Hey hey.
Well that's one week (and a day -- weekend really flew by quick) done.
Another random sighting to add to the "only in Korea" list: apparently instead of having squeegee kids at stoplights here, there are guys selling calculators.
First week of teaching went well. Apparently this week will be a fair bit tougher, since we've been told that the kids view the first week as a kind of observation period to size up new teachers and week two is "test the boundaries" week. Should be fun. It's a good thing I like yelling at small children.
What else.....
Oh yeah, we were going to visit some friends of ours from our TESL course next weekend. They live in Seoul and moved there in July, so they'd be able to show us around a bit. These plans may be in jeopardy due to an interesting Korean holiday called Chusok. It's basically Korean Thanksgiving, and it's a three day holiday (which this year falls on a Sunday, meaning that we only actually get Monday off work - stupid everything) where everyone in Korea has to go to the house of the oldest male relative on their Father's side, and almost all of them drive. This is a lot of traffic. Apparently, they're estimating that there will be 21 million cars on the road for the weekend.
And you lot thought cottage country traffic was bad on May 24.
Anyway, due to this, the normally 90 minute journey to Seoul from Cheongju is estimated to take just over 5 hours, and while inter-city buses in Korea have their own lanes on the expressways, I'm not sure if we'll risk it, or if we'll just stay here in town and hide. More on that as it develops.
An exciting developement on the money-saving front. It's come to my attention that the basic monthly charge for a phone line is only 5200 won. Add to that the fact that our internet (through some interesting wheelings and dealings on the part of the internet company and the teacher we're replacing -- we just took over his account and get all the "long-term customer" bonuses and discounts) is only 22,000 won/month, and our heating bill is almost guarenteed to be under 70-80,000/month, we're in great shape to have all our monthly expenses (excluding food) come to under 100,000 won/month. Most other things seem to be fairly comperable in price (except alcohol - more on that later) so it's nice to see that the whole "cheap Korean living" thing turns out to be true for something, anyway.
So a quick note about the alcohol. Seems you can get alcohol anywhere. Convenience stores, gas stations, department stores, you name it. Most of this alcohol seems to be whisky, and most of the whisky seems to be scotch. It's a bit cheaper than in Canada, which strikes me as weird. A Johnnie Walker black label gift set seems like it should cost more than 30,000 won. The most amazing thing that we've seen in the alcohol department is the soju, which is a kind of Korean version of Sake. It's awful, for the record. However, there's something to be said for getting a value for you dollar. So without further ado, I present the price for a 3.6 LITRE (plastic) bottle of soju (30% alcohol by volume):
4,000 won.
yeah.
(for those of you who are currently looking puzzled and slightly anticlimactic, use the currency converter link in the link section. For those of you who have, but still look slightly confused/let down, go to the LCBO and check out the price for the cheapest vodka you can find.)
Speaking of the links, I've updated them. So there. Some useful, some not, feel free to check them out. Or not. Up to you, really. I mean, what am I going to do about it if you don't. How am I even going to know? I'm not. Don't worry. I'm not watching you or anything.
Stop scratching yourself.
I'm not watching, I promise.
It's evidently far too late for me to be doing this. I'm going to bed.