Almost Employed again

  Seoul, Korea Rep.
Sunday, September 30, 2007

· Seoul, South Korea
· GMT +8:00 hours

Here is a quick recap of how we passed the last two days here in Seoul, the last two days, as it turns out, of our 'holiday'. We report for work later this afternoon with work proper beginning tomorrow. A working honeymoon. Sounds kind of cool, if a bit different.

Day 46 - September 28th 2007

01 Unhyeongung

It'll come as no great surprise that we didn't get up to much today. We walked to The Grand Palace (but not into The Grand Palace), took a few pictures, had a look around a few paint stores (Meg's toying with the idea of doing a bit of painting during our 4 month stint here in Korea), tried to update our diaries (we're way behind) and of course met the Henkster, with the three of us enjoying a traditional Korean BBQ meal down an Insadong lane followed by beers in the salubrious surroundings of The Henksters motel room.

Day 47 - September 29th 2007
To cover today's goings on I could easily just cut & paste the above day's summary, making just a few location changes. Ummm, now there's an idea. Actually, I will. See if you can spot the differences.

02 Drum roll

It'll come as no great surprise that we didn't get up to much today. We walked to the Namdamun Market, took a few pictures, had a look around tons of shops (Meg's toying with the idea of buying everything in Korea, just as she was in Turkey), tried to update our diaries (we didn't & we're now even further behind than we were yesterday) and of course we met up with none other than the Henkster, with the three of us enjoying Korean/Japanese food fusion meal followed by beers in the salubrious surroundings of our motel room.

Day 48 - September 30th 2007
Today's the day - the day we report for camp, the day our unemployed status ends (I haven't worked since late May, Meg since late June), the

03 The setting

day we officially turn 'illegal' in Korea and the day I begin to attempt to convince Korean employers I've yet to meet that I'm actually a teacher. We have to meet that aforementioned employer at 1pm today, after which they'll transport us to home base, seemingly a 30-minute trip outside Seoul. As I've already said we assume our teaching duties proper begin tomorrow, but we're not really sure; we were originally told there would be a few days orientation. Regardless of what happens we'll be sure to report on our adventures in camp as regularly as possible. We are glad our waiting in Seoul has finally ended. It's been a long week, a week we spent trying, unsuccessfully, to sort out our visas, a week we spent passing days with little of much to do and a week I spent trying to curb Megs desire to overhaul her whole wardrobe bit by bit, day by day.

Day 46 & 47 Observations (September 28th & 29th 2007)

· Sleeping beauty once more
I think I've finally shaken my jetlag (or whatever it was I was experiencing) as I seem to finally be sleeping okay again. I'm not going to waste anymore space here on my now past sleeping problems other than to say I'm glad they are behind me.

· Watchtower
I was accosted on Friday by Jehovah's. Can you believe it? In Korea! I guess the hand of Jehovah reaches far and wide but here, in atheist Korea, and in a motel, is the one place I never ever expected to be offered a Watchtower magazine. The fact that it was offered by an amazingly smiley Korean with native-esque English didn't matter. The shock aside I still managed to politely reject it, just like I do at home.

· No tripod needed
I've said it before (numerous times) and no doubt I'll say it again but Koreans have

04 Better smile for this one

to be the most hospitable people in the world. We're constantly approached with offers to take our picture in front of whatever building, temple or gate we're looking at. It happened twice when we visited the Grand Palace on Friday, including a guy, surely 100 years away, who left his tour group, walked over to us and gestured to take our picture; all because we were standing there looking at the entrance gate to the palace. We get this all the time, but still we were too embarrassed to take him up on the offer. Then when eating out with The Henkster on Friday evening a table of adjacent Koreans moved their table that bit closer to our table; an act of friendliness that signified we were all eating and sharing laughs together. That sort of thing doesn't happen in too many places.

· No change there

05 Eaves

Speaking of the Henkster, he hasn't changed much, apart from the fact that he's 18 months older and 18 months wiser (we assume) since I last saw him. It was good to catch up (see the pictures to the right) and he agrees with us that Korea is more expensive than it used to be, especially Seoul, and he likes the idea of travelling with us after our stint in Korea ends in February. We'll see how that pans out.

· "We're not hungry!"
One of the more annoying aspects of Korea is the requirement that when you enter a bar you

06 Back as one

have to order food. Not all bars require this, but most do. It happened Friday night after we had finished dinner and we entered a bar looking for nothing more than a few beers to sit and chat over. What we got however was the usual menu shoved under our nose requesting us to order a dish first, followed by beer second. Explaining we'd already eaten and weren't hungry didn't cut it and prompted our server to point out what was the cheapest dish on the menu. Rather than order some dish we didn't want or need we decided to visit the local 7/11 and retire to Henks hotel room instead.

· Just in case

07 Nightcap

It was still overcast yesterday, the 3rd overcast day in a row. Every now and again the sun threatens to break through but most of the time it's smothered by the clouds. It rains here and there; not much but still enough to force us to purchase an umbrella, which we did a few nights ago. Given the limited selection in the 7/11 store where we made the purchase we reckon we did well with our sky-blue 'Milano' choice umbrella. It's certainly more noticeable than the dull black ones costing twice as much. It's just a pity it wasn't pink, right Meg?

· 3 dresses, one pair of shoes
Yep, that's the count thus far of Meg's purchases after we spent yesterday afternoon walking around Namdaemun market and Myeong dong (again). But I'm not complaining; she looks amazing in all them.

· So long Jongnowon
We're leaving the Jongnowon motel today after having spent 6 nights in room 306. We haven't willingly spent so many nights in the one room since the trip began

08 Mano Accessories

(the 5 nights we spent in our Tirana room, due to Megs food poisoning and Macedonia visa issues, don't count). It's been nice to get kind of settled, although we could have done without the nightly 35,000won (€27, CND$40) fee (it adds up). We're gonna miss the free WiFi (we hopped onto next doors network, enabling us to 'be connected' for the week), the simple toast & jam breakfast in the mornings, the arctic-inducing air-conditioner and the 75+ channels of Korean TV (even in Korean some channels are compelling viewing). We won't miss the mosquitoes however who, despite our best efforts, feasted on us nightly. They were such a part of our Jongnowon motel experience that we found ourselves on Wikipedia researching them (also an indication as to how bored we got at times). Nasty little buggers.