So Let Me Just Say Something

     Have you ever tried trying to find potting soil in Korea, or any kind of dirt for that matter that's not $800,000,000 $2 per liter? No well let me tell you a little something about it. It sucks.

     We have a planter box and I've been trying to find some sort of dirt to put in it so I don't have to trek all the way downtstairs to walk (we live on the 9th floor of a high rise) Copper ten times a day. Its a large planter box so it's going to take a lot of dirt to come even remotely close to filling, let-alone covering the bottom. Let me tell you, it's harder than all heck to find dirt here. We finally found some at the PX in Yongsan, guess how much it was? Well I don't exactly remember but it was something like $16 for 8 liters. Whuck? You're kidding me right? And actually a friend looked for us so I was like "That's not so bad, $16 for 8lbs, I can do that," and then he said "no, 8 liters." Then all thought of buying said dirt went out the window.


     Finally I decided to ask someone about it. Turns out you can get it at 다이소 Daiso. It's still expensive, but not as bad. We ended up paying 2,000₩, about $2, for 3.3 liters. I was also looking for mason jars and was told I could get them there, I didn't see any but then again I forgot to look. Oh and before I forget Daiso is kinda like a mini Walmart, think a third of the size. (Well I've only been to one so they may not all be that small, but in my experience). They have dishes, and utensils and cosmetics, and they're cheap! You know those red Paula Deen pans that run about $12 back home, they had basically the same pan for about $5! And you know what's super great? It's only two subway stations down from us, so it only costs 900₩ to get there. Awesome, that's less then a dollar, depending on where you convert money.  Like the BofA atm, don't do it, it sucks. Not as bad as my airport fiasco though.

     After we got our measly amount of dirt, along with some nail polish and a squirt bottle we decided to get some dinner. So we walk into a restaurant at random hoping they have a picture menu. They didn't. But they were nice enough to bring us a menu that had some English on it and we figured it out from there.

     Let me say, it was an experience, we thought we ordered, a pork cutlet with a few sides (a pork cutlet is pure breaded-deep-fried-goodness), and a rice cake stir fry (I love rice cakes almost as much as pork cutlets, its a gooey, chewy, nearly tasteless cylinder made out of rice flour). What we actually got was pork cutlet sushi, in this sushi was kimchi(pickled cabbage), the yellow stuff they always serve (which I suspect is pickled daikon), rice of course, some sort of egg, and of course the pork cutlet, along with a few other randoms. It was actually pretty good, but after the say fourth piece the kimchi and daikon were getting to be too much. The stir fry had three options, and not knowing hardly any Korean we though we were choosing what kind of meat we wanted, we decided it didn't matter and guessed. We guessed wrong. They were actually asking us how spicy we wanted it. We picked medium and thought we were dying, not to mention the flavor was weird. I got through about two bites before I gave up. But for 2,500 I'm over it.

     So today was an adventure, just like pretty much any other day here, but it was goo, oh we also stopped at the Lotteria (fast food chain similar to McDonalds) and had chicken fingers. They were good, but I'm not sure if they were $5 good.

     Tomorrow we're heading into Yongsan again, and will probably get street vendor food again, mmmm yummy. And I'll post some pictures soon. But for now annyeonghaseyo.