Sunday, March 13, 2011
We spent our first morning in Korea cleaning up the apt, mainly scrubbing the entire bathroom and sweeping the floor (it's suuuuper dusty in Korea!). We did some unpacking and then met with our supervisor, who is a guy our age from Halifax. We got the run-down of all things work-related, our schedules as well as some "light reading" to do in preparation for the next day. It was also then that we got the very disappointing news that we would be unable to sign up with an internet and cell phone company until we had our Alien Registration Cards, which is basically South Korea's way of keeping track of aliens/foreigners. In turn, getting a card is completely dependent on passing some kind of medical, our appointments for which would not be until Friday...nyar.
We then took our first trip to the local grocery store, Lotte-Mart, which wasn't nearly as bad an experience as I thought it would be. It was very similar to T&T/China-Mart, but on acid. For example, at their "free sample" counters, they have people on mics, shouting at everyone to come on over and try whatever it is they're dishing out (98% of the time, I have no idea what that might be). It felt like we were on one of those crazy Asian game shows, but other than that, it wasn't too weird (thanks, Chinamart!), and we were able to buy very Western-ish things in general, which aren't really that Western-ish to begin with, now that I think of it. They have very strict food laws here, so there isn't a lot of that useless/terrible crap you'd find in processed foods back home. They put caloric amounts and nutritional information on everything (of course it's not all that helpful to us because we can't read Korean. Their number system is the same though, so that's pretty handy!). Despite such good food regulation, their bread is waaaay too sweet, it's impossible to find whole wheat and they don't have to pasteurize their milk. Now, there are a couple of brands that do believe in the pasteurization process, but the milk is still a lot thicker than the 1% I'm used to drinking, and it still smells like butter. Needless to say, one of the first things I'm going to have when I get back home is a humongous glass of delicious, pasteurized milk. Mmmmmm. Groceries weren't as expensive as I thought they would be, mostly because we've lived in Vancouver and are used to paying a lot for our food. We did get quite a few looks from other customers though; despite being a pretty "Americanized" place, it's like the people here think that white people only exist inside their TVs or something. After the g-store, we met up with a couple of the other foreign teachers (it's still a little strange that I'm talking about "us" when I say "foreigners"...) and went for some ACTUAL Korean BBQ (sorry Shebusan!), which was suuuuuuuper delicious. We also tried soju for the first time. While you can click the link to learn more about soju, here's the short version: it's usually distilled from rice, it tastes slightly better/sweeter than vodka, you can order a bottle at any restaurant or pick up your own (in a classy 1L plastic bottle, at that!) at your local convenience store for the equivalent of about two Canadian dollars. Bazinga.
After dinner, we went to a PC-bong (=computer room) to let the fam know that we had made it safe and sound (and also to reassure my mom that South Korea is NOT Japan, and that the earthquake did not directly affect us). I'm not sure if and/or what you've heard about PC-bongs before, but they are basically big, dark, smoky rooms (yep, you can smoke EVERYWHERE in Korea *blehck!* and packs of cigarettes are only about 2 bucks!) with rows upon rows of computer stations, usually filled with a bunch of Korean pre-teens and teens who get hopped up on energy drinks and forget to eat because they're too busy playing online video games, usually until their eyeballs bleed. Okay, I'm not really sure about that last part, but true story: A Korean couple was so obsessed with a sim-type game where they had to take care of a baby and stuff, that they neglected their REAL newborn baby, and it died! Very very sad and disturbing. Once we got home, Mike passed out and I tackled some of our reading in preparation for our first day as teachers.
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