shopping

Now that I am almost in my third trimester, David has been taking over more of the grocery shopping/errand running duties. Walking around Seoul, by the end of the day my feet have usually swollen to the size of small footballs (about Nerf size, I’d say) and all I want to do is stretch out on the couch with a slice of pizza (or six).

Anyway, Monday night he went out about nine p.m. to the Kim’s Club near the Express Bus Terminal to get some food for the rest of the week. I tried to get him to blog about what happened next, but he would only send me the basic details by email. I got a live cellphone play-by-play the night of, so what follows is his account of the Great Monday Night Kim’s Club Cashier Sit-in 2007, interspersed with my reactions by phone. (Sorry, no pictures.)

Dave’s comments are in block quotes while mine are in basic text.

Last night, I experienced a Korean-style union strike first-hand.

I arrived at the Banpo-dong / Express Bus Terminal Kim’s Club around 9pm. Besides a few guys standing around in suits and a handful of empolyees with vests on, things seemed pretty normal. However, by the time I had gathered all of my groceries into a cart, the number of vest-wearing people had multiplied, the set of cash registers closest to me had been intentionally shutdown and blocked by the strikers, the fist-pumping was well under way, and a small brawl had broken out. From my distance, I could not tell if punches were being thrown, but it looked violent enough. The police showed up a few minutes later and calmed things down, but the strikers were allowed to remain.

OK. That’s what he says now. But, when he called me about 9:30, all he said was that there was a protest going on in the store and that some guys had gotten into a fight near the cash registers. So I told him to forget the food, there’s absolutely no fresh kimchi so good it’s worth your safety, and to come home. But he said that things weren’t that bad, other people were shopping, and he’d be fine. Oh, and what kind of sliced ham did I want? By the way, he couldn’t find any zucchini, just cucumbers, would that be OK instead?

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I have to say it: Motherhood.com rocks. Rocks it like Metallica.

Just when I was down to only one pair of pants and one skirt that I could wedge myself into, my ship(ment) came in. Since Plan B was to ask my boss whether it would really be out of the question to wear my drawstring pajama pants to work, this is definitely a good thing.

I placed my order on Monday and chose to pay extra for two-day shipping in the hope that I’d get my clothes within a couple of weeks or so—hoping against hope that the above-mentioned clothing items could hold out that long. My past experience with ordering from the few U.S.-based online retailers who will ship to non-military addresses overseas is that—no matter what the website says—it will take at least three weeks and maybe up to a month for the package to get here.

Imagine my surprise when, exactly two days later, I got my order! Right to my door. Everything I ordered, looking exactly like I expected it to—and it fit!

What’s that you say? Don’t they have maternity clothes in Korea? Of course they do. Lots of them. Cute stuff. The only problem is that they are designed to fit the typical Korean female body type. Of which I am distinctly not. Not even close, apparently.

Clothes shopping here has been something of an exercise in humiliation even before I got pregnant. I’m not sure who was more embarrassed—me or the saleslady at the Levi Store—when the only pair of jeans that would fit me were found in the men’s section.

Full disclosure: I weighed 138 pounds at 5 feet 5 inches tall before I got pregnant. Certainly no one is going to want to put me on a runway any time soon, but I didn’t think I was exactly in “freak o’ nature” territory, either. I think the real issue is that, while I have a reasonably narrow waist and torso, my hips are definitely wider than most women here. So, even the “largee” size things don’t fit me correctly.

(Don’t even ask about the looks I’ve gotten when looking for shoes that might fit my monstrous U.S. size 9.5 feet.)

Thank God for Motherhood.com. Right now, I think if I could have its baby, I probably would.

The loot, originally uploaded by cathilee.

I spent Sunday afternoon at the annual international bazaar held by SIWA and the diplomatic community - 50 Countries and 5 Senses - and by the end I am sure a lot of people there thought I had lost mine.

I am already looking forward to next year’s event, when I plan to get there early so I can try out the different cuisines offered at the country booths, see some of the entertainment, buy some tickets for the raffle, score some cheese from France, wine and Sambuca from Italy, and maybe a little tea from China for the house.

Of course, I could have done that this year if I hadn’t been blazing through there like some sort of holiday shopping demon. I was just so overwhelmed by all the choices. Neat stuff from 50 different countries (art from Thailand, scarves from Indonesia, candy from Turkey, silk pillows from India) . . and during the last hour they cut prices like crazy.

I’d planned on picking up some Christmas gifts there in time to send back to the States before the holidays (Family, some of the things in the picture are going to look awfully familiar . . .). I was pretty aggressive. Let’s just say my new nickname is “I’ll take two…er, four, OK, fine, six…”

So I hope the next time I see a lot of the women from SIWA they don’t get that look in their eye like, ‘Back away, back away slooowly…’ Either that, or ask me to send their kid to college.

You can click on the picture to see the descriptions of some of what I took home.