A Saturday In Korea

This Saturday was our first day off of work. In celebration of this day off, I decided to make the journey to Costco and renew our membership there. I had asked our coworkers if they wanted to go, but no one was interested in going this time, so it was just me. The trip took about an hour and a half to get there and required using three different subway lines. The second line I took (line 1) was particularly difficult to navigate. It has about six different end points whereas most subway lines only have 2. This caused me some confusion on the way home, but I managed ok on the way there.


Once at Costco, I went to the membership desk and explained my situation. I had an expired membership, but didn't have my card with me. They tried looking it up by my name but couldn't find it. So, I had to sign up all over again, which turned out to be very simple. Happily, they didn't need my Alien Registration Card, which we have yet to receive.

After getting my membership card, I then had to navigate through a moderately crowded Korean Costco. Please understand, that "moderately crowded" in Korea is much more crowded than in the U.S. It was set up so that the non-food items were on the ground floor, and the food items were in basement floor 1, with parking below that. So I finally found my way to the escalator that took me down to the basement, but only after traversing the whole length of the store. Upon reaching the food area I began my attempt to find everything, which went quite well and smoothly despite the throng of people around. I noticed that for some strange reason, many people had the food court pizzas on the botom of their shopping carts, but didn't think much of it.

I went through the check out and then went to fulfill my last objective before going home: buying a pizza! I tried to get around to the food court, but found my only way through was to go through the line that led upstairs and out of the store. It was then that I discovered that I had to get any food court items I wanted before I paid for my other goods. Ooops!

I told the woman who was checking receipts that I wanted to get a pizza still, and so she directed me to another woman, who watched my cart for me while I treked back through the store to get my pizza. When I came back with the pizza, I picked up my cart and proceeded through the exit line to go home.

Upon exiting the building, I pushed the cart as far as I could toward my exit, while still being in the Costco grounds. There, I ate a piece of pizza and packed my backpack and another bag for the hour and a half long journey home. It was while packing that I realized I had forgotten to grab a couple gallon sized ziplocks from home, to carry the pizza in. The pizza boxes are quite awkward to manage, especially in tight spaces (like Korean subway systems) and while carrying another bag and wearing a backpack.

Nevertheless, things went pretty smoothly until I got to the line 1 transfter point. Then I had to stand there for a good 20 minutes while I tried to figure out exactly which train would take me to my home subway line. This, I managed to do alright, after the 20 minutes, and was soon on my way home. It was a good trip, and I learned some useful lessons. Probably the biggest is that when getting a lot of things, bring another person to help with the load! :-)

While I was on my expedition to Costco, Jennifer very kindly worked on cleaning the apartment. She wiped down all the doornobs, handles, and anything else we touched regularly, cleaned and organized the bathroom sink, cleaned the door trim, vacuumed the floor and undoubtedly cleaned some things I didn't notice too! ;-)