Sunday, December 1, 2013

Having your wallet stolen is kind of a party killer

This weekend was so awesome in so many ways. And so not in one way.
I went to Itaewon (the foreigner area of Seoul) with Blythe and some of her friends from orientation. It was a great time- we stayed at a hostel run by some really cool Serbians, and shared out dorm room with a guy who is traveling on his motorcycle and has been to dozens of countries. It seemed like we had the perfect set up. Including the fact that our hostel was located just a few blocks from Taco Bell!
We checked in, dropped off our bags and headed to Myeongdong for a lot of shopping. Blythe and the other girls arrived in Korea in October, and therefore hadn't had time to buy warm clothes for our bone-chilling Gangwon-do winter. After shopping, we stumbled to our hostel with all our packages and got ready for the evening. Then we went out with others from our hostel, including our motorcycle friend, Noah, and a girl from Germany, and a guy from Greenland (I've never met anyone who's from Greenland before!). We were having a good time, and then we went to a place that was very crowded and a bit seedy, and sometime around four in the morning, I checked the latch on my purse for the millionth time to make sure it was closed, and it was, but my purse felt oddly light so I opened it, and behold, no wallet. Some clever person opened my purse, removed my wallet (which is enormous and bright red) and even shut my purse. I had bought a water just minutes earlier, so it was only a couple minutes at most before I discovered it missing. Luckily we did eventually find the wallet- someone had thrown it on the ground. I snatched it eagerly from Blythe annnnd all the cards were gone. The thieves were kind enough to leave my ARC (ID card) and my subway card, but everything else was gone.
Noah kindly brought me back to the hostel where we ate more Taco Bell and I frantically tried to contact my credit card companies. Around 6am I gave up, as my calls kept getting disconnected, but luckily my lovely mother at home was able to take care of it for me. I just have to figure out what to do about my Korean card. I called and they didn't speak English, so when I got back to my apartment and had the luxury of google translate I tried again. I think I managed to convey that my card was stolen, and gave them my info, but I think the person on the other end might have just been saying  yes to get rid of me- I am not at all convince that she understood what I was trying to say. So a trip to the bank is most definitely in order.
We spent most of the day sitting around the hostel trying to recover from the evening, while I moaned my losses- amongst my losses, I should also include my voice, which disappeared at some point during the course of the evening, and has not yet returned. I'm seriously wondering how this is possible as the last time I lost my voice like this was following the USA vs Panama World Cup Qualifier, and I certainly wasn't yelling like that last night. Anything I now try to say sounds like I am imitating a creaky door hinge. Lovely. Anyhow, hopefully I get a new bank card tomorrow, and when Taco Bell and friendly Serbian hostel workers lure me back to Itaewon in future, I will be a little smarter about what purse and wallet I bring.