E-MART

     Since we arrived we have probably gone to E-mart about 10 times, maybe more. Somehow we always need something else. It's a good thing E-mart and other shops are of walking distance from the dorms. On the first day our program managers took us to E-mart and gave us half an hour to buy anything we needed such as bedding, shampoo and all the things we did not bring with us. We were told E-mart was the Walmart of Korea and it definitely seems that way. At first it was overwhelming and half an hour was not enough time to buy everything we needed. This is because we did not know where anything was and we had a hard time finding things. Now we navigate the store with such ease, but that first day was a blur. It was definitely a good idea for us to buy our own bedding at home because it's so expensive here! The only things we did buy concerning our beds were blankets and pillows which were relatively cheap. One thing I noticed is that there are different sales people located in the different sections of E-mart, something I hadn't seen before. The shampoo section, lotion, kitchen cleaning supplies, you name it, each all have their own sales person who try to get you to buy certain items on sale or are just simply there to help. This one lady even opened different shampoo bottles for us so we could smell them! After finding some of the things we need it we headed for the cashiers and though we didn't know what to expect that first day at E-mart we definitely learned a lot. After paying we noticed that they did not give us any grocery bags and were puzzled by this. We found ourselves carrying our items all the way back that night. Grabbing a shopping cart was also something else; you have to insert a 100 won coin to use it which we did not know. Had it not been for one of the girls we met in the program who told us this goes on back home in her state as well we would of been lost.
        First, in Korea if you want  grocery bags you have to pay for it! Many of the people shopping there did not have any shopping bags instead there's this section where you can pack your things into recycled boxes. We have yet to figure out how this works. Korea is big on recycling ! This might be a reason to why they sell the grocery bags, but I will elaborate about recycling in Korea in another post. We returned to Emart the next day on our own in search for hair dryers, straightners and adapters/ converters for our electronics. From previous research we learned that it was better to buy hair dryers and straightners in Korea than bringing them from home. This is because even if you use a converter it will not work the same, they are pretty much useless. We had trouble finding these items because we thought we could find them in the hair section like back home, but it turns out they're all in the electronics section! The hair dryer and straightner were not expensive at all and work really well. We also had trouble finding the converters, but once we did we even had a more difficult time deciding which to take since everything is written in Korean and though we can read it we don't actually understand all of it. We decided to just risk it and chose one, thankfully it was the right one !

We were concerned about how we were going to communicate with others since we can't speak Korean well especially when it came to paying for our items, but our fears subsided once we actually went through it. At least at E-mart all you have to do is look at the screen for the total and if you want a bag they'll either offer it or you can ask for it by pointing or just saying bag. One thing I do have to mention is that even though it's Seoul you shouldn't expect anyone to speak or understand English. So far we have met very few people who can actually speak it and most of the time they will speak to you in Korean, but not to worry because they will definitely try to help you in anyway they can. People have been so helpful to us it's been great. This first week has definitely come with a lot of firsts, and many challenges, but we're excited of everything that is to come!