Oh yeah... We're back...

Hi all,

Sorry for being a slack ass and not posting for 2 weeks.

Last couple of days in Korea consisted of searching for lots of nifty things to buy to take back home with us... Shopping can be such fun when you can't communicate with the person you want to buy something from. We were attempting to buy some bags from a Korean guy who knew less English than we did of Korean (and believe me when I say I know very little Korean). Thankfully, he had a friend who spoke English. 2 hours we sat in the store trying to get them to supply what we wanted at an acceptable price. All the while trying to getting them to give us the stock that wasn't run over by a steam train or shagged by a walrus. This was not what I had in mind for how to spend my time.

Oh, and in Jack's tradition of "It's the little things". Heres the Korean version:

• Koreans (especially kids) eat bugs. They are actually silkworm lavae or something like that. When we first arrived, we could smell it and thought "what is that smell?". We eventually got the courage up to try it - Its DISGUSTING. Apparently the kids love the stuff...
• Westerners put Chinese or Japanese characters onto T-shirts that they have no knowledge of what it means. Koreans (and I believe other Asians) put English words on their T-Shirts that they have no idea what it means. Unfortunately, it usually comes out to be gibberish.
• Some of you may be aware with South Koreas' fascination with computer games, treating the people who play it professionally like pop idols, etc. Watching the grand final of some Starcraft competition, some of the kids in the audience had keyboards for their "idols" to sign.
• Watching same show, some of the audience held up signs for their computer game playing idols. I assume they said something like "I love " and so on. But where as an Australian would hold these signs up high where everyone can see them, these Korean girls (yes, you heard me, girls idolising computer game players... Crazy) put them in front of their faces so that the camera won't show that it's them there.
• Think for a moment. It's -5 as a maximum temperature. You're a Korean girl deciding what to wear. What do you choose? Of course, it's obvious, you wear the shortest mini-skirt you have in your wardrobe! Bear as much flesh as possible, nevermind the possibility that you will cause damage to yourself by exposing that much bare flesh to rather cold weather.
  
  There was a news broadcast about this, as well. So they know it's stupid. Oh, and the kicker on this one was the news reporter - a male - got out the tape measure to measure how short the skirts were. I wouldn't have wanted to be him when he got home to his wife that night...

Anyway, this probably draws to a close my comments on our holiday... Back to ye olde grind. Yay!