and now to lighten the mood...

since i'm a little bit over my butt-hurt. a little bit. i didn't say totally. anyway....

this past saturday, the ladies planned a trip to dongdaemun and the flower market. dongdaemun means "great east gate" & there is one there but mostly there is shopping. serious shopping. shopping such that last weekend, when a friend & i went to the fabric place, we met a group of women who had flown over from shanghai for the weekend to 1-go to the fabric place & 2-go to dongdaemun. our main mission was for ribbon & doo-dads for hair bows. and hair bow clips. all of which is amazingly cheap up there (over here? whatever).

so the plan is for me to pick up 2 girls & meet at starbucks at 7:30. notice i said the "plan". NOT what actually happened. friday night i was up late waiting for the dishwasher to finish so i could empty & reload. because our dishwasher can only be run at night now. because we paid over $1000 in utilities last month & i'm trying to avoid that happening again. and night electric is cheaper, so they tell me, therefore the dishwasher only gets run at night. between 10pm-5am. i don't remember why there were 2 loads worth of dishes but there were. and i was waiting on the molasses-ass dishwasher to finish sloshing around so i could go to bed. and then it was 2:30 or so. and i swear i set my alarm. which apparently i did but neglected to switch it from weeknight to weekend. and then at 7:25, 1 gained consciousness long enough to ask me was i leaving? and OMG IT'S 7:25 AND I SHOULD HAVE BEEN UP 1 1/2 HOURS AGO! and the race began.

so i finally made it to starbucks, sans my riders who had either already been picked up by someone else or missed the memo & walked on post under their own steam. 4 of us met in the starbucks parking lot where we soon discovered the sign on the door kindly informing us that they were closed due to water outage. nice. thanks, caffeine fail.

we persevered and picked up the 5th member of the group & headed for the train station...trains run REALLY early, right? SURELY korean starbucks will be open, right? AHAHA no. not when most koreans don't roll off the floor until about 10am since they stay up til 2am...presumably emptying their dishwashers. however, one of the 2 dunkin donuts was open. so we were able to satisfy our sugar/caffeine/water/juice needs. and we were off to the flower market!

until we hit traffic. hooray for traffic. we waded through it & thought we were on the right path. what's that up there? it says market! this must be it! and we were on the far left lane to make a left hand turn into...into...into...aww crap. that says grain market! quick! make a u-ey! and we did, cause that's what you do in korea. but then to get back on the road headed in the right direction, we needed to turn back around. in the traffic. agh. but through group driving...turn here! you can make it! look out for adjeema & her bike! ooh, look at the fish! keep backing up, you've got a few more inches...we got turned around in the right direction (after witnessing the costco parking guy holler at the lady in the car who just about sideswiped us in her haste to get in the line for costco parking) and were ready to make another stab at the flower market. which, yes, it was a flower market. but, no, it wasn't the right one. this was the wholesale flower market that we figure supplies the market we were actually looking for. but there were still flowers, and pots, and dirt, and greenhouses, and a skinny little road on the edge of a 10 foot drop off to a creek that we played chicken with some top heavy bongo trucks on. in other words, it was a market in korea next to a korean road. and it was fun. but no flowers came home with me since adjeema wouldn't sell me a single, only a flat. and i just didn't need that many daffodils, sorry.

and then we jumped back into traffic to head for yongsan for some quick lunch & a quick spin around the px before heading back out into korea to head to dongdaemun. we walked to the nearest subway stop where i temporarily lost my subway navigation skills but where a nice korean girl with a phone subway map sorted us out. and then at the next station where my skills were still nonexistent, she caught up to us & got us on the right train and, lo! we were at DONGDAEMUN!

sort of.

apparently coming up on a different train gets me confused & renders me unable to find the correct exit from subway-land to get to where we need to be. we'd pop up out of one flight of steps to find a huge road with no crosswalks separating us from our goal. and pop up out of another one to find another road separating us (this was after some of the crew had to buy a ticket just to walk through the station to another exit). this time we found a crosswalk or 2 and raced traffic to find ourselves where we meant to be. **note to self, it's subway exit 9** at this point we had spent so much time being lost that we had to kind of race around the ribbons & such to try to get home on some semblance of time. i'm the proud owner of 60 yards of ribbon now. and there were 172 yards spread across my living room floor that night as i was given the task of distributing the ribbon we bought in bulk so as to not annoy the adashee who was cutting...which meant someone had to cut it. and i volunteered. i'm so sick of ribbon right now that i threw mine in the drawer & haven't touched it since.

once we'd bought out dongdaemun, we got back on the subway (exit/entrance 9!). during our transfer, we smelled the delicious aroma of deli manjoo so my workout buddy & i raced up one flight of stairs to discover that the aroma had vanished! back down we went and followed the smell to where i introduced everyone to deli manjoo: corn-shaped, custard-filled cakes best eaten hot & fresh. we all ate way too many. but i think that & all the walking balanced each other out. after another short train ride and more walking, we made it back to post & the van. everyone grabbed up some drinks & snacks for the ride home. i think i tried to fall asleep on the ride home-not sure anyone noticed. we made it back safe & sound, albeit 2 1/2 hours behind schedule, and in record time for korea traffic out of seoul on the weekend. it was a great time & once my feet & ribbon fund recover, i expect we will do it again. we're losing one of the adventurers, though. she will be greatly missed!