Odong-do, Spaghetti, and the Movies

We have a new photo album detailing our trip to Odong-do island, and our spaghetti dinner, plus a few shots of us at the Movie theatre. The first two trips are detailed pretty well in the photo comments so follow the link to check them out.

Click here to view the album...

We spent yesterday evening learning the consonants of the Korean alphabet. How to pronounce them that is, not the actually "name" of the letter. We got through all of the basic letters, there are four "advanced" letters that we are not sure on yet, but are waiting for our boss, JS Park, to help with, or another Korean. Anyways, we were SOOOO excited that we were finally beginning to read, so we can now, VERY SLOWLY, order off Korean menus, read signs, read bottles, cans, boxes, almost everything. The most fun is when the sounds of the letters correspond to an English word, like Ba-Na-Na, which is the same in Korean/English, since it is a borrowed word.

Now that we learned how to read, we decided that we would try our luck at the 8-plex movie theater down the street called "Cinus." We got in a cab and told the cab driver the wrong place ("Cirus"), but luckily he was a smart one and figured out where we wanted to go anyways. We got to the theater and immediately used our Korean reading skills to translate the title of "The Mummy Three" to "Me-E-La" Three. The clerk figured out what we wanted, and used his English skill to tell us the price (although he was a bit off, he end up say 14,000,000, which is $14,0000!). We then got some Nachos, Pop Corn and Drink with a little help from a wise clerk. It seems that the younger Koreans are much more handy with English then the older Koreans. We went to sit and wait for the movie the begin seating in 1/2 hour.

The time finally arrived for us to go to in to theater 2 and watch Me-e-La Shree. Assuming it to be just like American Theater, we went in and sat down. A few people were giving us funny looks. We noticed that people were being a bit more careful then we had when choosing a seat. We then looked at our tickets, and realized that the seats were assigned... This explained the looks we had got from the people sitting next to us, we must've been in their seats! I decided to ask the Korean girl sitting next to me if it was still OK to sit here, or if we should move. After some confusion, she finally said "Chogi (there) - OK", and it was settled.

The Mummy 3 was as horrible as expected. The Koreans love it so much it was released here before it was released in the US. After it was over we got headed home. Later that night I received terrible news that my God father, Uncle Jim, had passed away after a 1+ year battle with cancer. It was really hard to hear that news being out of the country, but Megan and my Mom (via Skype) really helped me. Rest in peace Jimmy, we will all miss you so much.

Have a great day, we miss everyone, especially in a time like this.