Yet another big weeked! I have the feeling that is not going to change anytime soon!
Friday after school I had my dinner with the other English teachers, well most of them, we made it into a bit of a girls night which was a lot of fun... We all piled into Ja Young's car and headed to Songtan - which is where the US Osan Airforce base is. We headed to a Thai restauruant for dinner, apparently the Thai food you can get in Osan is "Korean style" and the teachers wanted an authentic Thai meal. The food was incredible, once again I ate far too much, I really am going to have to join a gym or start doing something active here because at the moment I feel like all I do is eat!
I really love the way Korean's eat - even when ordering Thai food - they choose a selection, eat that, and then order other different things, so you re
ally get much more of a selection. Not to mention that the food is always shared so there is never that Western style "I want what she's having" dilemma! Sharing food is not an issue - its just dig in with your chopsticks! The kids at school do sometimes take this to the extreme though, like when I bumped into some of them at the E-mart and they were eating ice-creams, to make polite English conversation I told them that their ice-creams looked good, and their instant response was to hold it out to me so I could have some. While I don't have a problem digging in with my chopsticks, sharing a pre-licked ice-cream is something I would only do with a few people, not my students!
I really love the way Korean's eat - even when ordering Thai food - they choose a selection, eat that, and then order other different things, so you re
ally get much more of a selection. Not to mention that the food is always shared so there is never that Western style "I want what she's having" dilemma! Sharing food is not an issue - its just dig in with your chopsticks! The kids at school do sometimes take this to the extreme though, like when I bumped into some of them at the E-mart and they were eating ice-creams, to make polite English conversation I told them that their ice-creams looked good, and their instant response was to hold it out to me so I could have some. While I don't have a problem digging in with my chopsticks, sharing a pre-licked ice-cream is something I would only do with a few people, not my students!
Because Songtan is where the US base is located there are American's everywhere, and the Thai restaurant was no different, there was a couple there with their young daughter, who was behaving like a brat...no surprise there...hehe. But the other teachers thought the kid was really cute - even though she had ghost eyes (blue eyes...hehe). Just as we were finishing up a bunch of about 20 soldiers came in for their dinner - a good time to depart as all of a sudden the restaurant was really noisy! We headed off for coffee to this gorgeous little shop we had passed on the way up to the restaurant, apparently one of the best coffee shops in Song
tan,
Yun is a bit of an expert on coffee - she drinks a huge amount of it! The Korean's love their coffee, American style, and Korean style - and I have discovered that I love both...so life is pretty good! The cappuccino I had was delicious, and spending that time with the other teachers was fantastic, we had some of the most bizarre conversations. One of the teacher's, Osana, has a really mean sense of humour, she has me in hysterics, even in English she is brilliantly clever. So with our coffee's finished and two of teachers thinking about returning home to see their kids (they look way to young to have kids...) we decided to head back to Osan.
Ja Young dropped us off at the school where the other teacher's cars were waiting and I wandered back up to my apartment, she offered to drive me but it is in the other direction from her house, and it is only a 5 minute walk anyway! At his point I think it was about 8 pm (oh the joys of teaching hours...hehe) so I quickly got organized and jumped on a bus to Byeongjeom... where wine, chocolate and the most adorable kitten were all apparently waiting for me - and chilled out after a busy week in front of the film "Invictus".
Really great movie, even if the rugby scenes were a little lame, the shots from under the scrum actually made me giggle... Saturday morning was busy - the weather man lied to me and told me it was going to be 19 degrees - and like a fool I believed it! So we headed down to Cheonan, which is a few stations beyond Osan, in the opposite direction from Seoul. We were suppsoed to arrive in Cheonan at about mid-day but ended up getting there around 1pm by the time we had gotten off the train and managed to get a taxi to the restaurant - Outback Jack's.
Definitely a strange feeling walking into Outback Jacks, with all the aboriginal style artwork, boomerangs, and the word "Sheila" spelled incorrectly on the door to the ladies room...hehe. The menu made me giggle too - I really should have taken a photo of it - every meal was named after a place in Australia, and then all the descriptions were in Korean... My friends and I were there for a post-wedding lunch for some friends, for Richard and Nesheba, with a small but very friendly group of people. Those events always make me feel all mushy...lol... especially when they got up to give speeches - so cute! After lunch we headed back to their apartment which was absolutely amazing, I think it was on about the 18th floor of this massive building, and the views were spectacular! One level down there was a balcony area from which you could pretty much see the whole of Cheonan and at this time of year the autumn colours make everything look so beautiful even against a grey sky.
The apartment was also substantially bigger and far more modern than mine, it was a two bedroom with a loft affair for the bed above the living area, before I cam here I had never really fathomed just how big you could make such a tiny space feel! We played poker for a few hours, with a few drinkies, some good music and great conversation, before heading up to Seoul for the Lantern Festival. At this point I was feeling thoroughly frustrated with the weather man - it was freezing and I was wearing a mini-skirt - so I stopped at this little roadside stall
(they are everywhere here) and for about $20 I bought a pair of stockings and some little black ballet flats that would get me out of the sandals but also be really handy to have for school!
I was planning on getting them and heading to burger king to change quickly but the guy must have clicked as to what was going on because he told Ashleigh (thank goodness for Ashleigh and her translation!) that I could use the backroom are behind the stall to get changed. A very bizarre experience but I was super happy to be warm again!
We decided that rather than catching the normal train, which from Cheonan would have taken a little over an hour, that we would catch the KTX train instead. KTX stands for Korea Train Express, it is a high speed rail system, the top speed for trains in regular service is about 305 km per hour but it has been designed to go as fast as 350 km per hour. The terminal where you catch the train was impressive, looking more like an airport than a train station, but it was the feeling of watching the trains that didnt stop at the station that knocked my socks off - they slowed down for the station but they still rushed past at around 200km per hour - the blast of wind, the sound, and the shape of the trains as they whizzed by was very futuristic!
So we arrived in Seoul where we headed straight to a coffee shop - in need of a caffeine hit - and it was cold enough that a hot coffee was too tempting to pass up! We waited for our coffee's, talking about the fact that the
Christmas decorations were already up, and harassed the guy working there to take a group shot of us with the Christmas tree. With the photo taken and coffee in hand we headed out again into the cold night air, following the large crowds in the direction of the Lantern Festival. The lanterns were stunning, some of them were the most incredible colours, and they were all placed in the middle of a stream that wound its way through the middle of the city. Because they were set down into the stream the lights glittered off the water and lit up the faces of all the spectators.
The lights of the city buildings and all the busy signs above that made the night almost as bright as the day. The crowd was massive, akin to the new years eve rush in Melbourne, and yet apparently quite normal for events like that. Everywhere you looked there were people, and people just pushed past each other to get where they were going. The older ladies are funny, they really don't care if they hurt your feelings, and have no concerns for manners, they would just put their arm out and push you out of the way. We wandered up and down looking at all the different lights and displays and then began to head back in the direction of the train station contemplating the idea of Galbi followed by a short session at the No Rae Bang to keep us awake till the ru
gby started.
We stopped for a snack at one of the street food stalls where I bought some Mandu (dumplings) and dukboki (spicy rice cake stuff) which I hadnt tried yet but that everyone had raved about. Absolutely delicious! Now I am just upset that the lady with the stall outside the E-mart doesn't sell dukboki! By the time we got on the train back we were all feeling pretty tired - so the Galbi and No Rae Bang idea was dropped pretty quickly, we opted instead for heading back to Jaco's place to chill out, order take out, and generally muck around before the rugby. Fortunately the All Black's played the English at 12:30ish so that kept me awake till the South Africa v Ireland match that was on at 2:30am... We ordered chicken (wow - I really have to find out what that stuff is called...soooo delicious... might be handy if I c
ould speak Korean well enough to get it delivered too - but at the moment I wouldn't even know how to give them my address!) followed by pizza when we found a place that was still open!
As it turned out by the time the match started Ashleigh and Nesheba were fast asleep (shame!) and it was only Jaco, Richard, Karel and I that were still awake to watch it - and even then a little bit of the enthusiasm had faded... Special mention also goes to Richard for telling me about some really handy i-Phone applications, that I can use without needing a sim card or a wireless connection, that give me a complete map of the train system and all the bus routes and timetables etc. Special mention should also go to Jaco for letting me hi-jack his wi-fi so I could download these applications!
Got home at roughly 4:45am on Sunday morning feeling a little worse for the wear and practically fell into bed - I was lucky enough to fall asleep in the taxi on the way back to the apartment, which I hear was a good thing because apparently the taxi driver was a little more frightening than usual! I do vaguely remember thinking he was going pretty fast considering you could only see a few meters in front of the car due to a thick fog. Speed limits are apparently irrelevant in this country...haha. Piling out of a nice warm taxi into the cold not air is also not exactly pleasant - makes me think it is definitely time to go and invest in a nice w
arm winter jacket - fortunately I get my Alien registration card on Monday afternoon so I can finally open a bank account - and get paid!!!
Sunday, again, was a bit of a write off - spent sleeping, eating, and generally being lazy - other than the dance lesson I gave to Karel...lol... kudos to Karel for being a good sport! ;) Went via E-mart on Sunday night to buy candy for the kids for this week - I promised them prizes as part of my people bingo game that we played last week - and bought this absolutely massive bag for about $5. I suspect this bag will last me at least to the end of the year! (Unless I suddenly decide that I can't live without a sug
ar fix...) I also noticed a huge area dedicated to Pepero Day - November 11th - something to do with the fact that the date 11/11 resembles four sticks of Pepero - which are the long thin biscuity things dipped in chocolate - apparently inspired by the Japanese "Pocky" - which for those of you that know me would know I have a bit of a passion for...lol. I was told about this "Pepero Day" by a few people and the geek in me made me look it up and do a bit of research...
There are a few stories about how it began - one of which suggests that it was at a girls middle school in Busan, in 1994, where they exchanged the sticks as wishes to one another that they would grow tall and slender - amusing when you consider that they are biscuits dipped in chocolate and more likely to make them short and tubby... Another rumour is that it was actually started by Lotte Mart as a sales ploy - though they deny this - saying instead that they simply noticed more Pepero sticks were being sold at this time of year and decided to encourage the holiday by presenting the Pepero if special gift boxes etc. Check out this link for Pepero advertising. Upon further reading I discovered that there are actually about 21 such events / special days in the Korean calendar which have become about boyfriends and girlfriends showing affection and buying each other gifts. Some of them are: January 14th is Diary Day / Candle Day- Couples exchange journals or diaries to share wishes that the other will have a lovely year. Couples also exchange candles - something to do with staying warm in the cold weather...
February 14th is Valentines Day - with a twist as this is the day where women buy chocolates for the men. Apparently they often deploy army trucks to deliver chocolates from girlfriends to the men who are in compulsory military service. March 14th is White Day - where the men return the favour and buy chocolates for the women. April 14th is Black Day - where those who haven't found love console their lonely hearts by eating black noodles - apparently many university students eat loads of these noodles hoping to meet a partner through this declaration of loneliness. May 15th is Yellow Day / Rose Day - Those who are in love by this day exchange roses. August 14th is Green Day - couples are supposed to dress in Green, walk in the woods and drink cheap liquor that comes in green bottles (this means soju...) First snow day - couples are suppsoed to celebrate the coming of snow with a romantic date. Christmas eve is apparently a couples night in Korea - but this makes sense given that the country is not built on Christianity like a lot of Western countries. I have to admit I am looking forward to May - where they also celebrate Teacher's Day! Anyway I best be off - still have 2 essays to write!!
tan,Yun is a bit of an expert on coffee - she drinks a huge amount of it! The Korean's love their coffee, American style, and Korean style - and I have discovered that I love both...so life is pretty good! The cappuccino I had was delicious, and spending that time with the other teachers was fantastic, we had some of the most bizarre conversations. One of the teacher's, Osana, has a really mean sense of humour, she has me in hysterics, even in English she is brilliantly clever. So with our coffee's finished and two of teachers thinking about returning home to see their kids (they look way to young to have kids...) we decided to head back to Osan.
Ja Young dropped us off at the school where the other teacher's cars were waiting and I wandered back up to my apartment, she offered to drive me but it is in the other direction from her house, and it is only a 5 minute walk anyway! At his point I think it was about 8 pm (oh the joys of teaching hours...hehe) so I quickly got organized and jumped on a bus to Byeongjeom... where wine, chocolate and the most adorable kitten were all apparently waiting for me - and chilled out after a busy week in front of the film "Invictus".
Really great movie, even if the rugby scenes were a little lame, the shots from under the scrum actually made me giggle... Saturday morning was busy - the weather man lied to me and told me it was going to be 19 degrees - and like a fool I believed it! So we headed down to Cheonan, which is a few stations beyond Osan, in the opposite direction from Seoul. We were suppsoed to arrive in Cheonan at about mid-day but ended up getting there around 1pm by the time we had gotten off the train and managed to get a taxi to the restaurant - Outback Jack's.
Definitely a strange feeling walking into Outback Jacks, with all the aboriginal style artwork, boomerangs, and the word "Sheila" spelled incorrectly on the door to the ladies room...hehe. The menu made me giggle too - I really should have taken a photo of it - every meal was named after a place in Australia, and then all the descriptions were in Korean... My friends and I were there for a post-wedding lunch for some friends, for Richard and Nesheba, with a small but very friendly group of people. Those events always make me feel all mushy...lol... especially when they got up to give speeches - so cute! After lunch we headed back to their apartment which was absolutely amazing, I think it was on about the 18th floor of this massive building, and the views were spectacular! One level down there was a balcony area from which you could pretty much see the whole of Cheonan and at this time of year the autumn colours make everything look so beautiful even against a grey sky.
The apartment was also substantially bigger and far more modern than mine, it was a two bedroom with a loft affair for the bed above the living area, before I cam here I had never really fathomed just how big you could make such a tiny space feel! We played poker for a few hours, with a few drinkies, some good music and great conversation, before heading up to Seoul for the Lantern Festival. At this point I was feeling thoroughly frustrated with the weather man - it was freezing and I was wearing a mini-skirt - so I stopped at this little roadside stall
(they are everywhere here) and for about $20 I bought a pair of stockings and some little black ballet flats that would get me out of the sandals but also be really handy to have for school!I was planning on getting them and heading to burger king to change quickly but the guy must have clicked as to what was going on because he told Ashleigh (thank goodness for Ashleigh and her translation!) that I could use the backroom are behind the stall to get changed. A very bizarre experience but I was super happy to be warm again!
We decided that rather than catching the normal train, which from Cheonan would have taken a little over an hour, that we would catch the KTX train instead. KTX stands for Korea Train Express, it is a high speed rail system, the top speed for trains in regular service is about 305 km per hour but it has been designed to go as fast as 350 km per hour. The terminal where you catch the train was impressive, looking more like an airport than a train station, but it was the feeling of watching the trains that didnt stop at the station that knocked my socks off - they slowed down for the station but they still rushed past at around 200km per hour - the blast of wind, the sound, and the shape of the trains as they whizzed by was very futuristic!
So we arrived in Seoul where we headed straight to a coffee shop - in need of a caffeine hit - and it was cold enough that a hot coffee was too tempting to pass up! We waited for our coffee's, talking about the fact that the
Christmas decorations were already up, and harassed the guy working there to take a group shot of us with the Christmas tree. With the photo taken and coffee in hand we headed out again into the cold night air, following the large crowds in the direction of the Lantern Festival. The lanterns were stunning, some of them were the most incredible colours, and they were all placed in the middle of a stream that wound its way through the middle of the city. Because they were set down into the stream the lights glittered off the water and lit up the faces of all the spectators.The lights of the city buildings and all the busy signs above that made the night almost as bright as the day. The crowd was massive, akin to the new years eve rush in Melbourne, and yet apparently quite normal for events like that. Everywhere you looked there were people, and people just pushed past each other to get where they were going. The older ladies are funny, they really don't care if they hurt your feelings, and have no concerns for manners, they would just put their arm out and push you out of the way. We wandered up and down looking at all the different lights and displays and then began to head back in the direction of the train station contemplating the idea of Galbi followed by a short session at the No Rae Bang to keep us awake till the ru
gby started.We stopped for a snack at one of the street food stalls where I bought some Mandu (dumplings) and dukboki (spicy rice cake stuff) which I hadnt tried yet but that everyone had raved about. Absolutely delicious! Now I am just upset that the lady with the stall outside the E-mart doesn't sell dukboki! By the time we got on the train back we were all feeling pretty tired - so the Galbi and No Rae Bang idea was dropped pretty quickly, we opted instead for heading back to Jaco's place to chill out, order take out, and generally muck around before the rugby. Fortunately the All Black's played the English at 12:30ish so that kept me awake till the South Africa v Ireland match that was on at 2:30am... We ordered chicken (wow - I really have to find out what that stuff is called...soooo delicious... might be handy if I c
ould speak Korean well enough to get it delivered too - but at the moment I wouldn't even know how to give them my address!) followed by pizza when we found a place that was still open!As it turned out by the time the match started Ashleigh and Nesheba were fast asleep (shame!) and it was only Jaco, Richard, Karel and I that were still awake to watch it - and even then a little bit of the enthusiasm had faded... Special mention also goes to Richard for telling me about some really handy i-Phone applications, that I can use without needing a sim card or a wireless connection, that give me a complete map of the train system and all the bus routes and timetables etc. Special mention should also go to Jaco for letting me hi-jack his wi-fi so I could download these applications!
Got home at roughly 4:45am on Sunday morning feeling a little worse for the wear and practically fell into bed - I was lucky enough to fall asleep in the taxi on the way back to the apartment, which I hear was a good thing because apparently the taxi driver was a little more frightening than usual! I do vaguely remember thinking he was going pretty fast considering you could only see a few meters in front of the car due to a thick fog. Speed limits are apparently irrelevant in this country...haha. Piling out of a nice warm taxi into the cold not air is also not exactly pleasant - makes me think it is definitely time to go and invest in a nice w
arm winter jacket - fortunately I get my Alien registration card on Monday afternoon so I can finally open a bank account - and get paid!!!Sunday, again, was a bit of a write off - spent sleeping, eating, and generally being lazy - other than the dance lesson I gave to Karel...lol... kudos to Karel for being a good sport! ;) Went via E-mart on Sunday night to buy candy for the kids for this week - I promised them prizes as part of my people bingo game that we played last week - and bought this absolutely massive bag for about $5. I suspect this bag will last me at least to the end of the year! (Unless I suddenly decide that I can't live without a sug
ar fix...) I also noticed a huge area dedicated to Pepero Day - November 11th - something to do with the fact that the date 11/11 resembles four sticks of Pepero - which are the long thin biscuity things dipped in chocolate - apparently inspired by the Japanese "Pocky" - which for those of you that know me would know I have a bit of a passion for...lol. I was told about this "Pepero Day" by a few people and the geek in me made me look it up and do a bit of research...There are a few stories about how it began - one of which suggests that it was at a girls middle school in Busan, in 1994, where they exchanged the sticks as wishes to one another that they would grow tall and slender - amusing when you consider that they are biscuits dipped in chocolate and more likely to make them short and tubby... Another rumour is that it was actually started by Lotte Mart as a sales ploy - though they deny this - saying instead that they simply noticed more Pepero sticks were being sold at this time of year and decided to encourage the holiday by presenting the Pepero if special gift boxes etc. Check out this link for Pepero advertising. Upon further reading I discovered that there are actually about 21 such events / special days in the Korean calendar which have become about boyfriends and girlfriends showing affection and buying each other gifts. Some of them are: January 14th is Diary Day / Candle Day- Couples exchange journals or diaries to share wishes that the other will have a lovely year. Couples also exchange candles - something to do with staying warm in the cold weather...
February 14th is Valentines Day - with a twist as this is the day where women buy chocolates for the men. Apparently they often deploy army trucks to deliver chocolates from girlfriends to the men who are in compulsory military service. March 14th is White Day - where the men return the favour and buy chocolates for the women. April 14th is Black Day - where those who haven't found love console their lonely hearts by eating black noodles - apparently many university students eat loads of these noodles hoping to meet a partner through this declaration of loneliness. May 15th is Yellow Day / Rose Day - Those who are in love by this day exchange roses. August 14th is Green Day - couples are supposed to dress in Green, walk in the woods and drink cheap liquor that comes in green bottles (this means soju...) First snow day - couples are suppsoed to celebrate the coming of snow with a romantic date. Christmas eve is apparently a couples night in Korea - but this makes sense given that the country is not built on Christianity like a lot of Western countries. I have to admit I am looking forward to May - where they also celebrate Teacher's Day! Anyway I best be off - still have 2 essays to write!!
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