Odysseus Cable

Funny story of the day:
Recently my internet decided to stop working. After endless frustration, I broke down last night and investigated the cause: my ethernet cord was broken. An easy enough fix, I was actually relieved, because I was convinced I could take care of the problem by myself! Hooray!
Today I went into work and asked Ellen if she knew of any place I could buy this cord. She thought about it for honestly, maybe five solid minutes, standing next to me. The pause was beyond uncomfortable. When she finally 'came to,' she said, "Ah Mandi. The Samsung store near to your house will have the cable." Great! Off I went on my little journey. Home by five!
There are actually maybe ten Samsung stores "near my house." They all sell different things, which I didn't know. I picked one "near my house," where I was met by two young bored looking gentlemen assembling phones, and asked if they had an internet cable.
"INTERNET CABLE?!?!" They replied.
"Yes," I said. "Lan cable. Internet cable. Cord." I did a lot of pointing at cords. They looked extremely puzzled and showed me various mouse models, a printer, and some cell phones. Five minutes later and they still weren't getting it. I thanked them and walked out the door. Next!

"Do you have an internet cable?"
"INTERNET CABLE?!?!" They replied.
"Yes, LAN cable, internet cable, cord," I replied. More pointing, more printers, more cell phones. Three minutes later. I looked around and wasn't seeing anything promising.
"Lan cable," I said one more time.
"OOOOHH!!!! LAN CABLE!" Eureka! The shorter one understood me. "Sorry, no. No cable." At this, Shortie wrote a phone number down on a piece of paper. REALLY DUDE?! I DON'T WANT YOUR FREAKING PHONE NUMBER RIGHT NOW. UNLESS YOU ARE CALLING TO GIVE ME A LAN CABLE. Then he started drawing a map, and wrote a bunch of things on it in Hangeul with various arrows.
"Internet cable store," he said, and pointed at the destination, with a Hangeul name above it. Of course there's an INTERNET CABLE store. Anyway, exasperated and a little embarrassed, I thanked him and left, trying to follow his map. From what I could read, it meant for me to turn left at the Jeil Wedding Store (?). I live in a neighborhood with a lot of wedding stores, so it made sense.
After walking for about twenty minutes, I got a little closer to the wedding district and flagged down two auspicious, chubby middle school boys, showing them my map. I figured they were probably my best bet for English speaking Koreans on the street, and asked, "Jeil wedding store?" They giggled, because they were being addressed publicly by me, a white lady in a fur hat (presumably Russian, presumably a prostitute) asking where this wedding store was. Through the giggles and the extreme broken English, they told me to go straight, then turn right. I followed their directions, and looking over my shoulder, I saw that they were following me. I kept pointing at streets and saying, "turn here?" And they would giggle and shake their heads. Finally, after a seemingly endless walk, I found the right wedding store, and the right Internet Cable store (wtf, seriously Korea), and bought my LAN cable for less than two dollars. Phew!

In other news, here's the finished product of my movie with my students this week. The English is unintelligible, and the story is completely senseless (don't even try to follow the action), but they really had a lot of fun and went completely crazy when I showed them the Youtube video today in class. I'm both sad and relieved that it's over, and can't wait to do another camp in the summer.
Behold: Youngcheon Ghost Story.

More soon,
<3M