Back to Mega Mart!

---

Last night, Charity, Celestia, and I decided to have a little adventure of our own. I was sort of tired being stuck around here in the afternoons, and the girls needed to buy some stuff. After getting some helpful bus advice from our Kiwi friend & fellow teacher, we decided to venture into the Cheonan bus system and see if we could make it to Mega Mart on our own. A big feat considering we didn't know where Mega Mart is and everything is written in Korean.

If you don't know about Mega Mart, let me introduce you. The best way to explain it is that its the Wal-Mart of Korea. They even have the Mega Mart greeters that bow as you enter...pretty sweet! Its probably not as massive or as big a company as Wal-Mart but its pretty similar. I'm actually kind of ashamed we like it so much. We actually want some tshirts that say "I (heart) Mega Mart.

We walked over to the bus station that is on campus, and that got us scared. We didn't know which bus to get on or what to do. This man that worked there started letting the Korean fly at us (Korean words, that is...not an actual Korean), and we had no idea what he was saying. We asked some girls if they spoke English, and they of course said, "no English." We just stood near them and kept a watchful eye. Finally, a bus pulled up; they got on, and so did we. The guy actually let us on for the wrong amount because we didn't have exact change, and we were holding him up.

We just sat in our seats hoping that we would see Mega Mart in the distance in enough time to press the button to have the driver stop at the next stop. We got a little worried when we noticed that we just went in a circle around downtown; luckily, he turned away from Namseoul. After another 10-15 minutes, there it was...the bright, shining lights of Mega Mart! We were so excited when we got off the bus...we were running, jumping, and taking pictures. I'm sure us dancing Americans didn't look out of place.

We found all sorts of really cool stuff that we wished that we could take home (curse you 50-pound suitcase limit!). We even found quite a few workers (with Mega Mart vests on, of course) that could speak very little English. The most annoying thing about Mega Mart is the tremendous amount of workers they have on the floor; they keep pushing you to buy something ("it is in style"). It is a little overwhelming when they try to sell you something while speaking nothing but Korean. All of the workers, though, seemed very friendly.

The most interesting part was the food section. They have plenty of fish, squid, octopus, and many other animals out in the open ready for your purchase. They have samples of almost everything...I had to resist. They even had a conveyor-belt sushi bar.

After a good tour of the store, we finally checked out and headed back to Namseoul on the bus. We even made it back very easily...very awesome!

---

Photos

On the Bus
Celestia & Charity

Rice Fields
Every nook & cranny is being occupied by something...a real bad land problem