Everybody's workin' for the weekend

First some more pictures that I forgot from last weekend:

The typical Seoul subway. No personal space in Korea!

This is a building at one of the palace in Seoul. It is famous because it is featured on the 10,000 won bill or manwon's at we call them. Unfortunately, it was under renovation at the time, but you get the idea.

Much like our lovely neigbor from the south, you can buy beer at your local convinience stores. Take a hint Canada!

This is a shot of the dingy hotel room we stayed in the first night. I wish I could have taken a better shot but my back was against the wall so there wasn't much room to work with in there!

This is me at Seoul tower with the city in the background. As you can see there is a mountain in the middle of the city, which adds some nice scenary to an otherwise greenless city.

As for the weekend... the week went by pretty quickly with no major events at school (which is probably a good thing because that could mean a bad event). And all of a sudden it was Friday! It was our korean english teacher, Christine's birthday. So I went with the SLP (my school) crew down to the Jukebox night club where we partied until 5am. While that is a late night, we were aiming for 10am but came up short in our attempt. A good time was had anyway.

Needless to say I didn't sleep much Friday night before it was time to catch a bus that was taking us to a tour of the Hite brewery at 3pm just on the outskirts of town. The parts of the brewery we saw were quite nice and very modern. We watched a video about the beer that was basically a 10 minute dose of propaganda. It was so strong at times that we just had to laugh. It stressed three important pillars of the company: purity, passion and something else that I can't remember. It also featured people consuming vast quantities of beer at odd times. Such as this guy that was apparently auditioning as a dancer who at first fell and was quite clumsy, but he turned it around! And as he left the theatre, he downed a big can of Hite!

On Saturday night I saw the movie the Sentinel with Jack Bauer errr I mean Keifer Sutherland. I didn't realize that movie was about 5 months old in North America. I wasn't exactly impressed with it, but I was happy as always to see a North American movie and to see Keifer on the big screen.

Today I enjoyed a nice western breakfast at the foreign bar here. The special was a breakfast burrito, which was delicious. They will be making the breakfast every Sunday, so that will be something to look forward to every week. I met my friend Chris at breakfast and we decided to venture on our scooters to the outskirts of town and do some scenic mountain cruising. The mountains surrounding the city are surprisingly high and you can see very far from the top of it. The only downside about our adventure was that there was a continual rain all day so we got a little wet and it wasn't exactly great for pictures. But we plan on making the trip again sometime soon. It will look really good especially when the leaves begin to change color. That just about catches everything up at this point.

One last thing... This should solve the confusion as to how to call me from Canada. My home number is 011-82-63-273-0515 and my cell is 011-82-10-2314-6985. Please let me know if those don't work. Time to start another week...

More pictures

This a view of Seoul from the North Seoul tower. It was a little cloudy and rainy so the view isn't great but you can see the river the seperates the northern and southern parts of the city.

At the norebong after a few drinks.. I thought I was Eminem. The best party about the kareoke rooms is actually being able to hear North American music.

This is a view inside one of the buildings in the palace. The big red thing is where the king sat and where a lot of business was conducted.

This time the ladies are at it. Not seen is the tamborine which often accompanies the singing. This place was great, but we had to pass by a transvestite bar on the way down to the norebong.

Seoul Pictures

This is Sam and I standing next to one of the Korean Palace Guards. I think they are similar to the British ones as you aren't allowed to touch them and they don't move. I noticed up close that their beards were glued on though.














This is the King's chambers in Deoksugung Palace. Many of Korean's foreign policies were made in that structure back in the day.





















This is Seoul Tower. Its rests atop a mountain in in the middle of the city. It boasts a height of 225m, but I think that may be including the mountain because the tower didn't seem that big although it did reveal a good view of the city. It was a little rainy on the day we were there so it wasn't great but you must be able to see a lot more when it is clear.

















Another picture from inside Deoksugung Palace. It is like a tiny, old village inside a big modern city. These are buildings that the king's helpers used to live in. Nice architecture in the buildings, although they have been restored since the Japanese destroyed most of the original buildings. Oh.. those Japanese...

More coming.

Weekend in Seoul

I spent the last weekend in the capital of Korea, Seoul. It is about 2 and a half hours north of my city by express bus. Riding a bus is incredibly cheap costing only 10,000 won ($11) one-way. We decided to stay in a part of town that has a large foreigner population (a welcome break from 2 months of essentially no foreigners). The area was called Itaewon. The reason it has so many foreigners is due to the close proximity of the US army base which houses approximately 10,000 soldiers and their families. A bonus to staying in the foreigner area is being able to enjoy a Western-style breakfast (eggs, bacon), which was expensive but well worth it.

The first night we stayed in the dive of all dive's in the world of hotel rooms. I think each room cost 30,000 won. In the spirit of keeping this blog for general audiences I will forego the details, you will just have to take my word for it. Although I will try to post a picture of it. We were able to see a live band for the first time since arriving in Korea at this bar called Woodstock on Friday night. The band rocked pretty good playing some AC/DC, Bryan Adams, etc. On Saturday, the first thing we did was change hotel rooms. After that, we did the Seoul city bus tour, which took us to some interesting sights while seeing a lot of the city out of the bus windows on the way. Stops included the North Seoul Tower (good view of the city), Deoksugung Palace, the Yongsang electronics market (this place is unimaginably huge and has floors dedicated to such things as hard drives or speakers).

At night we returned to Itaewon and ate some foreign food (aka Western style). I had a cheeseburger and fries and it was delicious! Afterward we headed to a Middle Eastern restaurant to meet with some people. I was forced to abstain from the food since I had just eaten, but it looked good. I would like to try it when I go back. The name of the place was Ali Baba's. I did participate in the post-meal shee-sa (not sure if I spelt that right) smoking. It is this weird gummy tobacco heated by charcoil that is filtered by this very large bong. It was a really cool thing to try. After that restaurant it was off to the Rocky Mountain Tavern, a Canadian bar! That place was hopping. I ran into these nice people from Daegu (a city close to Jeonju), who had been in Jeonju one night and ended up going out with me and some friends. Quite a coincidence.

Nothing ends a night like a visit to a norebong (kareoke room). So we stopped at the 7/11 to pick up some beers and off to our private kareoke room we went. The time can really fly by in those places as we busted out some of our North American favourites. The next morning we did some street vendor shopping. There were endless amounts of designer rip offs, sunglasses, clothes, purses, etc. All in all a great weekend, and it wasn't too expensive despite two nights in a hotel room. I caught a little bit of a cold with the lack of sleep. Today a kid sneezed on me too... that probably didn't help. Oh well... now for pictures



This is Fraser and Emily singing in the kareoke song. No doubt belting out a classic.

This is a giant pond at Deoksugung Palace. This place is in the middle of one of the busiest cities in the world, so it was pretty cool to be so isolated.

This is me hitting the shee-saa at the Middle Eastern Restaurant. The tobacco had a nice apple flavour to it.

Again at Deoksugung Palace. These people stood in the same spot all day. I also noticed that they glued their beards on.

A typical Seoul subway. Notice the TVs about half way down the car. They stick TVs wherever there is free space in this country.

More pictures coming. I can only upload so many at a time. I will definately need to get back to Seoul. It is very big and there is much more to explore. Maybe next month!

Scooter picture!

Here is a picture of my sweet ride. Notice the hot purple color. It is the dominant color of the scooter in Jeonju. Of course I always wear my helmet when riding, for safety's sake. I also forgot to mention that I visited the Jeonju Paper Museum on Saturday. This picture was taken in the parking lot. It was an interesting museum... it made you believe that paper is the reason for modern civilization. Quite funny in parts. I will just say that it was a good thing is was free! We got to make our own paper which was pretty cool. It was done by using pulpy water and filtering through a screen and then drying it. If I had to do that everytime I needed a piece of paper, perhaps I wouldnt toss away a sheet as easily as I do now.

I own a scooter!

Another exciting week and weekend in Korea. The end of the month means pay day! I decided to treat myself by purchasing a motor scooter. It was the best 400,000 won I have ever spent. The best thing about living in Korea is that you don't need a license, insurance or anything. You are supposed to have all of that, but no one actually gets it. I have spent quite a bit of time cruising around town especially down by the river. While it is very fun, it is also a little dangerous! But don't worry, I have a helmet. The first night I had a bit of a theft scare. I had parked the scooter in front of my building and the next morning it wasn't where I put it. I eventually found it down my street. Good thing I had bought a lock for it because someone had tried to steal the scooter but the lock jammed up the rear tire so they ended up leaving it on the side of the road. No damage done. So needless to say, I bought an additional lock for the added security.

On Sunday, I took a bus to Cheongju to visit my friend Sam from university who has recently arrived in Korea. It was a good afternoon of exploring her city. It was a little tricky navigating the Korean bus system on my own, but now that I have done it, I feel like I can go anywhere in this country. I was happy to introduce Sam to her first traditional Korean meal with shoes off at the door and sitting on the floor. We had bugolgi (beef cooked over a Korean bbq) served with many other vegetables. At one point there was some miscommunication with the owner of the restaurant when he pointed to his dog that was outside and then pointed to our table. Eventually it came to be known that he meant, he owns the dog and it lives with them. It was good to know that we weren't eating dog unknowingly.

Next weekend I will be heading to Seoul with some friends. I've been here for 2 months, so I think its finally time I headed to the big city to see what all the hype is about. It sounds like there is so much to do there and this will be the first of many trips. So I look forward to what there is to see and do there.

It has been mentioned that I do not often speak of my job, which is the reason that I am here in Korea. That is because it seems like I am there for a very short time in a day, most of my time here is spent outside of the classroom. I teach for only 7 hours a day on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. And on Tuesdays and Thursdays for just 3 hours. But I can say already that I have learned many techniques for being an effective teacher. One of the most important from when I first arrived was to speak slower and use smaller words. Also, behavior altering is quite easy with the correct reward and punishment scheme. At first I would ask many times and sometimes have to yell for them to sit down or be quiet. But I have learned that rewards work much better than punishments. For example, giving stars for being quiet and doing work. When a student gets x amount of stars, they get a small candy. It doesn't seem like a big reward, but it works! So classes are pretty easy these days. Most kids are pretty good and are learning quite a bit at the same time. I even get them to teach me some Korean along the way. My last class of the day is with these 5 girls that are pretty fluent in English. We talk about social issues and read a pretty interesting book about it. I am learning a lot reading it even after 4 years in political science!

I think that is all I have to say for now... my blogs have become less frequent, so at I am trying to make up for it with a rather long one. I will try to post some pictures of the scooter as soon as some are taken. More adventures and stories to come...