Journey to Korea - Day 7

Day 7 is Wednesday, May 31. The night before, when Mistie was checking email she had received an email from the embassy confirming my passport appointment for Thursday, May 31.  There seemed to be some kind of mix-up.  The Thursday was June 1.  Mistie confirmed the appointment time. 

I got onto the embassy website to check my appointment. There was an opening for 9:15 a.m. on Wednesday morning.  We cancelled my 9 a.m. Thursday morning appointment and switched it to Wednesday.  Small blessings.  It would be one less unplanned day we would have to spend in Seoul.  We could move onto Gunsan a day earlier.  


The hotel men helped us get a taxi and tell the driver where were wanted to go.  Apparently just saying "embassy" will not get you there.  You could not get into the embassy more than 15 minutes ahead of your scheduled appointment time.  I had my passport application, flight itinerary, pictures and my family in tow.  Hopefully, this would be enough to convince the embassy people I was an American citizen.

There were a lot of policemen around.  Some of them even had pepper spray and handcuffs.  That's how I knew this police presence was serious. :)  We were let into the embassy at 9 a.m.  We had to go through security, which was a lot like airport security.  We had to leave all phone and cameras in a locker.  Our bags had to go through a scanner and we had to walk through a metal detector.

We walked over to the embassy offices.  There was a picture booth to take more passport pictures.  I had fixed my hair and put on some lip gloss.  Didn't want the same unfortunate picture as last time.  I didn't wear make-up because I didn't bring any to Korea.  I inserted my $7 and sat down.  All the lights in the booth went off and then a bright light flashed.  I was trying to make sure my eyes were open and that I was semi-smiling.  There wouldn't be a person telling me to not smile here so I thought I would try a slight smile.  Also,  I didn't want to have to put another $7 in the machine.  Well... this picture did not turn out any better.  In fact, it's almost worse.  Instead of looking like a mugshot, it looks like I'm in a little bit of pain.  Oh well.  My mom and sisters got a real good laugh out of it.

I was #8.  They called me to the counter.  I turned in my application and paid the fee ($115) and was told to sit back down to wait.  About 20 minutes later, I was called to another counter.  The nice lady asked me the usual questions.  What happened to my passport?  Was this the first passport I had lost?  Where was I from?  How long am I staying?  When am I leaving.  She asked me if I had a police report.  I had nothing.  The police that night I lost the passport only had me write down my information on a piece of paper.  She said I would need a police report, but not to worry because there was a police station nearby.  She said it should only take 15-20 minutes.

Mistie and I walked to the police station.  There was only one older policeman inside.  He spoke no English, but he understood what we needed.  I would have loved to get a picture with him, but Mistie's phone was back at the embassy.  He looked and looked for the reports.  He finally found them in a cabinet in a large binder.  The copies he found already had someone else information on it.  He wanted me to just write my information on the form.  I crossed out all the other info and started to fill it out.  The policeman started to work on the computer.  He was talking in Korean to the computer.  I got the impression it was going slow.  Since it was hot inside the station, the police officer got up and went into the back.  He came back out with three small brown bottles.  He gave one to each of us.  He opened his and took a drink.  We did the same.  It was ....  strong.  Mistie just looked at me like "I have no idea what this is, but I don't want to offend him so I'm going to drink it."

As I was filling out the form, a man walked into the station.  He spoke ENGLISH!  Another way God was taking care of us. His name was Christian.  The police officer got up and got Christian a drink too.  Mistie immediately asked Christian what we were drinking.  Christian said, "It's an energy drink.  Like Monster!" as he took his three fingers and scratched down while growling. Oh, okay.  I've never had anything like that.  Mistie wanted to keep her bottle so she drank it down - on an empty stomach.

Christian was in Korea with his wife, who was in the military. He had his passport and id stolen from him by his brother-in-law.  We got his whole store.  He was quite chatty.  I think he might have been a little offended that we were quite as offended as we should be about his brother-in-law stealing his id and passport.

Anyway, Christian helped the officer with the spelling of many of the words on my form.  The police officer was taking my information I had written down (not in all caps) and entering it into the computer.  His keyboard had English letters on it, but they were only in all caps, so he was having trouble with my lower case letters.  The police officer had asked me when my "Happy Day" was.  I had no idea what this meant.  We figured out he meant "birthday".  The police officer told Christian the computer was going very slow because they were all on the same network.

As the police officer was trying to enter my information, an older couple came in.  Christian had sit down and the man from the couple started to help.  They were very nice.  We were about half way through the information when a younger, pregnant police officer came in.  She kind of took over the computer and my form was complete in about 4 minutes.  You could tell she was probably the one who did all the computer work. They make copies (one for them and an extra one for me) for the form.  I gave them all some Butterscotch candy I had in my purse.  In all, it had taken an hour to get the loss property report.

We walked back over to the embassy.  I was called up to the counter and gave her my police report.  I saw she had a copy of my old passport.  She had all the info she needed.  She asked me to take a seat and wait.  It took about 45 minutes, but I had my passport.  It's a temporary passport. It's good through August of this year.  The woman said when I get back home I can get a permanent one and it won't cost me anything.  We left the embassy and took the subway back to to the hotel.

It was almost 12 p.m. so we decided to eat lunch at a restaurant right by the hotel.  We went in and were seated.  A lady came by and gave us a menu. I have no pictures of this meal because I still didn't have my camera.  We read the menu - ox bone soup, ox knee soup, ox, ox, ox.....  It did not appeal to any of us.  We ended up ordering three plates of dumplings and rice.  They dished out kimchi from containers in the table into bowls.  The waitress said, "This is the old kimchi and this is the new kimchi."  They brought out soup for us.  It looked like the broth all the ox bone soups had but there was nothing in the soup.  It wasn't too bad.  It tasted a little like potato soup.  I'm just going to pretend it was potato soup.  They brought out the dumplings.  We had ordered three plates because they looked small, but they weren't.  The dumplings were fist size.  We didn't even eat the one and half plates of dumplings.  We just took those back to the hotel.

We had two goals for the afternoon.  First, find a store called Alands.  We had looked for it the day before, but never found it.  Gina was wanting to find some Toms.  Second, find the Hello Kitty Cafe.

Mistie used her iPhone and we finally found it. I think we were just a street over the day before.  We went in to look for the Toms.  Gina was looking for the classic Toms.  They are around $54 per pair.  She found the Toms, but they were not $54 a pair.  They were $69.  She didn't purchase them.

We left Alands and just shopped as we looked for the Hello Kitty Cafe.  This was not an easy place to find.  It's not exactly on a main street - not that there were streets.  There are shops all along on the street and cars do occasionally drive down the street.  However, it's mostly like an outside mall.  We finally found the Hello Kitty Cafe.  I have to say, I am not a girly-girl,  crazy about the color pink, or rabid Hello Kitty fan, but I wanted to see it because it looked very cute.  We stopped in to get a drink.  Every single, thing in there was pink or Hello Kitty.  I will have to admit it was pretty cute, and my daughter would have loved it.  We took a lot of pictures so you can see.

Even the drinks were cute!  I ordered an iced caramel latte.  My mom ordered a sweet potato latte.  Gina ordered an Earl Gray hot tea. Lastly, Mistie ordered a coke and strawberry sundae.

I was very tempted to order the Hello Kitty chocolate cake because it was so cute.  However, it was 10,000 won ($10). I didn't do it.

Even the restrooms continued with the theme.

Such a cute place.  After the Hello Kitty Cafe, we just shopped.  Apparently we were in the clothing and jewelry section of the shopping area because there was a lot of it.  Gina was in hog heaven.  Probably because most of the clothes would fit her.  She purchased a few cute things.  Mistie got her girls some jewelry. It was fun shopping with everyone. 

We found a very cute store called Artbox.  I think we all purchased souvenirs from it.  I had purchased a stuffed bear, a soup/rice bowl, and small candy bar.  I walked out of the store and realized the man had charged me for a $6 item I hadn't purchased.  Gina purchase cute coffee cups.  They were a Mr. and Mrs. coffee cups.  The Mrs. coffee cup's handle hooked into the Mr.'s coffee cup handle. One of the handles broke before we got home though. :(

Pretty soon, Mistie, mom and I tired of clothes shopping for clothes that either weren't our style or wouldn't fit us.  We left Gina to shop on her own.  She finished her shopping and made it back to the hotel all by herself!  Even my mom got tired of shopping and made her way back to the hotel by herself.  Mistie and I went to Daiso (a store equivalent to The Dollar Store).  She thought she might need an extra bag with all the stuff we were acquiring.

We made it back to the hotel and decided to rest a bit before dinner.  Everyone checked their email and cleaned up.  I went out onto the steps of the hotel to wait for everyone.  I had been out there for about 15-20 minutes taking picture of all the cool, colorful tennis shoes people were wearing.  Two of the hotel guys came out and asked me what I was doing.  One of them asked me if I was taking pictures.  I told them what I was taking picture of.  He said, "That's not right."  I said, "Okay, I'll stop."  Then one of the men went inside, and the other asked me more questions, "Are you waiting for someone?, Are you going duty-free shopping?  You've been out here a while."  Yes, I am waiting for someone, I don't know if we are going duty-free shopping, and yes, I am waiting for my sisters.  It was weird.  He asked if he was bothering me.  I said no, but I am unsure why he is continuing to talk to me.  I don't know if he wants me to come in from sitting on the steps or if he just wanted me to stop taking pictures.  I just walked in and waited for my sisters in the lobby.  


We asked another hotel man for a recommendation.  He recommended a place just down the street called Bulgogi Brothers.  

 
We are seated and given a menu.  This is another bbq place where we will have to cook the meat.  Several people who worked there came by and asked us if they could take our picture for us.

We order beef bulgogi with bean sprouts, yaki mandoo with what I will call the "fixins", and another beef bulgogi dish clear noodles, onions, and vegetables.  They bring out all the sides - and they are yummy!  Mistie said this was her favorite beef bulgogi.

Below is the yaki mandoo.  The fried things are the yaki mandoo.  the stuff in the center is "the fixins".  Gina had asked that this not be brought out, but I said, "Yes, let's get it." not really realizing what it was.  We were only going off a picture, since no one spoke English.  Okay, "the fixins" in the middle are muscles, squid and octopus.  My mom is the only one brave enough to try it!  The pictures are blurry I took of her holding it with her chopsticks.  She said it was rubbery.  I'll just take her word for it.  I saw little suckers people!!!

 

Doesn't this look good?  We didn't know if we were supposed to cook it or if they were going to.  We started to try to cook it ourselves, but the waiter came over and motioned us to not start. 

He was very nice.  He slid through the booth behind us back and forth to cook the two beef dishes for us.  Oh, it was sooooo good.

This was our table when we were done.  There is no beef left! 

We left Bulgogi Brothers.  Mistie and I wanted to go to Family Mart to purchase some snacks for our kids.  On the way, Mistie found another "friend".   We each spent about $10 and bought snacks, candy and gum for our kids to try when we got back home.  We also purchased a few snacks for our train ride to Gunsan the next day.

When I got back to the hotel, everyone took about an hour to unpack our suitcases and repack them with all the souvenirs we purchased.  Some of us (Gina & Mistie) were lucky to get all their stuff in.  :)  We all still had our gifts we had brought for the orphanage on top of all the other stuff we had purchased.  Things were getting tight.  

At 9 p.m., Jung Hwa was going to come by and see my mom.  When she arrived up, I showed her my passport. She got a good laugh out of the picture too.  She helped us change our train tickets.  She wasn't even feeling good, but she stayed there and helped my mom get it all figured out. 

Gina and I went back across the street to Kona Beans.  Gina got an Earl Grey tea and more cream puffs.  We only stayed until about 9:45 p.m. because she was tired.  I went back to my room and wrote in my journal.  At 11 p.m., mom brought Sung Eun up to our room so we could say goodbye one more time.  I profusely thanked her again for all her help.  I was glad to be able to see her one more time.

 

After Sung Eun left, my mom and I went to bed soon after.  It was late, but it didn't stop her from waking up in the middle of the night to read again.