seoul sisters

Anyoungassayo! [That’s phonetic Korean for ‘hello’!]

So you want to know what Korea is like, huh? At least that seems to be the popular question these last 3 days ...

Let's start with the first building we saw in Korea: Our apartment. Instead of the two-bedroom they'd promised us, Julie & I were confined to a very modest one bedroom apartment that pretty much resembles a hotel room. The one-bedroom we could deal with - the one bed, on the other hand ... The Director had offered us an actual hotel room for the night in lieu of sharing the one bed - but after traveling for over 28 hours, spooning with Julie well was a welcome alternative to getting back into a car & heading someplace else. Me being the generous friend that I am, I let Julie sleep on the floor and I took the bed [relax, the floors are heated & she did actually have a good sleep].And things are looking up: On Thursday our new bed was delivered [how the delivery guy managed to remove his shoes before he entered while carrying that mattress, I'll never know - but it just goes to show you how faithful Koreans are to the no-shoe rule]. So now we can [happily?] say we are living in a two-bed one-bedroom apartment ... Thank god for Laurier rez, first year, and the resulting reassurance that living together in these close quarters won't be the end of our friendship [or one of our lives]. We only have to stay here for two weeks, and then we move into a bigger two-bedroom apartment.

Next up: The bathroom. We didn't even think we had a shower, until we noticed the nozzle above our bathroom sink. The bathroom is our shower, turns out - so when we shower, everything in our bathroom gets wet. But that's ok - at this point, we'll just take hot water. Please. But at least the cold water situation explains the rumour about Asian men

...And the food! After our very first lunch with the school's secretary [cool Korean, our age], Julie & I were convinced we would fall in love with the food here …Until dinner. Ordering off an all-Korean menu meant dinner basically turned into a guessing game [with fingers crossed], and we ended up with what Julie described as "the most anxious meal of her life". After I set aside something resembling a tongue [after eating that ox tongue in TO I feel confident with that assumption], I picked up this hard-boiled egg that was the size of my palm. We were both convinced it was something other than an incredible edible egg. She made me cut into it, swearing there was going to be a teradactyl-like creature inside. I guess in our jet-lagged delirium we had discarded all natural logic and assumed discovering something prehistoric in our food was not only possible, but highly likely. [Equally as ridiculous was my disappointment that it was just an egg.] That night we both woke up from nightmares at the exact same time … weird. Note to selves: Avoid spicy mystery food.

Yesterday's lunch was a lil' better, albeit fish-themed. We’re pretty much living by the saying “What you don’t know, won’t hurt you” … Although the caviar mixed right in to our stir fry thingy and the shrimp were sweet & tasty [once you picked off their eyes]. Who wants kisses?!?!Last night we joined our Director for dinner at a restaurant where we actually sat on the floor to eat while we listened to our friend tell us stories of the live octopus he ate the night before. He said it squirms even after you have chopped it up, and you have to chew the tentacles extra well so they don’t latch on to your throat & choke you on the way down. Mmm.

As for the school - it's amazing. It's modern, high-tech, and kinda resembles a scene from Vanilla Sky. The students are adorable and their English is amazing [and they're all convinced Julie & I are the other teachers' girlfriends]. One of the secretaries has already told Julie she has "friend, introduce" - which we should all interpret to mean that Julie will be catching the Fever earlier than expected ...

The other teachers are pretty cool too. We're proud to say one of the nicest of the bunch is a guy that hails from Kdub - a UofW grad. 'Tis a small world, after all … Small it may be, but it really is a whole other world over here …

Today’s agenda: Tackling the E-Mart [a multi-level Walmart type thing where Koreans shout at you at the end of every aisle]. We’re most likely heading to Seoul for New Year’s, and possibly meeting up with my sister in Tokyo next weekend. Life is good.Stay tuned for New Year’s pics and updates on our first day of teaching [Tuesday].Till then, missing you all & wishing you the best. Happy New Year!

Anyoungassayo [conveniently also ‘goodbye’ in Korean!]