Busan – February 26, 2006

Amara and I were only in Busan for 1 day. We decided on doing a bus tour since we frankly didn’t do any research and had no clue what there was to see. It was a decent tour. We went to the UN Memorial Cemetery, the Busan Museum and the aquarium. The aquarium what great, lots of cool creatures and the place had a really good layout.

A second tour we wanted to go on was not running for some reason so we killed the rest of our time in Busan by watching Kill Bill Vol. 1 before heading back to Seoul on the train.

Gyeoung Ju – February 24-25, 2006

The Friday of this weekend that just pasted was a half day so I had planned a trip to Busan with Amara for the weekend. We didn't really plan much of the trip, except Amara mentioned a hostel she found so we made reservations.

We arrive at the train station and get in a cab to head to the hostel that is supposed to be less than 5 minutes away. 15 minutes later we’re wondering where the taxi driver is taking us. We finally realized that we had reservations in a completely different city. A 70,000 won cab ride and 1.5 hours later we arrive in the city of Gyeoung Ju!

It turned out alright though. We decided to stay the night and went on a bus tour the next day. It was really fun. We saw lots of historic sights, temples, museums, etc. It was really nice to get out of the city for some countryesque air.

February Flew By So Fast

The last couple of weeks seem to have just flown by. I feel a lot more at home in my appartment now. I retrieved a couch from the trash, yummy. I also bought a computer desk and chair, a microwave and a drying rack. So far I've done my laundry once. I'm kinda going for the once a month deal. The microwave is in Korean so I still need to figure out what all the buttons mean.

Earlier this month we had a school trip to KBS (a TV station). I hiked around an area with Buddhist temples and toured Seodaemun prison which is where the Japanese held and tortured Koreans before they gained independance.

I finished the Korean alphabet class that I was taking. It's kinda cool to know how to read the language. March is the beginners’ language class. So I'll get to learn some basic everyday phrases. I also started doing a language exchange with a Korean guy named Joshua. We meet up once a week and half the time he teaches me some Korean and the other half of the time we have a conversation to help his English. I'm going to try and do a Salsa or Tango dance class in March. I really don't want to end up sitting at home all the time after work.

Last Weekend Without $$$......(hopefully) – February 3-4, 2006

This week went by pretty fast. We had Monday off and it was the last week of the winter program at school, so it was pretty relaxed this week. I had my first Korean class on Wednesday. February is the alphabet class so we “learned” (I can’t remember all of it) the whole Korean alphabet in 2 hours. It’s nice to recognize some letters on street signs. It makes me feel more at home. I can now say: “My Name is Dozie”, “I’m a Canadian”, “hello”, “thank you”, “left”, “right” and “here”….. it’s a start

I finally found an ATM where my BMO debit card worked so I was able to take out some cash, a huge relief.

We headed to a DVD bang on Saturday. The concept is you rent a DVD and watch it in a private room that has a couch-like ‘bed’ with a few friends. The place had a limited selection and it was clean but the first thing I thought was - should I wipe down the bed before I lay down?

We also went to Insadong, a really artsy area. This was before getting money out of the ATM so we just looked through windows at all the stuff we couldn’t buy. There were lots of art galleries and places that sold ceramics, art supplies and home decor items.