There's a fairly large strip mall a few blocks from my house, affectionately called 'Spongey' by the foreigners in the area, because that's about as close as they've come to deciphering the mall's correct Korean name. Spongey is comprised of a 50-50 mixture of Korean and North American stores and food chains... you can find anything from Pizza Hut, to Zara, to a Korean dollar store inside. I stopped off on my way home from work today, due to a rumour I heard that Spongey offered free Wi-Fi...
Spongey is busy most hours of the day, so by the time I arrived around 7pm it was still buzzing. I managed to find a quiet bench at the far end of the mall, located on the second floor. I pulled out my netbook and started fiddling with it, but I must have been focusing pretty intensely because I barely noticed a group of teenaged Korean girls walking toward me. They were directly in front of me when I finally glanced up.
At that point one of the girls looked back at me and started screaming blue murder.
The screaming girl yanked her friend's arms, twirling her around so they both faced my bench. Then her friend started screaming too. I tell you, I've never been so freaked out in my life. I thought maybe some guy was standing behind me with a gun, or a deadly spider was crawling up my arm... I didn't know what to do - the girls only spoke Korean.
After about 20 seconds of chaos (and several near heart attacks) - those damn girls started laughing! They began babbling to me in Korean, worsening my confusion... my heart was racing so fast and all I could think was, "What the hell just happened?".
Thank God for the nearby English-speaking Korean man who witnessed the scene, or I would still be confused and writing Spongey off as some sort of nut-house. As the girls walked away (stll laughing hysterically) the Korean man approached me with an oh-so amused expression and explained, "They were scared because you moved. They thought you were a mannequin".
Geez, Louise.
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