This entry comes to you from a different Daegu café than the last. This place is called Seven Monkeys, and was constructed during the time I’ve been here. I walk by it every day on the way to work and, having seen its birth, I suppose I feel a special kinship to it. Rather than pay for overpriced tea this time, I got a cappuccino, with which I received a free banana, in keeping with the monkey theme. Across the street is a gym that also contains a hair salon and a place to play screen golf.
On Tuesday, I went on a mission to buy ice cream. I started walking in a direction I hadn’t been yet, reasoning that, since I knew there wasn’t ice cream in the directions I’d already been, it had to be that way. Of course once I set off the pleasure of walking around and looking at stuff distracted me from my purpose. I saw a slew of golf clothing stores, which made me giggle. I was having so much fun wandering that when I came upon a Baskin Robbins, I decided to walk some more and then come back to it. When I returned to BR, I bought a pint of cookies and cream. The cashier asked me how long it was to my destination, and I said ten minutes, though I was at a loss as to why it mattered. When I got home , I took the ice cream out of the bag and a little cloth baggy fell to the floor, containing what looked like ice. When I went to pick it up, I quickly discovered it was too cold to be regular ice. I threw it into the sink and it landed in a pot filled with water (the pot with which I’d had my first, very unsuccessful attempt at cooking sticky rice without a rice cooker) and proceeded to bubble in an alarmingly unnatural way for a good ten minutes. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I learned that they give you dry ice to keep your ice cream cold.
On Sunday, it was gloriously, unseasonably warm. I collected Bryan and we went on a delightful walk to Emart. I’d only gone to Emart by cab before this. I was in a very good mood, and when I’m in a good mood it really shows, which is probably why two separate strangers said hello and asked me where I was from, which is the classic “I’m talking to a foreigner” dialogue, but (as far as I can tell) you don’t get it that much spontaneously on the street. I suppose I do look pretty approachable.
On Saturday, I spent most of the day relaxing. It was Adom’s birthday so I talked to that crazy, quarter century old punk, which was lovely. Adom is a great brother and person, and since he’s the least vain of the three of us, he is probably embarrassed that I wrote that. Well suck it up, oppa. After that, I went downtown to go to the salsa party at the place where Melinda teaches. As you may recall, I’m not a good salsa dancer, but I am a champion people watcher so I had a really good time watch the dancing and trying to pick up on the stylistic differences between the “LA style” salsa popular in Korea and the “Cuban style” taught by Melinda and her fantastic co-instructor, Susy. I did actually end up dancing 5 times, and not making a complete fool of myself. The first guy I danced with was a regular who is friendly with M and S. In conversation, he mentioned that whenever he travels, the first thing he does is locate the salsa community in his new city because that’s the best way to make new friends who share a common interest. This got me thinking about my own tactics of adaptation. It’s a touch unfortunate that my dominant interest, books and literature, doesn’t lend itself to making local friends since it requires a high level of English proficiency. While I’d totally love to get into some Korean lit, not much has been translated and my Korean isn’t anywhere near reading even a picture book level. More bodily activities are better for crosslingual friendship making.
Friday, I joined Melinda for a trip to a new Tex Mex restaurant that she had to write a review of for the local mag she writes for. The resto was ultra weak. We waited 2 hours for our food and the food was seriously mediocre. Thank God we didn’t pay for it, otherwise – well, I wouldn’t have paid for it if it was two hours late regardless, which is saying something because I am usually very forgiving about these sorts of things. The co-owner was this American dude who, I am confident, had no idea what he was doing, either in restaurant running, or in food making. As I said later, I would take good Korean food in Korea over mediocre Western food, any day of the week.
Last night (chronological order is for suckas), I went out for galbi with the enjoyable Nakia, a coworker who has different hours than me so I only see her in the afternoons, and her friend who works elsewhere. Galbi was delicious as always and the conversation was most entertaining. Then me and Nakia did a little shopping and I started plotting what I will buy when I get paid.
Today was a triumphant day because I got my alien card, bank account and cell phone. BAM! I officially exist in this country. Now people don’t have to call people who might happen to be around me in order to talk to me. My cell phone is quite fancy and I’m sure it’ll take me a million years to learn how to use it (with my Canadian cell phone, I never learned how to text quickly, and that was way less complicated than doing it on this one).
I know it must seem like I am obsessed with Korean traffic, but there are some things I just can’t get over. If you thought motorcycles on the sidewalk was outrageous, then let me tell you about the times I’ve been on the sidewalk and I’ve looked over my shoulder to find a car inching along behind me. I just don’t get it. When I walk on the sidewalk here I feel like I have to be constantly vigilant or else I’ll get hit by something.
In other news, I get paid tomorrow! Oh my goodness. A real paycheck. I’m very excited. Money I worked for that I get to actually keep? Amazing!
Well, that’s all for now, kiddies. I should probably vacate Seven Monkeys and go home. Luckily, tomorrow is Friday which means its so close to the weekend I can taste it. Aw yeah.
Love,
AAA
p.s. almost broke my chain of music recommendations. A quirkier side to Korean music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjvW3LqtijA
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Bonus Ramblings
This evening, I decided to go to a café for a little tea and reading time. I really like reading in public places, for whatever reason. So I walked over to a cute little place called Hue Story that is just down the main road from my place. If you were to judge the regular activities of Koreans based solely on what shops are most numerous, you would be convinced that all people did was drink coffee, eat out and talk on cell phones. This city is quite crawling with cafés. Hue Story is a cute little place with an exposed brick wall, Christmas lights and some kitschy decor including a high ledge that holds a skateboard and a random selection of university textbooks including Orthodontics, Power Electronics and Clinical Pedodontics.
I ordered a black tea but what I got tasted like a halfway between black and green (and was, as tea tends to be here, horrifically overpriced) and sat down to read Sandman vol 8. When I first arrived, a big group of girls sat at the tables beside me, giggling and chatting. When they left, they were replaced by a very quiet couple that, for a while, I thought didn’t speak at all.
Across the street from the café is the building of one of Korea’s big TV stations and I went walking in its pleasant little courtyard before I came to Hue Story. Attached to the building is a movie theatre that I might check out soon. It’s almost the weekend, which is exciting. I’m hope to take a little trip to the jimjilbang for a little TLC on Saturday. Jimjilbang are awesome, family-friendly, affordable spa places with hot tubs and saunas and hot floors to lie on. Totally my sort of places.
While we were wandering last Sunday, we passed a belly dancing studio which I also want to check out since I really liked taking belly dance lessons way back in Guelph.
Tonight feels like a night of random reflections and I shouldn’t waste this inexplicably mellow and talkative mood, so the rest of this entry is a bunch of observations / thoughts / mongoose.
Previously I mentioned the crazily wide roads around here. I said 6 to 8 lanes but I actually counted and the one I have to cross to go to work is in fact 12 lanes wide. For real. And yet there are still always cars parked on the sidewalk and at least twice I’ve been narrowly missed by motorcyclists careening along the sidewalk. I’m beginning to suspect that sidewalks here are conceptualized rather differently than I’m used to.
On a completely unrelated note, I the toilets at work are squatters. When I told my mom she was surprised because last year we only encountered squat toilets in China, but it seems like they are common in Korea, just not as much in Seoul. I’m not a very good squatter, for my shame, so it’s taking some getting used to. I do take the point that they are, in their way, more sanitary than seated toilets since everyone’s bare bum isn’t touching the same seat (though it’s a hell of a job not peeing on your pants when you are new to squatting) but since I’m not even close to being a germaphobe, I do prefer unsanitary over uncomfortable. Also, the bathrooms are horrifically cold, as is the water that comes out of the tap. So peeing at work = not that fun.
Another remembered tidbit: I’m definitely going to miss Canada’s non-smoking laws. By the time I came of age, smoking was already a no-no in bars and clubs (yeah, I’m so young, I know) and this fact becomes more valuable when you go to places where smoking is still a-okay in such places. Yuck.
Lastly on the miscellaneous thoughts train: much can be said about Korea’s incredible homogeneity. But the part of it that I am thinking about right now is that, when something is in style, a breathtakingly, incomparably large portion of the population is into it. An obvious example: shiny black coats. Seriously, young and old, male and female, a ridiculously high percentage of the population wears essentially the same winter coat. It’s actually pretty incredible. Even the most generally accepted trends in Canada can’t hope to be so ubiquitous.
To wrap up this meandering entry, I give you another lovely link. This group is huge in Korea as well as Southeast Asia /Oceania (I once saw a video of some Malaysia teen girls, including hijabis, doing a synchronized dance to one of their songs in the middle of a city square) and this song has the sexy sound of good old fashioned R&B. Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvXMOSB5aqk
Love,
AAA
P.S. as an unrelated bonus, here is another link to an Iron & Wine song that I lovely like crazy and is highly appropriate for such a mellow mood.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVwIBFEjQXY
I ordered a black tea but what I got tasted like a halfway between black and green (and was, as tea tends to be here, horrifically overpriced) and sat down to read Sandman vol 8. When I first arrived, a big group of girls sat at the tables beside me, giggling and chatting. When they left, they were replaced by a very quiet couple that, for a while, I thought didn’t speak at all.
Across the street from the café is the building of one of Korea’s big TV stations and I went walking in its pleasant little courtyard before I came to Hue Story. Attached to the building is a movie theatre that I might check out soon. It’s almost the weekend, which is exciting. I’m hope to take a little trip to the jimjilbang for a little TLC on Saturday. Jimjilbang are awesome, family-friendly, affordable spa places with hot tubs and saunas and hot floors to lie on. Totally my sort of places.
While we were wandering last Sunday, we passed a belly dancing studio which I also want to check out since I really liked taking belly dance lessons way back in Guelph.
Tonight feels like a night of random reflections and I shouldn’t waste this inexplicably mellow and talkative mood, so the rest of this entry is a bunch of observations / thoughts / mongoose.
Previously I mentioned the crazily wide roads around here. I said 6 to 8 lanes but I actually counted and the one I have to cross to go to work is in fact 12 lanes wide. For real. And yet there are still always cars parked on the sidewalk and at least twice I’ve been narrowly missed by motorcyclists careening along the sidewalk. I’m beginning to suspect that sidewalks here are conceptualized rather differently than I’m used to.
On a completely unrelated note, I the toilets at work are squatters. When I told my mom she was surprised because last year we only encountered squat toilets in China, but it seems like they are common in Korea, just not as much in Seoul. I’m not a very good squatter, for my shame, so it’s taking some getting used to. I do take the point that they are, in their way, more sanitary than seated toilets since everyone’s bare bum isn’t touching the same seat (though it’s a hell of a job not peeing on your pants when you are new to squatting) but since I’m not even close to being a germaphobe, I do prefer unsanitary over uncomfortable. Also, the bathrooms are horrifically cold, as is the water that comes out of the tap. So peeing at work = not that fun.
Another remembered tidbit: I’m definitely going to miss Canada’s non-smoking laws. By the time I came of age, smoking was already a no-no in bars and clubs (yeah, I’m so young, I know) and this fact becomes more valuable when you go to places where smoking is still a-okay in such places. Yuck.
Lastly on the miscellaneous thoughts train: much can be said about Korea’s incredible homogeneity. But the part of it that I am thinking about right now is that, when something is in style, a breathtakingly, incomparably large portion of the population is into it. An obvious example: shiny black coats. Seriously, young and old, male and female, a ridiculously high percentage of the population wears essentially the same winter coat. It’s actually pretty incredible. Even the most generally accepted trends in Canada can’t hope to be so ubiquitous.
To wrap up this meandering entry, I give you another lovely link. This group is huge in Korea as well as Southeast Asia /Oceania (I once saw a video of some Malaysia teen girls, including hijabis, doing a synchronized dance to one of their songs in the middle of a city square) and this song has the sexy sound of good old fashioned R&B. Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvXMOSB5aqk
Love,
AAA
P.S. as an unrelated bonus, here is another link to an Iron & Wine song that I lovely like crazy and is highly appropriate for such a mellow mood.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVwIBFEjQXY
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Back for more, are ye?
That’s right, everybody, here comes another one. And less than a week after the last one! Don’t get used to this kind of treatment.
So as of last night, I’ve been in Daegu for over a week. Things are still going very well. One of the funny and awesome things about being in here is that there is a whole lot of Guelph, Ontario in Daegu, South Korea. I work next to a fellow Guelphite, I live two doors down from another one, and I got a delightful visit this weekend from another, not to mention several others who work for the same company as me. It’s a huge relief coming into a new place but having familiar faces around, especially because opting for an office job means that if it weren’t for all these folks I would have had a way smaller network of people to hang out with.
So since you heard from me last, I finished up my first week on the job and enjoyed my first weekend of Daeguification. Friday involved going out to dinner at a very nice but rather cold Canadian-run spot with Melinda and some other cool folks. Turns out foreigners can’t own businesses in SK, which I didn’t know. The place is owned a Korean woman with a Canadian husband. The food was good; I had a very delicious hamburger with bacon on it. After dinner (during which several teachers, who don’t get off work ‘til late, joined us), we headed off and I was introduced to a couple of the very foreigner frequented clubs of Daegu. Those of you who are not very familiar with SK may not be aware that it is a society that really loves alcohol. A lot. It’s also a society that is pretty lax about public drunkenness. When we visited Adom last year, I was introduced to the phenomenon of drunken businessmen roaming the streets at all hours. Which is why it wasn’t quite so surprising when I found out about “bag drinks” which are plastic ziplock-esque bags filled with mix drinks that people can walk around the street sipping from with impunity. I’m sure SK has a drinking age, but I can’t imagine it is enforced very intensely. But back to the nightlife. Daegu is surrounded by several US military bases which really affects the nightlife because American GIs are, well, young people who enlisted in the army who are stationed in a place where they have relatively little to do other than cause trouble. I’m not all that into the military in general, and I don’t foresee this closer proximity reforming that opinion; I’ve already seen a fight amongst drunken military boys and girls outside of the club that they most often frequent, which was across the street from where we were. That isn’t to say that all military folk are annoying and/or douche-y. I met two perfectly nice Mexican-American military dudes at salsa. But I don’t expect that I’ll be going out of my way to meet military folks, is all. Of course it would be unfair to say that all of the foreigners who I am likely to avoid are military folk; there are lots of people who come as teachers who I probably also won’t be very interested in meeting. I really don’t approve of treating other people’s country as if it is your own private playground and there are definitely some foreigners here with that attitude. I also know that Korean isn’t a very easy language to learn, but I do think it’s ridiculous that there are people who stay here for long periods of time but never learn how to read Hangul (which you can literally learn within a day) even if you can’t always understand what you are reading , and who don’t learn the really basic, get you around town and keep you from being hopelessly rude to people vocab. Anyway, I don’t mean to be ranting right now. It is quite judgey of me to already be hating on people for the way they do living here, but this is my blog and I shall be judgey if I so desire. But back to the fun stuff!
After an enjoyable night on Friday, I spent Saturday morning taking it very, very easy. In the late afternoon I headed over to Melinda’s so that she could take me along to her salsa class, which she kindly coerced me into attending. I. am. terrible. at. salsa. Hardcore. I’m bad at dances that involve doing specific steps, and I am even worse at dances that require you to follow someone. So while salsa was enjoyable, I don’t know how frequently I’ll be doing it because my incredible lack of skill and coordination (not to mention lack of stamina from months of being lazypants to the extreme) make the experience a little embarrassing. After salsa there was galbi (delicious!) with some very cool folks from the class (cool people do make it hard to not do something that puts you in their path). After galbi there was more dancing, which was even more fun than the night before because there were more people out (apparently Saturdays are way more dancey than Fridays ‘round these parts). I’d found out earlier in the evening that the glorious Maanda (who lives in another city) would be joining us for the evening and she did indeed arrive with Brian, fellow Guelphite and my now neighbour, in tow. And thusly did we dance ‘til the wee hours. And after dancing ‘til the wee hours, M and B had some chamchi kimbap while I reflected on how long it is going to take me to get used to eating places that don’t serve tea. Korean restaurants are very specific. You can’t just get anything at any place.
Sunday was even lazier than the day before because it involved waking up at 2 in the afternoon (delicious!). The rest day was spent cavorting with M and B. We went out in search of food and ended up wandering the streets for quite a while until we ended up picking a place basically at random. Then, after a complicated ordering process that ended with us still not actually knowing what we ordered, we finally got to eat. Of course, M and B are both non-meat eaters so the fact that our first of three courses ended up being pig intestines meant that I had a lot of solo eating to do (luckily for them, every Korean meal comes with tons of side dishes that they were able to munch on while waiting for the next course). Pig intestines, I found, taste fine but are really all chew and no swallow (though the table beside us would definitely disagree; those two girls and one guy were packing those pig intestines in like they were about to hibernate). The next course was, luckily, seafood so my table mates were able to partake. Cooking that was fun because you cook them in the shells and then mix them into a soup. Very tasty. The last course was a cold apple and squid salad-like thing that I didn’t have any of because I don’t like cold food. On the way out of the restaurant they have a little coffee machine where you can get a Dixie cup of surprisingly tasty cappuccino for 100 won (which is like 10 cents Canadian). After our eating adventure, we went back to B’s place and played Boggle, game of champions. We also watched the new Jennifer Lopez video, which is so breathtakingly wack you have to see it for yourself. The lyrics almost certainly lower the IQ of anyone who hears them. As an antidote, enjoy this great Drunken Tiger track about his adorable baby:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-M2v6O9S_S8
And then it was back to work on Monday. And again, this is a probably unnecessarily long blog entry. Ah well. The point is I had a great weekend. I was well fed, I danced, I hung out with glorious people, I slept obscene amounts. Tomorrow I will try to remember to /figure out how to upload pictures on this here blog and on facebook. In the meantime, I hope all of you are starting Tuesday have a good one.
Bam,
AAA
So as of last night, I’ve been in Daegu for over a week. Things are still going very well. One of the funny and awesome things about being in here is that there is a whole lot of Guelph, Ontario in Daegu, South Korea. I work next to a fellow Guelphite, I live two doors down from another one, and I got a delightful visit this weekend from another, not to mention several others who work for the same company as me. It’s a huge relief coming into a new place but having familiar faces around, especially because opting for an office job means that if it weren’t for all these folks I would have had a way smaller network of people to hang out with.
So since you heard from me last, I finished up my first week on the job and enjoyed my first weekend of Daeguification. Friday involved going out to dinner at a very nice but rather cold Canadian-run spot with Melinda and some other cool folks. Turns out foreigners can’t own businesses in SK, which I didn’t know. The place is owned a Korean woman with a Canadian husband. The food was good; I had a very delicious hamburger with bacon on it. After dinner (during which several teachers, who don’t get off work ‘til late, joined us), we headed off and I was introduced to a couple of the very foreigner frequented clubs of Daegu. Those of you who are not very familiar with SK may not be aware that it is a society that really loves alcohol. A lot. It’s also a society that is pretty lax about public drunkenness. When we visited Adom last year, I was introduced to the phenomenon of drunken businessmen roaming the streets at all hours. Which is why it wasn’t quite so surprising when I found out about “bag drinks” which are plastic ziplock-esque bags filled with mix drinks that people can walk around the street sipping from with impunity. I’m sure SK has a drinking age, but I can’t imagine it is enforced very intensely. But back to the nightlife. Daegu is surrounded by several US military bases which really affects the nightlife because American GIs are, well, young people who enlisted in the army who are stationed in a place where they have relatively little to do other than cause trouble. I’m not all that into the military in general, and I don’t foresee this closer proximity reforming that opinion; I’ve already seen a fight amongst drunken military boys and girls outside of the club that they most often frequent, which was across the street from where we were. That isn’t to say that all military folk are annoying and/or douche-y. I met two perfectly nice Mexican-American military dudes at salsa. But I don’t expect that I’ll be going out of my way to meet military folks, is all. Of course it would be unfair to say that all of the foreigners who I am likely to avoid are military folk; there are lots of people who come as teachers who I probably also won’t be very interested in meeting. I really don’t approve of treating other people’s country as if it is your own private playground and there are definitely some foreigners here with that attitude. I also know that Korean isn’t a very easy language to learn, but I do think it’s ridiculous that there are people who stay here for long periods of time but never learn how to read Hangul (which you can literally learn within a day) even if you can’t always understand what you are reading , and who don’t learn the really basic, get you around town and keep you from being hopelessly rude to people vocab. Anyway, I don’t mean to be ranting right now. It is quite judgey of me to already be hating on people for the way they do living here, but this is my blog and I shall be judgey if I so desire. But back to the fun stuff!
After an enjoyable night on Friday, I spent Saturday morning taking it very, very easy. In the late afternoon I headed over to Melinda’s so that she could take me along to her salsa class, which she kindly coerced me into attending. I. am. terrible. at. salsa. Hardcore. I’m bad at dances that involve doing specific steps, and I am even worse at dances that require you to follow someone. So while salsa was enjoyable, I don’t know how frequently I’ll be doing it because my incredible lack of skill and coordination (not to mention lack of stamina from months of being lazypants to the extreme) make the experience a little embarrassing. After salsa there was galbi (delicious!) with some very cool folks from the class (cool people do make it hard to not do something that puts you in their path). After galbi there was more dancing, which was even more fun than the night before because there were more people out (apparently Saturdays are way more dancey than Fridays ‘round these parts). I’d found out earlier in the evening that the glorious Maanda (who lives in another city) would be joining us for the evening and she did indeed arrive with Brian, fellow Guelphite and my now neighbour, in tow. And thusly did we dance ‘til the wee hours. And after dancing ‘til the wee hours, M and B had some chamchi kimbap while I reflected on how long it is going to take me to get used to eating places that don’t serve tea. Korean restaurants are very specific. You can’t just get anything at any place.
Sunday was even lazier than the day before because it involved waking up at 2 in the afternoon (delicious!). The rest day was spent cavorting with M and B. We went out in search of food and ended up wandering the streets for quite a while until we ended up picking a place basically at random. Then, after a complicated ordering process that ended with us still not actually knowing what we ordered, we finally got to eat. Of course, M and B are both non-meat eaters so the fact that our first of three courses ended up being pig intestines meant that I had a lot of solo eating to do (luckily for them, every Korean meal comes with tons of side dishes that they were able to munch on while waiting for the next course). Pig intestines, I found, taste fine but are really all chew and no swallow (though the table beside us would definitely disagree; those two girls and one guy were packing those pig intestines in like they were about to hibernate). The next course was, luckily, seafood so my table mates were able to partake. Cooking that was fun because you cook them in the shells and then mix them into a soup. Very tasty. The last course was a cold apple and squid salad-like thing that I didn’t have any of because I don’t like cold food. On the way out of the restaurant they have a little coffee machine where you can get a Dixie cup of surprisingly tasty cappuccino for 100 won (which is like 10 cents Canadian). After our eating adventure, we went back to B’s place and played Boggle, game of champions. We also watched the new Jennifer Lopez video, which is so breathtakingly wack you have to see it for yourself. The lyrics almost certainly lower the IQ of anyone who hears them. As an antidote, enjoy this great Drunken Tiger track about his adorable baby:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-M2v6O9S_S8
And then it was back to work on Monday. And again, this is a probably unnecessarily long blog entry. Ah well. The point is I had a great weekend. I was well fed, I danced, I hung out with glorious people, I slept obscene amounts. Tomorrow I will try to remember to /figure out how to upload pictures on this here blog and on facebook. In the meantime, I hope all of you are starting Tuesday have a good one.
Bam,
AAA
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Yeah, this is actually happening
Well ladies and gentlemen, before I left Toronto just a few days ago, just about everybody I spoke to told me that I should write a blog while I’m here, in the South Korean city of Daegu. Generally, I’m not very good at things like this. I’ve never been a good diary keeper. But since learning a little self-discipline when it comes to writing can’t really be a bad thing, I figured I’d give this a try. So, welcome to my blog. This is the beginning of the story of my time as a runaway from North America and academia.
The facts: I’m working and living in the city of Daegu, which is about the same size, population-wise, as Toronto, which makes it small by Asian standards. It’s about 2 hours on the high speed train from Seoul, the capital. I work as an editor for an ESL company that runs a number of schools, though editor in this context actually includes writing and designing and potentially voice recording. I decided to come to SK for a number of reasons, the most prominent of which is that I needed to take some time away from academia before I sign up for the long-term commitment stylings of ye olde PhD. When I finished my master’s this past August, I knew it was time for me to give this whole fulltime job, actual income thing a try before I wrote it off completely. So here I am.
The flight(s) from TO to Daegu is super long and involved stopovers in Vancouver and then Seoul. I had non-annoying seatmates the whole way which was a big relief and I took Tylenol sinus to reduce the epic painfulness in my ears that I always experience when I fly. I also chewed gum the whole way to help with this. That’s almost 20 straight hours of gum chewing, which, incidentally, makes your mouth feel like you just had your wisdom teeth out and a bee stung your tongue. But my ears weren’t as bad as they have been on other trips so I was happy about that. When I was waiting for my connecting flight in Seoul’s Incheon airport, a young woman came up to me and explained that she comes to the airport to chat it up with foreigners to practice her English. So I talked to her for a while, which was a good way to while away some of the time. Then I ate at Lotteria, which is a Korean fastfood chain. I had a bulgogi burger, which was good and entertainingly fusion-y.
I was picked up by one of the fabulous folks that the company pays to make foreigners not wander off cliffs and he drove me to my apartment, where some of his counterparts were waiting to carry my sinfully heavy baggage up the stairs to my third floor (no elevator) apartment. And what a nice apartment it is! It’s a spacious bachelor. The kitchen is, as these kinds of kitchens go, very nice though the lack of oven is sort of annoying. I have a toaster oven, a stove and a microwave, but no oven means no cakes or huge slabs of salmon. I’ve also got a washing machine (yay! laundry mats blow!). Marty will be impressed that I will have to start hang-drying my clothes since neither I nor anyone else has a dryer. The bathroom is the typical kind over here, which is to say that the entire bathroom is a shower in the sense that literally everything in the room gets soaked when you have shower because there isn’t any kind of separation between toilet, sink and shower. The shower head is the handheld kind and it is attached to my sink faucet.
My place is walking distance from work, which is sweet. I do have to cross a crazily wide intersection with very confusing lights, however. Korea seems to be made up of huge, six to eight lane major streets and tiny, barely single lane residential streets. Clearly, middle ground is for suckas.
I arrived Monday night and worked Tuesday morning and this is my first night coming straight home from work. I’ve taken a couple of trips downtown to do some looking around / eating and I’ve also done some very necessary grocery shopping. All of these activities have been accomplished with delightful coworkers, including my awesome friend from university, Melinda, who has been working here for a while and has been incredibly helpful with my settling in. Tomorrow and Saturday nights there will be going out on the town to be done; I shall have my introduction to Daegu night life. I’m looking forward to the weekend; I’ve gotten used to working here, now I need some time to get used to living here.
So there you have it. My first few days in Daegu. Nothing too exciting, but whatever, you guys made me write this. I’m sure there will be more entertaining tales to tell in the future. For now, I’m off to laze the rest of the evening away.
Bam,
AAA
p.s. I suppose I ought to give you all an idea of what this blog will be like. Aside from the sort of personal ramblings found in this entry, I’m sure I’ll also spend time rambling about the sorts of topics I find interesting, which is mostly stuff like popular culture (particularly kdramas and kpop since I am, after all, all up in Korea), language (I’m going to try to learn as much Korean as possible and I’m sure I’ll have observations about the English language in Korea), ethnicity and culture and all the craziness related to these two amorphous concepts, and food, since food is awesome. And before any of you ask, yes you get stared at a lot if you are black person in Korea. But I am a person who gets stared at a lot anywhere (because I do things like dance down the street mostly) so it hasn’t really felt that weird. People have been nice and helpful to me, and generally understanding of the fact that my Korean vocab is rather small. I’m not by nature a humble person, but acting humble when traveling is definitely the secret to my success in terms getting great treatment from people and not having them read you as an entitled western douchebag. So yeah, my biggest travel tip: work on having a really nice smile and a good, polite but friendly laugh. Seriously. These are really the things best able to make cross-lingual communication less awkward and strained. Wow, this is a long postscript. Ah well. I’m a long winded gal. You guys should know that by now.
The facts: I’m working and living in the city of Daegu, which is about the same size, population-wise, as Toronto, which makes it small by Asian standards. It’s about 2 hours on the high speed train from Seoul, the capital. I work as an editor for an ESL company that runs a number of schools, though editor in this context actually includes writing and designing and potentially voice recording. I decided to come to SK for a number of reasons, the most prominent of which is that I needed to take some time away from academia before I sign up for the long-term commitment stylings of ye olde PhD. When I finished my master’s this past August, I knew it was time for me to give this whole fulltime job, actual income thing a try before I wrote it off completely. So here I am.
The flight(s) from TO to Daegu is super long and involved stopovers in Vancouver and then Seoul. I had non-annoying seatmates the whole way which was a big relief and I took Tylenol sinus to reduce the epic painfulness in my ears that I always experience when I fly. I also chewed gum the whole way to help with this. That’s almost 20 straight hours of gum chewing, which, incidentally, makes your mouth feel like you just had your wisdom teeth out and a bee stung your tongue. But my ears weren’t as bad as they have been on other trips so I was happy about that. When I was waiting for my connecting flight in Seoul’s Incheon airport, a young woman came up to me and explained that she comes to the airport to chat it up with foreigners to practice her English. So I talked to her for a while, which was a good way to while away some of the time. Then I ate at Lotteria, which is a Korean fastfood chain. I had a bulgogi burger, which was good and entertainingly fusion-y.
I was picked up by one of the fabulous folks that the company pays to make foreigners not wander off cliffs and he drove me to my apartment, where some of his counterparts were waiting to carry my sinfully heavy baggage up the stairs to my third floor (no elevator) apartment. And what a nice apartment it is! It’s a spacious bachelor. The kitchen is, as these kinds of kitchens go, very nice though the lack of oven is sort of annoying. I have a toaster oven, a stove and a microwave, but no oven means no cakes or huge slabs of salmon. I’ve also got a washing machine (yay! laundry mats blow!). Marty will be impressed that I will have to start hang-drying my clothes since neither I nor anyone else has a dryer. The bathroom is the typical kind over here, which is to say that the entire bathroom is a shower in the sense that literally everything in the room gets soaked when you have shower because there isn’t any kind of separation between toilet, sink and shower. The shower head is the handheld kind and it is attached to my sink faucet.
My place is walking distance from work, which is sweet. I do have to cross a crazily wide intersection with very confusing lights, however. Korea seems to be made up of huge, six to eight lane major streets and tiny, barely single lane residential streets. Clearly, middle ground is for suckas.
I arrived Monday night and worked Tuesday morning and this is my first night coming straight home from work. I’ve taken a couple of trips downtown to do some looking around / eating and I’ve also done some very necessary grocery shopping. All of these activities have been accomplished with delightful coworkers, including my awesome friend from university, Melinda, who has been working here for a while and has been incredibly helpful with my settling in. Tomorrow and Saturday nights there will be going out on the town to be done; I shall have my introduction to Daegu night life. I’m looking forward to the weekend; I’ve gotten used to working here, now I need some time to get used to living here.
So there you have it. My first few days in Daegu. Nothing too exciting, but whatever, you guys made me write this. I’m sure there will be more entertaining tales to tell in the future. For now, I’m off to laze the rest of the evening away.
Bam,
AAA
p.s. I suppose I ought to give you all an idea of what this blog will be like. Aside from the sort of personal ramblings found in this entry, I’m sure I’ll also spend time rambling about the sorts of topics I find interesting, which is mostly stuff like popular culture (particularly kdramas and kpop since I am, after all, all up in Korea), language (I’m going to try to learn as much Korean as possible and I’m sure I’ll have observations about the English language in Korea), ethnicity and culture and all the craziness related to these two amorphous concepts, and food, since food is awesome. And before any of you ask, yes you get stared at a lot if you are black person in Korea. But I am a person who gets stared at a lot anywhere (because I do things like dance down the street mostly) so it hasn’t really felt that weird. People have been nice and helpful to me, and generally understanding of the fact that my Korean vocab is rather small. I’m not by nature a humble person, but acting humble when traveling is definitely the secret to my success in terms getting great treatment from people and not having them read you as an entitled western douchebag. So yeah, my biggest travel tip: work on having a really nice smile and a good, polite but friendly laugh. Seriously. These are really the things best able to make cross-lingual communication less awkward and strained. Wow, this is a long postscript. Ah well. I’m a long winded gal. You guys should know that by now.
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