A few weekends ago Jason and I decided to spend a day in Seoul visiting the mall and watching a movie. We started our date off at CoCo’s Curry House which was sooooooo good. If you are ever in California, you can’t pass it up. Mmmmm. Just thinking about it makes me hungry!
Next, we shopped around the mall which was also pretty incredible. You haven’t seen a mall until you’ve seen a mall in Korea. Every mall is at least 6 floors, some up to 12. It is INSANE in the membrane. Where I come from, Concord Mills is the big to-do, but you could fit 3 or four Concord Mills inside of a Korean Mall.
And finally… the movie theater! Korean movie theaters are an interesting experience. When you pay for your ticket, you are also assigned a seat. The majority of the time they fill every single seat and Jason and I picked our movie out just in time to get some of the last ones. We picked two seats on the end of an aile. They weren’t the best, but at the time we were happy to get any seats at all.
Unfortunately, when we got into the theater we discovered two very important things. Number 1: Unlike most American theaters which have a small amount of room to stretch your legs once you sit down, the rows in Korean theaters are so close together that the seats in front of us were touching my knees. Number 2: There are only two ailes to get in and out of the theater, and both of them are in the middle rows. In other words, the seats that Jason and I had were right smack dab next to the wall.
This would have all been alright if we hadn’t gotten a giant coke. Yup. I’m a woman. I had to pee. SO BAD. I’m not even ashamed to admit it, you know you’ve all been there. It was about half way through the movie and I had just a tiny little urge. But I could still hold it and ignore it for awhile. So I did. Thirty minutes later it got a little worse, and then thirty minutes after that I was starting to get desperate. I kept looking at the screen and then back at the long row of people that blocked my exit to the aile. I was sweating and I kept drumming my fingers on my knees. At that point, I couldn’t even tell you what was going on in Star Trek II. Finally the movie was almost over and I just couldn’t do it. It was like Moses parting the Red Sea. I was stumbling and popcorn was falling and at least 8 Koreans were hissing and grumbling. They hated me, I know it. Anyway, at least I was kind enough not to climb back over them again afterwards. I figured if I’m going to be a Stupid American, I should at least be a Considerate Stupid American.
So the moral of that story? Get an aile seat, or else don’t you dare drink a sip of coke.
The Airman's Wife 