A Korean Christmas!

Well  it's Boxing day and I have to say  this is definitely the least Christmassy Christmas I have had especially as we have been working today! It sis snow on the lead up to Christmas though which was nice.

Here in Korea Christmas isn't really celebrated, it is seen as more of a 'couples' holiday instead. Having said that we certainly celebrated on Christmas Eve with shots of 151, pool competions  and ending up in a Norae bang with about 10 other Koreans and a tamborine!

 We spent most of Christnmas day in bed having and then went out for a curry with a friend, very traditional.... the curry was great though!

Jacks Body

This is what the 12 years olds in Jacks class think of him!

Night out in Seoul

Last Saturday we went on our first night out in Seoul, which was brilliant, not only do you get free food when you order drinks but you can also get your own private room with drinks to order, amazing! We ended up just getting the  first subway back at 5.30, not too bad!

Our private booking room!

Free fried chicken!

General Update

I thought I would give you a general update on our first two weeks here in Korea. It has been very easy to slip into life here, everything is so easy and convenient, we live about 20 feet away from a huge supermarket, we are right next to the subway and about 5 minutes walk from our school!

The job has been going well, it was a bit daunting at first but we have got into the swing of things now, with a bit of planning most of the lessons have been pretty easy. The kids are mostly well behaved although by the time they get to us they have already been at school all day so they can be a bit sleepy! I particularly enjoy my classes with the younger children as they are chattier than the teenagers and they come out with some funny things!

A street in Seoul

There is plenty of nightlife nearby, our friend Elias has been showing us the ropes in Ilsan, a bigger town nearby with some cool bars and restaurants. Everything here seems to be open pretty much 24 hours, on Friday we had dinner at 12 at night before starting our night out, crazy! We had our first night out in Seoul last night which was great, it is a massive city so we have a lot of exploring to do!

Other news ... I have started doing yoga classes 3 times a week, I have never seen so many bendy people and Jack is looking into starting some kickboxing classes too.  We are having a brilliant time all in all, except I can't believe it is Christmas this week, not feeling Christmassy at all :-( I am sure we will find some other foreigners to celebrate with though!

Would you like a bigger bum?!

Walking through the subway last night in Seoul we spotted these in the window, I don't think we have this problem in the UK!

Inappropriate pet clothing

The Koreans, believe it or not love their little dogs and like to dress them up however I would not recommend dressing your dog up in this ...

Also while you are in the 'Pet' section of the supermarket, don't forget to buy your hedgehog!

Funny Moment 1

Hi guys, Jack here.

So just thought I would fill everyone in on a few funny moments I have experienced so far.

Firstly, the incident with the fly. So it turns out that Korean children seemed to be pretty wet when it comes to insects. In one of my first classes a large fly arrived announced and tried to start a disturbance, it flew round the class causing utter hysteria.
I could see this was some kind of test so I decided to grasp the situation by the balls before it got out of hand. I waited until the fly had landed on a student poster mounted on the wall and made the decision to end its mischief permanently. The closest thing to hand was an A4 hand out with the weeks vocabulary words. I approached the fly with the strategy of catching it in the paper and the screwing it up and putting it in the bin, what a hero, an idol of Korean children everywhere. Unfortunately all I managed to do was squish the fly into the poster and then smear its remains a good three inches across it. This triggered complete chaos which then took me ten minutes to calm the children down. Now every time I teach in that class I have to tell at least one child to stop pointing at the remains of the fly’s corpse and laughing. *sigh*

First night out!

Our first night out began in Ilsan at a Kalbi restaurant (this means they have a mini bbq in your table!) with Elias leading the way. Here we had our first bottle of Soju - 20% rice wine which you can buy in the supermarket, 2L for £3.00, bargain! It actually tasted surprisingly OK to me, not sure if this is a good or bad thing hmmm... Following this we went to a couple of cool bars where you can get cocktails for £2.50 and tequila shots for about 90p and so the drinking began! We ended up in a Noraebang (a karaoke room) luckily I can't remember the singing .... there is a bit more to this story but I will let Jack tell the rest!

Ilsan

First bar

Amazing bar full of vinyl where you can choose any song, if they like it they will play it!

Our duet!

The food

Food seems to play a big part in Korean culture and therefore they are very proud of their food. So Jack and I have arrived with open minds in terms of trying food (his more so than mine!). In the last week we have eaten out every night something we could never do at home! The street food is really cheap, costing about £2.50 for us both to eat. In the restaurants the majority of the food has been really good although not so sure about the national side dish Kimchi, but maybe it will just take some getting used too! Here are some pictures of our food experiences so far ....

Kimchi (fermented cabbage) and tofu, yum ...

Korean pot noodle!

Kimbap - like a sushi roll but wit no seafood

Enjoying Kalbi - barbequed meat

At the food hall in E-Mart - all this for £6.00!

Starting School

Well, we have just completed our first week at school! It has certainly been interesting, beginning on the Monday with teaching 6 classes! We have definitely been thrown in at the deep end however the school has been very supportive and the two other foreign English teachers have been really helpful. The kids we are working with range from about 9-16 in age although in Korea when you are born you are already a year old, so in the UK these kids would actually be a year younger! They are mostly pretty sweet and much more well behaved than your typical British teenagers. A few of the highlights include: starting work at 2pm, eating cake out of a cup with chopsticks for another teachers birthday, saying boobies instead of movies (one of Jacks highlights anyway), some interesting names including Albert, Michael (pronounced as Mihal) and Bishop for a girl! We have learnt a lot this week and I am sure time goes on we will get into the swing of our new jobs as English teachers. There is a lot more to say and many pictures to post but we won't have the internet installed until tomorrow, see you then!

Here at last!

Wow! I can't believe we have only been here four days, so much has happened since we arrived on Saturday. The journey was tiring but went without a hitch until we arrived in Korea and there was no one there to pick us up ... eventually we managed to us a payphone to contact some one who as it turns out was there all along, but with no sign! We arrived at our studio apartment in Hwa Jeong at around 10.00 pm, we are on the 15th floor so we have got  pretty good view! Most people seem to live in high rise apartment blocks as there are so many Koreans. The apartment (if I can call it that, it's more like one big room and a separate bathroom) is in a great location, there is a starbucks and a pizza hut right around the corner as well as loads of great Korean restaurant. We are also opposite a huge supermarket that sells everything that you could imagine from hiking equipment to 3 litres of 20% alcohol for £3 and spider crabs to Special K! There is so much say I will write a few separate posts otherwise this will end up looking like an essay!

The view from our apartment