driver when we want to go home. It feels a bit strange but we don't really have much choice in the matter at this point. The cost of a taxi ride is also very reasonable. It costs us no more than 7000-8000 won (~$7.50-$8.75) to get downtown which is about 20 minutes away.
One of the places that we have taken the cabs and buses to is E-Mart. This is now my favourite store in the world! This store is very similar to a Wal-mart Superstore. You can buy everything from kitchen items to appliances to clothing, to gorceries, liquor and beer and even treadmills and other sporting goods. It is 3 levels high and must be 5 million square feet (thats an educated guess, haha). This is where we have gotten most of the things that the apartment lacked when we got here to make it feel more like our home. We have also gotten a ton of Western food at E-Mart at very reasonable price. Another place that we have done quite a bit of shopping is the Dong A Department store. This is a very high end department store that also happens to have a grocery store in two underground levels. This store is very convenient as it is right at the end of our street. Today we took the bus to Costco. We have our membership card from Canada and it also works here. When we walked in, it was absolute madness. If anyone ever wants entertainment, the best form can be found at Costco in Daegu, South Korea on a Sunday afternoon. The place was just absoultely packed with people. Koreans, although very nice seem to always be in a hurry and whether they are driving a car or if they are pushing a shoping cart they are going to get where they are going and there isn't anything that anyone can do to stop them. If you stop to look at something in a aisle they will bump you with their cart. This happened to us a number of times today as we were in no hurry at all. On one such occasion the guy bumped me with his cart and not five seconds later he SMASHED into a lady's cart in front of us. It was pricelsss and we couldn't help but laugh out loud.
Living in Korea can also be a lot of work sometimes. Because there are so many people (just a hair under 50 million) in such a small place (99 617 square kms) they are extremely careful about how they dispose of waste and organize garbage and of course recycle. When we bring garbage down to the waste area at the front of the building there are about 5 or 6 different sections to divide the garbage into. Therefore we now make sure to keep everything divided in the apartment so that it only takes us a few minutes to sort things out once we get downstairs as opposed to the nearly 2o minutes it took us the first time we brought garbage down (lesson learned).
One of the other things that still puzzles us about this country is the traffic laws. Because we live in a major city the main streets are all at least 5 or 6 lanes wide and there are a ton of strange intersetions. This makes it very difficult to try and figure out which traffic light pertains to people driving in each direction. Also there seems to be a lot of advance lights for people driving in each direcrtion but it is almost as if it is completely random and the lights never turn the same
way twice. The other really funny thing is that there is obviously not even close to enough parking in any secton of the city because people park in the most ridiculous places. As you can see in these pictures, some park on the sidewalk while others double and triple park people in and it is never out of the question to see someone parked just randomly in the middle of a street. It is safe to say that we will never drive a car here. However, that does not ensure our complete safety. There are many motorbikes and moped type bikes here and some of them drive on the road but do not seem to obey the traffic lights
or speed limits what so ever. While others drive on the sidewalk, which seems dangerous to begin with but add to this the fact that they are not very loud so if you are walking down the street listening to your ipod or even just generally not paying attention then you might not even realize that one is sneaking up behind you and they can just whiz by going 90 miles an hour. The lesson here is to be alert at ALL times.Everyday we learn something new, and I think (and hope) that this will continue to be the case. Week one was a great success and hopefully that will continue!
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