First weekend out. Liberation!

This past weekend was my first real free time! I absolutely made the most of it.

Friday night was the EV ball, we met in the staff lounge and rooftop deck, dressed up, danced, drank. It was all my usual coworkers, plus people in programs I don't usually encounter, like the One Day Program and the Edutainers. Danced a lot, had some great conversations, and felt a lot more comfortable socially here than I had before. I won't go into more detail because it's less about travelling and more about me partying with a bunch of Westerners!

SATURDAY was when the fun began! I was planning to meet up with Tim's friend Joey, who I only knew through the 'net so far, and go into Seoul. There's a shuttle that goes from EV to his town, Ilsan, so I was planning to take that...but turns out they don't run as often on Saturdays, so I got on a bus instead. A little unnerving to be on a route without being sure where to get off, and not speaking any of the language...but luckily I recognized the Daehwa subway stop and got off. Cab to Joey's, but they dropped me at the wrong building about a block away, and without a cell phone it took me a while to figure it out. A parking attendant ended up letting me use his phone!

So Joey and I got on a bus into Seoul. Took a little under an hour, I think. The view where we got off was amazing...the tall buildings of the city just sort of opened into this gap, framing a towering mountain with a temple on top of it. We walked a little ways and ended up in Insa-dong, a foot-traffic-only street full of shops and vendors. Admittedly it's rather touristy, but lots of cool stuff to see. There's stands in the street where people can do pottery or paint tiles, and food vendors and tables to sit and eat. As it happened, the day we went there was some sort of makgeoli festival happening! Makgeoli is a Korean rice wine, it's a little sweet and lightly carbonated. I had seen a documentary on its history and how you make it, so I'd been eager to try it. There were maybe 8 or 10 stands giving out samples of all the different brands, and selling bottles as well. After 3-4 samples (they poured generously) I was rather buzzed! After we finished shopping, we bought a bottle of one of the better varieties (w1,000!! that's less than a dollar, if you've forgotten the exchange rate!) and got some street food (sausages on a stick, and this hot sweet fried dough with cinnamon filling, OMG) and sat in the park for a bit, watching local couples take pictures of each other, and tourists take pictures of everything else.

We met up with another friend of Joe's, guy by the name of Khristoff (he's Australian) for dinner, had Indian food and shared a hookah. Apparently Indian food is very popular in Korea! (I have like 10 kinds of heat-n-eat curry in my cabinet right now!) Little odd, though, you had to actually ask for rice. After dinner we headed back to Ilsan and went out to some bars around La Festa/Meat Street. This is the same approximate neighborhood that my girls and I went shopping on Thursday. It's got an incredibly active nightlife. Went to one bar that specialized in its vinyl record collection, but it was pretty dead so we moved on to the Don't Go, another bar with lots of music to request. It was like Tattooed Mom's, but in a room the size of Fiume. I felt instantly at home! Met some awesome people there, other expats, the one guy made my night by the sheer fact of his septum piercing! Had some wonderful conversations, and I will totally be going back there. The bartender/owner, Kim Han, is a real character who will look up any music you'd like to hear on YouTube, if he doesn't have the cd. I made him play Lazy Town and Lil John's mashup. :) The drinks are also quite cheap.

The bars in Korea don't really close until the last person leaves, but somewhere around 2 AM we got hungry, so 5 or 6 of us went for galbi (Korean BBQ). Those also are open until all hours of the night! Masses of food, beer, and 2-3 bottles of soju (Korean rice liquor, comparable to vodka, maybe not quite as strong) cost us maybe w10,000 each. We stuffed our faces on many kinds of meat, did shots, and told all of the most offensive jokes we could think of! It was a great end to the night. Crashed on Joe's futon, and woke up feeling fine, believe it or not!

Sunday I wandered around Ilsan for a little bit before taking a cab back to the bus/subway stop at Daehwa. There's so much to see. I passed a seafood restaurant that looked like the freakin' Baltimore aquarium out front, there were 30-40 tanks of live fish and other animals. Lobsters, squid, octopi, crabs, anemone, and these nasty tapeworm-looking things, all swimming around. There was also a restaurant called "Oh My Chicken" which cracked me up. I had just found my way to the station and figured out where to get the bus back to EV, when one of the other teachers pulled up alongside me and offered me a lift back!

Spent the rest of Sunday doing maintenance stuff....shower, laundry, grocery shopping. Out of those activities, only showering is as easy as it sounds though! I have no dryer, so laundry all has to be hung up on a drying rack, and it's been about 26 hours and some of it is still a bit damp. The wash cycle takes almost 2 hours, although I did just learn that there's a "quick wash" button...it sounds like apathetic monkeys are listlessly stirring my clothes. Did I mention all the settings are in Hangul? Grocery shopping was a trip too, even though a lot of packages are in both Hangul and English, it's hard to find what you need...and you can't even be sure that they have what you want. I could not for the life of me find butter or margarine, even though i KNOW they sell it. But I have enough food now to last me maybe a month, besides stuff like milk, and I'm starting to get furnished better as well. I need to get some more clothes, though, and THAT may be tricky, since Korean women are TINY. At the very least, I should be able to get a hoodie in a men's size...it's starting to get cold already and I only brought a heavy jacket.

Today after work I got invited to a restaurant I'd heard a lot of people talk about. It's less than a 10 minute drive, and apparently everyone at EV adores it. It's called shabu shabu, it's most easily defined as a hot pot...there's a heat source set into the table, and a pot of broth and vegetables goes on top. It gets heated to bubbling, and then you get a plate of very thin strips of meat (looks like bacon, all red and white marbled) and you drop them or hold them in the pot until they cook. You fill your bowl with the broth, vegetables, and meat, and once the meat is done, you add noodles to the pot, and then after that, the broth is drained out and you finish with a sort of fried rice, which you can add to the remaining broth in your bowl. It was all delicious, although the woman who runs it is a little scary. Apparently she hates everyone, although she did smile and laugh at Emily, the only vegetarian, as she motioned Emily to a separate table from the rest of us. Perhaps just glorying in her misery at being segregated?

I love that EV is not clique-y at all, at least not that I've experienced. You may have people you're closer to, but everyone is just very open and welcoming, and it seems that everyone mingles pretty freely. Tonight my friend Erin was along, as well as a guy Devin I've talked to quite a bit already, Greg who took me on my first E-Mart trip, and several other people I've talked to at work: JT, with whom I apparently had a long conversation at the Ball; Harry, a really cool guy from Zimbabwe; Becky from London, who was out with us on Thurs as well, and her husband David. People just sort of kept inviting people, and the whole outing of 12 of us just happened very naturally.

I also have to mention how psyched I am to have gotten out independently this weekend. Now that I've taken buses, spoken to cab drivers, done some shopping, and been to a couple different neighborhoods, I've broken through the initial qualms about not knowing what to do or where to go. I have a T-money card and always enough cab fare back to EV, and a subway map. I can say "does this bus go to ____?" There's nothing holding me back! I'm actually excited that Bali fell through because now I get a whole week to explore the country I live in! I can't wait.

I'm also learning a lot of phrases and I'm starting to teach myself Hangul. It's way easier than Japanese or Chinese, instead of each character representing an idea, it's a language you can actually sound out, with just 24 letters and some very concrete rules. After the training we've been doing these past weeks involving phonics and ELL, I'm starting to realize how hard English is. If Korean kids can learn all our screwy rules and pronunciations, Hangul should be a breeze! Anyway, once I can sound out words on signs, I will be able to get around much more easily. I'm also starting to adapt to the cultural niceties, like the little bow of the head, and the left hand on the elbow as you exchange an object with the right. Interesting stuff.

This has been a brutally long entry, but a lot happened since last time I wrote! I'm glad I didn't wait another day, who knows what new experiences will start to crowd in my memory. Tomorrow or Wednesday I hope to activate the cell phone my neighbor gave me, and to explore the neighboring art community across the street. Next weekend? A million possibilities!

Once again, I'm so glad I came.