First week teaching completed and Irish drinking fun

Greetings from the future. As in, it's 12:17pm here but 03:17am where you are. I don't have any lottery numbers for you though. Sorry.

So, I completed a full week of teaching and it wasn't actually that bad! I'm back in the internet cafe as my 'free' internet currently won't let me on. I've taken over almost all of my lessons now. I'm only sharing one with Tracy, a New Zealander. It's the first lesson on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday, which is quite nice. My other lessons are going really well, although I'll find out exactly how well when they come to do their mid-term tests soon. On Thursday, a little boy in one of my classes gave me a hideous but quite cute little basket of sweets, as Saturday was White Day, where boys are supposed to give girls presents (girls are supposed to give boys presents on Valentines Day) and we got a whole box of Dunkin' Donuts on Friday from one kid's parents.

On Thursday night, Tracy took me out to ladies night, where lots of bars let women drink free. I was expecting seedy places, slimy men and watered down drinks but I was pleasantly surprised by the strong drinks and not-too-seedy venues. We started off at a place called Helios, which was a bit pretentious and had loads of army men standing around waiting to enforce the curfew on the American soldiers but then we moved on to a place called The Loft, which is a German bar, doesn't skimp on the drinks and plays Rammstein if you ask for it. I had a great time. I met some lovely people and drank a lot of rum and coke and headed home about three hours after Simon (he works in the morning and I don't). Some teachers didn't get in til 7.30 apparently and I caught one snoozing in the staff room later that day.

On Saturday, we met up with some of Simon's friends from the compound, who were really nice and great fun. We went to a St Paddy's day shindig in a park, where there was free Guinness (we went round a couple of times) and hundreds of green balloons:

Some shifty-looking character:

The Guinness Girls:

There were foreigners everywhere. We ended up heading back to Itaewon, near where we live, to some bars and then Simon and I got the subway to a Tex-Mex place to meet some of his other compound buddies, as it was someone's birthday. The staff gave us hats and things to wear and then sang something that included the word 'Birthday' but it wasn't entirely clear what it was they were singing:

Simon's friends, Aaron and Mallory (whose birthday it was):

Some shifty-looking Mexican:

We headed off earlyish that evening, as I always start to flag around 8pm when I've been drinking during the day. I look happy (and superimposed) in this photo but I couldn't wait to get home:

On Sunday, it was quite an overcast day and we finally went south of the river to the Coex mall, a massive underground shopping centre, where we wandered about, saw Watchmen (excellent, if a little gory) at Megabox for a reasonable 4 quid and generally enjoyed a moochy Sunday. I bought a top that says 'crooked smile but no one notices. They're looking at your glasses' for about 2 pound 50. There's no pound symbol on this keyboard.

Here's the view as you walk back towards our place from Itaewon. That's the N Seoul Tower, on top of Namsan, the 'mountain' I live next to in the middle of Seoul. Nice, eh?

In other news, I have a bank account but no account card, for reasons unknown. The very nice lady who opened the account for me (and laughed at my little slip of paper that the Korean office ladies gave me explaining in Korean that I wanted an account) said I can't have a card for 3 months, so I might have to talk to someone about that. Oh and I had a medical this morning. I got the subway on my own for the first time, managed to turn up without an address or phone number (I forgot I'd given the school's business card I had to the woman at the bank) and found the hospital ok. I then spent an hour or so wandering in and out of different areas, being asked questions like 'do you have any psychopathic disorders?' and 'please take off your bra and hug this machine, Bungard'. I also discovered that my weeing-in-a-cup skills have deteriorated somewhat, which made me nervous and I couldn't fill each cup a third, as I was instructed. The guy who took my blood was really good, even though he went 'ready?' just before he did it. I had my eyes shut tight, hoping he'd already done it and I couldn't help squeaking 'no!' but he just laughed and thankfully it was relatively painless and stress-free.

Simon and I have been making plans to visit some of the palaces and there's a tearoom in Insa-Dong that I really want to visit, so we'll be trying to fit in sightseeing around the city over the next few weekends as well as keeping up with his compound buddies.

I only know Canadians, Americans and New Zealanders here, so I'm hoping I don't come back with some kind of weird combination accent. If I do, hit me.

That's what I've been up to, more or less. I've also been getting mad at the no internet situation but we can't get it ourselves until we have an Alien Registration Card (ARC) each. That's what the medical was for. I get the results for the medical in a few days, so I hope there are no abnormalities. I did drink some Pepsi and have a sweet on the tube, so fingers crossed I won't come out as diabetic.

Korean life is going well though. It's weird looking into a tank outside a restaurant and seeing a little octopus swimming around. Outside one restaurant, there was a tank with a plastic bag in it and there was a large octopus inside that, which was sad to see. And Simon pointed out that a lot of food gets wasted here. But the food is generally good, although I'm not a fan of kimchi, the pickled veg they have with everything. I also had some radish on Saturday, mistaking it for pineapple. It was nasty.

I still have to enquire at the school about Korean lessons, but I plan to do that this week, if not today. Learning how to read Hangul before I came out (which only takes about a day) really helped and Simon and I are constantly spelling out subway station names as practice on the tube. Oh and I saw some men cleaning windows the fun way yesterday, while I was getting the bus to work:

That's all from the future for now. Email me, text me (but not at 2am, like Miles and Katy did today) and generally stay in touch.

Loads of love,

Hannah

PS - I haven't been mistaken for a Korean yet, although I have found that a lot of people from America and New Zealand think that Nepal is a city in India.