Shopping in Seoul, part 1/?

In a word: dizzying. Products are bright, flashy, and very much in your face. It's worse when the product names are all in Hangul (which, okay, I can read, but not so much when I'm strolling down the aisle in a haze). Shopkeepers, too, blare announcements in your ear, both when they're hawking on the street or in a department store. Walk through the produce aisle and you'll see a slew of shopkeepers advertising watermelons or fish. On the streets, mini skirt-clad women carrying microphones try to herd men and women into make-up shops.

Employees at Grand Mart (I initially thought this was the equivalent to WalMart, but not until I heard about Home Plus Mart... read below) were very kind to poor old me as I tried to find a detergent for delicates that can only be handwashed (remember the days in Guatemala when the only clothes I had with me were basketball shorts and yellowed t-shirts? those days of roughing it are long gone). Obviously, my Korean is nowhere near the level needed to express this. All I could say was "옷" (clothes) and then make hand-washing motions, which the lady interpreted as my needing hand soap. After a few minutes of charades, she helped me find the right detergent. The lady at the counter was not as nice, as she mildly snapped at me when I tried to take a plastic bag for my detergent (maybe I misunderstood, but it seemed like only purchases of 5,000 or so won and above entitled one to a shopping bag?). Well, it's a good incentive against using plastic unnecessarily.

My friend Charlie, who's also here from Stanford, went shopping with his host family yesterday, and they took him to Home Plus Mart, which he described as "WalMart on acid." I heard from another source that, like Grand Mart but likely fifty times worse, there was a frenzy of employees blaring their products in every direction. Charlie saw something that was quite baffling. The employees at one point assembled into a line and started dancing and clapping in unison, singing "Home Mart Plus!". When he asked his host mom why they were dancing, she explained, "because it's dance time!"

I just asked my host mom about this, and she said that they dance during their break periods in order to exercise and keep their circulation going.

I've never had a clearer purpose in my life than I do now, and that is to go to Home Plus Mart to witness and photograph this phenomenon.