Saturday, November 13, 2010

The Great Crib Quest

As you are probably aware, we need a crib soon. In fact, we need two cribs… soon. As it turns out, cribs are not quite as common here in Korea as you might expect. The various baby stores that we checked have piles of bottles, blankets, and 12-month-old clothes, but not a crib in sight. We were somewhat hopeful when we ventured to Toys ‘R’ Us a few weeks ago when we saw a sort of oddly shaped crib on display. These hopes were dashed when we discovered that this crib was only a platform from which the store was selling more blankets. Asking employees for cribs often turned frustratingly humorous as the word “crib” sounds exactly like “cream” to all Koreans so we were quickly escorted to the baby lotion section of the store.

After several arduous hours on Google, I found my answer. Evidently, there is an online store that sells every baby product I could ask for. Enthusiastically, I typed in the promising URL and waited. What I found was indeed a site that sells cribs, strollers, car seats and anything else you might need or think you need for baby’s big debut. There were two catches. The first one, I expected. In order to be able to buy these items, you need to speak Korean. Not too big of a problem as we have a few Korean-speaking friends kind enough to help us. The second catch I didn’t see coming. Apparently, the makers of this site think that it is a good marketing strategy to induce seizures in their clients whilst they are browsing the hundreds of pages of baby products. Each tiny thumbnail picture of a product changes and flashes with such frequency, it is exceedingly difficult to actually distinguish what, exactly, the picture is advertising. As I am unable to read the name of the product in Korean, I was forced to stare at each picture for several minutes before determining whether or not it was an item that I desired. Shop a moment in my shoes here. But seriously, watch out.


After several dizzying hours on this site, I finally determined the items I wanted to buy. We were getting our cribs, a rocking chair, a dresser, and a changing table. A friend of ours was kind enough to help us through the equally as dizzying purchasing process and we awaited the arrival of our items. Having never received any sort of confirmation of our order, I was a bit worried. However, sure enough, random delivery men began knocking at our door. Cribs, check. Rocking chair, check. Dresser, check. So far, so good. I was feeling pretty confident about ol’ seizure-inducing G-Market. Then, the changing table came. This is what we received:


I’m not sure if you can tell the scale from this shot, but this piece of furniture is not large enough to change anything but your daughter’s Cabbage Patch doll, and that’s pushing it. My favorite little quirk to this little treasure is the dog and bone handles. I never quite determined what the exact purpose of this item is supposed to be. However, after a few emails and very broken phone calls, we evidently communicated that this was not what we ordered. Yesterday, the nice delivery men came and picked it up again. We haven’t received the changing table yet, nor have we seen a credit to our checking account. It is kind of exciting to live on the edge and just wait and see which prize will be selected for us. Will it be door number one with the changing table we ordered? Will it be door number two with a refund to our account? Or, will it be door number three with another item delivered to our door, a kitty cat version this time? Only time will tell…

1 comment:

ginger said...

Okay, that site is totally awesome. Maybe you could save the image file to get it to hold still?
Your adventures are fun to peek in on. Good luck with your baby girls!