Korea finally

I've been in Korea now for a little over 2 months. Really only 2 days more than 2 months. Maybe 2 months, 2 days, and 2 hours who knows. Something like that. Depends if you count arriving in Busan or Daegu. Let's see where I should start.

I guess the airport since all epic journeys begin at some kind of station. I guess returns can't really be epic unless I'd been away for more than 20 years maybe. There might be a different rule if it's your hometown or something. So LAX. I can't really think of anything worth mentioning about the flight over except that what I thought would be a nice seat when I picked it on the seat map wasn't all that great. I liked that I was on Northwest flight 1 from LA to Tokyo. I think that was probably the most interesting thing.

I got to Busan and met my recruiter who drove me to Daegu. The old awkward conversation with the Korean thing. I always hate awkward conversations with strangers that happen only because both people feel obligated to talk to the other. It was alright for one of those though. Got to Daegu took a 2 minute tour of the school and went to my new apartment to sleep. My apartment was pretty disappointing. Full of useless chairs and tables. It's much better now and I'm actually quite happy with it. If I cleaned up a bit maybe I'd take a picture of it.

Work has been going fine. They stuck me with a few classes on Saturdays but I decided I was fine with it since Alex and Young Mi would be working anyway and I knew I'd do absolutely nothing with it. Plus half the week I barely have class. I teach for less than 3 hours so I was never dying for the weekend to come which is a big change. They gave me 4 extra classes the last couple weeks but I'm getting rid of a few next week. Actually next week I only have 29-40 minute classes but I'm waiting for them to give me a couple more.



Let's see what else. There was the World Cup. Korea unfortunately didn't make it to round 2 but we saw the Togo-Korea game in the middle of a big intersection. So it was fun to see Korea win with a giant field of red horns. The Koreans are known as the red devils. That was actually the night that 2 new teachers came in and I got out of class early.



I also took a day trip up to Seoul to see an old Austrian friend of Alex's. An Austrian, an American, a Canadian, and a Korean hanging out in the streets of Seoul. It always sounds like the opening to some bad joke when everyone is a different nationality. Of course, to the Koreans were all just Miguks or Waygooks (American/Foreigners) hanging out with a native daughter. Young Mi had her nationality questioned by some Korean kid. "Mom, where's that girl from?" "I'm Korean." "Mom, where is she from?" Funny only because usually kids only ask that question about people who don't look like them. Foreigner by association. We went to the Gyeongbukkung Palace and Insa-dong. Both places I'd been before. It was quite a silly day probably since we woke up about 4 hours before usual and we exhausted by 4pm. The Austrian was all jet-lagged and only knew she was staying with a guy named Kim which can't really get anymore vague in Korea.



I also went to Gyeongju with my boss and my newly arrived Canadian co-workers. That was quite a long day. I should really start updating this thing more often.



Basically things are going pretty well with everything. I've been having a bit too much fun and am already 200,000 won below my savings goal for the month with another week to go. Luckily, this next paycheque should have some extra money. We've been teaching morning classes for the past week which isn't too bad since it's really only an extra 2 classes with a 4 hour break between them and the regular working day. The nice thing is that I get an extra 150,000 a week. Not that much but enough to pretend that I saved 1,000,000 total this month. I bought some new clothes though, went to Seoul, had 2 really fun nights out, and got a personal trainer for the month.

I've been going to the gym during my 4 hour breaks and they have a really nice sauna so by the time I get back to work the morning feels like it was a different day. The trainer is actually a pretty good deal, too. 200,000 won for 16 sessions. It's a lot of money though so this will probably be my first and only month of doing that. Maybe I can work something out with them because 280,000 a month (membership fee) for fitness seems crazy especially when it's only 10% of my salary. I don't need 4 private sessions a week. Of course, I could come out of Korea with a totally awesome body. I'll have to put myself on a strict budget though. Anyways, I guess that's about all I feel like writing at the moment. Well I could write more but you're probably getting sick of reading this. Until the next.