Welcome to the second part of week one! I'm sorry this one came so much later than I said it would; this current week is my first week working at my campus (which I'll talk about in depth in the next post). This post, however, is about those things I promised you in the last one: new friendships, exploring Seoul (without getting lost, somehow), karaoke, and discovering the true meaning of Gangnam style. Grab your walking sticks for this one, 'cause we're about to get some serious wandering in.
Wednesday, August 22 - Health Test Extravaganza It was health test day! Which meant... no breakfast. Due to a confluence of factors, this was also the day we would get our company photos taken, so we were instructed to dress up for those. Despite being forbidden from eating anything, we went to the hotel's breakfast room to chat and hang out with the others. There were a few people who weren't taking their health test that day, and watching them eat was waaaay more torturous than I expected. Then everyone went downstairs to the lobby to catch the bus. I enjoyed watching everyone talk to each other - watching new friendships begin to blossom, seeing how some people chose to quietly observe while others were boisterous and gregarious. Once we got on the bus and were settled in, the driver communicated (through hand gestures and Korean, since he didn't speak any English) that we were missing two people. We didn't have a designated leader, so I went back into the hotel to call Brian or Amy (our contacts/trainers at the Avalon head office), but neither of them answered. As I hung up, the bus driver came into the hotel, so I asked the woman at the front desk if she would please relay to the driver that I had called my bosses and received no response. I went back out feeling a little deflated. When the bus driver came back on the bus a few moments later, he came straight to where I was sitting and handed me his cell phone - and Brian was on the other end! We chatted and he decided we had to leave without the missing people since we were short on time. I felt so integral! As we left the bus, the driver spoke Korean to me (I assume he knew I didn't speak Korean?) so I said thank you in Korean and he said thank you back and I bowed and left the bus. Nascent friendships were appearing even in the most unexpected places. The health test place spanned several stories in a large office building downtown, and the waiting area was furnished simply with chairs and some art on the walls. We entered a side room where we gave them our passports and received a piece of paper that we would carry around with us. Our first stop was the 6th floor, where we changed into (ridiculously adorable) pink robes (picture of Anne below). Then the tests began! There didn't seem to be any order to how we were called or which tests we did. And there were a surprisingly large number of things we had to do: a chest x-ray, hearing test, eye exam, ECG, blood pressure, blood samples, urine sample, and a dental exam. That was the order my tests occurred in, but everyone else's was different. We traveled all over that building, from the 6th floor, up to the 7th, down to 4th, then back up to the 6th! Also, nobody could pronounce my name! They wanted to put another syllable in, so I was A-sha-ri, and they smiled and laughed and kept trying to get it right when I corrected them. Laughing with them about such a small, silly language difference made me feel so, so much better. The best thing about the haphazard order was that we were all released simultaneously. Although it was incredibly hot outside, we were so famished that we all ran (almost literally) to the nearest food place. We ate at a little hole-in-the-wall sushi place where no one spoke English. All we could do was point to one of the items on the list, but oh my gosh, we ended up with absolutely incredible food (pictures below). They served us cold soup, which I've never enjoyed more, and artfully crafted sushi. And there was an Eevee plushy (picture below)! :3 Then we went to training! Another small, noteworthy culture/language hiccup happened when we were taking a break and wanted water from the water cooler, but couldn't find the paper cups. They were actually right beside the cooler, but they were flat and need to be popped open to be used. None of us knew that! It's the little things. Also, their hand soap by the sinks is just a blue bar of soap on a metal stick (ah, no pictures, sorry. It shows up on Google if you look it up, though). I vividly remember Brian giving us cultural sensitivity training and emphasizing the importance of showering every day. Every day. Every. Single. Day. Don't skip a day. He drew a circle with his laser pointer around the sentence "Shower every day" many, many times. On the way back to the hotel, I splurged and bought a croissant. To be honest, I was a little nervous to order food for the first few days, but this experience went perfectly smoothly. Showered quickly (taking Brian's advice immediately), and went to eat noodles at a little shop near the hotel. I had spicy kimchi soup! To end the day, we decided to buy more soju from the supermarket downstairs and play games in the room again. We also talked about our favourite anime series, like Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Legend of Korra, and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. If you haven't watched these yet... You really ought to. Joke time! Troy dropped his soju at the supermarket. Mike said, "Some people just can't handle their liquor". Ba dum tsh. Unfortunately, I received a text from AJ that night and my cover as an international woman of mystery is officially blown. It said, "I imagined a situation where you were a spy that just went rogue. And moving to Korea was your cover to disappear. It was a hard decision, but you had to do it so I wouldn't get hurt getting caught up in crossfire." I now have to fly back to Canada ASAP and whisk him away to safety, and by "safety" I mean jumping from one safe house to the next for several years, constantly watching our backs and fearing for our lives, and eventually disappearing in a small, wintry mountain village in Kyrgyzstan and surviving off of yak's milk and snow. I may have taken that joke/bit a little too far. At least there weren't any werewolves in it. Thursday, August 23 It's time that I talk about this continental breakfast that I've been eating! You might have an image in your mind of sad little waffles, stale cereal, under- or overripe fruit, and yogurt containers that are all wet on the outside because they're just sitting in a bowl of ice at room temperature. This is entirely, completely not the case. Instead, it consists of tasty little hard-boiled quail eggs that are super fun to pop into your mouth, rice, various delicious soups, grape tomatoes, and flavourful coffee. There is also cereal, which I definitely ate the first morning because I was so intimidated by the Korean breakfast. I've since gotten bolder. :) The bus driver spoke rapid-fire, excited Korean to me as I boarded the bus, so I grinned and laughed and said, "I think you're great, too!" which he laughed at for some reason! Did he actually understand English? (I'll spoil the ending now - he certainly didn't. Which makes his laughter so much more mysterious.) We had a surprise test today at training. Woo. More importantly, I taught people how to make paper hearts! If you're interested in learning, just dig through my Facebook videos. I think I made a how-to video long ago. The last noteworthy thing of the day was that Amanda, Brandi, and I were hanging out in the hotel room - trying to learn some Korean phrases - when the woman who cleans our rooms came in and overheard us! She really liked when we tried to say beer (maekju) and "Soju, I love you" and bathroom. It was really fun just being silly and trying to make her laugh. Also, dinner on this day was, without a doubt, the best thing I've eaten since arriving - it's called bibimbap and it is incredibly delicious. My fellow Canadian, Troy, and I made inukshuks out of tiny white stones at the restaurant (pictures below). Friday, August 24 - Korean Karaoke Back to cereal for breakfast (I felt a little homesick), but I was brave enough to slice one of my bananas into it. I also made some chocolate mint tea that I brought from home, which not only warmed my mouth and my stomach, but also my heart (in a less literal sense). Time to board the but. It was my last time seeing my dear friend the Bus Driver, so on the way off we thanked one another in Korean (gamsahamnida); he sort of patted my arm in a friendly way, and then extended his hand for a handshake. At breakfast I had learned that one way a younger person can be very polite and deferential to an older person (age and hierarchy are very important here) is by receiving their proffered handshake with both hands and a low bow, so I did that. I don't have a very satisfying conclusion to this interaction, however, because it was raining and there were people getting off the bus behind me, so... We went our separate ways, quietly and without ceremony. More things you should eat/drink if you haven't before: Vermicelli and Vietnamese iced coffee. Mhm. The penultimate story: Korean karaoke! Since all six of us were all relatively new to navigating Seoul, we didn't want to go too far from the hotel, so Trevor chose a place nearby and we ventured out into the warm night. Now, look, we were never "lost", per se, but we really, really couldn't find the place. Thankfully, Koreans aren't only good at karaoke - they're also really kind. At least three different people helped us get to our destination. One young guy became really excited when he saw us and gestured for us to follow him, but he thought that we were looking for the bathroom. The problem was that the sign for it was on the second floor of the building (fun fact: it was also a flashing rainbow neon sign), and we couldn't figure out how to get to the second floor at all. A young woman saw us and guided us through her restaurant into the elevator area behind it. Then we were there! If you've never heard of or been to Korean karaoke, it differs from North American karaoke in that you get your own room to share with your friends, so you're only singing in front of them. You also order food and drinks to your room and can control the lights and the music volume. The doors to each room were old-ish, wooden doors and had painted-on numbers. Thankfully, they had plenty of English songs. My favourite song of the night was Dreams (by Fleetwood Mac). :3 Oh, and the entire reason we went to karaoke was to give Troy a proper send-off, since he was leaving to Busan on Sunday morning. It was his first time doing karaoke! We ended the night with some 7-Eleven instant ramen and crashed hard. Saturday, August 25 - Gangnam And now, the ultimate story: Gangnam! I'm now realizing that my description might be underwhelming considering all the hype it gets. While it was certainly beautiful and full of interesting people and smells and sights, it was also a busy, crowded street lined with bars, restaurants, and clothing stores. But first, I had to eat breakfast! This time there was scrumptious, hearty pumpkin soup. The boys (Troy, Trevor, and Mike) went out for a spa treatment in the afternoon while I wrote my first blog post. Apparently it was quite pleasant and relaxing. The only catch was that while they were there, they had to be naked the entire time. But they smelled great when they returned, so... worth it? The plan for the evening was to walk to Garak Market and meet with Anis, who would guide me to Gangnam for dinner with him and his co-worker Andrew. I first met Anis in Canada while we were taking the Teach English as a Second Language (TESL) course together in Edmonton and we got on really well. We met up at a Starbucks, and it's difficult to describe how uplifting it was to see a familiar face here, in Seoul, thousands of kilometers from home. I was effusive. We took the subway to Gangnam and as we neared the station, I noticed that there was a not-so-subtle difference in the kinds of people on the train. There were more people around my age, but they were dressed immaculately and were, simply, beautiful. We arrived at Gangnam station, and the first thing I need to tell you is that there's a huge underground mall in the subway station itself. The hallways stretched away for an unbelievable distance and were lined with vendors selling everything from cute Kakao friend socks to phone cases to pastries. Unfortunately, I'm not much of a shopper, so I was enjoying how vast and intricate it was more than the merchandise selection. And then we went outside. The neon lights were myriad colours, flashing and dazzling, stacked close together up the sides of buildings. There were innumerable smells, which I didn't recognize at all, and so, so many people. We ate bulgogi at a small restaurant where the walls were plywood (it was nevertheless delicious, pictures below) and, as the oldest at the table, I had all my drinks poured for me. A popular drink here is a shot or two of soju mixed with a glass of Cass beer, so we drank that. The boys wanted dessert afterwards, so we found a posh shaved ice restaurant and ate mango ice cream and chocolate bread (pictures below). It was packed wall-to-wall with people! We had to wait a few minutes for someone to leave before we had a place to sit. Something worth mentioning is that out on the street, the cars drove straight through milling crowd, sometimes coming within inches of pedestrians. But they weren't just any ol' cars: Ferrari, Lamborghini, and Corvette all made an appearance on the street at some point (picture below). We went to ArtBox (pictures below), and then stopped to look at Lotte World Tower on the way home. It's hugely huge. No, really. It's a "123-floor, 554.5-metre supertall skyscraper" and is the fifth tallest building in the world. We parted ways there, and I made it back to the hotel all on my own - without getting lost! Hilariously, when I arrived at the hotel, the crew was playing Mario Kart 8, so I played a bit of that, then finally went back to my own room to sleep. That's all for now! The next post will be this Sunday. The format will change as I settle into a routine at work and move into my own apartment, so it won't be so day-by-day and episodic. It's like when a TV show transitions from disparate, unrelated events to a more overarching story line. Hopefully they'll be shorter and less action-packed as I find more time to reflect on my experiences here and not just focus on getting around and getting by. Thanks for reading, loves. <3
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Welcome to a blog about one gal's journey to and adventures in Seoul!
I've split the first week into two posts because this has taken longer to edit than I thought it would. I'll strive to post weekly and keep y'all updated on the goings-on over here. For those of you who don't know the nitty-gritty of why I'm in Korea, I was hired by a company called Avalon to teach English as a second language (ESL) from August 20th, 2018 to August 31st, 2019. My airfare was paid for and my rent will be paid every month by Avalon (once I move into my apartment - more on that below). I'll be working in the evenings, usually from 1:00pm to 9:00pm, with mornings and weekends free. I plan on using the weekends to explore the city and travel outside of Seoul and maybe even Korea! So keep coming back if you want to live vicariously through me in South Korea. Everything up to now has been a flurry of new experiences, so this first post might be a little heavy on the "what happened" side of things and a little light on the "how I feel about what happened" side. Prepare yourselves for the adventure! Oh, and Weebly doesn't allow me to post multiple pictures in the middle of a blog post, so all the pictures are in a gallery at the bottom. Okay, enough welcoming and exposition. Let's jump to the part you actually care about: the story. Sunday, August 19 - Monday, August 20 These special and inextricable days began at 7:00am with me wandering drowsily into the solarium and meowing a good morning to our sleepy cats - who meowed back! AJ and I drove to a restaurant called Cora for breakfast with my family, where I made a paper flapping bird and received some sage advice about the flocking habits of paper birds from my dad (they flock together). After a very teary goodbye with my family outside of the restaurant, AJ drove me to the airport for a bonus, even more tearful goodbye. Once I was alone, I took out my phone and wrote in my Blog note, "Once I was alone, I quickly got myself under control by thinking about the tedious bureaucratic process that lay ahead of me," in an effort to get myself under control. I have to admit, it worked remarkably well. I highly recommend writing down your own future in an attempt to shape it. The first security guard I encountered didn't know if Seoul was in North or South Korea, but was friendly nonetheless, and the normalcy and formality of the encounter helped me calm down a bit. The second security guard beckoned me through the metal detector, then exclaimed, "Is that all the Eeveelutions on your shirt?!", and I enthusiastically confirmed that yes, it was, and we high-fived! At my gate, I looked around for a place to sit and saw an open seat next to a guy with long hair reading a Brandon Sanderson book with a Dota pin on his backpack. Unbeknownst to him, he was my gate buddy. Then we boarded the plane and flew out of Edmonton! Takeoff is always so exhilarating; it's hard to describe the feeling that thrums through you as the plane leaves the ground and rushes upwards. Unrelated, I think I wrote a poem about clouds the first time I flew - something about pillars, castles, shapes that would be impossible if they were made of anything tangible. Below the clouds, the smoke from the fires in B.C. was thick and covered the earth like a hazy blanket. And it only worsened as the plane flew for Vancouver. Trivia time! The man sitting beside me on the plane was wearing the little hat that Jewish men sometimes wear, and I realized I didn't know how to spell it. For those who are curious, it's spelled yarmulke (but pronounced yah-mah-kah). Once I landed in the smoky city of Vancouver, I had to traverse the entire airport to get to my next gate. I did snag a few photos of some interesting statues on the way (in the gallery below). As I approached the gate, I heard a woman calling my name over the intercom! For some reason I can't explain, I'd been expecting something unusual to happen and just calmly walked up to see what she wanted. She simply checked my visa, asked me a few questions, then told me that a bus would be taking everyone from the gate to the plane in ten minutes. I settled in and, for the first time, began to realize just how different things would be in Korea because the woman began speaking in Korean and people stood and formed lines. It was just so jarring - she said things as simple as where to stand and what to do and I couldn't understand the instructions. So I stood up arbitrarily and joined the line behind a man (who had frosted tips) and his son. He turned around, saw me, and seemed taken aback. "Gosh," he said, "I almost put my arm around you. I thought you were my girlfriend," which I responded to by laughing awkwardly. He peered at me a little more closely and asked, "First time to Korea?" and I replied with a nervous grin, "Yeah. Is it that obvious?" His girlfriend came back (she introduced herself as "Young Sun") and they were both incredibly sweet, telling me everything they could about portable WiFi cards, delicious Korean food, and how to properly pronounce the name of the area I'd be teaching in. The airplane was enormous and teal and we had to climb a winding ramp to the doors! Passengers were welcomed aboard by classical instrumental music and a massive booth-like first-class seating area. The calming music was in stark contrast to the noisy, jostling atmosphere in the plane. People were squeezing past each other in the aisle and it felt slightly more chaotic than the last plane. On everyone's seat was a small care package with slippers, headphones, a pillow, a bottle of water, a blanket, and a toothbrush + tiny bottle of toothpaste (pictures in the gallery below). Everyone immediately put on their slippers, so I followed suit and noticed that the elderly couple beside me had actually brought their own. I got to experience the stomach-dropping thrill of takeoff again (twice in one day? So lucky). There was a fancy touch-screen monitor on the seat in front of me, and I eagerly perused the movie selection. There was a section labeled "Beyond Special" that contained two Korean movies and Big Fish (which, oddly enough, I had talked about with my massage therapist the day before because she wrote her master's thesis on how the characters in Winnie-the-Pooh have mental disorders, and then we fawned over the fact that Ewan McGregor was going to be Christopher Robin in the new movie, which naturally led to us gushing about Big Fish). After watching it, I felt compelled to rewrite all of my Blog notes - to fill them with friendly giants, werewolves, and misunderstood witches. Also, oh boy, I listened to "Girl on an Island" by Alice Phoebe Lou on the plane in the dark and it felt so relevant. She sang so beautifully about the night sky being your only friend, and the ground beneath your feet feeling like a dream. I filled the rest of the time with A Quiet Place, Tomb Raider, and Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. Trivia time! Alaska has fjords! They're not just for Scandinavians apparently. Also, the reason August 19th and 20th are combined into one day is because the plane landed at 2:00am Edmonton time, and since I hadn't slept at all on the flight, they became one very, very long day. Upon landing, I happily stumbled into Casey and Troy (two other new Avalon teachers) near one of the exits. After our supremely long flights, the two-hour drive to the hotel felt like a special kind of torture designed to drive us mad. We managed to stave it off with conversation and granola bars. This purgatory-esque day ended with a small adventure to find burgers with Casey, Troy, and two other new employees named Shannon and Debasree (her name is fantastic - it's pronounced like debauchery but with a -sh sound instead of -ch). Neither Troy nor I ordered anything, but thanks to the girls' kindness, we still ate a hefty helping of fries ("the original fantastic potatoes" are pictured below), soft drinks, and we even got to share an entire mozzarella stick! Then finally, thankfully, it was bedtime. Tuesday, August 21 Almost slept through the night! Woke up at 4:00am Korean time (1:00pm home time) but fell back asleep with only minor difficulty. Mom and dad were the first to call me in Korea! It was so, so great to hear and see them. Avalon hired thirty-seven new people for this upcoming semester, and in the morning we all assembled in the hotel lobby for the bus ride to orientation and training. What I remember the most about that morning is how incredibly friendly and chatty everyone was despite how jet-lagged they were. It was the kind of camaraderie that only shared misery creates. Everyone got mildly lost finding the training place, and I'm certain that we looked like a gaggle of silly foreigners to the Koreans walking by. After training (which inexplicably lasted for only one hour), everyone followed our newly-appointed leader, Jen, who spoke some Hangeul and knew the subway system. She took us to Starfield Coex Mall, which felt mostly like a North American mall, except that in the centre of it there was a truly magical, massive library with a huge vegetable/fruit tree in the middle (picture below). A few of us ate Korean pizza at Devil's Door for lunch (also shown below), which was served with a side of pickle slices. We returned to the hotel and learned that there was a fairly extensive shopping and dining area below the hotel! We went into a lovely supermarket where I bought a hand of bananas and some soju (pictured below, my roommate describes it as a kind of "watered-down vodka with flavouring"), then rested by playing card games and Boggle (shout out to AJ for telling me to bring these, they were such a great idea! Thank you so much). The day wasn't over yet! We ventured outside one last time and wandered through green parks, down narrow streets lined with little food places, and found so much unexpected art (pictures below). After we felt tired and hungry enough, we ate dinner at a sushi restaurant that carried the sushi around on a conveyor belt (picture below)! The sushi sat on a plate, and the plate colour indicated how much the dish cost. After eating, the jet lag truly began to set in at around 8:00pm and we all went to our rooms to relax. I fell asleep immediately and with all my clothes on, which was probably a good thing because we weren't supposed to eat anything after 10:00pm in preparation for our Korean health test the next day. Final trivia! Bubble tea is called boba tea here. Guinea pigs are a delicacy in Ecuador, and should probably be called terrestrial tuna. I hope you enjoyed my ramblings, but it's bedtime for me! I'll talk to you soon. Coming up next - Part Two: Health test extravaganza, Korean karaoke, and Gangnam! |
AuthorAshley is a Canadian teaching English in South Korea. Although between the Korean, swing dancing, and general life skills, she's probably learning more than she's teaching. Archives
June 2019
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