October 1 - Daejeon

Woke up to pouring rain, so lazy morning doing laundry at hotel.  Super easy, and very affordable.
Then off to the absolutely largest "mall" I've been in.  Who remembers The Galleria in Houston?  This is also called The Galleria, and it's 12 stories - each floor has dozens of boutiques/ salons.  Except for the basement floor which is a full size grocery store, about the size of the GucciB - so imagine that magnitude on another 11 floors.

 The very top floor is a food court - we've been adventurous eaters the whole trip, and would have been here, but all signage was in Korean, and there weren't any pictures to help us choose.  So we went with pizza by the slice - pretty good though sweet like almost every food here.  In talking with Isabel, it seems that white sugar is a fairly new commodity and since it's "Western", there is some status to it.  I'm n the other hand, white skin is very prized.  There are zillions of skin care stores, and each one has rows and rows of skin masks and other treatments to whiten skin.  White skin is so important that most of the women wear hats.  Isabel has an assistant teacher who is Korean.  After Isabel had been in the sun one weekend, the Korean teacher said - in a very disapproving voice - "Oh Miss Isabel, your skin is now so dark."

We met Isabel and some of her friends later, and went to the old downtown- Daejeon has grown so much that much of the civic buildings have been relocated to a newer part of town.  Anyhow, it was awesome.  We went to a typical Korean restaurant - they all serve a lot of extra side dishes - always kimchi, often pickles radishes, soup, and sometimes fish cake.  Honestly, I could just eat this and be done.  Rice is not served routinely- but it's very cheap to order as a side.

Loren and Isabel

I found the blow up signage fascinating.  In the daytime it looks like below, and is about the size of a 32 gallon trash can lid.  At night, it blows up like in picture above - just inside the left arch.

We wandered around the shopping area - mostly people watching.  Saw a bunch of guys help a friend give flowers to a girl - kinda like he was among her to go out - not a proposal.
Because the area is above a major subway station, there's also underground shopping - lots and lots of  small stores selling everything you can imagine.  Super entertaining.

Isabel has to work tomorrow- so more adventures to come.