Lessons in Driving and EMart

We learned this week that in Korea, red lights are more like a suggestion than a mandatory law.  Most people will stop at them, but if no one is coming from the other direction, they just go.  Part of the reason that this is the case is probably because police officers have little or no authority compared to in the US.  We have seen one police car so far.  We are told that they don’t even carry guns.  When you are stopped at a red light, it is also legal to make either a right or a left turn on red.  Parking spaces are also MUCH smaller here, but they are way more efficient with their parking in that it is mostly either underground or in parking garages.  People also rarely honk their horns or get road rage because they see no point in that.  We were picturing there being a lot more scooters and full, packed streets, but there hasn’t much pedestrian or car traffic so far.  You might be surprised to know that we are in a city of almost 4 million if you saw that. 

The ceiling light in our bedroom went out last night, so we took the cover off and discovered these hoola-hoop-shaped light bulbs.  One was about 10 inches across and the other about 14.  So we took a walk down to EMart today to see if we could find them.  Thankfully we took a picture of the bulbs with the labels so that we could try to find the right one.  However, after looking at the shelves for a few minutes in complete confusion, a wonderfully nice EMart worker came over to try to help us.  We showed her the pictures of the light bulbs and she pulled them out for us in no time.  Lesson learned: always take a picture of what you need to the store. 

Getting to the store and then out of the store was also interesting.  There wasn’t a crosswalk to actually get to EMart, so we went down the metro station hoping we could come out on the other side, which we could.  That was interesting.  Then coming out of the store, we had to go up the escalator after checking out, even though we wanted to exit on the ground floor.  Then we had to take an elevator back down to the main floor.  I can’t imagine this is the most efficient way to get out of the store, but that’s how we did.  Koreans seem to be so efficient in everything that there must be an easier way. 

We are off to the beach for the afternoon!  Finally some relief from the heat without being stuck in our apartment!  We'll post pictures soon! Have a great weekend!