Fun things that happen in Korea (Part 2)

Walking down the street in South Korea can be tricky and takes some getting used to. You see, the cars and people share the road. There is no foot path or side-walk or anything. You walk down the middle of the road with the cars. This gets very tricky when there are parked and moving cars. If you have a car parked on each side of the road there is only room for one more car to squeeze through the middle. I have been keeping a tally and I have almost been run over by 23 cars.
The larger roads/highways/free-ways have multiple lanes and a foot path so this isn't an issue here....but all other roads you share it with cars. It takes some getting used to and a little courage but this strange system seems to work. So far I haven't seen anyone get run over. Only 23 near misses for myself.

There is an interesting cultural difference between Korea and western countries. At home it would seem very rude and a little disgusting for someone to hock up a loogie and spit it out next to you while you wait for a bus. 

On the other hand it is quite acceptable for you to blow your nose into a tissue in public.

In Korea these two things are flipped. It is very rude to blow your nose but is fine to snort, cough and spit right next to someone. It's a bit weird and a little yuck but  I do now have the freedom of spitting when ever I like... 

Video tour of our apartment

Gyeongju and love motels

"Love Motel" lane

On the weekend just gone Brenton and I went for a our first weekend away to Gyeongju. Gyeongju is known as "the  museum without walls" and has more tombs, temples, pagodas, and ruins than anywhere else in Korea. We arrived on Friday night in the dark, but luckily there were about 1,000 neon "hotel" signs right near the bus terminal.

The first place we passed had little pictures of topless women on the step, so assuming it was a brothel we kept walking. Then the next and the next had the same pictures. I decided that these must be "love motels". I had read and heard about love motels before coming to Korea. Lonely planet describes them as being the best value for money accommodation in Korea.

Tombs in the background. They built a wooden coffin chamber
and then made a hill of rocks on top of it and then soil and
grass over the top of that

So, thankfully, I worked up the courage to walk past the topless women and in to the very dimly lit reception area. Love motels are awesome! Sure there are some weird things like the complimentary condoms, broken English about love on the ceiling and the free soft porn channel on the cable TV. But there was also a spa, giant TV, room about double the size of my apartment, computer with free internet, 80 cable channels and everything was brand new! All that for less than $50 per night. I am now seriously considering moving in to a love motel instead of my apartment!

Our weekend in Gyeongju was great, apart from spending the first hour lost on Saturday morning, we did a lot of walking and saw a lot of tombs, temples and ancient artifacts.

Anapji Pond

Bulguk-sa

Seokguram Grotto

Fun things that happen in Korea (Part 1)

I wanted to make a post that lists all the fun things that have happened since I came to Korea. By fun I mean either very annoying or just weird. There might be a few of these posts so I called this one "part 1".

The first fun thing was when I was having breakfast at orientation. It was a buffet breakfast so I grabbed some cereal, a piece of toast, some jam and an apple prima (fruit box). I sat down and started with some cereal, then a bite of toast then a sip of.....yuck....what is this? I took another look at my apple drink and saw that it was not actually apple. The box is green and it is served with breakfast. But this juice was definitely not apple. Oh no no. This was bean juice. Yes, BEAN JUICE. I'm not sure you have ever tasted the juice which comes from a bean. I sure hadn't. If you get the chance, DON"T try it.

On another day, Loren and I went for our first shop to buy the essential house products for our new apartment. We bought dish washing detergent, toilet paper, laundry liquid, milk, bread, etc. On our way to the checkout we ran into another Australian teacher we knew from orientation. He was with his Korean Co-teacher who was taking him to buy the essential home goods like us. We showed the co-teacher our items to see if they were the best/cheapest things to buy. To our surprise we found that they weren't what we thought they were. We were going to wash our clothes with dish washing liquid and wash our dishes with toilet cleaner! It's a good thing he was there or we might have got very sick.

First few weeks in Korea

A lot has happened since my last blog. Our arrival in Korea was smooth. We spent a night in Seoul and then flew to Busan (the orientation location) the next afternoon. Finding the EPIK people at the airport was easy. There were 5 of us on the flight from Seoul and we were told by the co-ordinator that we needed to wait for another 20 people to fill the bus before we could leave for the orientation location. An hour and a half later, after no one else had arrived, they eventually gave up and bussed the 5 of us to Pukyong National University. We left in the middle of peak hour and what should have been a 40 minute drive took more like 1 hour and 30 minutes.

Orientation was fun, but very busy. Everyday we had classes about teaching from 9am till 5:30pm and then Korean Language class in the evening, we didn't even get a weekend!, It was great to meet some people who are living in our area and other parts of Korea. Last Friday we were all loaded on to busses, good bye Brenton! And driven to our new home town, Daegu. In Daegu we were all quickly collected by representatives from our schools and shown our schools and apartments. Luckly finding Brenton and I's meeting spot that night was easy and we both arrived at the same time!

It was a public holiday Tuesday so we had a four day weekend, which we used to shop for our apartment and explore Daegu. Wednesday was my first real day of work. I had no idea if I had to teach or not, luckly I didn't! Wednesday I spent sitting at my emptry desk (my computer didn't arrive until I was going home), going to school assemblies and staff meetings, all in Korean, and meeting lots of people. I also found out my schedual. I will be teaching every grade 6 class (there are 7) twice a week and every grade 3 class (5) once a week. I will also be teaching 3 of the grade 2 classes once a week in first semester and 2 grade one classes once a week in second semester. Both of my co-teachers (I have one for grade 6 and one for grade 3, grade 2 I am alone!) are very nice and are both brand new to the school and I think teaching!

Yesterday classes started. I had 1 grade 6 class in the morning. We were locked out of the room for the first 10 minutes! The kids understood a lot less English than I had expected and most didn't know how to write their name in English. The class flew by and we only covered about half of what we had planned, helped by the fact we were locked out! Overall I think it went pretty well, but we have lots of room for improvement!

Leaving on a jet plane

Today is the day. The day Loren and I leave Australia for our new home in Korea.

Are we ready? Very close...but not as close as we probably should be. We had a pre-orientation course to do online before we start our actual orientation when we arrive. I finished it weeks ago but Loren....well....she wasn't even half way through it the day before we go. She some how forgot about it so she is trying to do it all on the day we leave....pfft, silly girl.

We have pretty much everything else organised. Our bags are packed, we have our passports and visas ready, we had a sweet going away party and have said goodbye to everyone.

BAM! It's go time

Brenton's first blog

Hi all,

This is my first blog post.

So, I quit my job, I have a couple of weeks before I have to leave the place I am renting. No backing out now.

I have a couple of weeks to learn a little Korean and prepare myself for the trip.....but learning Korean is hard. Really hard.

I have learnt a couple of words but feel I can't say anything well unless I do it while putting on a cheap Chinese accent.

I can't understand anything spoken in Korean. All the words spoken sound very similar and don't even get me started on reading it! I am hoping after I spend a bit of time over there everything will start to make sense....that's what I am telling myself anyway.

Loren and I have bought our plane tickets. We fly from Melbourne to KL to Seoul on the 16th. Then spend the night in Seoul before we fly to our orientation in Busan on the 17th.

The orientation starts on the 18th and goes for 10 straight days. No weekend break. And we have to attend classes from 9am to 7pm! I am imaging some buff Korean dude with a mustache whipping anyone who gets out of line during orientation. I'm hoping that doesn't happen. The mustache would be ok but the whip might be a bit much.