Day 35 of Living in Korea-Cell phone shopping and 2nd trip to Costco

Well, today was one of those days that had highs and lows. I met two of my co-teachers for coffee this afternoon so we could hang out for a while and then go shopping for cell phones. You all know how attached I was to my Blackberry, so I was really hoping to find another smart phone.
Well, after talking to three different companies we found out that the only contract I could have is a one year contract and they didn't sell smart phones with one year contracts. So my only options are to search for a used iPhone or get a regular cheap phone. There's a HUGE electronics market in Seoul, so I'm very tempted to go there tomorrow or Monday and see about trying to find a used iPhone. The bad news is that today (of all days), Apple announced that the iPhone 4Gs would not be available in August as originally announced, but in December instead. So according to the very friendly and helpful KT salesman (the company that sells iPhones) it would now be much harder to find a used iPhone. My co-teacher is going to search the internet and we're hoping to find something that is affordable. But it looks like I'll be stuck with just a regular flip phone for now. I think I can get a smart phone in a year if I want to...I can't remember how exactly it works. So I ended up without a cell phone today. Which is ok, just frustrating.

BUT I did get to go to Costco! This time I managed to find baby carrots, American cheese, deli ham, pretzels, and more delicious stuff. I still have Cheerios from my last visit, but I bought some more anyway-you can never have too many giant boxes of Cheerios!

Anyway, I'm not going to focus on describing Costco. I did that in my last Costco post. Since we went on a Saturday, it was twice as crowded. It was very difficult to navigate the cart and almost as difficult to stick with my two co-teachers. Of course, this bothered me. I'm claustrophobic, so I have a hard time being in crowded places, even with 100 ft. ceilings. Every time somebody bumped in to me or I had to squeeze by a cart to get through, I cringed a little. Mostly on the inside, but sometimes on the outside as well. But Koreans don't even notice it. Yes, they know it's crowded but they have no sense of personal space. It's very common for people to bump into you on the street or in the store and no one ever apologizes. I've heard two different theories for this: Koreans are inherently rude and only care about themselves, and Koreans are used to it so it doesn't bother them anymore. I choose to believe the second one. The population per square mile (or kilometer) is off the charts here. They're used to living in little apartments, shopping in little stores, and walking on crowded streets. It's a part of every day life for them. They're also much more comfortable with holding hands with a friend, even middle school boys. It's not uncommon for me to see two girls holding hands or two boys holding hands at school or on the sidewalk while I'm out walking. For some reason, they're just more comfortable with it.

Anyway, enough about that. Remember the cart escalators that I told you about? Here's a video showing them! Enjoy!