Movies, Parties and Thieves...

Hello All,

Well, I have made it past the two month mark with relative ease- and many soju headaches! The 1st March is (another) holiday over here so I celebrated by spending most of the day in bed with a hangover. And Friday night was party night at Barry's.

Saturday was, therefore, a bit of an effort for me. I went to the opening of a new hagwon downtown. It is a beautiful academy- though mostly because there wasn't any kids there yet- nice peaceful classrooms etc. Very nice but an effort to be sociable. Then I got a phone call from my Korean counterpart asking me out for dinner. So I went. She drove me out of town (with the reassuring words 'you had better put your seatbelt on as I am not a very good driver!') to a lovely little traditional place where we had one of the only Korean meals that I know of where I can use a spoon and not have to cope with chopsticks- relief!

We also went to the movies on Friday afternoon, which was great. When we were standing outside we heard a little moped come buzzing up and a man leapt off it and opened up a steel container in the footrest and ran in with the reel of film so that the punters could watch the second half of the movie- while he buzzed the first half across town to the other movie theatre! Mad.

Other than that it had been a very uneventful week until this morning when I woke up and went into my bathroom to find the window wide open. I had heard a noise in the middle of the night but reassured myself and went back to sleep. But someone HAD tried to get in- Tim's place has been invaded three times already. So this money I rushed to the bank and opened an account. All I have to do now is work out how to use the ATM as it is all in Korean!
So you will have to forgive me for writing a genuinely short mail today (for the first time ever!)

dumb foreigners(us), post offices and back to toilets!

OK,

I gave you the low-down on the toilets over here and I may have hinted at the toilet paper situation but I don't think that you know the extent of it. Our school provides no toilet paper or hand towels. So we supply our own paper and have to walk between the dumpster and the staff room with paper proudly in hand as if we were staying on a camp site or something. And the kids all have rolls of toilet paper in their school bags to keep them going as they go from school to academy to school- none of which can supply them the basics they need for this everyday venture. There are emergency supplies at the counter but it is a little embarrassing asking for paper as they tend to hand you every other bit of paper on the desk before getting the right one- as if the little dance that I was doing at the time didn't give it away!

So I have got used to the toilet paper situation and my Korean counterpart thought that it was odd that I hadn't anticipated this problem on my first day (when I turned up completely TPless!). Then it got confused all over again when we went to Seoul. The toilets at the first subway station we used had no paper but as we (and this is not the royal 'we' I had friends too- a girl who needs to go to the toilet is rarely without friends to accompany her) left the facility someone pointed out the machine just outside which was a paper dispenser. You have to pay for the privilege naturally but inserting the correct coinage will produce an individually wrapped bundle for you to use at your leisure. Fine. The next toilet (by the way, if you are of any kind of a North American persuasion and all this talk of toilets is offending you in any way then I suggest pasting this mail into Word and using the 'Replace All' function to change ever instance of the word toilet to bathroom or restroom or some other more palatable- if somewhat misleading- phrase) I had sussed- I went to the machine outside the door and inserted my 100 won piece. Very pleased with myself I ventured into the main 'landing' area with paper in hand and met the queue (line for the Americans again- see I am learning!). Well, having been a woman for most, if not all, of my adult life I am more than used to the queuing system in public lavatories. Except this one. Rather than any kind of a single orderly queue where it was obvious who had been there the longest and therefore deserved the next go on the throne (or squat pot as it turned out to be) women were lining up outside individual cubicle doors. They all turned to look at me. I looked back and joined a line. In all my experience of queuing I had never seen anything like this. Shortly after a flush was heard a door opened and rather than the lady queuing in front of it going in she gestured to some other female to enter. Which she did. So what was the story now? Was there some first come first served basis after all? Or is there some way of telling just by looking at people who long they have been waiting (maybe by the franticness of the foot shuffling?) Or was this woman a professional queuer who held the line for folk? I didn't know and probably never will. Finally the door in front of me opened and I went in- fingers tearing into my newly acquired plastic wrapped bundle of paper- and assumed the correct position. And what should I notice, mid-flow, but a gleaming great stainless steel toilet paper holder stuffed to overflowing with virgin tissue! I will never win on this one I think!

I read in the Lonely Planet that Korean companies were looking for ways to save money in times past and decided that too much of the company resources were being squandered on such trifles and fripperies as bog roll. So they stopped buying it. Must have been a bit of a shock on the first day but the Korean obligingly adjusted and started carrying their own. No-one thought fit to suggest that possibly more money could be saved if they just turned off a square kilometre or two of the neon tubes covering each and every non-resident building in the land??? Madness I say!

To get off the subject of public facilities for one minute (I am sure that I will find something else to say about them in the future so don't you worry!) I wanted to tell you about the train on the way to Seoul. Just one little instance of misunderstandings that are a daily occurrence for me over here. There were eight of us on the train on the way there (the rest of the group went off slumming it to the Philippines for the holidays- poor souls- while the rest of us lived it up in Seoul) and we were being rather sociable and generally having a great time. Shortly after we got onto the train an official came round and looked at us and said something. We all looked blankly back. He tried again- slightly slower and slightly louder (yes, the affliction is universal I fear). With a spark of understanding we all got our tickets out of the various pockets they had been stuffed in and held them proudly aloft. the guy looked at us as a group- obviously in awe of our speed of understanding- then he looked at each of individually. We all continued to sit and looked pleased with ourselves for our mastering the situation so quickly, Then he held a finger up to his lips and 'sshhed' us. So not the tickets then! We looked slightly abashed and less pleased with ourselves. The cute bit was the next time we were getting a little rowdy he walked straight past us and came back five minutes later and asked us to be quiet- obviously had an English teacher stuffed away in the guards van in case of such emergencies!

Everyday has its victories and defeats of understanding. This morning I was flicking through my newly purchased Korean phrasebook and saw that it had a phrase that translated to 'I would like to buy 5 aerogramme (those all in one airmail letters- not in the translation obviously but for the benefit of you guys!) please!' I hadn't known at that stage whether they sold them or not over here but this seemed as good as confirmation to me (I had forgotten about the fact that they sell cheese graters and not cheese and was opting for the purely logical here.) I went to the post office and held the book up to the woman behind the counter and pointed out the phrase. It worked. I bought aerogrammes. Of course, I had to buy five because that is what it said in the book after all, but I did buy some! It is so great when things work! next time I shall startle the lady with actually attempting to pronounce the words and that should give them something to chuckle over for the rest of the day.

I think that I shall leave you there then.

Seoul, Mardi Gras and Pancake Day...

Hello again!

Last night something pretty exciting happened- we bought tickets to go to a World Cup game. We are going to see the brutal game of Spain versus Slovenia. Having researched both teams on the internet last night we are still not sure who to support- the Slovenian team had the best website but the Spanish players were honeys! So we are going for both by sporting t-shirts with big S's on the front and covering both sides at the same time, Good thinking. It is costing 66,000 won (1,900 won to the sterling pound roughly currently) and the game is in Gwangju on the 2nd June. I know that I said that I wouldn't be going to any matches but I think that I got carried away after England's defeat (slaughter?) of Ireland in the 6 Nations on Saturday night. We may have been having a Mardi Gras party but it stopped for the duration of the match. Despite there only being three Europeans in the room I was still outnumbered 20 -1 by the Ireland supporters!

Now, what did I need to tell you all about? I have been having problems getting into my hotmail account in the PC bangs and the problem is not helped when all of the error messages come up in Korean- leaving me more clueless than ever to the cause! So I am in a different one today and apologise for the lack of response for the last couple of weeks.

Last week was Korean New Year and we all had three days off school to celebrate. The traditional thing to do over the NY holiday is to go to your grandparents’ house here. Obviously our director had decided that Tim and me weren't going for the traditional feel when he gave every member of staff a NY present except us! But then again, their presents were 2 litres of cooking oil so I am not too sure that I have really missed out. Six of us headed to Seoul for the long weekend and we stayed in Itaewon. It was weird to be in Seoul- it is much bigger than Mokpo(!). to begin with we were still saying hi to all the foreigners, as we do at home in Mokpo, then we realised that there were more of them than Koreans- at least in Itaewon. And I saw African and Indian people for the first time since leaving the UK- and I found myself staring at them like some yokel/culchie until I realised what I was doing and pulled myself together. We ate in Burger king and drank in Irish pubs so it was really like a trip away from Korea for a few days. And I have to share with you my most favourite ever misspelling on a Korean poster- and it appeared in BURGERKING of all big US corporations to make such a mistake- here I quote word for word and the spelling is all BK’s not mine!----

'Try our mouse-watering chicken sandwich and take a lot of benefits along with it!'
We laughed for a long time at that and I have a photo of it on my wall. And funnily enough we were all duped into buying chicken burgers by this poster so maybe it was all deliberate! I can't really tell you much else about Seoul- it was mainly a drinking and shopping weekend rather than a cultural exploration of the city. I did manage to get a block of cheese though which is pretty exciting- cheese on toast here we come! I found yesterday that you can buy a cheese grater here in Mokpo but not the cheese to grate- interesting. We did visit the old royal palace though which was pretty cool if also freezing cold for most of our 90 minutes guided tour of the grounds. Our guide had the maddest accent too and seemed to slow down every time she said any dates and waved her hand in the air.

So we got back to Mokpo at midnight on Tuesday night- the journey was fun since they sell beer on the train and we made the absolute most of that facility. We then went to Nerrissa's house for another eight hours or so on the soju- having discovered lemon soju I have become a bit of a fan it has to be said. The normal stuff is like straight vodka and even thinking about it makes me cringe but the lemon stuff is more like an Alco pop but you still take it in shots. I mostly slept on Wednesday and made up to the fish for the neglect- though they still seem to be sulking and after a whole weekend of worrying about them not having enough to eat they haven't eaten a thing since i got back- the little sods!

Thursday was back to school and neither myself or the students really wanted to be there so it was a very painful day. We had our postponed Pancake Day on Thursday and we went for it Newfoundland style and hid things in the pancakes. I got a safety pin and a coin so I am having a baby and money- any chance of reversing the order on that??

Friday was a quiet night at the pub and Saturday we had a Greek style Mardi Gras- that is Mardi Gras with Souvlaki, which was fantastic!

As usual, I had in mind a lot of amusing little anecdotes that fled my mind the moment I sat down- sorry! So I will stop here and get back to you when my head feels less fuzzy. I had my second Korean lesson on Saturday and it is beginning to make more sense and I now have a Korean name- Ee Hee-yun. Ee is the family name that most of the class took on- mostly because it was the easiest to write- just a circle with a straight vertical line down the right of it. And Hee-yun sounds a bit like Helen really!

More another time,