As my time in Korea continues to unfold, I am finding myself
feeling a lot more comfortable with the way things work here. I am getting used to the smells, the
missioning around from place to place with absolutely no personal space, being
surrounded by children all day every day and finally, living on my own. I'm finding myself becoming more and more
aware of customs and instead of everything surprising me, I am trying to
incorporate myself in the culture. I am asking Korean people to teach me
different sayings and trying to memorize certain things that I use in my day to
day activities such as "how much is this" or "Can I have a
plastic bag". The Koreans tell me
my pronunciation is good but I think they are just being nice, if I were to say
hello to someone here in Korean they act as if I just accomplished the greatest thing known to man.
It is amazing that I have been here over 7 weeks now, there
are still a lot of things I am still getting used to such as my lesson planning
which I keep finding ways to mess up (crying shame). I think travelling abroad is a great step for
almost anyone, it really does help a person mature and become more independent (at least
for a moment in time :P).
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| The "plum" candy is a lie..it looks and tastes like a peach...fail on the plum front (One of the many glorious goodies we munched on while studying) |
This week went by very quickly and I was very excited to
start my weekend as I would be sleeping over at my friends place on Friday
night and working on our online TESOL course for the evening while eating
Korean snacks and chatting. Friday after
work I got on a bus to Gangnam station and then caught the subway to my friends
stop however on the subway this very obnoxiously drunk man approached me. My instinct was to be prepared for an attack
but since he was pretty small I just looked down at the floor as he came up to
me and started staring as he circled me (he was very much in my bubble).
He began to talk to me and put his hand in a bag he was carrying and
handed me a red pepper (which is pretty expensive here). I tried to tell him no but he insisted and
put it in a bag for me. Everyone on the
subway was watching us and I wasn't sure what he was saying to me. He held the pepper and kept saying
"tomato" to which I told him it was a pepper but that was a fail, he
just escalated yelling tomato even louder. Luckily the next stop was mine so I
hastily got off the subway with the pepper in hand, I was pretty pumped to have
gotten a vegetable since they are expensive and it was a beautiful pepper. :)
I headed to my friends place and although it is humid
outside, this past weekend has been pretty nice compared to last week. We stayed up till 3am and worked on our
online course while eating some interesting candies and snacks. The next day we woke up and headed to meet up
with some people where we had a bible study and headed to a Dongdehmoon which
is an ALL NIGHT market. The negative
with having a all night market is that it is cheaper as it gets later but the
subways stop at around midnight which is a no go.
We got to the market and walked around only to find a few
book stores open and a man approached us saying that the market was on holidays
for the next 10 days (fail). We were
pretty bummed but then one of my friends who had been her a while mentioned
another market that was really nice and sold traditional Korean things if we
wanted to buy souvenirs. We headed over
to the cutest little market village type of area I have seen in Korea thus
far. There were many tiny little shops
and people on the streets singing, it had a community feel to it and I will
defiantly be returning. I bought a few
small things but enjoyed the atmosphere more than anything and the street vendors :P.
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| Us eating deep fried hot dogs in french fry batter and ketchup on a stick...mmm haha (no idea how these Asians stay so skinny with this kind of food around) |
After walking around for a few hours we headed to a little
restaurant that was known for its pork cutlets.
Most of us got different kinds of pork cutlet: jumbo, cheese, pizza,
fish...etc. The restaurant was SOOO cold
that I had to put on a scarf however it was a lovely change of pace from the
constant sweating that has been going on.
We headed home after dinner and one of my friends and I stayed up till 4am
working on our TESOL course and chit chatting about life. It has been such a joy to have a friend from
home that is going through the same "newness" and culture shock at the same time as myself. It is comforting to be able to talk to
someone who understands the exact feelings at the exact time I am feeling
them. Yay for my fellow Canadian buddy
:P
We headed to church in the morning and met with some people
before going shopping in the subway system.
It is pretty funny how memorable we are just because we are not
Korean. I find that if we ever return to
a store or cafe, the people there greet us as if we are old friends (hugging us
and saying hello while proceeding to follow us around and offer help
constantly). It can be both a good and
bad thing however I do enjoy the kindness I have been shown many times
throughout my Korea experience thus far.
I GOT MY FIRST PAYCHECK AND IT FEELS SOOO GOOD!!! :) I also
have Wednesday off this week, its a holiday!! PLUS on Thursday we have a field
trip to see the play Peter Pan with the Kindergarteners which means no class in
the morning :). This week will be a
glorious experience, I feel it!!!
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| Not sure who this man is but I felt he seemed like someone who could be leaned on...? |
All in all I am feeling more and more at home as time
continues to unfold and my Korea life is turning from a learning experience to
something I am beginning to love. I have
a lot to process but I am feeling much more confident and I KNOW that having a
great support system really helps with that.
