Doctor FIsh

Day One in Korea!!

I got here and surprised EVERYONE!! Rock immediate ran up and jumped in Tuna Cali's arms and Baby Cali was terrified of the impostor in her house, but she's warming up to her namesake. We're getting to be good friends. 

That night, we took the kids down to the fountain at their apartment complex to let the kids play. Rock went into the Seven Eleven on the corner and bought us yogurt drinks all by himself. Not gunna lie, I was impressed. What a guy! The kids were hilarious in the fountain and loved it until that dreaded time when someone falls and slices their chin open. Poor Rock. Hate it when that happens. Luckily, I'm a nurse! He'll survive. Then Tiffany and I went on base and then over to Itaewon and bought a delicious chocolate cookie from Ben's Cookies. I was a happy girl. It was surreal to be here with Tiffany! Itaewon had a bunch of shops and we got dumped on by a random rainstorm. All of the Koreans hid under the buildings but Tiff and I realized we were already soaked so we might as well keep going. It was so much fun despite the jet lag.

I've noticed a few things about Koreans...

1 - They all have really nice cars. Rarely do you see a beater car like you do in the US. The only beater cars you see here are those that the people on base bought. 

2 - Everyone has a phone.

3 - Everyone that has a phone (which is the entire population of Koreans) is always on their phone. I'm not kidding. I don't think I've seen a Korean without their phone for more than ten minutes. It's very entertaining on the subway because they run into each other or lose their balance as the train moves. It's really funny to watch. They even have these little antennae that stick out of their phone so they can watch their favorite show no matter where they are. Tiff and I wonder what the show is about because everyone is watching it! We feel like we're missing out.

4 - The men don't have facial hair, yet they wear mustache shirts. It's pretty funny. 

5 - A lot of the clothes here are translated to English, but they don't quite translate correctly...I bought a sweater that says, "they think don't matter all that happens hat I think I ask you are pretty special." Makes sense, right?

6 - Koreans don't sweat. I"m incredibly jealous by this because I'm dying!!

7 - They love to see how many people they can fit in elevators, subway trains, subway stations, cars, buses, sidewalks, pretty much anything you can fit people in, they will find a way to max it out!

8 - Everyone wears outrageously comfy clothes that don't match and would be considered to be pajamas in the USA. Don't worry, I'm going to try to bring that back.  I bought some Korean Aladin pants that I'm sure will do the trick!

                                                                         Day Two 

We woke up on Saturday and went to Butterfinger Pancakes. I can't imagine anything much better than that! They had the most DELICIOUS french toast I've ever had. I'm sorry mom, but this was good. It was SOOO GOOD! The weird thing about this place is that I never saw Butterfinger Pancakes anywhere on the menu. I was bummed. They even had some delicious sounding pancakes advertised on the window, but those weren't on the menu either...oh well. The french toast was incredible.

Everywhere we drive, I get to sit between my two favorites in the back seat. Not the comfiest of places, but I love it!

 Rock and his Tuna Cali

 Baby Cali isn't quite as excited...

After Butterfinger Pancakes,  we went to HomePlus which is a 6 floor department store. It was huge! On the top floor they have a Kids Cafe that is every child's dream play land. It had a train, ball pen, horse racing, jump area, Nintendo bike racing...they had everything! Rock and Cali had a blast over there so Tiffany and I went shopping. Bad idea. Shouldn't let us two out to go shopping...

And then it got worse. After naps, Tiff and I left the kids with Adam and went to Myeongdong. Myeongdong is a giant shopping market area. Again, bad idea to let us go out shopping on our own...but we went to find Doctor Fish. What is Doctor Fish you may ask? Imagine this...all you have to do is buy a drink (we bought a weird sandwich that was delicious as well) and with that drink comes 20 minutes of the most relaxing time of your life as you place your bare feet in a pool of water full of fish the size of goldfish that come up and nibble on the dead skin. WOW!! Can you imagine anything better than that!?! I can't!! Tiffany and I hiked around Myeongdong for about two hours trying to find it and asking tons of people for directions. I can't believe we didn't give up. But we can do hard things, so we found it! And little did we know that finding it was going to be the easy part. This was sooo hard to handle! I learned just how ticklish my feet really are. 

 Ticket in to see the doctor

 Before we knew what was going to happen...

the Doctor Fish 

 SOOO TICKLISH!!!

I couldn't handle it!!! I was dying! The best part was that everyone else there was completely relaxed and enjoying their time. I think they hated us because as they were relaxing, these two white girls are screaming at the tops of their lungs and can't stop giggling at how ticklish our feet are. I couldn't even keep my feet in for more than 5 minutes at a time.

I could not handle it. Sooo ticklish!

But they did a surprisingly good job! But I wouldn't call tense bodies from 20 minutes of straight tickling very relaxing...

After Myeongdong, we jumped on the subway over to Dongdaemun. We found some awesome stairs on our way out of the subway station that lit up. I've learned that Korea isn't very kid friendly. There are zero elevators and zero trash cans anywhere! But Dongdaemun was an awesome place! It had tons of street vendors that came out at night. Tiffany and I invented a new game of taking pictures of couples that match. Apparently it's a big thing to match when you're out on a date. I don't know why we haven't started that yet in the USA, but I'm bringing it back with me! It was HILARIOUS! Here's a sneak peak. Tiffany and I have a plethora of pictures of matching couples and we're going to dedicate a whole post to them, so keep your eye out! But here's your sneak peak!

Matching hats!

 

In Dongdaemun there was a giant mall that had vendors on six different levels of this massive store. Tiff and I went in there and had a hay day! There was a vendor that was selling shorts and pants, and since everything in Korea is small, I finally fit in these clothes! The sign at the vendor said they had a fitting room so when I asked to try on some shorts she took me behind the table of clothes and had me put on a giant stretchy maxi skirt so I could take my shorts off under it and then put the other ones off. Tiffany about died laughing as she watched me try to maneuver and keep myself modest. That didn't last very long and I ended up as I usually do, standing in the middle of everyone in my underwear. But hey, what's a trip without accidentally standing there half naked!?

This was a monumental day: I finally bought a size Medium!!

 We worked up quite an appetite from all the shopping endless hours of wandering to find the beloved Doctor Fish, so we found a Korean BBQ restaurant and had some nasty kimchi and whatever other weird things were there. The meat was incredible!! I'm not quite sure what I ate, but it tasted good so I was happy.

 My first bite of kimchi...not impressed