So I rearranged the blog itself so that the pictures won't get cut off by the menu on the right, cause now the menu's on the left. Nifty, huh?
This week has absolutely flown by. I can't believe that it's already our second Friday. So weird. School's going better now. Becca's parents' suggested an absolutely BRILLIANT technique for getting tiny people to shut the crap up while we're trying to teach, and it's worked perfectly so far. So a big thanks to them!
We still have yet to explore the "western bars" area of the city. This town's got 3 or 4 major universities in it, and the university district surrounding one of the bigger ones is apparently the place where all the foreign teachers go to hang out. We've been meaning to get there at some point, and it looks like next weekend will be decent for it, so we'll let you know how that goes. I think that there's this weird understanding between foreigners here. When you pass another white person on the street, it's not exactly an open-armed welcome, but just a nod and a simple "hey, howsit goin?" like they're someone you just kinda see all the time at school or something, even if you've never seen them before. I wonder what it's like to be at the social spots. I guess we'll find out soon enough.
Tomorrow evening we go to Seoul. I'm excited, both to see some familiar faces (the folks we're visiting are a couple that were in our TESL course, and I'm pretty sure that I had a class with the girl at Trent a couple years ago), and to see the city. They've been there since July, so they're going to show us around a bit. Also, on Sunday there's a celebration for foreigners for Chusok where they get us all traditional Korean outfits and there are some sort of festivities planned. Not really sure what they are yet, but hopefully it'll be awesome, cause we're going.
Just for the sake of clarity, Chusok is the Korean version of thanksgiving -- the harvest moon festival to be precise. It's a huge three-day affair, with the day before and the day after the actual day of Chusok being holidays too. We got majorly ripped off this year (THANKS ALOT, MOON!!) cause Chusok falls on a Sunday, which means that Saturday's a holiday (fat lot of good that does) and we get Monday off. I know it's still a long weekend, but if it fell on a Tuesday, we'd get Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday off - paid. That would've been sweet. As it is, though, there are pleasant surprises to this. We got presents from the school. We each got socks, 100,000 won (which we were genuinely surprised and ridiculously excited about, since that'll pay for our trip to Seoul this weekend) and a gift box, which is the focus of the first picture of this post... Observe:
Yeah. It's 8 cans of tuna (4 regular and 4 hot pepper tuna) and 4 cans of Korean spam. Canned luncheon meat to be exact. MMMMMMMM!!!!!!
Anyway, I've got a couple more pics of weird Korean food-related products. The first is an example of the only sized can of pop you can get here. Taller but much more narrow than its Canadian cousin:
The next is a baffling display of wasted educational opportunity. In a land so obsessed with teaching their children English, you'd think that any chance to teach kids any English would be welcome. Apparently not:
Can anyone else think of any reason at all to have crocodiles forming a letter "B"? Or a squirrel in the shape of a "V"? It'd be so EASY to have foxes make an "F", but NO, they've gotta be making an "N". So. Weird.
This next one is one of my favourite things that we've seen so far. It's a placemat from a restaurant downtown where there was a dinner for ESL teachers, and it's got some of the most bafflingly hilarious mis-uses of English I've ever seen. I asked to take the placemat home, and assuming it survives the year, I intend to frame it once we get back to Canada. I might frame it here, come to think of it, if I find a place to do it.
Below the price list is written "All vegetables and fruits we use in our dishes are fresh and environment friendly products." Awesome. Try to pick out all the errors on the rest of the menu. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.
That's all for now, except for the pics of our apartment to follow, but there are a few things that I hope to get pictures of in our neighbourhood, like the incredible Korean parking habits, the abundance of neon, and the pick-up trucks full of fruit that have loudspeakers on the top blaring out their contents while meandering through the narrow streets with all the subtlety of Kareem Abdul Jabbar at a KKK rally. They're really annoying.
Anyway, here are the pics of our apartment to close out this (really long -- sorry) post. More to come after the weekend, when we'll have pics of Seoul to share.
Our kitchen. This is what you enter as soon as you walk in the door. Every other room branches off from it.
Our bathroom. Korean bathrooms don't have separate showers, they just have tile everywhere and a drain in the middle of the room. At least this one has a western-style toilet. The big green thing in the corner's the washing machine.
Our spare room. We've got a bed in there in case anyone wants to come visit, and a wardrobe cause there are no closets in the entire apartment.
And finally, our bed/living room. Two pictures, one from the door, the other from the bed. Decent size, really, and we decided to keep the bed in there cause that's where they installed the air conditioner, and we figured that a spare room might come in handy.
