adventures of a teacher
from central illinois
living in korea
(& traveling all over)!
contact
ljknight at gmail.com
or
here
current date & time in seoul:
popular tags:
korea
seoul
teaching
united states
read about my travels:
cambodia
indonesia
japan
laos
malaysia
myanmar
singapore
taiwan
thailand
vietnam
Yes, It’s Seoul . NOT EGG.
Gangnam folks thinking they’re at the center of the universe ㅋㅋㅋ. Truuueee.
Haha, it is true! My gu is where it’s at.
Check out my $50 sheet and $60 blanket
Peruvian blanket = prized possession
My apartment, which is nothing more than a big room with a bathroom and laundry porch attached. The lighting is bad, like in every Korean apartment, but it looks a lot worse in the pics.
Everything is pretty much just how I want it, I only have to fill these two pillow cases I bought in Laos and Thailand and buy pillows for my bed. One of my coworkers lives in my building, and she has found a ton of nice furniture in the garbage in our neighborhood. So I’m going to steal her shoe rack and shelves for clothes when she leaves at the end of April. Piling things under my bed and TV work for now.
Plenty of room for my summer visitors! :D
Like I’ve said 100 times, I love my new ‘hood.
I went into my new little grocery shop for the first time with my coworkers after work, and the owner was so surprised to see me with them.
Him: “New face!”
Coworker: “Yeah, new teacher!”
Him: “Ahh! New teacher!”
Then yesterday, he was very excited to introduce me to his daughter. ”New teacher!” Only in Korea. Lee Hyori also allegedly lives down the street so I’ll have to keep my eyes open for some celebrity-stalking opportunities.
Late-night galbi last Monday
Joseph, Ags, me
I have lots of pictures with strangers
Agatha was in Seoul for a week before finally heading back to Chicago. She finished teaching the same time I did, and did a massive four-month trip around SE Asia. It was cool to be able to talk to someone about a lot of the places I’ve been too! It will be weird not having her in Seoul for my second year.
I have a big bone to pick with whomever decided the Seoul public transportation hours. Subway closing down at 12am on weekends and holidays? In a city where there are 24-hour coffee shops and clothing stores, and where it’s not uncommon for business-people to work super late hours? Really? I DID find out that the buses run later than the subway, though, which is helpful.. but still. I’ve spent $50 in the past three nights getting home from Hongdae or Sinchon. Ugh. White Whine, I know.
Side notes: there are an obscene amount of people from Illinois here now—which is awesome, and the number will only increase when Patrick and Jen come in the fall :). And the Lovely Bones is a really terrible movie.
Today Ben and Tae were super nice and brought more of my stuff over from Tae’s. Now I only have two not-very-big boxes left that I’ll probably get tomorrow. I also have caved and decided that hanging clothes from the ceiling isn’t sooo bad. Plus I have to wait until I get my flight reimbursement money (hopefully this week) before I spend a bunch of money on shelves and stuff, and I’m sick of having piles of clothes on the floor. My apartment is slowly coming together! I love it! I also got to explore my neighborhood a bit, and found countless coffee shops, a lot of good-looking restaurants, and a ton of other things that make it way better than my old area.
MY APARTMENT! Finally!
It’s the standard Korean studio size, which is perfectly fine for me. The pluses are that I inherited a couch, a painting, and a sailor hat. Minuses: no sheets, no pillow, and no closet. (It was a boy living here and he had just hung hangers on a string across the ceiling. Boys…) Since it’s a fancy neighborhood, there aren’t any E-Marts or Home Pluses nearby, so I’ll probably make a trip to the Jamsil Home Plus tomorrow to get bed stuff and figure out what to do with my clothes.
I’m so happy I can settle in. I went to my friend Tae’s to pick up half of the stuff I had left there, and it’s nice to be able to unpack everything I haven’t seen in months and finally be able to decorate with the things I bought in SE Asia. :D
-Getting stares and random hellos
- No tipping!
- No commercials during shows
- No one uses voice mail
- That the subway and half of Seoul permanently reeks of soju
-Always almost getting hit by motorcycles on the sidewalks
- The subway closes annoyingly early—last night I went to meet up with my friend Sakura, and left her place at 12, thinking the trains run until 1 on the weekends. Then I got to the station and hey! Everything was closed. There was a guy who had been right in front of me on the stairs, so I turned to him with my confused-face on, and pointed to my watch. “토요일 .. 한시 .. 아니오?” (Saturday .. one o’clock .. no?) Then he tried to tell me in English that it closed early on Saturdays. Oh yes, I remember. The subway runs until 1 every night except Saturdays and Sundays. $10 taxi ride, ugh.
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