My first real weekend in Hanam

• Heatherann's Profile
• About this blog
• Entry from Hanam

Trip Start Nov 20, 2008 Previous
Entry Trip End Nov 2009 Next
Entry

  Hanam, Gyeonggi, Korea Rep.
Saturday, December 6, 2008

Well, I made it through my first week of teaching. I thought I might die of exhaustion on a couple of days. My Monday, Wed, and Fri are dominated by large classes with young kids (by large I mean 12-16 kids) But its a lot with small kids that don't speak english well. Anyway, so Friday night I went to dinner with one of my co-workers, Peter. He was off to Australia in the morning (he's from there) to be best man in his mate's wedding. So we had dinner and then he gave me an Australian beer. I just hung out in my room watching the first season of 30 Rock on DVD. Then Saturday I met up with another co-worker, Jasmin, in Seoul. She is from Seoul so she knew exactly what I needed. We met at the COEX mall, which is absolutely huge!! It has a Kimchi museum, an aquarium, a movie theater, and so much more. I was really proud of myself too for catching the right bus, getting off at the right stop, catching the right subway and meeting her at the right place at the right time. But doing it helped me to become a lot more comfortable with the system. Of course after about 10pm the subway starts to smell like stale alcohol and there are always old men sleeping (passed out?) in thier seats. So anyway, Jasmin and I met up with another guy who was in her training class and we had dinner. We had Chinese food. The best part was the black bean noodles which are a really popular Chinese/Korean dish, or Chirean as I would call it. We walked around for a while and then decided to go to the Bond flick. So we got our tickets for Quantum of Solice and when we bought them we got to pick which seats we wanted in the theater.

At Francis' apartment

Its great system because as long as you get your ticket early you don't have to show up early to get a good seat. The flick was great and then we headed home. Jasmin was going the same way as me and just had to get off the bus a couple of stops before me. She was so sweet and told the bus driver that I needed to get off at Hanam city hall and he reminded me where my stop was, even though I was totally ready for it.



Sunday, I was all ready to go to E-Mart (walmart of Korea) when Russell and Francis stopped by my room to say they were going into Insa-dong, which is the traditonal area in Seoul where you can find authentic traditional goods. We walked the street and found some great Christmas presents to send home. Then, we stopped in a tea house and I had fabulous pear tea (even though it was more like asian pear tea). When we were almost finished shopping it began to snow big beautilful flakes. It made me feel like Christmas, which I've been missing. So, we caught a cab back to Hanam and made a great taco dinner. Fran contributed his lettuce, Russel had the seasoning, shells, and salsa, and I had the pan and the meat and cheese. Between the three of us we were able to come up with a great meal. We played some video game golf after that and after about 3 hours of play, ended up tying. Anticlimactic as it was, at least we had a great time.



Now, I'm back in school and about to start my last class of the day!!

Post your own travel photos for friends and family More Pictures

the ladies room	insa-dong	me and Russell	Francis
It's snowing

Slideshow Print this entry Share Seoul hotels

Previous Entry Next Entry