Hey man, thanks for the free squid!

    That's what I would have told the guy at E-Mart last night. If I spoke Korean. As it is, "kansamnida" (thank you) had to suffice. 

    

    I guess you're wondering what I'm talking about. E-Mart is a grocery store, etc, across the street from our school. It's like a smaller Wal-Mart, with more food. Anyway, Jon and I discovered one night that they severely discount food like bread, produce and seafood in the half-hour before closing. They only discount produce that's sell-by date is that day, but all fresh seafood and the bread left over is discounted. So that's when we do our shopping, and it's pretty fun and suspenseful, since you never know what you're going to get. 

Like last night. A full squid, maybe a foot long including tentacles that weren't stretched to full potential, was about 2,700 won ($2.70ish). Which is a great deal. 

The other great part about E-Mart in general is that things often come, how can I explain this, taped to other things. Like the other day there was a 4-pack of yogurt attached to a 4-pack of chocolate milk, so the yogurt was like a freebie for buying the chocolate milk. Or sometimes there's just an extra of the same thing you're buying, like a 'buy one, get one' sale. It's cool. 

Also, there are a lot of salespeople in E-Mart that serve up free samples and shout a lot, obstensively about their product, but I can't understand them. It gets even crazier at night, with the salespeople desperately trying to sell what they have left. It's pretty funny. They're not annoying, they don't bother you, they just yell pretty much across the store something I'm assuming is along the lines of "Fresh squid! Only 2,700 won! It tastes really good! Please buy it!" etc etc.

So back to the squid story. The guy who was working at the squid counter, after we started walking away with our squid, picked up the other package of squid that was left and said "No, no, take!" (In English! A lot of younger people here know at least some words, like take, thank you, pay, sign, etc) After a few seconds we realized that he wanted to tape that squid to the other, aka give it to us for free. So he took the first squid from us, handed it to the guy behind the counter, and he plastic-wrapped the packages together. It was sweet. 

Now we just have to figure out how to cook squid. I figure we can figure it out. I mean, all the time at restaurants, they just throw it on the burner in the pan in front of us, cutting it into chunks with scissors. I can do that. Scissors are really an important culinary instrument here.

p.s. New photos!!! On the sidebar in a slideshow...click and it'll take you to the album