A day in the life of us...: Destination Daegu

Friday morning (10:00) Chris came with the information that we had to get to Daegu today. This meat that we had to check out of the hotel within the hour. A military escort took us to the train station, bought our tickets and arranged for an Ojeshi (male adult) to carry our luggage and make sure we got on the right train.

Here is a picture of our Ojashi.

Here is a picture of the platform for the trains.

The train that we took was the "bullet" train. An average train would take up to 5 hrs to get to Daegu, the bullet took 1.5 hrs. The speed was 290-300km per hr. (approx 180 mph)

The train was very clean. I'm always fascinated at how clean public transportation systems are overseas. The train employees would bow as they would enter and right before they would exit the sliding glass doors.

I suppose Seoul was a major stop. There was a pre-passenger cleaning crew that came on and replaced all of the white clothes on the head rests. There was another crew that came on and picked up all the garbage. There were TV consoles on the train and at one point they had a mini show of different animals procreating, very interesting. There was a snack cart that a man pushed up and down the aisle. The girls had green tea and "jeepo", dried fish...similar to jerky.

When we arrived at "Dongdague", 2 military members met us to take us to the hotel. We had our first experience of driving in a car. The lines in the road meant nothing and an inch was enough for a car to squeeze in. Driving here organized chaos. I do not see us taking that challenge on any time soon. The air was cleaner and the temp was about 10 degrees warmer.

Welcome to Camp Walker. This post is very small compared to the Seoul post. The commissary is about the same size as the Dexheim commissary (for our friends who were there). It has a small town feel.

We were out and exploring our new home by 9. Most of the city didn't open until 10 but it gave us enough time to walk far enough off post and get a feel for the community.

As we came onto post last night Isabelle noticed a store that had puppies for sale in the window, as you can imagine, that was one of our first stops. When we stopped at the second shop they had a Shitzu that was selling for $50. This is incredibly cheap and I'm sure you could negotiate a "discount".

We followed signs that said "market" and ended up here. This is where it gets insane! We were completely jazzed to have found it.

This is an open market where you can find anything.

I was worried that the vendors would be offended with me taking pictures but they were the complete opposite. Everyone was especially friendly to the children. Most of the items were familiar and some I had no idea. The prices were awesome. We bought 4 pairs of socks for 2000 won ($2.15).

I love this picture. Sophia was petrified of everything on the table. As I was trying to take a picture of her the vendor of the table tried to help. She took one of the crabs (live) off the table for Sophia to hold. Sophia had no idea the woman was walking up behind her. When Sophia turned around and saw the woman, she screamed and jumped.

This was another memorable moment. I had my back turned to Chris and the kids when I head all 3 girls squealing. I turned around and all of them are running up to me telling me the octopus moved. The vendor was slapping the octopus and the octopus was moving. I suppose it was to show us how fresh it was.

I had no idea what these things were, they were all moving. I did have a hard time looking at them.

There were little stands where you could buy food. Chris isn't to this point yet, he'll come around (wink).
As we were standing at a crosswalk a Korean man started talking to Chris telling us he was an employee of the club on post for 40 years. He also told us he had a mountain house and we were welcome to visit him anytime. Chris asked him for a restaurant recommendation. The man walked us to a restaurant and told the waitress to treat us well, and that she did.