omigod: shoes!

[Preamble: if you don't understand the title of this post, feast your eyes upon this.]

Now then!

My second day of teaching was today, but I don't feel like going into all that.  Well, actually, I'll give you the quick version: I'm beginning to hit my stride, it's difficult to keep my vocabulary simple enough for the kids to understand, my favorite (and smartest) class was strangely rambunctious today, and it turns out my morning classes' curriculum is way over the kids' heads (we were "beta testing" the curriculum, if you will) so we're scrapping a lot of the original syllabus--which makes my job easier.  And I got to leave at 4pm today!  Woohoo!

I decided to go shopping this late afternoon/evening.  It was awesome.  More on that later!  Including pictures!

***AND NOW BACK TO OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED DISCUSSION OF SHOES***

As I was sitting in the subway tonight, admiring my pretty new notepad, I decided to start jotting down little observations I have.  Hopefully I'll write quick little blog entries about some of those observations, in case someone other than me finds them interesting.  :c)

For my first post of that nature, I noticed a theme among my ideas: shoes.  Now, I'm not really a shoe person; I pretty much wear flip-flops just about every day of my life.  And I own a reasonable number of shoes; I'm not one of those crazy shoe women.  But since I've been in Korea (soooo...for the past 5 days) I've found myself noticing and admiring Korean women's shoes.  I tell you what--these women wear some ridiculously cute shoes!  I hear myself saying that and it sounds so....not me, but seriously, you'd think the same thing if you were here. 

Apparently I'm becoming a shoe person.

I discovered today that Korean women have an excellent reason for wearing cute shoes every day: they are CHEAP.  (The shoes, not the women.  Although who knows?  Maybe the women are too!)  In fact, Korea has a glorious and brilliant practice of selling shoes in the subway stations.  Racks and racks!  Of shoes!  Cute ones!  FOR NINE THOUSAND WON.  THAT IS NINE DOLLARS.  FOUR AND A HALF DOLLARS FOR EACH SHOE.  AMAZING.  I CANNOT CAPITALIZE THAT SENTIMENT ENOUGH.

Perhaps actual stores sell shoes for eleventy thousand dollars a pair; I don't know.  But the subway shoes are cheap!  I love this country.  Check out the pair I bought tonight!  Did I mention that they only cost nine dollars?  They only cost nine dollars.

You can't really tell from the picture, but the straps are white and a really pretty shiny blue.  (They look kind of navy blue here, but they're lighter and shinier in person.)  But seriously!  How cute are they?!  And how silly do I feel getting this excited over a pair of shoes?  ("Very silly" is the correct answer.)

Bless you, Koreans-who-sell-shoes-in-subway-stations.  Even though you make me feel like I have giant feet.