The Weekend

Well I successfully completed my first week of school, success being that I did not kill any of my students or myself. Actually this teaching thing may not be too bad but I can't imagine doing it for life, I need conversations that go beyond ABC's and phonetics.

Friday night was a fun night out with four of Lorne's friends who came to visit for the weekend and then we met up with some other foreign teachers who actually live in Daejoen. There was nothing really out of the ordinary Friday, I think bar scenes are pretty much universal. Someone was taking pictures on Friday and is going to email them to me so once I get them I will post a few up.

Saturday I braved my first outing on my own. I walked to the HomePlus, which is like a grocery store/Wal-mart type place and about fifteen minutes away. I wandered around the grocery aisles for about an hour just checking things out, I think I can find pretty much the same things here as I can in Canada, although their fruit and vegetable section is sadly limited. On the other hand though, seaweed salad (wakame) is extremely cheap and one of my favourite things to eat and super healthy as well. Ask me again in a month and I'm sure I'll be tired of it but for now it is fantastic. The weirdest thing I bought, my mistake, was a mini loaf of bread from the bread section, it looks like normal white bread but when I got it home I realized there is a peanut butter like substance between every other piece, which I think is the epitome of true laziness when you can't even make your own P.B sandwiches!

I wasn't able to walk home because of the groceries and a few other odds and ends that I needed so I hopped in a cab and carefully pronounced "SongChong Dong, Op-or-a-hous-a," which Lorne and David had assured me would always bring me right back to the school, which is about two minutes from my house. The cabby started out the right way but pretty soon I didn't have a clue where we were so I was able to convey to him that we were lost. I gave him a business card for the school, which Lorne and David also had assured me would work to get me home, but it didn't help. The cabby got on the phone for back up help and managed to get me home. Once he got me to the school he took the business card back and wrote, what I assume are, proper directions for my next cabby. It's kinda like my lost and found card I guess.

Last night we met back up with the gang and went out to TGIF's for dinner. This was in a part of Daejeon that I had not yet been to and it was almost like stepping into little U.S.A or little Canada, complete with CostCo, the Outback, a huge mall with familiar stores like Chanel and Mac... I can't wait to go back there! The only difference was we were the only non-Korean's around and we attract so many stares. There were two teachers in our group who are Korean and one patron in the restaurant actually interrupted them during dinner to ask if we could teach their children English in private lessons! After dinner we went out for a few more drinks and some Soju juice, the typical Korean drink to get drunk off of, though you can barely taste the alcohol. And I'm sure I'll have one or two Soju tales of my own within a few weeks... Once again we were provided with munchies, which I have learned is the law, you have to have some sort of food to accompany alcohol, and amongst the munchies were tiny snail shells which you are supposed to suck the snail out of (yum). You could actually see the dirty water coming off the snail and I fell back on my tactic of "when Marianne tries it, I'll try it." Then she tried it. Lorne said they tasted like dirt and other people really liked them. I went back on my word and didn't try them. It's funny I actually thought I was pretty adventurous in what I would try up until arriving here!

And now it is Sunday afternoon and I'm not sure what I am going to be up to, maybe walk around my area and see what else is around here.

Ta ta for now!