Scary movies

It’s been a nice little break for recuperating with my foot- but SUCKED b.c. I couldn’t go ANYWHERE!! :( Viable travel opportunities... gone.

Oh well... I still had a good time with “Asia movie week” with Tish -- we watched 7yrs in Tibet, Memoirs of a Geisha, and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. It was nice for my foot AND back since we laid on her awesome mattress!!! (Yes, she shipped it from home, so it’s nice and comfy and soft- totally unlike the mattresses here... hard and crap. :( )

ALSO- she had gone to a massage place last week and the guy gave her his card saying “Call me and I’ll come to your house” !!! Pretty much b.c. it’s cheaper to make house calls instead of him having to pay a fee to his boss... NOT b.c. he wanted to do other things with us... (which I say that, b.c. in China- it’s like that.. In China, you pretty much just DON’T get a massage at all b.c. a massage means... well, you know!!)

So I had a 2 hour massage for about $40!!!!! UH-Mazing!!! We will make it a bi-monthly ritual :)

Today I had to get outta the house. So we called for the “international taxi” which is supposed to come pick you up at your house and take you wherever.. except, they didn’t have on in our area!! (which doesn’t make a whole lotta sense since we are the rich foreigner area of town, but whatev!) So- Tish got a cab at the bottom of the insane hill we live on and came to get me and we went to see a movie.

Now- first off... you can’t really find out the movie times here b.c. everything is in Korean.

You can’t call the movie theatre for times b.c. everyone speaks Korean.

And you can’t just randomly show up at the theatre hoping to get a movie you want, b.c. everything is in Korean and all the Koreans buy their tickets from home.. ( which I can’t do b.c. #1 I can’t read the website and #2 I can’t buy an online ticket b.c. I don’t have a Korean national ID #!!!, I’m just an “Alien”!)

So... we called this help line and asked for the movies.. the only english ones were “Orphan” and “The Prefect Getaway”.. The Koreans TRULY enjoy scary movies!! :)

So we went to the “Orphan”..

The movie theatre was in a tall building about 13 stories high.. each story was a theatre with a different movie playing..

So we were on the 11th floor (luckily there were elevators.. which you really take for granted in the US, having them.. but surprisingly S. Korea, despite it’s real advanced nature, is lacking in the motorized moving helpers.. aka elevators, escalators, etc.)

We went to choose some seats in the back of the theatre b.c. of my broken foot and about 5 minutes later 3 korean 20-somethings come and stand next to us looking like we’d taken their seats.. I was like “What are there assigned seats here or something like that?! lol..”

Well, sure enough..

There are!!!

Evidently the US is one of the only places in the world that DOESN’T have assigned seating at the movie theatre!!!

So after realizing our seats we pretty much in the front (which we entered at the back and naturally there are stairs going down towards the front) I sat in some other people’s seats and waited til they came to see if they’d switch.

Luckily when they came, they guy understood a little bit of English and agreed to take our seats in the front! whew.

Crisis averted. (ESP since the seat-holders came late and it was already dark and mid-scary music and creepy scene #2!!)

So.. it was interesting seeing a movie.. but I don’t think it will be a common occurrence b.c. there’s no recent movies playing here yet!!! Like, movies that came out in the US in June have yet to arrive here!!!! No wonder the blackmarket on bootlegged movies is SO popular AND good here... like under $10 for 5 movies that are in US theatres!!! Not bad, not bad.

Now, if only I could get to the blackmarket to buy them... that’s another issue. :(