Work meal and a relaxed Saturday

On Friday, there was the monthly staff meal. We went for an Indian, which I have only just started to like, but I have to say that it was delicious.

Here are some people I work with. I hope they don't mind me plastering their faces all over the internet:

My new Zealander friend Tracy:

After that, Tracy and I went back to Itaewon, where Simon met us. It was free drinks for girls again and it actually turned into a bit of a wild night out with a brief stop at a place on Homo Hill (which is next to Hooker Hill) and culminated in McDonalds at 5-something am and a lot of confusion on my part as to how I ended up with an egg Mcmuffin and no cheeseburger (and a hash brown instead of chips). In my defence, everyone goes out really late here (Simon didn't show up til 1am) and I didn't realise it had got so late that we'd swung round to the breakfast menu. It was fun anyway. Sorry to anyone who may have got texts from me. I'm a happy drunk. No photos, thankfully!

I felt bad the next day, although Simon felt even worse thanks to the soju he'd been drinking before he met us, but I got over it quickly enough. We wandered down to the second-hand place near us and had a look for a fridge and a chest of drawers. The owner was nice and gave us weird little vitamin drinks to have while we walked around the shop. We settled on a little fridge freezer and a small chest of drawers and arranged delivery for Sunday midday.

When that was all sorted, we headed back to Hongdae, the cool uni area, where we met up with Kyra. She's Rosy's friend who Simon met last time he was in Seoul and she's really cool. It's a very arty and creative area and I'm probably going to end up with several pairs of hand painted Converse, as there's a cool market with loads of exciting stuff. We went for 1000 Won-a-plate sushi which was delicious and perked us both right up.

I think we had seventeen plates between three of us:

Then we tried to go to a Wii place, where you rent a room with a Wii in it but they were busy and the wait was to long, so we ended up in an incredibly chilled-out hookah (hookAH) bar:

This place wouldn't work in England as you can imagine drunk people heading there after a club night or something and falling in the water. It was quite dark and a couple of times I thought I was going to fall in. We had some drinks. Simon had an apple tea but I was recovered enough to have a beer. And then we got a hookah. It was apple flavoured tobacco and really nice. I'd never been to a hookah bar before, so this was a new experience for me but a very cool one.

We went back to Itaewon after that for a someone's birthday and had a much less wild night out but a nice one all the same. On Sunday, our stuff arrived and we had a relaxed movie day. Oh and I finally managed to ring my parents and had a nice chat with my mum. This week, I'll we'll both get our ARC cards and so we'll finally be able to get phones and the internet at home. Oh and I'll start learning Korean - hooray!

Japan vs Korea

On Wednesday, there was a baseball game between Korea and Japan. It was the fifth game, as they'd won two each previously, so this was kind of the decider. It was on all the massive outside screens as I walked from the bus stop to work and I walked through a load of people just standing there and I had to turn around and take a photo.




I wish I'd taken more. Everyone in the whole square was facing a TV screen. There were about three or four in different directions and people had come out of work to stand and watch the game.

Unfortunately, Korea lost.

A Saturday with a palace, birds and fish

Matt keeps calling this blog 'Bungblogalypse', which makes me laugh, so I thought I'd share. Just wanted to post some photos of a wonderful Saturday. Simon and I visited Gyeongbokgung, which is a palace nearish my school. I go past it every day on the bus and it's the biggest one in Seoul.

We turned up just in time for the changing of the guard:

and then joined a tour with a sweet and funny Korean lady. Here are some photos from around the palace:

This is a sundial they invented that also split the year in 24 seasons for agriculture:

Kingy things:

A hexagonal chimney behind the queen's quarters:

Simon got dressed up as some top official:

I preferred the cardboard cut-out route as it was boiling hot and I didn't want to put any more clothes on:

After the palace, we headed for Insa-Dong to find the bird tearoom I'd marked in my rough guide months ago. After a while, we found it and it was wonderful. Simon had the strongest, spiciest ginger tea we'd ever teasted and I had cold pear tea (with a spoon).

Then, we headed to Hongdae, the university area, to visit a Doctor Fish restaurant. You wash your feet and then you sit with them in water and Doctor Fish eat the dead skin from your feet. You also get a beer and a piece of cake. Not bad for a fiver. I'd been wanting to go ever since Rosy took Simon last year but when I was actually there and about to put my feet in, I couldn't do it! They were bigger than I expected and Simon had his feet in and was making all these weird faces. Anyway, eventually I did it and it was not how I expected! I thought it would be gentle nibbling that you didn't really notice. But no. Simon started me off with the Chinese Doctor Fish, which (he later admitted) are the more hardcore ones. I put my feet in and something just attacked me. It felt like. I mean, these things really go at you! It took me about ten or fifteen minutes to get used to it but I did in the end. It felt like having quite bad pins and needles. Or lots of water jets on your feet. It would have been ok but they kept moving, which reminded you that it was something alive that was feasting on your dead skin. But once I got used to it, it was brilliant.

My feet. I mean, Simon's:

Mine!

That's more of a grimace than a smile:

We stayed there for a while (and my legs and feet were so smooth afterwards!) and met a Canadian and two Americans, so we went for dinner with them and then home afterwards. I'd more or less lost my voice the night before and sounded like Marge Simpson all day so I didn't want to stay out late. My voice completely disappeared on Sunday but I got it back a bit on Monday in time to be made fun of by my kids. I gave them the extra hard spelling words if they laughed at me. It was more or less completely back yesterday and it's only a bit croaky today.

Work is going well. I give regular spelling tests and lots of homework. It's fun being in charge! I start learning Korean next month and I handed in my application with immigration this morning to get my Alien Registration Card, so soon I can get a phone and things like that finally.

Hope you all had a lovely weekend too,

Love Hannah Bunged-Up (I've had this stupid cold for nearly two weeks so far) x

Free of disease!

You'll be pleased to know that I'm free of AIDS, TB and anything else they tested me for. Hooray! It seems my meagre amount of peeage was enough. I picked up my medical results this morning and the nurse told me everything was ok but then pointed at my blood results and circled 'white blood cells'. She said it was a bit high and I immediately developed hypochondria and asked what it meant but she said 'maybe.....you have cold?' and I started grinning with relief while coughing and spluttering 'yes I do have a cold!' like a gullible audience member at a Derek Acorah show who's just been told they may have eaten a banana in the past. So, I'm all fine. I made sure I took the school's business card with me to give them the address and phone number but no one seemed to want it. Oh well.

I went upstairs in my school to the Korean department the other day to enquire about Korean lessons and the lady I spoke to (whose name is Hana!) said I can start on 2nd of April, so I'm quite excited about that. I'll have two lessons a week and they'll be 12 -1 I think she said, so I'll have two hours between finishing the lessons and starting teaching.

Oh, want to see my walk to work? I took photos just in case you did....

I step off the bus, turn to my left and head towards the tall thin building sort of in the middle of the picture:

I always pass this statue and it was lovely to see someone almost mirroring him the day I took this:

You'd think you could be in any busy city, until you see this guy:

My rough guide doesn't tell me who he is but I'll find out. Just a city shot:

I can't really take photos at the school as there's not much to see from the outside and people will see me and think I'm weird if I take them inside. It's just one floor, basic classrooms with desks, chairs and a whiteboard and a couple of teachers' rooms which are crammed with stuff. I like it though. Simon's is all new and exciting apparently. He could post about it in his blog but he hasn't even posted one entry yet. Which means I'm winning. Woo!

North Korea

Two posts in two days. How good am I. Well, it's just that this happened when I'd got to school yesterday, after posting that last blog.

I 'd been told, on my second day, as Tracy and Jo-Ann showed me how to get the bus to school, that there's a siren that goes off around the 15th, every two months and it's called something like the Civil Defence Siren. When it goes off, they said, everything in Seoul stops. Traffic comes to a halt and if you're a pedestrian, you're supposed to get off the street, into buildings or the subway. They told me that a new teacher was in a taxi and the siren went off. She didn't know what it was, or why the taxi had stopped, so she asked the taxi driver, who pointed in the air and said 'North Korea'. The teacher thought they were invading and rang the school in tears, saying she was going to die and everyone fell about laughing before explaining what it was.

I told Simon about it when we met up but at the back of my mind I couldn't help wondering if they'd said it for a joke, just to wind me up because I was new. I mean, I read a lot about South Korea and Seoul before I came out and that didn't come up once.

So, yesterday, I was at school early to plan my lessons and suddenly, at 2pm, I heard the siren. It was weird. Other teachers were in the office with me and said 'oh, that's it. That's the Civil Defence siren' and it went on for ages and ages. Then, there was a ten or fifteen minute gap and it went off again, signalling that traffic could start again and people could carry on. I've since found out that it goes off every month, on the 15th, unless it's a weekend and then they'll do it on the nearest weekday. And all in case North Korea attacks. I can't say it isn't a little scary but the threat isn't huge, they're just trying to prepare people a little. I'll probably be at the school already every time it goes off. Some teachers were late because of it but it's unlikely I'll still be on my way. If I can film it at least once, I'll try! I get some days off between terms, so if I'm ever travelling when it happens, I'll try to capture it for you all. Just thought you might find it interesting.

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.

No longer alone in a foreign country

As the title suggests, I successfully met Simon on Saturday at Noksapyeong tube station (which is only a short walk from our flat). He arrived at about 5.45pm, which was earlier than expected and I met him like an excited teenager. We dragged his bag back to the bedding shop under the flat and I introduced him to the landlady (by introduced, I mean that I gestured at him saying 'boyfriend' over and over in bad Korean). He loves the flat too.

Here are some pre-Simon photos of the flat, when it was all nice and tidy still:



This is the view from my balcony at night:


Oh and this is the supermarket a few shops down that makes me smile every time I see it:


So, seconds after arriving, Simon starts chatting to this Canadian guy and his Korean girlfriend who were on the roof next to ours. I'd never even seen them before (I'd seen their suicidal dogs but not them). I couldn't believe it. He'd been there five minutes and had already wangled an invitation to this guy's house. The closest I came to making friends last week was when I waved at a Korean lady on the roof of a building over the road. She ignored me.

We wanted to go out for dinner, as Simon had been eating kimchi all week in the compound. So we hopped on the subway, which of course I hadn't done before. Here's our station:



That's my obligatory cheesy face pose. The subway is really easy to use and we now have T-money cards, like Oyster cards, which you charge up with money and can be used on the buses, which is handy for me. We went to Hongdae, which is a studenty university area with tons of trendy-looking Koreans, and had dinner in a not-very-Korean place, where Simon had been with Rosy last year. We had massive sausages and tempura prawns. And lots of beer. We didn't stay there long though as it was late and we were tired. When we got back, we went to this convenience store down the road, Family Mart, bought some beer and sat outside in the sort of covered area they have, drinking them.

On Sunday, Simon had to go to his school to be videoed or something so I got up really quite late, watched some anime and then meandered along the road looking for the key copying man. His stall is right opposite and open but god knows where he was. It was open all day but we didn't see him and then about six hours later he finally showed up and we now have two keys, both of which you have to really force into the lock before they'll turn.

Anyway, I went for a wander when I initially couldn't find Mr Keyman and as I was walking back, I looked up and saw the Canadian guy and his girlfriend on the roof and then looked at ours and saw some shifty looking character hanging around, which gave me a bit of a shock but it was only Simon. We then walked into Itaewon, which is a real foreigners district. There were westerners everywhere and lots of places like Burger King, McDonalds, Starbucks, etc. And places like this sports shoes shop:


Oh and we also saw a tailor who, according to the pictures in his window, had catered to the likes of Magic Johnson, Pavarotti and:


Yes, that's right. Steven Seagal. Or Sigal, as the sign said. After wandering up and down Itaewon, with Simon imparting helpful information that he'd learned in the compound ("If it's one barber's pole, it's a barbers. If there are two barber's poles, it's a brothel." and "If it says 'karaoke' and not 'norae-bang', it's karaoke with girls. Like a brothel" - I mean, who has been hanging out with all week?!), we had some food and then headed back to Family Mart for a beer outside again. We read a bit and chatted a bit and that was the end of the weekend really. Oh, actually, we bought some, er, exceedingly cheap DVDs in Itaewon, so we came home and watched Gran Torino and Choke. We have Transporter 3 to enjoy at a later date. It was, all in all, a very pleasant weekend.

As today is Monday, Simon had his first day at his school. Now, I teach classes of, at the most, 14 kids. Simon's classes can be between 30 and 40 kids, so he was quite nervous. I sent him a text near the end of the day asking how it went and the reply said 'it sucked'. He then went out for drinks with his other teachers (all Korean) so he's not back yet for me to ask why. I had my three classes today and I taught half of the second and most of the third on my own and it went well. I'm starting to suss out the kids a bit more and I'm starting to get favourites already and use their weird English. "Teacher, writing?" "Yes, writing. I mean, write this down." and when I was talking to two Canadian teachers (our teaching staff are all western), I found myself talking to them as if they didn't understand. I bet Simon and I are going to end up yelling at each other in broken English every night, as if we're still teaching. Sometimes, they do weird things or say something funny, or just do kiddy things and I'll start laughing, so I need to stop doing that and be a little more stern. They are hilarious though. And some of them are really bright, which makes the classes a lot easier. I don't get home til about 8.30pm most days and Simon should be getting home around 5.30pm (when he isn't boozing it up with the other teachers) so we'll only really be able to spend a good amount of time with each other at the weekends. It's not so bad though. I'm starting to get to grips with my job and we're in a good location so....hooray I suppose! I'm just disappointed that I'm not going to be in England for the launch of episode 6 of Zomblogalypse. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, please go here and be educated:

www.zomblogalypse.com

See? Still pimping it out from halfway round the world. Anyway, bye for now and I'll write soon.