Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Hey everyone,
Just a quick update on how things are going here in Korea since the last blog. The evening I arrived at the hotel, I didn't sleep at all that night until 8am in the morning (and then got up at 8.30am) because my body clock was out of sync. I was then tired! We went to get Kimbap (a Korean version of sushi) for breakfast and then got taken to the airport again where we registered with EPIK and took their bus down to Daejeon, making another friend called Chris. It was the Lunar new year (the biggest festival of the year) so the traffic out of Seoul was horrendous and took us four hours to get to Daejeon.
We are staying at a university in Daejeon until the 27th Feb for our orientation period. There are over 300 teachers here. When we'd got settled, we went for dinner. The food here is delicious and I've been having lots of Kimchi (spicy fermented cabbage = the Korean national dish). Kimchi, Rice and various types of soup are eaten at every meal here. After dinner five of us went out for a walk and found a pub. On the way home I managed to get us lost...oops! But we did make it back in time for 12am curfew. I also met my new room-mate Frank.
This morning breakfast was at 7.30am so it was an early start. Afterwards was a campus tour, although we had already discovered most of the areas ourselves. After lunch was the opening ceremony. This included displays of a traditional Korean dance once used by the king and queen to wish a good harvest for the country and then a very impressive performance of traditional farming folk music by middle school students. After the opening ceremony was a very interesting lecture on Korean history and culture. We learned that Korea has 50 million people in a country the size of Scotland and Wales combined, that Soju (a spirit like Vodka) is the most widely drunk spirit in the world - and almost all is consumed within Korea!) as well as how to shake hands the Korean way (always with the right hand, with the left hand under the arm pit or holding the wrist.) Once that was over, it was time for a class meeting where they took us through a lot of the admin stuff, explained the events of the week and informed us of our topic and group for a lesson we have to teach next week. Then it was dinner time again.
So far, its been really good. I've met lots of great new people and it's been fairly relaxing so far. Tomorrow things begin to get more intense as we have a medical test in the morning (I'm not looking forward to having blood taken and will probably faint lol) and then lectures. There's a cultural trip planned for Monday, lectures on teaching, a Taekwondo class and 3-4 hours of Korean classes next week. It's gonna be great :).
- comments
kieran Sounds good Matt. Glad it's starting well. I'm interested to see how you fair with your diet.