No Coke. Pepsi.

I found a little noodle shop that serves the local ROK Marines. I go in, look around, and see to great joy that they have reach-in coolers with sodas and juice. Most excellent! I start scanning the options. Mountain Dew. Lots of Korean stuff. Pepsi. Some bottled water. Within seconds my joy turns to horror as I see that neither cooler has what I really need. Darn it all to Heck!

Well, desperate times call for desperate measures. I'm typing this with a Styrofoam cup of icy Pepsi at my side.

Here's some more about the interactions with the Koreans over the last couple of days. Their word for yes is ye but to hear them pronounce it it sounds more like "yih", only with a drawn out 'y' sound at the beginning. I've also noticed that certain military words don't have translations and they don't even try. "DEFCON" and "H-Hour" spring to mind. The translators are fun to talk to because they keep asking if a certain word is proper, which is right up my alley. I probably gave one of them way to much information on the difference between 'possess' and 'have' but hey, he asked. There was also a smirk worthy moment when one of the enlisted translators called me "Sir Draper."

Since English is taught to them all through school, some are fairly fluent all by themselves. The Colonel who is in charge of the section I'm working with can speak fairly well. We were sitting in a video teleconference with several other units and towards the end of the meeting the video feed froze up and we lost the signal. We waited for a little while and it never restarted so he leaned back in his chair, shrugged, and said, "Hmmm. Game over."

So we're most of the way through Part A and the weekend will provide some liberty. I'm going to try to get to Osan Air Base and a western commissary and some real Coke. Wish me luck.