I LOVE KOREA

We never thought we would utter those words. Sure, there's good things about this country, plenty of them, but we were surprised tonight when we said it, "I love Korea!" So what made us feel this way? The other day I had a terrible time trying to get my bike to change gears and I thought it was just a little too cold for the bike. Today it happened again. I thought maybe the clutch cable needed to be adjusted. So, being the "fix it till it breaks" type guy, I broke it. I turned the screw a bit too far I guess and it snapped. AWESOME! The bike is in the basement, so Jen and I push it up the ramp so I can walk it to the shop. "Where's the shop?" "I don't know, do you?" Hahaha, I hate this country.

I walked over to the security guy and asked him, in my best Korean tongue, "Motorbike, place, where-yo?" "I don't know." Awesome! Ok, I'll push the bike down the street until I find one. I wandered to one side of the parking lot and then to the other. The security guard must have felt sorry for me, because he came out of his security hut and asked what happened to the bike. I showed him the weak link and he walked off. A couple minutes later he walked back with a phone number. He motioned for me to call them and I laughed and said, "I don't understand Korean" again in my best Korean. So HE called and told me that they don't have the cable, but would call back in an hour. Apparently they had to buy the cable from somebody else. It's already 6:30 and the sun is getting farther below the horizon. Jen and I took the dog around the block and to the store.

While I was waiting outside for Jen to come back, the mechanic called me and said a bunch of stuff I couldn't understand. I caught, "...first floor..." so I said ok and started walking toward the house. A minute later he called again and all I heard was "...hurry, hurry..." so I said ok and began running to the house.

Anyway, to keep a long story from getting longer, the cable broke at 6. The cable was fixed before 8 and it only cost me 15,000 won. The US equivalent would be around $10 with the atrocious exchange rate currently.

Think about it, these guys:
1) Rounded up the correct cable to fix the bike,
2) Drove to my apartment so I wouldn't have to push the bike to the shop,
3) At 8:00 PM on a Friday,
4) Replaced it in 15 minutes,
5) for $10 and a thank you.

I LOVE KOREA!