Day out to Wolmido island.

Went with a bud of mine, his friend from Yemen and his girlfriend to a place on the coast called Wolmido island today. It's in the satellite city of Incheon. We took the subway there and arrived at the last stop on the Incheon line in about an hour. Outside the station was China town, a small area of Incheon filled with Chinese restaurants and shops. We had some lunch, I had Jajangmyeon, which is a famous Chinese dish here-noodles in a black bean sauce. It was actually really good. Then we took a bus to Wolmido which is like a small theme park with a seafront and lots of restaurants serving seafood. We skipped the seafood part and went straight for a restaurant serving raw seafood of all kinds. I ate the strangest things, like raw squirming baby octopus, raw abalone, raw sea cucumber, this one sea creature that looks rather like a penis, and some other really odd stuff, then we had a full fish served sashimi style and finished it off with some spicy fish soup plus copious amounts of soju. Drinking is somewhat of a lifestyle here, the Koreans apparently are only second to the Russians in terms of alcohol intake per capita as can be witnessed by the amount of vomit on sidewalks in the mornings when walking to work. In Korea, if you work for a big company you are basically forced to go out drinking with your boss almost every night of the week. I get invited to dinners with teachers all the time. I think i have 2 next week alone. Anyway, South Africa has nothing on this place when it comes to drinking and bars. After the meal we walked back, stopped at a food vendor and bought the most vile thing they had on offer as a dare, it happened to be silk worm larvae, and I bought a cup for W2000 (about R12) and the three men each tried one. I went first, I put it in my mouth, ignoring what I was actually eating and chewed on it a bit. I think my response was something like: "its not that bad, taste like shriveled broccoli". The next guy tried and said its the worst thing he had ever tasted, the third guy tried it and threw up on the pavement near the vendor. I discarded the rest of the silk worm larvae and we headed back to Seoul on the train. That night we went out in a unvivesity area where I have never been before, met another South African from Pinelands, drank a lot of Soju and beer, met some Korean university students (some cute girls) and started singing drinking songs and playing drinking games with them. After that we took a cab back as my American friend was covering the streets of Seoul with more vomit. Good night out but the hangover! Spent the day in bed recovering :(. I didn't think I would come to Korea to get drunk every weekend but it seems to be the norm here.

2 weeks in Korea

So its been quite an exciting time for me since arriving in Korea. I had to get used to a lot of new things since I have been here. I stay in a tiny apartment in an area of Seoul called Boramae. Its south of the Han river, the river that splits the city in two. The neighborhood is mixed between working class and middle class families so its not the best part of Seoul but near me I have a little CBD with a big park where I can go jog or cycle. Seoul itself is absolutely huge! Its surrounded with hills and mountains. There is a subway station near me so its easy to get around in Seoul. My school is a middle school, that means teenagers. Its about 10min walk from my place. The students are super friendly, I cant keep up with all the greetings when I walk down the passages. Sometimes the girls will say "You so handsome!", good for my ego, so I say "Ah, thank you very much!". Then its usually followed by "Your face so small, very good!", then i'm like "Er, thank you, I think." The teachers are really friendly too and keen to chat with me, very polite people. I get rice cake gifts on my desk all the time, some of them are nice, others are rather inedible. In my room I have underfloor heating, so its a nice escape from the chilly Korean winter outside. Now the weather is heating up as we heading into Spring. I also have cable TV (watching the Tsunami in Japan on CNN at the moment) and I have high speed internet, so cool. I can download a gig of info in like 30min. There are some interesting things about Korea. There traffic lights are like super computers, they give you the exact time you have to cross and if you try crossing when its red, the traffic light barks something at you in Korean. So no one here J-walks. The food is great, the love their BBQ and I went with some fellow expats in my neighborhood to a BBQ joint where you cook your own meat on a heated grid in the middle of the table. They let me try Soju, the local favorite brew, it tastes like a light vodka, which is a dangerous thing because Koreans tend to down bottles of the stuff in one sitting, as did I. They have these buzzers on the side of the table to call the waiters. I didnt realize this and kept on resting my elbow on the buzzer. Eventually the people at the table had to ask the waiters not to come if the buzzer goes off. There are shops and restaurants everywhere. There is a Lotte Department store about 500meters from my appartment. Its like a Sogo's or a Woolworths. Its expensive but some nice shopping there. I get nice school lunches so Im not too worried about what I eat, Korean food is really healthy and very tasty. Anyway Im off to Costco, so see what they have there. Cheers!