costco... in korea!

yes you read that right... costco in korea! :)

after saturday's adveture into seoul for the st. patrick's day festivities dani and i made our way back to ilsan and sort of slept in on sunday. we then decided we were going to find the costco that was supposedly somewhere in ilsan. being that ilsan is so large we thought it would be best to google it to see if we could find anything.

i found the address finally from the costco website and we eventually got google maps to tell us what bus number to take to get there. (considering i am still stealing internet, sometimes it hates be and refuses to work). we got the bus number, but we couldn't figure out the direction we were supposed to go. so we set out to first find an ATM for dani and then figure out which bus stop to take to get to costco.

after asking a few people, we figured out where we needed to go. turns out it is the same direction to go to costco as it is to go to western dom and la festa (which are giant outdoor shopping areas). after passing those i figured where we were. once we made it to our stop, we weren't really sure what to look for. it's funny, back in the states costco is a big thing and pretty much everyone knows about it, unless they have been living under a rock for years. here in korea you ask someone of they know the direction to costco and a lot of them just look at you in confusion having no idea what you are talking about. it took a couple people to finally find someone who first of all understood us, and knew where to go. we managed to get a front desk worker at a hotel to point us in the right directions.

we didn't know what to look for. being that costco in the states would be this giant warehouse looking thing. considering there isn't a ton of land space in korea, especially in the city, we weren't sure if that is what we were going to find. luckily the directions too us right to it. and it sort of looking like a warehouse thing, just multiple floors. two floors of shopping and then parking of course. always at least two floors of parking in every building.

we managed to fill out the paperwork and were able to get one account with two cards... because you know we are related. (woot for pulling that one off!) and then it was time to find cheese! literally that's why we wanted to find costco... for cheese. and tortillas.

costco in korea is absolutely INSANE! take costco in the states... lots of people depending on when you go. lots of carts. everyone trying to find what they want. long lines to check out. take that and times it by oh let's say 15 and you have costco in korea. people were everywhere. people stopping in the middle of the walk way. carts everywhere. getting rammed by carts. i swore if i got hit one more time i was going to ram their cart into them. so irritating.

we managed to find cheese... tillamook cheese! it's the little things. and tortillas. and cinnamon. and muffins. :) considering we didn't bring a bag and we had to ride the subway back we didn't get a lot. if i go back i am going to bring my duffel bag. or my coteacher. when i told her that we found it, she told me she had never been and that when i go again she wants to go. so i might take advantage of that and use her car. :)