Driving

Apparently I am easily amused by all of the new-ness around us. You'd think I'd never travelled outside of the U.S. before. Oh wait, I hadn't!

We took a little drive up to a Seoul on Friday, just to see something new. Seoul, of course, is humungous. We just walked around the Itaewon Shopping District which is a little area right outside of Yongsan Army Garrison. We knew we could just park on the army post and walk from there, so it worked out nicely. Where are we? We also saw a Starbucks, Popeye's, Burger King, Outback, Hard Rock Cafe, lots of American brand clothing stores, and a Crocs store.

The driving is, um, interesting. I was telling Dan that I didn't know whether it would be better for me to be driving, or riding, as far as my nerves and panic level go. He suggested instead I just take some Benadryl or Xanex! He's probably tired of all my grabbing the door handle and gasping like we're about to die while he's trying to drive. (By the way, that's not just a Korea thing, poor guy). But, the more we go out the more I get used to it, just like any new city we move to. Well, not just like it... it is a bit more chaotic. My new best friend is the GPS we recently bought. Worth every penny!! At least we weren't having to worry about reading road signs (in Korean) and could just concentrate on everything else and let Miss GPS Lady tell us where to go. In the above photo, we are waiting at an intersection. At a red light all the motorcycles just come up to the front ahead of all the cars, and when the light turns green, off they go! They're crazy! And I guess motorcycles aren't allowed on the highways. That is a GOOD thing, judging by how they drive in the city streets. Oh yeah, and sometimes on the sidewalks.

Several things about this one... look at all those signs! The lights are so confusing! They are not telling you that you can turn left from all three lanes (thank goodness!), but just that you can turn left from the designated left turn lane. The red circle means you can't go straight. Then when the green arrow turns off, there's a yellow circle, which makes a yellow circle and a red circle on at the same time. But the signs and lights don't necessarily correspond with the lanes they are above... very confusing.

The no U-turn sign I understand. But that blue circle sign to the left of it??? Didn't get it! Dan told me instead doing a U-turn it's telling you to go the the next intersection, turn right, turn right again, turn right again, then turn left. Same effect as a U-turn. Clear?

The other thing to get used to is that there are some intersections (in smaller areas on much smaller roads) that don't have stops signs or lights in any direction. Just a four way intersection with no guidance on who should stop or go. It's just whoever gets there first. Seriously, that's the rule. Whoever gets there first has the right of way. It's hard to get out of automatically thinking that if you don't have a stop sign, surely the other direction does. Surely not!!

And my favorite... lots of directions to things around here include something like this:

"Turn right out of the gate, then turn left at the triangle of death..."

Luckily, it seems the roads are much crazier than (most of) the drivers, most of the time. Mostly...