Walking, cherry blossoms and noraebang at 2am.

Last Wednesday (so a week ago now), Tracy and I walked to work. As there's a mountain in the way and neither of us like hills, we walked around it instead. This meant that we walked through the war memorial.

It took us an hour to walk to round the corner from work, where we stopped to try and take money out using my bankbook (I'm not allowed an ATM card for three months. Who knows why). Of course, the machine swallowed it and rebooted and we had to ring someone to come and help us. I eventually went into the bank and drew out half my pay so I can just have money on me all the time. We walked again on Monday and after I finish here we're going to try out the mountain route.

On Thursday, I went to immigration and got my ARC finally. I then went to school and had my first Korean lesson upstairs in the Korean department. It was pretty good. I learned a few basics and showed my rubbish Hangul reading skills. I have since had one more lesson and learned counting and other things. I'm quite excited about it all. After that first lesson, I tried to get a phone at Seoul Global Centre but there were no cheap ones so I said I'd wait. Simon had paid about 20 quid for his phone and they were trying to sell me one for 60. At school, the kids had mid-term tests, so I spent all day wandering about and pointing at the papers, saying 'is that the question says?' in an effort to put them on the right track.

There were more mid-terms on Friday, and the cheap phones came in so the very nice lady from Seoul Global Centre, with her amazing English, dropped my phone off at work for me! That evening, we went for a Soebu Massive (the people in Simon's work area) meal and drinks. This was outside the place we normally meet in:

A bit tipsy and possibly a little drunk on Weekend Euphoria, we braved the subway and ended up in a place called Tavern's Vil in Hapjeong. It was a fun evening, although I more or less had to carry Simon home. He did some kind of fireshot with the bar staff. I looked outside and the handrail of the balcony was on fire. I'm not sure where he got this megaphone from but he went around the bar high-fiving people.

On Saturday, we went cherry blossom spotting in Youeido Park:

Believe your eyes. This man really was walking a rabbit:

King Sejong. The coolest Korean king:

Silkworm soup!

Simon and I then broke away from the group as we were heading to a birthday party in Hongdae. We arrived a little early so decided to visit our good friend Doctor Fish. Look at the one on the left of my foot. It's sucking in a huge chunk of skin!

We made it to the birthday party, then on to a club and then finally ended up in a luxury noraebang (karaoke) around 2am. It was expensive but there was free ice cream and we belted out such classics as 'Piano Man', 'Cowboys From Hell' and 'that Korean song that everyone but me knows'. Good fun.