KOREA: My First Full Day...

Well, the flight was good, i watched about 8 movies (or parts of movies) on my mini personal TV (which has games too!! so cool... anyways..) and slept for about an hour TOPS... and my plan on wearing my largest most bulky clothes was... probably not a good one, but its in the past, and after my shower this morning, i feel wonderful!

Last night was actually REALLY fun (despite the zombiness), Rhys/Taylor picked me up at the bus terminal (my one hour bus ride after my flight that took TWO hours because of traffic), and we taxied home. He also bought me a metro card, which was super nice, so now I'm good to go for travelling all over today!! Anwyay, then we got back, i changed, and we took me out for "Duck Boolani" I think its called? Which is actually chicken, and they basically throw a crapload of ingredients onto this tabletop BBQ (like korean bbq back home) and then you can just mow down on the food with your chopsticks right off the grill, or put it into little lettuce wraps, or... we ordered rice to throw into it near the end, so it became like a "pilaf" Rhys said... haha. it was delicious.

THEN, we went to these girls' house for a "kimchee party" aka make REAL, legit kimchee on the kitchen floor on a big plastic mat and everyone grabs gloves and joins in... quite fun. and i tried all the beers of Korea (or many of them). Max (how sketch is that name), Bite, and BC. I opted out of soju, but I'm sure there'll be time enough for that soon enough...

we also stopped at the convenience store on the way home and i tried 2 new korean things, freeze dried octopus, which is essentially like calimari beef jerky (60 cents a package) and this AMAZING yogurt drink that tastes like egg nog. mmmmm

im at the school now, i walked over with Rhys/Taylor This morning i unpacked/organized my stuff (less unpacked, more.... organized since i wont be staying in this apartment for very long). and i feel a little more "at home" now that i have my stuff sort of together. SO MUCH CHOCOLATE. thanks mom, but seriously its a bit extreme.

we stopped at this place called "Paris Baguette" which is supposedly like their Tim Hortons, and OH. MY. GOD. you think premiere moison in montreal is good? this place is like 3X the size, 1000 times more pastry varieties and like... to die for. plus, the pastries are like a dollar each and all individually wrapped in cutesy little packages. and the coffee is awesome, though they dont have cream, so im going to be getting used to black... anyway, so today i had a "maple pecan twist", which was mindblowing, and an americano. Specialty coffees are the norm, they literally dont have regular i dont think. maybe instant... oh well, we'll see.

its like 12:55 in the afternoon on saturday here... and after sara is finished her marking she is going to take me to this place called "technomart", which is a apparently a massive like 12 story flea market type place for only electronics. and also, Rhys told me, that haggling is like, the norm, but girls dont do it so they get ripped off... dont know if im going to be comfortable with that, but we'll see. i need a hairdryer and straightening iron... and it pisses me off because dad bought me a voltage converter at the last minute which i brought, but i basically have nothing to plug into it. it says its specifically for hair dryers and curling irons, etc, but i LEFT MINE AT HOME. and my laptop only uses one of the little pluggy things it came with (out of about 6 different ones...) Anyway, i air-dried this morning, and Sara says my hair looks "fine" ... personally i think it looks like a flippy, wonky mess... but whatever. also, i ran out the door and didnt put on makeup today.. hm. so yeah. but the shower i had this morning was blissful--definitely needed after that 14 hour flight.

I am so aware that i am writing this from the future right now--i think its friday night there? weird... haha, Lisa said "what are the winning lottery numbers??" hahaha

Tonight Rhys wants to go to a santa-hat pubcrawl (???), though most of the other teachers are going to one of the Korean teachers' weddings. Weddings, they said, in korea are all sort of Vegas-style with people wearing jeans, etc and like, talking through the ceremony...and then getting wasted and pigging out at a buffet. it would be interesting, but i think its TOO weird to show up without knowing the person. and then TOMORROW, Rhys heard about this thing called a "german christmas festival"? Who knows.. well, I'll report back when I have more to say. Just killing time right now...