Arriving in Busan

We finished teacher training in Seoul on a Tuesday night and celebrated. The training program was demanding at times but overall a worthwhile experience.

This is Jef, wandering in the mists of a 4 litre beer cooler. Four litres of beer like this will cost you around twenty bucks. It kind of looks like his arm is on fire, which was an omen of times to come because later in Busan his hand really did catch fire as we were drinking incinerated spirits.

Part of me was wanting to stay in Seoul, but I had previously made arrangements to end up down south. This is Maria and Mi-Hyun from the last night I went out in the big city.

Purely impromptu moments like this are few and far between. If you disregard the blur caused by fumbling with the camera, a hidden symbolic message emerges. It says something like 'Never underestimate the creativity of a Dane at 6am'.

So we boarded the bus after saying our goodbyes and left for Busan on a Saturday night. I heard that the countryside on the way is nice, but it was too dark to see anything.

And we arrived at our branch early on Sunday morning. This is Meaghan standing at the reception desk. We're the first batch of teachers here and the branch is new so everything is nice and shiny.

This is the admin office. The Korean staff here are really nice and all speak decent English. I'm looking forward to the day when I can speak the language enough to have a Korean conversation with them.

Some foliage near the water cooler. They give us free food and a staff room here too.

The classrooms are built for larger capacities but class sizes rarely exceed ten students. We've been teaching elementary to middle school students at different levels. When I know the students well enough, I'll post some photos of them. Some of the little kids are incredibly smart.

This is the accommodation the company arranged for me. It's a nice place with a gas stove, fridge, shower and ondol (heated floors for the winter).

The next day, some of the admin staff took us out to this restaurant. When I saw the name I thought we'd be dining on some baby kangaroo meat, but it turned out that this was the name of the chef.

Busan is a nice city, with cleaner air and is a bit more scenic than Seoul. The mountains and the beach are really close, which gives the place a more relaxed atmosphere. But it's still a big city with its own subway and nearly 4 million people.

Last week Jef and I made a night trip down to see Haeundae beach, one of the major tourist attractions in Busan. The area around it is also a nightlife district which has a beachy feel to it.

This is the beach at night. It's an impressive sight when you're standing on it and the sand is different to what you find in Australia. The individual grains are bigger, which makes it feel funny to me.

Nearby is a market area, some of which opens until late. You can buy all sorts of live seafood here, but I've heard that there's a much larger seafood market elsewhere.

So Jef and I ate at a random seafood shack to see what was on the menu. These were the appetisers the waitress brought for us. In the middle you can see raw sea snails and those brown thingys on the bottom right are boiled silkworm larvae. The sea snails you scoop out with a toothpick and they taste a little bit like mussels. I had a bit more difficulty in summoning the composure to eat a baby silkworm, but in the end it tasted a bit like barley and peanut butter. You pop the skin in your teeth and the barley-peanut buttery insides ooze onto your tongue. I only ended up eating 4, but school kids here love them.

For main course we pointed at something on the menu and ended up getting a nice mixture of large fresh shellfish that the waitress cooked for us on the bbq. After that, some local woman who was also eating at the place took over and chopped our food up for us while giving us a tutorial in Korean. That's one thing I've noticed in Busan, some of the people are a little eccentric but also very friendly. We bought the woman a beer for her troubles and she was really happy. The shellfish boiled into a broth and it turned out to be an incredibly good seafood soup, the best that both of us had ever tried. It's definitely worth a try.

We also found a western themed bar in the area, where you can buy imported beers including Coopers Sparkling Ale from South Australia.

The next day I went for a walk down the street and had a poke around. This man gave me permission to photograph him and his chicken, which was nice. A lot of older people here, especially women, prefer not to be photographed by strangers. It's important to ask them first. This man was squatting outside his shop and swatting flies for his pet chicken, which was behaving more like a dog than a bird.

We've eaten out a fair bit since arriving and checked out most of the nearby places. This is one example of strange fusion cooking you can get in Korea. I don't know what it's called but it had corn chips, lychees, cabbage, mango and mayonnaise in it. If I had to name it I'd call it a Tropical Mexi-Asian salad.

Two days ago, the O'briens Irish pub down the road had its opening night. I happened to run into the owner last week by accident and he told me about it. The place is run by an Australian from Brisbane and a Korean-American adoptee. This is me eating the first ever sauerkraut hotdog that came from their kitchen. Their menu is western and they're letting us have bar tabs whenever we visit.

$3 shots of Jager? I think I'll have a photo of that too.

That night we lit up some alcohol and dropped it in beer. Jef had the shot lit up properly but dropped it on his hand.

Ok that's it for this session! There's still plenty of stuff in Busan that I haven't seen yet, but as I settle into my job I'll get out and see more of it. I like the fact that this city has a lot of trees, and land is cheaper so everything is a bit more spaced out. If anyone's thinking of visiting, be sure to let me know.

Enjoying vacation

I still haven't been up to much else except eating, drinking and having a good time. The koshiwon I'm staying at has a really good location, easy to find and close to everything. I'd recommend it to anyone who's looking for a decent place to sleep at a good price.


This is the view from the roof of my accommodation. Due to space restrictions here in Seoul, a lot of people hang their washing up on the rooftops. Those two socks you can see are mine. I bought them for about 50 cents.


And this is Sinchon McDonalds, a prominent landmark and quintessential meeting place for everyone in this region. It's a busy location in the afternoons, with literally hundreds of people waiting around and meeting up with each other to go out for dinner and whatever may follow. If any of you come to visit me here, chances are we'll meet at this place.


So after everyone arrives and pleasantries have been exchanged, the typical Sinchon meetup group will then migrate down the road and loiter outside a restaurant of choice. This is what Sinchon loiterers look like.


That particular night we ate dakgalbi, a kind of fried combination chicken and cabbage concoction that cooks at your table. Sometimes they put cheese in it. Well actually the cheese here isn't real cheese. It's more like rubbery play-dough that vaguely reminds you of cheese.


Then of course you go to a bar and drink until the sun comes up and burns your eyes.


Here's what it looks like when the sun comes up and burns the eyes of those who have stayed out too long.

The subway system in Korea is super-efficient, convenient, clean and logical. It's definately my transport mode of choice. Seoul metro actually employs a team of mathematicians who come up with the best possible timetables to suit the largest number of people. The stations and the trains are all air-conditioned and you're never waiting long.

You can buy normal tickets to board the subway, or you can use T-money. T-money is probably the best invention that Koreans came up with since cyclic-automated-robotic-carparks that stack cars on top of each other to save space. I'll show you one of those in a sec. But anyway, T-money is a card that acts like a credit card for transport on the subway and buses. You just recharge the card when you want, and then you scan it at the turnstiles. It's kind of like a bluetooth system, the card readers instantly deduct what you owe and you don't have to worry about change or anything.



This is how you scan it to enter the subway. You don't even need to take the card out of your wallet, you just scan your wallet and the computer can read it. When you exit the subway you scan it again and it will tell you how much money you have left on it. You can also use it to buy food at mini-marts and make phonecalls from public phones.
T-money is the greatest. You will learn to love T-money. You will respect the T-money. Do not scold the T-money.


And if the whole T-money thing is too confusing, they even provide plastic bags to suffocate yourself with. Simply place over the head and pull the strings as shown.

And here's the picture I owe you of a cyclic-automated-robotic carpark that stacks cars on top of each other to save space. This whole thing is a robot with a vertical conveyer belt. You just drive into it, get out of your car and put coins in. Then the whole thing rotates like a show ride and your car is stacked up. When you come back you put your pin in and it'll bring your car down for you. Very very cool.

Here we are at a bar again. I have a fair few of these sorts of photos but this one has the guy who hugged Guus Hiddink in it. He actually hugs him in a TV ad they have here. If any of you come to Korea and he's still here, I can introduce you to the guy who hugged Guus Hiddink. For a small fee, he may consider allowing you to hug him too.

Here is my nuna (colloquial expression for older-sister). She doesn't speak any English but she still laughs at what I say. I guess I'm funny in any language?
My Korean hasn't improved much. So far I can only say "Where's the toilet?", "Please give me some beer" and "Where is my beer?"

Yesterday we went to the Lotte World skate rink. This is an ice rink in the middle of an indoor themepark. While I was trying to compose my balance enough to stand still without falling, these little kids were zooming past. But one of the little kids had his helmet on backwards. Hoho.

And here is the King of the Ice, at home in his natural habitat. Shortly before falling backwards and hurting his wrists.

Just kidding, I actually have a remarkable sense of balance when I'm sober.

After a hard days work ice-skating we went and ate samgyeopsal, my favourite bbq type with wrapping leaves, kimchi and a naughty amount of pork fat. The meat has 3 layers of fat, but you can also get ogyeopsal, which has 5. If you don't like eating fat, I usually have enough room left so that it doesn't get wasted.

I've been really lucky and fortunate to meet so many nice people here. I met this group of Koreans last Sunday at the Yonsei University soccer grounds. There was supposed to an adoptee match there, but no one showed up except me. The guy on the far end of the table was playing with a Korean team, so I asked if I could join them and we played together. Then he took me to dinner with his friends. This Saturday they invited me to go to Daejon city with them to see a festival they have there. As I said before, I've been really lucky and people are really nice.

The samgyeopsal we ate that night was a bit more tastier than usual. We had different kinds of leaves and radish slices to wrap it up with. And the whole time the Koreans were teaching me new Korean words. But unfortuneately I forgot them.

Here's what an empty subway station looks like. You can hear the trains in the distance, they make a kind of wailing sound. Then you get hit by a rush of air, then all of a sudden the carriages zip by at lightning speed and then it squeals to a stop. This might be old news to some of you, but back in Adelaide we don't have a subway.
That's it for me this time! And I've accepted a job offer in Busan to teach English to junior middle school students. Next Monday I start training in a special camp for one week before I head down there. When I start working I want to enrol in Korean language classes too. So that should be interesting. Hopefully I can post again before then though. Cyas.

Job training

Well it's been a busy week. Last Sunday I moved from my nice little koshiwon and into a hotel that's being paid for by the company I'm working with. The new place is in Soelleung and the room is really nice.


Two televisions, a jacuzzi, sauna and internet access? I just hope they're not going to make me pay.


Probably the best thing about the room is the toilet which has a control panel on the side. Being the curious monkey that I am, I started pushing the buttons one day when I was doing my morning business. All of a sudden a jet of warm water started spraying my nether regions. After I got used to the tickling sensation, I found it to be quite enjoyable.

This is my roommate, Ben. He's from Canada and used to teach here a long time ago. Right now he's at a street vendor ordering takgatchi, marinated chicken skewers on a stick that taste a little like teriyaki.

Itaewon is a district in Seoul which is a hub for multicultural businesses. Due to its proximity to the US army base, there are a lot of American style bars and nightclubs. In the daytime you can buy things you'd normally have difficulty finding in the rest of Seoul. Here we are playing pool at a bar called Hollywood.

And here we are back in our room the next day with some friends that the wind blew in. We ordered some delivery food and Ben was still keen on drinking soju. I lent them my spare shorts and we hung out in the sauna for a couple of hours. Daniel and Alex on the left are from Sweden but they live and teach in Thailand.

Every few weeks around the city you see a whole a lot of these buses parked near strategic locations. They're riot-squad buses and they carry special policemen that have to do drills with helmets and shields. The protests in Korea can get pretty serious, especially the student ones. All the doors and windows on the buses are protected with metal cages.

This is a French restaurant in the heart of Sinchon called Le Petit Paris. It's owned and run by a French-Korean adoptee and the staff are adoptees too. The food is good and you can get decent wine as well.

That particular night it was Matthias's 24th birthday. He's from Sweden and recently landed a university scholarship to study here. Happy birthday dude.

Us at the Six O'Clock bar.

Thomas and Sara rocking it hard to some Scandinavian beats.

Pirate love.

Daniel feeling the pinch from a long night out. He was fine the next day. Young bodies heal quick.

So I started my training to be a teacher at a company called CDI last week. The schedule has been pretty intense and I've been impressed by the setup. The company runs private language tuition schools throughout Korea and is expanding into China next year.

The training I've done has involved a lot of theory and mock teaching in front of classmates. The training has been surprisingly smooth and well-planned. While I still don't think I'm ready to teach just yet, it's helped me a lot to organise my thoughts. The rest I guess I can only get from experience.

Even though we're training for 5 hours a day, we still manage to squeeze in a drink with co-workers. But everything in moderation, of course.

Those two girls in the front are satelite adoptees from the US. Satelite adoptees are the name I thought up for those who aren't connected to any of the organisations here. But now they're kinda connected.

Well this is a view of Seoul from our CDI training building. If you look closely you can see my reflection in the glass. I'm leaving this city today and have a bit of catch up blogging to do for the in-between time I've spent here. I guess I'll get that done in Busan. Oh well, cyas.

One week in Seoul

Well I've spent one week in Korea now. Here is a snapshot of what I've accomplished thus far:

Days in Korea: 7
Nights spent drinking: 5
Average hours of sleep per night: 5
Number of Korean BBQs eaten: 5
Number of days it took me to learn how to use the subway: 1
Number of times I've been lost for more than 2 hours: 2
Number of pirates met: 1

It's been raining a fair bit in Seoul lately, as you can see from this shot I took from upstairs in Koroot. The rain here is different from Adelaide's, it pours heavily for hours on end instead of clearing up frequently. The droplets are large and heavy as well. I didn't buy an umbrella for a while and just tolerated being a bit wet when leaving the house. But then someone told me that the rain here is acidic and can make your hair fall out. Now I have two umbrellas.

I generally shy away from racial stereotyping, but during my time here I've found Koreans in general to be hilarious people. Here are the Koroot volunteers making curtains for the guesthouse. After a couple of hours work, these four nice ladies realised that they had sewed the curtains the wrong way. That lady in the middle is undoing the stitching with her teeth.

Look who recently moved in. Adam is from the Netherlands and he's met Guus Hiddink in person. He was in an advertisement with him for a pizza chain and got to hug him. That is why I'm hugging Adam. So now in a way, I feel like I've also hugged Guus Hiddink.

We found a Vietnamese beef noodle place last week. I've heard that some of the other places are decent but this place was a bit shoddy. The waitresses were wearing Konglish (Korean-English) superman uniforms and one of them looked like she wanted to kill herself and was fairly rude. She even made Eric swear in French. The noodles were even worse. They weren't fresh, the chilli sauce was watery, the soup tasted like it was made from instant noodle base and the couple of pieces of beef in it were small and chewy. But the tea was nice.
A typical view of a BBQ session. Two points of interest: (1) The bamboo containers you can see are filled with a kind of sweet soju (2) There's toilet paper on the table and on the wall. They use it for paper towel here, but the funny thing is that it's not usually found in public toilets. You need to carry your own.

BBQ sessions always evolve into something more exciting. Here we are in a rock bar called The Door, singing to none other than Money Talks by AC/DC. If you look closely it seems like we've been drinking.

This is the ceiling in a different bar in Sinchon, called Mu bar. Those coloured panels are actually the transparent bottom of a stream that constantly runs overhead. The whole place has a kind of foresty feel to it and when you're in the toilets you get a good view of the place.

This is Thomas posing with a pitcher of beer that you can buy in Mu bar. The middle section has water and dry ice in it and keeps the beer cold while pouring out mist. See that pink tin on the table? It's got toilet paper in it.

And here is a market street near Koroot. The atmosphere is a little more pleasant and less busy than the markets I saw in KL. You can buy everything here, from live eels to already-boiled eggs in egg cartons that are indistinguishable from non-boiled eggs.