I met up with my friend Gina in Myeongdong today. I hadn't been in the same place at the same time as her in over a year, so it was really nice to finally see her in person again. Myeongdong is a bustling, shop-filled, extremely touristy place. There are all kinds of clothing stores, accessory stores, and random-other-stuff stores all over the place. I have a hunch that there were more non-Koreans than Koreans there. The workers standing outside were switching languages left and right, saying a message in Korean and then following it up with a translation in Japanese, Chinese, English, etc. Sadly--well, is it sad?--I felt quite at home there. I guess I'm most definitely way more of a tourist in Korea than any type of native. Since there were a lot of Japanese people there, I probably could have gotten by better using Japanese rather than my extremely faulty Korean.
Because Gina and I are both fans of fluffy, furry creatures, we went to a cat cafe. When she mentioned it, I really thought it'd be cat-themed, as in cat decor and cat-costumed waiters and waitresses, but I was incorrect. Cat cafe meant, in this case, a cafe filled with live cats. THEY WERE SO CUTE. There must have been around twenty cats just chilling everywhere, and customers were free to pet and play with them. The place really cared about the cats' well-being though. As soon as we entered, we were given a rule guide that included stuff like "don't lift, hug, or hold cats" and "do not touch the cats when they are eating." The cats looked like they were living pretty good lives. I think a cat cafe is a really good idea. I might try something like that since it's a nice way to give cats a home while making enough income to sustain their care. Cats are great. We saw a sign for a dog cafe when we were walking around, and I wondered what that would be like. But I love dogs too, so I'm sure it would have been an equally pleasurable experience.
We went to this store with a bunch of cute stuff and went crazy over the notebooks, stuffed animals, and random other things. I still am at a loss as to why Asian people find the need to use broken English as decoration. I sure get a kick out of it though. I'd like to believe that the decorator's main point isn't to give me a good laugh every time I read the grammatically incorrect sentences, but that's what always happens. I am, however, always impressed when I find one that's got perfect English. But that doesn't happen too often.
For the rest of the time, we basically walked around looking for shoes and earrings for Gina and a backpack for me. We didn't accomplish either of the above. I did, however, manage to get a new pair of Vans to replace my "ghetto ones," dubbed so by my mother. Now I can finally go skating again! My longboard has been mighty lonely this week. This pair of shoes is quite a bit more conservative; they're just an ordinary blue. I figured it wouldn't be a good idea to stand out too much while I'm in Japan. My shoe quota is filled, but I must continue questing for a spunky backpack.
I came home and then did some ironing. I had a bit of an iron fail at one point when I unknowingly unplugged the iron and then ironed half a shirt before realizing that the wrinkles were only semi-disappearing. I plugged the iron back in and then resumed without any additional issues. After that, I had dinner with my dad at some random home-cooked-feeling restaurant. We were originally looking for my dad's favorite tofu restaurant, but since the last time he'd been there, it went out of business. So we stopped at the only place that wasn't a grill-your-own-meat place. It was pretty ridiculous how many grill restaurants there were on that one stretch of street. The lady working there was super nice. Since I really didn't feel like eating anything excessively spicy, she had the spice level toned down in the food, and she brought out additional stuff to kill the spice with, like lettuce.
After that, my dad and I got back in our car and drove off, but we had to wait a bit at the end of the street since there were a lot of cars at the intersection. As we were waiting there, we heard a thump on our car, and when we looked over, the same lady from the restaurant was catching her breath next to our car. She then handed my dad his less-than-a-month-old cellphone, which he had left at the table. I was amazed that she managed to catch us in time; we were pretty far from the restaurant by then.
From this experience, I have gathered that a little bit of inconvenience is not necessarily a bad thing. Although my dad and I were stuck in a bit of traffic, we were saved the stress from the sudden realization that he was missing his phone, and the subsequent frenzied retracing of our steps. Next time I'm stuck waiting for something in an unexpected line or traffic jam, I'll think, even if I'm not directly benefiting from the wait, at least someone around could possibly be recovering a forgotten item. Finding the silver lining always makes everything better.
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