Dong Dae Mun

On October 29th we spent the evening making plans for the following week. Here are Cheryl and Jana (respectively) as they get cozy for the rendezvous.


Yeah, I know; it doesn't look like much planning (or much of anything, for that matter) is going on, but we did indeed arrive at a concensus for the next day's activities: shopping.

The next morning (October 30th) we set out for Dong Dae Mun. Here we are leaving the apartment.


Dong Dae Mun is a mega huge shopping market that sells pretty much everything. I like to say, "You can buy everything you want here if you can actually find it." And that's no joke. We started in one of the many buildings that comprise Dong Dae Mun Market, and, after walking through the first floor only, we emerged four hours later and had exhausted our funds. Yes, this place really is that big.

Funds exhausted (except for a few thousand won), we went home. We were pretty hungry since we missed lunch, so we decided to pool our remaining resources together and buy some street food called 떡볶이 (ddukbokki). It's glutinous rice sticks in hot red pepper sauce. This particular 떡볶이 also had 오뎅 (o-dang), which is kind of like a fish hotdog. We liked it so much that Cheryl was about to burst into song about how tasty it was.

Okay, she wasn't really planning on bursting into song, but she was worried that her facial expression in the picture did not do justice to her kindly feelings towards the food, but rather expressed the opposite: derision and/or disgust. I merely implemented a little poetic liscence, but I stayed true to Cheryl's intent. And she really does look like she's about to break into song.

We arrived at home in time to meet Matt, who had just come home from work, for dinner. Then we went to Nam Dae Mun Market, which is much smaller than Dong Dae Mun, where I sniped a pair of earrings out from under Cheryl's nose. I realized it was a shafty thing to do, however, so I let her have them. They really were gorgeous earrings, though, and very much worth sniping. Sisters are better than earrings, though, so I didn't mind relinquishing them from my clutches. Actually, I just remembered, the earrings came from Myoung Dong, not Nam Dae Mun. Oh well, the story is still the same, so I'll just leave it here.

We bought some more things, mostly accessories and snacks (they had fresh peeled and quartered pineapple on a stick ~drool drool~), and then went home. We fulfilled our plan to shop.