Costco Adventures

A trip to Costco is one of our regular adventures here. Yes, they do have Costco over here, and WE LOVE IT! :) It's kind of like a little taste of home. However, since we don't have a car, making a trip to Costco requires either a subway ride or a taxi ride. The subway is the best because it's the cheapest but we also have to pack everything into bags and haul it up and down 3 flights of stairs.
This can be daunting, especially when hauling "Costco sized" items. When taking the subway it also means we are subjected to stares and the unabashed attempts to look into our bags to see just "what the foreigners buy at Costco." Having Costco close by affords us the luxury of some treasured items though, such as ground beef, cheese, tortilla chips and olives....everything we need for tacos! :) yum!
If truth be told, Costco actually allows us to eat like a Westerner which we love. Korea has some delicious food but it can be incredibly spicy and it's always nice to have a taste of home when you're so far away from it.

Speaking of Koreans and their food. We found ourselves surprised when we first visited the Costco food court. They had pizza, hot dogs, and ice cream like usual, but we found the Koreans did something unique with the condiments. For example if there were two people eating together they would buy a piece of pizza and get an extra plate. Then they would split the pizza and take the other plate over to the condiments area. Then they would pile on an ENORMOUS amount of onions and equal amounts of ketchup and mustard. Then they would mix it all together and eat a delicious meal of pizza and raw mustard/ketchup onions. I wish I could say this was a single phenomena, but it actually occurs on virtually every table in sight, on every trip we take to Costco. (Really wish I had a picture to insert here)

Also, at the food court they have napkin bins on the walls around the food court so you don't have to walk too far to get your napkins. During one trip to Costco we noticed a man stopping by one of these napkin holders with his cart.....he then proceeded to pull handfuls of napkins out and hide them under his purchases. He then continued on with his hundreds of ill-gotten napkins and walked right out of the store. This was strange, not only because this man stole a ton of napkins, but because napkins are not a common item in Korea, so we were wondering why he wanted them in the first place?
Alas, that's a question for another day.....