HomePlus

I went to Homeplus in search of many things that I spent hours not able to find. This store is huge!! It has three stories, which by the way, took me a while to figure out. The elevators are to your immediate left when you walk into the store, but leave it to me to miss that. The first floor is clothes, food, books, and private vendors. While I would have loved to eat some delicious black bean paste with vegetables, a little meat, and rice noodles, I unable to figure out how to order it. Pointing would not have worked in this situation, and I didn’t have my handy phrase book. Unfortunately, this lead me to settle for a Popeye’s fried chicken sandwich, and that is only because they noticed me and handed me a menu in English. What a great first dinner in Korea…not!! The second floor has groceries….oh man! I wish I knew that before eating my gross fried dinner. I’ve never eaten at Popeye’s before, and I’m hoping I never have to again. It also had cosmetic and toiletry-type stuff like grocery stores back home would have. The third floor is electronics and household items. I definitely spent a long time trying to explain to a non-English-speaking Korean that I needed a converter for my 3-prong U.S. computer cord. Finally, I was taken to a man who spoke fairly good English who just came on shift. After attempting to understand me, and walking all over the store, he tried to tell me that there is no such converter in Korea. Well, with a little more discussion, and many drawings, he found just what I was looking for on the internet. He then told me exactly what bus to get on to go to an electronics store in another part of Uijeongbu. Well, I politely explained that since it was my first night in Korea, I was quite fearful of hoping on a bus, especially since I didn’t have any way of contacting anyone at the school, or even know the address of where I live. So, needless to say, three hours later, I walked out HomePlus with no more than some yogurt, three bananas, and an apple. What a goof! I did walk around a bit before going to HomePlus though, so I was quite proud of myself for venturing to explore and not getting lost.