Eating Live Octopus at the Noryangjin Fish Market

Every Thursday my friends and I get together for Thirsty Thursday, we try to do dinner and drinks in every area around Seoul.  This past thursday we decided to head to the Noryangjin Fish Market for some fresh fish and eat some live octopus for the first time.  Let me tell ya, it was quite the experience.

When you get the the Noryangjin fish market, it's packed with fish vendors trying to sell customers what they have.  You can buy live snapper, salmon, flounder, scallops, king crab, shrimp, octopus, etc.  My girlfriend Haley and I ended up wondering around  drooling over king crab while our friends who were a bit fluent in Korean were bargaining with the vendor about what type of fish we wanted and how much it was going to cost.  We ended up getting a big flounder, big snapper, two small fish that were kinda like tuna, 9 jumbo shrimps, 5 baby octopus' and scallops for 110,000 won.  That was split between 9 people so it came to 12,000 won each ($11.00 CAD).

After we had purchased our fresh fish, there's a guy who takes you upstairs to a restaurant where you have your fish pre-pared and served to you at no cost.  Our fish was served sashimi style, our shrimp and scallops were grilled and the fish remains are made into a delicious spicy stew.

Our appetizer was live baby octopus, it was served freshly cut and still moving around on the plate (like worms squirming around) seasoned with seasame oil.  It was so weird and kind of freaky seeing my live baby octopus appetizer moving around on my plate.  I found it difficult to pick up with my chopsticks cause it was moving and sticking to the plate.  After I put it in my mouth, all I can feel was the tentical moving around and sticking to my cheek and tongue, you really have to make sure you chew it well before you swallow.  It actually wasn't that bad, it was delicious

DMZ

On November 1st I took a trip to the DMZ.  This is probably the closest I'll ever get to North Korea, that's if I'll ever have the guts to take a trip over there.

 

ImjinGak

ImjinGak is as far as civilians can go to the North by themselves without permission.  Imjingak was built to console those who had to leave their homes in the North. 

The 3rd Tunnel

This was first discovered in 1978, was dug by North Korea to infiltrate into the south.  It is 2m in width, 2 m in height, 1,635m in length, and 435 m from MDL.  The floor of the tennel is covered with rubger mats and the wall with charcoal which was applied to give some possibility to the North Korean claim that the tunnel was part of an abandoned mine.  The tunnel would allow about 10,000 armed or 30,000 unarmed soldiers to invade Seoul within one hour.

 

Dora Observatory

This allows visitors to get a view of both the DMZ and the Kesung city (the second largest city of North Korea).  You can also see a "Propaganda village" Kijongdong designed to give visitors the impression the North Korea is a prosperous nation.

 

If you want to take pictures, you can only take pictures at a certain distance, I guess they don't want tourists taking pictures of the village. 

I'd have to say, I was a bit disappointed about the DMZ trip.  I guess I thought it would have been more intense, maybe seeing more soldiers with guns walking around or something.  My favourite part about the trip was walking through the 3rd tunnel, it's so interesting to see it and experience it in person.

Playfighting in Hongdae Park

About two and a half weeks ago, my boyfriend Brad was play fighting with his friends in Hongdae Park.  He hurt it so bad that the pain in his knee was unbearable, so his friend and I ended up having to take him to the hospital to get it checked out.  After 9 hours in the emergency room 300,000 won worth of x-rays and a 650,000 won MRI, the outcome was a broken tibia in two places and a torn MCL.  The doctor said that Brad needed to have surgery done on his knee to have it fixed up since the injury so serious.  We asked the doctoer how much surgery would cost, we thought maybe it would be a couple of hundred thousand won since he had medical coverage with his school.  Turns out, the cost of the surgery was going to be 5 Million won (that's about $5,000 CAD).  That's 5 Million won including the medical coverage.  Yikes!

 

After a 5 hour surgery and 3 nights at the hospital, Brad is doing well.  He's hobbling around on cruches and sporting an awesome knee brace.  Serves him right for being drunk play fighting in Hongdae Park.

Chuseok Weekend October 2nd to October 5th

A couple of weekends ago, we celebrated the Korean holiday called Chuseok.  Chuseok is one of Korea's most largely celebrated holidays.  It is a time when families and friends gather to share food and enjoy their time together, giving thanks to their ancestors for the year's bountiful harvests.  Everyone buys gift sets of SPAM (yes, SPAM), fruit boxes, seaweed, and rice cakes to bring to home or send to their families.

During my Chuseok weekend, I ended up going on a surf trip to Busan, which is South of Seoul.  My surf trip included a surft lesson, surfboard and wet suit rental, bus ride and hotel for only 160,000 won (works out to be about $150.00 CAD).  I went with my boyfriend and 6 of my other friends on this adventure tour.  The water weather was unbelieveable for the month of October.  There was lots of sun, and the water was still very warm.

As for surfing, I managed to get up and ride a couple of waves by the end of the day and soon after called it a day and lounged on the beach until the sun started to set.  I really enjoyed the surfing so I'll definitely take up again when I hit Philippines for Christmas break!

The week after was Canadian Thanksgiving.  Most of our Canadian friends got together for a Thanksgiving feast.  We had roasted chicken from Costco, garlic mashed potatoes, pasta salad, dinner rolls and wine.  We had roasted chicken instead of turkey because none of us had an oven and a turkey is impossible to find in Korea.  Hey, it's better than nothing :)

S.M.O.E Orientation

After an amazing first weekend in Korea, I had to start my orientation.  I was hired by the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education so we had to do mandatory orientation at a University from Monday to Saturday with 400 other teachers.  None of us knew where we were teaching or living in Seoul.  It was like school all over again...dorms, rooomate, meals in the caf and I met tons of people.  Except we couldn't drink any alcohol, weren't allowed to leave the campus and we had a curfew.  Since we were quarantined, we had to do temperture checks twice a day.

Just a couple of my new friends from S.M.O.E

After stressing out for an entire week about where I was going to be living and teaching (I didn't want to be put in the outskirts of Seoul) I ended up getting really lucky.  I was put in Cheongdam/Apgujeong area which is like the Hollywood/Rodeo Drive of Seoul.  My apartment is a cute decent sized studio apartment about the size of my old room in Toronto and I'm just 25 minutes by subway from my school and main areas of Seoul.

My elementary school that I'm at is great and my co-teacher is very nice and has been so helpful since I've been here.  There are about 45 teachers and over 1000 students.  I'll be teaching grades 3 to 6.  This month I'm teaching grade 5's.  7 different grade 5 classes, 30 kids in each class.  The first lesson I taught, I had to read a story about a Mole who got pooed on.  It's called "Who's Dung is this?" haha.  My work hours are 8:40 to 4:40 but I only work a total of 4 hours a day.  The rest of my time is spent making lesson plans, surfing the internet, facebooking or  just thinking about what I plan on doing for the weekend.  Tough life eh?

  

My First Week in Seoul

I first landed in Seoul 4 weeks ago Thursday, when I arrived at the airport I couldn't read a thing or understand what anyone was saying.  I was playing a game of charades with everyone there trying to find my way to the bus I needed to take to get to my friends place.

My friend took me out for some Korean BBQ and Soju, which is like Vodka but much strong and it's about a dollar a bottle at the convenience store.  We walked the streets and they were filled with colourful lights, people drinking Soju outside of the convenience store on plastic patio furniture and endless food vendors selling chicken skewers, soups, fried seafood, squid, dok boki (thick rice noodles in a spicy spaghettios like sauce) and pig intestine.

From Friday to Sunday I decided to make a trip to Busan, which is South of Seoul.  A close friend of mine who has been living in Korea for almost 4 years lives here so I went to spend some time with her and her friends for the weekend.  We went to popular beach called Haeundae beach.  This beach is in the Guiness Book of Records for the highest world record of umbrellas on a beach.  The beach is filled with Koreans covered in sun screen (I'm talking about a thick film of white cream covering themselves) because they are so scared of getting tanned for some reason.  Did I mention that the females walk around in heels at the beach?  Also, you can't swim past water beyond your waist level or else you get a Life Guard blowing a whistle in your face.  They are so paranoid about people drowning at the beach that they keep you from going any further than water past your waist.

The night life in Busan is beautiful, most people are sitting along the beach eating food they've purchased from the food vendor or just pre-drinking the $1.00 Soju purchased from a near by convenience store like we did.  No matter how late it is, the streets are always filled with people just walking around (including families with their kids!).

I really enjoyed my stay in Busan, it's very relaxing and the foreigners that choose to got there to teach are pretty relaxed.  If I ended up staying another year in Korea, I would definitely live in Busan.

My New Adventure Begins....

A week before I left Toronto, Canada to leave for Korea, a lot of my friends and family asked me how I felt.  To be honest, it didn't really hit me until I got on the plan.  The thought of leaving my family and friends was very said, but I was excited at the same time because I knew I was starting a new adventurous chapter in my life.  Teaching in Korea was something I've always wanted to do.  I was actually supposed to do this 2 years ago but my mom and guilted me into staying.  2 years later I landed a job at an Advertising Agency  where I truly enjoyed working at and saw myself growing in the industry.  Before doing so, I thought I would get this English teaching experience out of my system before I can fully focus on my career.  I have nothing tying me back so why not?  I've started to realize that life is just way to short to not do the things you want to do.