Observations

Korea is the only country I've been to so far where someone wearing glasses in an advert isn't necessarily a nerd or advertising an optician. Koreans can also pull off white-framed glasses.

Chivalry died in Korea. Or was never born here. You stand up for an old lady on the bus and some guy takes your seat.

People stand right by the door on the subway, even when they're not getting off and there's plenty of room on the rest of the carriage.

It's rude to blow your nose here but not to hock up a load of spit and hurl it out.

Men fart loudly and unashamedly all the time. Sometimes, it's as if they wait for you to walk past before letting rip.

Seat-switching on buses. I watched one guy change seats five times in a ten-minute bus journey. Also, the other day, the bus driver stopped the bus and removed a giant bee for the screaming passengers. I wasn't screaming, I just moved seats. Oh no! I'm a seat-switcher!

Bus drivers here are mental.

People watch TV on their phones all the time. We were having dinner in a little place near us the other night and a woman came in with her sons and ate one-handed, watching her phone TV the whole time. You mainly see it on public transport because all you can do is sit there. But then they walk off still watching it and somehow avoid bumping into people. Having said that....

....people bash into you all the time. Mainly old women and old men.

An alarmingly large proportion of middle-aged women wear visors.

Full moon madness, more cherry blossoms, Costco and an Italian Easter Sunday

So, Friday was a bit of a weird day. It was a full moon and every single one of my three classes had something odd happen in them after breaktime.

In my first lesson, I came back after the break to find kids shrieking because there were ants all over the windowsill and back of the classroom, so someone (who may or may not be part-time) had to come in and spray anti-anty stuff all over the place.

In lesson two, I came back to find the kids complaining that it smelled like the dentist. It stank. Some kind of disinfectant smell. Another teacher came into my classroom to see if we could smell it because it was worse in his classroom (we've since found it it was some kind of worm-killing stuff being used somewhere outside) and we had to have the fan on, which blows all the students' work off their desks.

Lesson three, I was coming back to the classroom after the break and one of my students ran out, going 'Ha! Ha! Ha!' with his mouth wide open. I said 'hahaha to you too!' until I noticed his mouth was bleeding. Then he held his hand out and he had a piece of toffee with a tooth in it. I took him to the office. And got a photo. But I took it on my phone so I'll add it later! When I went back to the classroom, the kids informed me that Korean toffee was 'very very very hard'. Hmmmm.

After school, Jo-Ann, Tracy and I managed to get on the wrong bus home, so we got on another bus instead but that turned out to be the wrong one too and we ended up back where we'd started an hour later. We'd got on the number 5 (which we'd never seen before) instead of the number 3 (which we always get) and when Tracy rang information they said there was no number 5 in Seoul! Later that night she locked herself in her house by accident, although when I turned up, the door opened by itself. It was a weird day. Oh and I bought a hat in a bar.

On Saturday, Kyra took us to Samcheonggak, a beautiful little place with a restaurant (we didn't eat there) that used to only be open to government people (info here if you're interested). On the way, wandering through Seoul, we saw a lot of bandaged up trees. This tree was so ill it had an IV drip!

Here I am pointing in the direction of Moscow for no reason:

We hung around waiting for the free shuttle bus for a while and then it flew past us. Luckily, we weren't waiting at the right place, so we jogged down the road and got on with all of the other people. It took us to Samcheongguk, which was beautiful.

I like the way the cherry blossoms make the mountains look all patchy:



Hang on a second, sir. What's that t-shirt you're wearing?


After that, Kyra took us to Costco, where we finally bought food for our fridge. We also had some food there. It's so strange. You park your trolley like a car, buy food and eat it and some guy moves all the trolleys around so yours ends up near the front when you're finished.

On Sunday, we went to this Italian place Simon's been going to for the last three weeks or so. He met this cool Korean guy outside Family Mart who speaks Italian and told him where to go to get Italian food. It's this little bar at the bottom of a church and they act as a restaurant every Sunday to a handful of people. This Sunday was Easter Sunday though, so it was packed. We got there early enough to get a seat but they had to get out extra tables for people. The food was delicious.

I also bumped into a girl I'd met at Seoul Stitch and Bitch the previous Sunday, which was cool. I think we may go back to both this coming Sunday.

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.