Yesterday was Xmas eve and we started off our first day in our motherland unpacking our two gigantic lugguages.

Unpacking the dirty laundry, putting back all the toiletries, unused batteries and sorting all the gifts that we bought for friends, relatives as well as for ourselves.

Didn’t know that we started off at 10am in the morning and only finished unpacking at 6pm. When I look around me right now, there are still some loose items strewn around in different corners of my house, and not forgetting the clothes that are hung out to dry. (please don’t rain today; if not, my winter sweaters can’t dry.)

Below are all the things we have bought from Korea, Seoul and Jeju.

Though it was my second time back to Korea, this country has never failed to continue to amaze and intrigue me. A shopping paradise for ladies in deed and a beautiful place for an avid photographer to take photos.

Here are the cosmetic items that my wife bought from shops like “The Face Shop”, “Skin Food” & “Missha”.
There are also authentic ear-rings that I have never seen in Singapore. Not cheap though. At least S$50 for a pair…but I guessed it is the worksmanship that matches the price of the ear-rings.

The staff hardly speak English. But what impressed me was language was no barrier for them for delivering excellent customer service and it doesn’t stop them from giving you the best service.

Common words like “face masks”, “blushers”, “lip gloss” are easy to convey. As for any more description words, they will try very hard to use both actions and solo-words like “nice”, “good” with their thumbs up, “3 times per day” showing 3 fingers and “this one, 1; this one, 2 and this one, 3” to show the order of using the cosmetic.

However, we did manage to meet some Koreans who can speak fluent English but the proportion is like 1 out of 10 Koreans that we came across. Most of the time, there are communication breakdown or we took 5 to 10 minutes to try to ask simple things like “How to use?”

Koreans are one group of enthusiastic people who work very hard. Statistically, they are the fastest walkers in the world, beating the Japanese.

The staff knowing that we were tourists threw in lots of freebies for us. We got a table mirror, at least 6 samples of different kinds of new products, plus bottles of mineral bottles. Most of the time, half of weight of items in the paper bags were freebies.

Today is Xmas eve. I want to wish all Readers Merry Christmas!!! >.< especially to all my bloggie friends and the newly wed...and of course to everyone who is reading my blog right now. >.<