Going to the Movies in Korea

You’ve just moved to a new country. You don’t have internet access at home, no one on television speaks English, and you’re tired of exploring (literally, as in your legs don’t want to move anymore.) What do you do? Well, if you’re like me and Babehoney, you go to the movies! Going to the movies has always been something I’ve done to feel just a little more “at home” at a few different points in life. I think that it has something to do with the fact that I used to go to the movie every Tuesday afternoon when I was in college. It was my “me” time. When I lived in Hawaii I went to the movie every Monday for a while because it was my day off and it was a place that made me feel like I was back on the mainland. In Korea I think it’s going to be just because I want to see people speak English on the screen J.

The movie itself doesn’t matter, I’m writing this so you know what it’s like to go to the movies in Daegu. When you arrive at the theater you take a number (this seems pretty common in Korea) and look to see if there are seats available. Next to the movie’s title will be a number 55, 60, 200, 73, whatever. That’s the number of seats left in the theater. When your number comes up you walk up to the counter and buy your ticket. A ticket today was only 8,000W, a little less than $8 US. Once you have your ticket it’s time to head over to the snack bar. Popcorn comes in flavors here. I accidentally ordered the sweet. It was pretty good, similar to kettle corn, but with a little bit of “tastes like Korea” added in.  Two medium drinks and a large popcorn was 7,500W, around $7 US. It’s a bit less expensive to go to the movies here, I’d say. Now, True Grit came out several months ago in the US, so we were seeing it as a first-run movie in Korea, a bit late. I’m sure the bootleggers have plenty of copies running around here so it’s not hard to see why the price might be lower. The crowd was mainly westerners and the movie had Hangeul subtitles displayed at the bottom of the screen. It was worth every stinkin’ won we paid J.

We did find some interesting stuff on the way to the theater. There’s a dollar store chain here called Daiso, and we got some utensils and necessities for super cheap, and then we found a SANRIO STORE! Now, if you’re not familiar with Sanrio I’ll explain. Hello Kitty. Enough said. A WHOLE FREAKING STORE OF IT. WHAT A FREAK SHOW! Needless to say Babehoney and I were thrilled. Hopefully we’ll get back to it at a time that it’s a bit less crowded.

Tomorrow is the first day of school. We have our outfits picked out and we’re both sitting in bed at 9:28pm like good little educators. I’m sure there will be plenty of updating to do on our status after our first workday!