Weekend update!

Hello again, I’m back! Here is the biggest update, Dave and I purchased a car! It is a ’96 Hyundai Elantra with awesome seat covers, working windows, and of course the essential air con (air con is Konglish for air conditioner since Koreans think the word is too long to pronounce). Last week on Wednesday, Dave and I test drove 2 cars. One of them started, the other needed to be jumped. Based on that, and some other minor details, we decided to go with the one that started. Now that we knew what car we wanted it was time to figure out how to get car insurance. Our boss kindly helped us out with the insurance before school. He took us down one floor to talk to car insurance people, pretty convenient eh? Even though we are 23 years old and have 7 years driving experience back in the states, Koreans must be 20 years old to drive. This means that we essentially have only 3 years of driving experience. This “lack of” experience made our insurance rate higher than what we thought. Luckily while we were figuring out the insurance, one of the other car salesmen, who worked at the car dealership we went to , happened to come in and he undercut his coworker by giving us 100,000 wan off of the car. A 700,000 wan car ($600, booo to U.S. economy) was exactly what we wanted after hearing how much insurance would be. We accepted on the spot and by the next day were driving our way around town. All together the car/insurance cost us about 1,600,000 wan ($1600) which was lovely.

On Saturday we went to the open market in Yeochan, near our house. It is about 2 blocks of vendors selling vegetables, fruit, seafood (alive and dead), and side dishes. The seafood is so crazy to see. Next time we will have to take pictures! There are live octopus, crabs, eels swimming in tanks and/or buckets everywhere you look. There are old Agima’s ( old women) squatting down cutting up fresh fish as you walk past. It is quite the sight to see. Seeing as we have no idea how to cook half of the things we say at the market we opted for the essentials: fruits and vegetables. We bought peaches, apples, carrots, potatoes, onions, green/red peppers, and curry for about $25. Then I took Dave to a whole foods place that my co-worker Liz showed me. This place was great! We were able to get boneless chicken breasts along with many other frozen foods that are easy to cook.

After shopping we decided to take advantage of our newly found independence. We took a scenic drive to the beach and around the very country part of Yeosu. Even though it was raining and gloomy outside it was great to be able to go wherever we pleased, and listen to music! The only thing stressful about driving here are Korean drivers.
The sign says "Yeosu" in hangul.


They are very aggressive drivers who do not stay in their lanes or watch for other traffic. Dave did an excellent job driving. He basically has to be aware of all possible cars which even means pretending that parked cars are moving.

That night we made stir fry as a picnic and drove to Dolsan Park to see the bridge lights. It was very beautiful and a perfect spot for a date. Our first REAL cooked meal tasted wonderful, and the view was spectacular. That night, since it was still rainy and humid, we stayed in and drank our fair share of wine and soju while playing Super Mario brothers 3, haha.

This upcoming weekend we are babysitting Hana and Sara while Jeff and Hye-gyong go out of town for a wedding, so expect to hear about the kids in our next blog post. Hopefully we will also be planning some fun trips outside of Yeosu soon such as Seoul.

We miss you and hope you are all doing great! Please please pleas keep writing, e-mailing, facebooking us whenever possible because we really look forward to hearing about updates back at home. Anyounghaseyo!

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