Day 62: The Perfect Care Package

So I stayed up way too late last night chatting away on Messenger but it was so worth it! It seemed like *everybody* was online last night and it was great to catch up with old friends back home. The highlight of the night was being able to chat for a while with my friend Sharon back in Thunder Bay! We've been friends since Grade 4 (many lifetimes ago it seems now!) and have stayed in touch over all those years. I hadn't been able to chat with her since arriving in Korea so it was such an awesome surprise to run into her online.
I MISS YOU SHARON!!! :-)

I slept in pretty late today, and it felt great that I was able to do that on a THURSDAY! Hooray for holidays!
I met up with Kevin again and he showed me a bit around his hometown - Incheon. Other than my arrival at the airport, and an hour at the Immigration Office about a month or so ago, I haven't seen anything of Incheon. And I've learned there's a lot more to that city than what I thought! There's lots of great shopping and some nice parks and because it's on the ocean there's some cool waterfront areas to explore as well. There's also boats leading to offshore islands! I'll *definitely* have to devote more time to riding west on the subway to Incheon instead of always heading east into Seoul.

Kevin and I did some shopping and he took me to this really cool department store near his sister's house. Koreans are all about department stores here! They love 'em! I had never been a fan of them myself prior to coming to Korea, but I think I'm being slowly converted! It's kinda cool being in a store with 10 floors selling everything from clothes to food to household supplies to shoes to music and books. The ubiquitious underground food courts and grocery stores are always cool to explore as well. I'm *always* on the hunt for familiar foods that I can't find in my local city. There's always the hope that I'll find some wonderful long-lost treat from back home that I can add to my dull weekdays' diet. I made two great discoveries today - multi-grain bread and emmenthal cheese!!! Mmmm...!! I've been SO SICK of white bread which is all you find in the bakeries around my house, and cheese is a RARE TREASURE (block cheese, that is) anywhere in Korea. It was going to cost me 13,000 bloody Won to buy the cheese - I gasped when I saw the price (about $15 CDN for a small block) but god dammit I've been DYING for cheese so I bought it anyways. Luckily Kevin had some vouchers for this department store that he needed to use up before leaving back to London so he actually paid for most of it. I'm SO EXCITED to have this cheese and I can't wait for lunch tomorrow!!! It's funny how much joy one gets out of the simplest discoveries here!!! :-)

We tried to find me some English magazines, but alas, no luck there! Korea is full of familiar magazines - Vogue, Cosmo, Newsweek, National Geographic, GQ...all the big popular ones we're used to seeing in North America, but they're all 'Korean editions' so I can look through them, but not read any of the articles. If any of you kind souls back in Canada (or America!) were to perhaps send me a mag or two from home to read, I'd love you forever and ever!!! (And hey it's a guaranteed way to get your name into my internationally-read and renowned blog!)

Actually, while we're on the topic, there's a few things that I've been missing from home that I would LOVE to receive in the mail (hint hint Mom and Dad!) To get anything in the mail is wonderful, but the perfect care package would include:

- a GQ and Rolling Stone magazine
- Cadbury mini-eggs (buy the leftovers from Easter now before they're gone!)
- black socks (all the socks here are either too small for my feet - size 12 - or are those annoying 'short' socks that people like to wear here)
- Clinique Happy For Men shower gel
- Kraft Dinner
- Campbell's Chunky Chicken Noodle Soup
- Lipton Sidekicks Noodles - Garlic Raefello
- Uncle Ben's Broccoli & Cheddar Instant Rice
- Lipton Iced Tea (blue lid!) and
- Garnier Fructisse Normal Hair Shampoo (Korean shampoo is shitty on my hair!)

There's probably quite a few other things that I'd love to get in a care package (like all the food items I mentioned in my earlier blog entry - Day 18) Hey man I just like getting mail! Send me anything and I'm thrilled to bits! But I thought I'd write this up since a few people have asked for suggestions. Well here ya go!!! (Now comes the part where I anxiously await the mail everyday....hoping....waiting...) hehe!

;-)