Arrival

Here I am in Seoul, South Korea.

I love it here and I have too much to tell and too many things to show.
I'm going to try my best to find the happy medium between saying and showing nothing and everything.

Alright, well I've been here for about two weeks now. My apartment is nice, but oh so tiny. Actually, here, have a look at it for yourself (this was last week, pre-unpacking, so excuse the suitcases and mess).

See the bathroom there? I put that there for a reason. See the shower head over the toilet? Yeah, the whole bathroom is the shower. There's a drain in the floor. It's actually not a bad arrangement. Makes it really easy to clean, at the very least.

So what happens when I leave the house? Well here are some snaps from my neighbourhood, all taken just a few steps away from my apartment, basically:

It's a pretty decent area - it's within walking distance of Seoul National, the Korean Ivy League University. It's not right on the main road, either, so I'm spared the constant sounds of traffic. This city does not sleep. Ever.


On my first Sunday here I went out at like 12 to see if I might be able to find a convenience store open, and there were freaking clothing stores still open. Not that everything's open 24/7, but you'd be surprised and confused at some of the hours they keep here.

Speaking of which, bars don't have to close here. And speaking of drinking, Korea loves it. Drugs? Well pot will basically get you thrown in jail and deported. But booze? It goes, anywhere and anytime. You can drink on the streets, in cars, on busses, in the subway. Mind you not a lot of Koreans do those last few, but there's no law against it.

That massive pile of beer is from a bar near work. You actually sit at that table and take beer from the centre. Brilliant. The lame labels are from Molson Canadian. For some reason, it comes imported with those strange labels on the back over here. Oh, and the other pictures are from just outside of a convenience store. They set up lawn furniture and you have your own little makeshift bar supplied by the store.

Speaking of stores, things are, for the most part, crazy-ass-shit-cheap here. A meal in a restaurant often costs like 3 dollars. Bottles of vodka at the convenince store for about 3 dollars, too.

I love seeing familliar products with strange and unfamilliar labels. There aren't all things I recognized, but it gives a good idea of what a store shelf looks like here. Oh, and the juice and pills are for the cold I had the other day.

I'm feeling a lot better now, thanks.

So, exploring near the house a little more, you'll find a pretty neat outdoor market...

Yeah, despite the roof, that is outdoors. It's a pretty popular way to sell things here. There's one across town that's literally about 10 or 15 times the size of this one, and also runs underground. It's quite the madness.

The food here is delish for the most part. They've got these seafood places everywhere, though (that I've yet to try) that have the product outside the store. Still alive. Swimming in tanks.

Some of these fish a fucking huge. Anyone who knows my one true phobia will know how much I love to walk by this on my way to the subway every morning. Also, every time I've seen the guy come out to try and fish a meal out of the tanks, the food makes a run for it, and flops out of the butterfly net and tries to boot it down the street. With little success, of course. I've yet to see a crab try, though.

So I guess I should mention work. The job's not hard (teaching english to kids ages 4 - 14), but some (maybe one) of my younger kids is pure evil. I'm told that in Korea, if there's something seriously like, medically chemically imbalanced about your kids, the parents are generally too ashamed (or rather, proud of their child) to admit it, so the kid is put in with all the others.

On the flipside, however, the majority of the other kids are too fucking adorable to let one jerkoff spoil it. In fact, my favourite kid is in the class with my least favourite. She's aaaadorable and she's only about 4 or 5 I wanna steal her and raise her as my own, but I don't think that would go over real well, 'specially not when I've only been there like a week. I think the contract said something about needing a few months of seniority before you could steal students.

This is around where I work, by the way. Oh, and that neon cross you see in the picture there? They're far more plentiful than you'd imagine. I've looked out on the city skyline and have been able to count 7 at once, just in a little chunk of Seoul. Apparently Christianity mixed well with some of the older eastern religions here.

And that's about it for now. I'll reiterate that I love it here. It's taken on a strange familiarity, like it feels more like home for now, instead of just aplace that I'm visiting. That's good, since I'll be here a year.

I miss you all, and I miss real home, but I'm surviving. Of course I do. Most of the time, there's just so much happening around me that I hardly get a chance to sit down and ponder home. That's good; that's the point. I wanted a year that spun my head. So far this is everything I wanted and expected.

I'll leave with a chuckle. See, knockoff brands are huge here. You can buy Abercrombie and Eitch clothes, for instance. Here's my one counterfeit purchase so far:

Sharkie?

Take care folk. I'll update again when I find enough time away from living my crazy life to write about it.

(Note: I orignially posted this on another website, but migrated it when I started this blog)