Breaking in the Blog

An-nyong ha-se-yo!
Greetings from Jinju in South Korea!

Before I get into my initial thoughts about this country I just need to explain what this things is all about. Im starting this blog as a way to document my year abroad. Its a place to post photos, share my thoughts and to keep track of what ive been doing. Im hoping it will be a place where I can try and be creative, hopefully funny, and at the very least, keep everyone up to date with my movements.

Unfortunately, I wont be able to add photos for the moment as I didnt bring a camera over and, suprise suprise, the cameras over here have Korean all through the menu and display. So while I get that sorted you are going to have to live with my words, which may mean some very boring and uninteresting posts.

Anyway, the first thing I have to say is that I have no idea of what is going on. In Thailand, most people know enough English to let you be able to speak it and not have to learn much more than kabbu krup. Not the case here. Even my co-teachers have very basic english and the person on the street has none whatsoever. Communicating with people is pretty non-existant, im totally isolated in this means. 1st priority, but what will be always ongoing, is learning this language.

With this in mind, here are some initial observations and thoughts;

- Has not stopped raining since I arrived over 2 days ago. Havent been able to see more than a couple of hundred of meters in either direction. Im sure its a beautiful country, I just havent seen it yet

- Hotels are slightly different from Aussie ones. In Korea they are fully equipped with complimentary sex machine and softcore porn channels. My intitial reaction to the sex machine was it was a piece of gym equipment, but a closer inspection showed none of the parts moved and there was instructions (ie, positions) on the bottom. I kept going to hang my wet jacket on it before recoiling in disgust. The TV had not 1 but 2 non-stop porn channels. Unfortunately, these hotel channels didnt translate to household channels, and even worse, neither did the sport channels. Every household channel seems to play ridiculous game shows and soaps. Yay.

- After selling out and getting a pizza my first night (in my defense I was tired from travelling and didnt want to risk it) I opted for some Korean for lunch the next day at a food court. I pointed at something on a board. What I got back didnt look like what I pointed to. It was the biggest bowl of noodles ive ever seen in my life (I mean salad bowl size) full of mushys and onions and the black sauce was so increadibly thick and gooey. It tasted OK, but was so hard to eat. It came with a massive pair of scissors on the side which still baffle me. Maybe it was to cut the noodle up becuase as I said it was so hard to eat.

- I was taken to lunch and dinner by my co-teachers and this time it was to proper Korean "resturants". What a production. Dinner was soy bean (tofu?) soup and a warm kimchi soup and our table had no less than 21 different plates and bowls on it, not including our personal rice bowls that you place the condiments in. Every square inch was covered in bowls. The bowls contained pretty unidentifyable stuff mostly. I know there was spinach, seaweed, sprouts, and thats about it. All the condiments are prepared (its not spinach as we know it, it sliced and diced and seasoned) meticulously and there were at least 6 containing green veges and looked pretty well identical. I am in no way confident of using chopsticks at the table because if I pick something up in a bowl across the table and just going to drop it in 3 bowls on the way back to mine. All the stuff gets put into your rice bowl and tossed around and the end result is definately colourful but im not sure its appetizing. It tasted fine but when its all mashed together it all tastes the same and it just looks wrong. The chances of Ella or Makenze eating it would be a million to one. Although it is more appetizing then the Koreans slurping their soup and spitting bones and hard bits out of their mouth and into a nearby designated plate.

- The cities here are massive. There would be more buildings over 10 stories in Changwon (population 500,000) than all of Sydney. Easily. Driving in and out of the city is wall-to-wall of huge apartment buildings. The impression the cities give you is that they should have more people than they do. Driving through Jinju today (pop 300,000 and considered small), it felt like there should be millions of people here. Massive streets with bright lights and shops side-by-side, huge apartment buildings, everything so darn built up, every bit of space used. But i guess what you see is what you get - no sprawling suburbs extending for kilometres away from the city. Everything built on top of each other and next to each other. It really is deceptive to an aussie just how big these cities feel.

- This alleged fastest internet in the world is feeling like a bit of a scam. It may have something to do with the the old, old computers ive used in my hotel and now my room in Jinju, but Its definately not what I was expecting. But dad, it is still better than at Port, thats for sure.

Keep checking back as I will update this often and soon have some visuals to go with my words. Id rather do constant, small updates and not write big chunks of writing like this as you are more likely to read it! Also, please reply if you would like to!

Jake