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

Goodbyes!

Only 5 days to go! Over the past few weekends we have been saying our goodbyes to friends and family at various nights out and partys', including a memorable night at WHP and a Christmas themed weekend!! We are really going to miss everyone, wish they could come with us, thank goodness for the internet!

Just about to tuck into a pretty good roast dinner, even if I do say so myself!

Warehouse Project with random guy in the background!

Visas

This is just a quick post about getting your visa processed in the UK. When we first started looking into teaching English in South Korea I found that several websites stated that the a visa for teaching English in South Korea for UK nationals would be around £27.50 however this is not the case, it is in fact £80! Follow this link for more information http://www.mofat.go.kr/english/visa/apply/index.jsp or phone the consulate. We decided to send our visa to the consulate as neither of us live near London, this took around 2 weeks to process, this wasn't a problem as our job starts in December. Once we received our visa the recruitment agency organised for flights to be booked, so now it really is official, as of 2nd December we will be off to South Korea for a year, eeek!

Attempting to learn Korean!

In preparation for our year in South Korea we have decided to learn some of the Korean language otherwise known as Hangul. I have read that it is not essential to learn the language, but having travelled before I feel that locals always appreciate it when a foreigner  tries to learn their language. Also, having done some research I feel that it will make our time it Korea a little less challenging and more enjoyable. Starting to learn Hangul at first seemed extremely daunting especially when I realised we would have to learn the alphabet instead of just learning phrases. However, after following a few easy to follow videos, see: http://www.seemile.com/renewal/package_list.jsp?pkg_no=21  for some great Korean teachers) I found that the Korean alphabet can actually be learnt quite quickly, this doesn't mean to say however that I am any good at it yet! Jack and I feel we have mastered some of the basics but we are yet to see whether these will work in practice! Another great language learning resource is the Rosetta Stone programme if you can get your hands on it.