Blogs from South Korea, Asia - page 345

Chusok is the name for Korea's version of Thanksgiving Holidays. This year we apparently lucked out as to what days the holiday fell on because we only had to work the Monday of the week!!! The Tuesday was National Foundation Day (October 3rd) - separate from Chusok, but nonetheless it was still a day off! Chusok day is actually the 6th, but the 5th and 7th are also holidays. The idea is to allow people enough time off work so that they can go back to their hometowns and spend time with family and also visit the grave sites of ancestors. As a result, most large cities become deserted and highways are rammed with carloads of families traveling to their hometown. During the Monday of this week all the kindergarten children came to school dressed ... read more

Kovats and I had really wanted to check out a mall that sells strictly electronic equipment. Being in Asia, my visions of an electronics store would be one that carries the latest, biggest (memory wise), fastest, smallest pieces of electronic equipment ever made. This was not too far from the truth. We had two options; we could either go to Technomart or Yongsan Electronics Market. Both are well known. Technomart is a 10 story building that has numerous different booths setup on each floor catering to certain electronic needs. Whereas Yongsan Electronics Market is spread out in 20 different buildings, of which 2 buildings are 5 stories tall. Yongsan is known as the largest shopping area in Asia for electronics. Wow. Anyways, in the end we decided to make the trek to Technomart. We’ll save Yongsan ... read more

I'd send you all one of these wonderful Spam gift sets but at about 25 squid a pop you'll just have to make do with a photo.... Oh, and if I miss the architecture of Europe no problem! I can just wear this fetching outfit and feel instantly closer to home!... read more

We've been here a month now...first impressions...ok...I'm definitely not going to lie when I say there were more things that made our eyes pop out than I could remember. We were constantly comparing things to what we knew and either making the weirdest face, laughing and/or taking a picture. I'm an honest person so everything from this point on might be a little biased from my point of view...consider this your warning.... I know that sounds mean, but let me tell you......if you heard a little dink-dink-dink-dink behind you, turning around only to discover its a korean girl on her 4 inch or so toothpick high heels running full speed down the sidewalk. Assembling the blur together into a stick figure with zebra spandex capri-ish pants, puke green shorts/overalls, a bright pink shirt-thing underneath and a ... read more

.....but at least they still get me there in the end! I really feel like I'm starting to settle in now, the initail anxiety has gone and I'm actually beginning to feel rather at home. Last weekend was really fab, got appropriately leathered on Friday night, lost my wallet and broke my English phone but a good time was still had. Over here they're crazy about 'noraebang' which are like karaoke singing rooms. You go in with your mates, get shown to a room, drink as much as you like and try not to shatter the glass with your ear piercing attempts at singing. If you're a good singer I can imagine the Koreans love it (they just looked at me rather pitifully) but lots of girls in my class, when asked about their ideal man, ... read more