At last I start my korean blog

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Hi all

Okay so I’ve finally decided to get a blog so family and friends can keep up to date with what I’m up to on the other side of the world.

I’ve been in Korea a month now so sorry about this but my first blog post is going to be REALLY long as there is a lot to say. I will keep it shorter going forward I promise! Sorry if I have already told you about some of this as well just skip to the new bits.

Seoul



Extremely tired and grubby we arrived in to Seoul on the 14th February. We had decided to fly out to South Korea early so that we could get over jetlag and adjust to the culture a bit.

We decided the best route from the airport to the hostel would be by coach, it looked simple enough and we told the bus driver where we needed to go and he seemed to understand. The journey took an hour but it was great to see how big Seoul is, it is literally enormous and full of skyscrapers. We kept listening to the destinations for each stop and then suddenly realized when comparing to the map that we’d just missed ours! The bus driver had totally forgotten about us so dropped us two subway stops away, then nearly drove off with our luggage! And to add insult to injury my bag broke just as we got on the subway so Ash had to pull it to the hostel. I felt slightly bad considering I have bought about 3 times as much stuff as him. Whoops.

Our hostel was in Hongdae which is a student area in Seoul and is known for its nightlife. On our first evening the hostel workers made us a traditional Korean bbq and fed us soju which was very hospitable of them. I will go in to more detail regarding food later though.

The next few days we suffered from horrible jetlag. Seriously I don’t think I ever actually understood how jetlag felt it was pretty bad and stopped us from going to sleep and then getting up and being productive. Because of this we became nocturnal which luckily is okay in Seoul as there is lots to do. So in summary this is what we got up to in Seoul:

Went to Insadong-il, a touristy/arty area in Seoul which has lots of nice craft shops, tea rooms etc.

Ate food in a korean fast food restaurant and it massively SPANKED western chains in how healthy and fresh and yummy it was.

Went to Dondaemun Market, parts of it are open 24 hours and had great street gimbap (like sushi). Visited the flea market there too which was cool.

Rode the subway lots, it is amazing - never thought I'd be bigging up the underground but it really is its so easy to use. There are little mini kimchi cabbage farms called metro farms in there as if its the most normal thing in the world - will put some pics up asap of that.

Went out in Hongdae (student area) where there are literally skyscrapers full of bars, we reckon there are more bars than people and that is hard!

Met up with Mitch who I know from uni days

Found a dog cafe - which turned out not to be selling dog meat but to be an actual cafe where you could go in and play with and pet different types of dogs (Daegu where I'm going to be living has a cat cafe so will be getting involved in that to overcome Chillam withdrawl) http://seoulpatch.blogspot.com/2009/11/dog-cafe.html

Found an empty fancy dress bar so got involved in some dressing up at 3am

Got lost walking home and ended up playing in a playground at about 8am in sub zero temperatures.

Went for a weird breakfast of soup with pig spine and meat in it 😞 on the same occasion at 8.30am in a traditional restaurant with loads of koreans whilst we were still drunk.

Got a cable car up Mount Namsan which is a litte peak in the middle of Seoul and saw how unbelievably huge the city is.

Generally got away with not knowing what we were ordering until one night we pointed at a random thing on the menu which turned out to be lots of totally raw freezing cold beef with a raw egg on top of it. The meat actually tasted nice but even Mr 'I eat anything' Ash found the texture a bit slimy.


EPIK induction at Jeonju University

We spent around 8/9 days at our teaching induction with lots of other soon to be ESL teachers going to the same areas as us. It was a really valuable experience in terms of meeting people and also for learning how to teach and practice our first lesson. Most days were hardcore with lessons from 9-5.20 and Korean classes in the evenings. We did some pretty good stuff too like Taekwondo class and having a cultural day off where we tried our hands at Korean dancing, drumming and paper crafts. On the last day of induction we found out what age we were teaching and whereabouts in Daegu. Both Ash and I were extremely shocked to find out that we had been given high school as hardly anyone gets them apparently – although a good few in our class did. To be honest I started to internally freak out at how the hell I was going to begin teaching kids that age 16) but there was nothing we could do so we just went with it.

Daegu

Tomorrow we’ll have been in Daegu for 3 weeks and are settling in nicely. Both of us have studio apartments and are only one subway stop or a 20 minute walk from each other which is sweet. We’re also not far on the subway to downtown Daegu where the shops and nightlife are. I am teaching first grade (16 year olds) at an all girls private high school and it is pretty sweet. I teach the same lesson to 15 different classes of 40 girls every week and from tomorrow will also be doing 1-2-1 conversational teacher classes. The other teachers are all really friendly and the girls are cute although they love looking at themselves in their mirrors and chatting in Korean instead of focusing on English conversation. Fair play though South Korea is really strict on education and students spend most of their lives studying and worrying about grades.

Ash is teaching at a technical school which is mostly boys. They are generally from poorer families and have not excelled in academia so are taking more vocational subjects and are a bit of a challenge. He is going to be teaching 36 different classes so will teach the same lesson for 2 weeks at a time. I think his calm personality is perfect for handling them though!

Food

Overall the food here is really nice and if you eat Korean it can be super cheap. I have lunches everyday at school for approx. £1.50 a day and really enjoy them. You get three side dishes, rice and soup and it seems to be different every day. I am proud at some of my recent eating achievements considering how fussy I used to be. I have successfully held a crab with metal chopsticks and sucked the meat out in front of my co-teachers. I am regularly eating octopus and my new favourite is pig spine soup – it is soooo good, Ash is now reducing my intake because I’m getting obsessed and wanting it every day.

One thing I really do not like though is noodles in a weird spicy kimchi slush puppy, also the weird green based pizza with a kind of sweet topping and custatrd I nearly threw up after that ha. Am sure more weird foods are just around the corner too.

I estimate there are tens of thousands of food places in Daegu and its so cheap that apart from breakfast we have only cooked for ourselves twice. We need to do some cookery classes because at the moment the food is so nice and cheap in restaurants that its easier to just go out thank risk making something badly ourselves. Also everyone else seems to eat out loads and we are trying to get in to the culture as much as possible J

Korean BBQs are the most popular type of restaurant. They usually specialize in either beef, pork or seafood. You order and then cook your own food and wrap it up in lettuce. You also get a bowl of tasty soup and rice. I haven’t eaten so much meat in my whole life as I do now! A vegetarian would be totally screwed here.

Sights so far

I haven’t left Daegu since moving here (only 3 weeks though I suppose) because I wanted to settle in and relax a bit but even so we’ve tried to do stuff at the weekend. Our first weekend we went to E World which is a mini theme park just up the road from Ash’s and that was funny and a bit surreal – this is where we had the disgusting pizza. Then in the evening we went to an expat bar downtown and then on to another bar to see a band.

We’ve been to Daegu’s biggest market which was bustling and full of life, textiles, food stalls, fruit and vegetables, clothing, bags, electricals – pretty much everything you need. That was a nice way to spend a sunny afternoon and it was a good way to see every day Korean culture too.

Daegu is surrounded by mountains and it seemed rude not to take a look at them so last Saturday we got a cable car up Mount Apsan in south Daegu and had a wonder along the mountain for a while. It was really hazy but the views of the city were still amazing. We treated ourselves to creamy pasta at a nice restaurant after too, I miss pasta SO much.

Ok that is a mammoth entry but I’ll leave it as that for now and try to update this regularly and keep it short and sweet x

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Photos

Seoul Cityscape
Seoul cityscape from Namsan Mountain

Raw dinner
Yep This is raw beef with a raw egg cracked on top of it!

Comments

[tomasz]

Very nice
hi Nat and Ash, good to hear you are having such an amazing time. i am well jell;)