Day 4 going out with Mr Kim

Well now, Mr kim who is my Uncle's contact arranged to take me out to look around Korea. so He and his daughter picked me up outside of my school and basically drove me for lunch and a trip to one of the tall towers to catch a panaromic view of Korea. Our first stop was at a place calledYongsan electronic market. The place was mind blogging and truely deserved the name of market. Forgot to take a picture of it though. sigh. but u can just try to visualise a big area whereby people hawk all kinds of electronic goods. You name it, they have it.

Next stop was a korean BBQ. IT was good. as you can see from the picture. and the numerous numbers of small dishes was like woah. its too many for me (-_-") but i guess its the culture. I mean with the no. of side dishes available, I doubt even the haviest eater could finish eating it. There was even a type of i think it was winter kimchi is soup that left the most simply refreshing feeling in the mouth. it was hmmmm i can't really discribe it. sorta mildy sour soup but totally relieves the oil of the BBQ from your mouth.

Next was the building that hmm i forgot the name. but it offered a very nice view from the 60th floor. You have to pay to go up the building though. But the view is magnificient. as you can see form the pictures, the whole of Seoul is available. Seoul is a very very very densely populated place though so its always full of buildings..... :P

Went back to my hostel after that. Mr Kim drove me back. very kind of him I thought. He was very friendly but his daughter was rather shy so didn't speak much to her. Maybe she was still very young. Any i love being driven back to my hostel..... at least today i wouldn't have to brave the slopes............... groans. Found out one very intersting thing. Koreans count age as measure from the mother's womb. so Once you're born you're 1 yr old! :P so like Mr kim's daughter, she's 16 in korea but 15 in international terms. it doesn't affect the birthday though. at least i think it doesn't :)

I arranged to meet Maxwell at 6pm for dinner. but me being me, my short map turned out to be a long one and i woke up only at 730pm, and it was already very dark. oh man. Sorry Max..... but anyway he was still waiting for me so we went out to eat. Randomly picked a resturant, couldn't read the menu it had no pictures too, so just picked the first dish off the menu on the wall. Turned out to be Spicy beef stew with rice and the standard 3 side dishes. cost us 4000 won but it was well worth it. 1 SGD=600-650Won. Just in case you think i really lucked out, i didn't. I mean if i ordered a dish for 4000won, its unlikely to be soup or water right? lol. Max was rather shocked though. lol he was like, oh man what r u doing, you don't even know what u just ordered...... (I ordered for him too) lol. haha its exciting to eat in korea.

Can't really walk around tonite though. its a 5 day working week in seoul so many shops are closed. In addition, its numbingly cold here. Especially with the big wind. So i guess thats it for today. Tomorrow will be my first time in a Korean church so pray that i will manage to make it there intact? yeah? Amen to that! :P

Goodnight everybody and God Bless! :P

Mr Kim's daughter. I couldn't spell her name :P 

My host, Mr Kim and me outside my classroom 

Here you have the cross of the biggest church in korea, Yoido Full Gospel Church. ignore the building behind. thats not the church. was on a car so no time to snap the building. 

Wind outside the tower was so big and cold....I can't open my eyes. man.....more then 10 km of wind is no joke...... 

This is the han river that splits seoul into 2 parts. The bridge in the center was the first bridge across the river and was constructed by the japanese when they conquered korea. 

This is panaromic view of seoul from a tower that mr kim took me to. 

We were out on a car. This is the road....... hahaha doesn't look that much different ey? 

Uncle's korean contact took me out to eat today. Korean barbeque. Yumm Yumm 

It snowed this morning at 830am. Darn i missed it though....sigh.......... doesn't the snow look nice? 

This is Maxwell from Lousiana, United States. He sorta just poped by our room at 12midnight. so i guess it counts as today :) 

Day 3 An outing

Woke up horrendously late today. I mean it wasn't my fault to wake up at 1130am. honest, I actually woke up at 9am but hmmm i saw my buddy sleeping and one thing led to another. Anyway, when i woke up my roomie yuanchang gt a call from Weiqi whose another singaporean in SMU inviting us for lunch, quite nice of her I thought. Anyway, it gives us a reason to go out and me a reason to get out of my nice comforty bed............though i have my own deliberations as to the bed part. lol. anyway, we went out to the city again......groans another 20 min walk out. boohoo, miruko had to change some yen for won so ok we made our way to woori bank on the way too.

We actually wanted to eat some authentic but not too expensive korean food. unfortunately, none of us was conversant enough with the places to eat.....so after walking around, snooping in to shops, we finally decided on pizza hut. which hmmmm was not actually something which we had in mind i guess.........oh well, at least it tasted good. yumm yumm. anyway we stayed in that place talking a bit. miruko doesn't really speak english well so weiqi did a running translation and hey she's good. almost like watching one of those vcds that offer 2 different languages, and u listen to both at the same time. oh well, guess its time for me to take up a third language. Someone remarked that we were lucky to start learning chinese from a young age, tink it was weiqi, and i guess all of us agreed on that. Chinese is hard to learn so its always good to start young so we dun struggle with it in the future, so all u back there in singapore, stop complaining! and count ur blessings. muahahahahaha.

anyway hmmmm what next, oh yah. went shopping for detergent again. yuanchang gave all his to some other student and i didn't have any, so....... troughed back to school after that. sigh..... and i lazed away the day. tiring though. btw, plastic bags in korea cost 50 won if you want one, so we put everything into our haversacks.

I guess thats it for today, going to watch chc's webcast. ciaoz!!!!!!

To anyone who doubts, that entire sretch of road is UPSLOPE! one of the many in this school...... 

These is 2 of my new friends. One on the left With eyes closed is Miruko from Japan and the one on the right is Weiqi from SMU. Me and yuanchang not in picture cause we were on the same end of the table 

We had pizza today. hmmmmm last thing I would hav imagined eating though, but at least it was tasty, yumyum 

Korea's very own EZ link card! 

My student ID 

Its cold enough here that we don't really have to use a fridge to keep things fresh or cold. We simply put them near the window...... 

This is me lazing in my room 

Another day out korea day 2

Woah today's orientation was ok. but superbly tedious groans so many talks so many speeches in 2 hours 40 mins. I mean no matter how good you are at talking, after hearing speeches for more then 2 hours ur mind starts to dull. today was another cold day. felt a bit numb from all that wind lol.

Anyway went to do my alien registration card today. sort of like an id. only that its for aliens like us. So, after visiting the men in black, walked around seoul, searched for some chap groceries, you cannot imagine how difficult it is to find cheap groceries everything is quite expensive. sigh............

Took a train today, like singapore, but rather broader i think, not too sure, could be just me though. one thing that really impresses me is how koreans use the train and escalators. in the train, there are fixed seats for the elderly pregnant and disabled. and no one else sits in them! i mean really no one else, even if the seat is not taken. amazing right? totally......... and on the escalators everyone keeps on the right hand side, and the left is for people in a rush. no on stands on the right hand side, if you're there u keep moving down. impressive right? so you have one side full of moving pp and one side with people standing. efficient. too bad though, it hasn't occured to them to do the same to stairs, but hey its a good step i guess.

had some food fromt he road side today. lonely travel says it safe so it must be. sorta like a store on wheel by the pavement where by you just grab some food skewed on sticks and stand there and eat. they put the soup which the sticks are inverted in, into a cup and u can drink it. quite nice and hot considering the cold cold weather. The food was good too. sorta like fish cakes but more doughly. any way thats it for today, no time to organise this so sorry if it seems a bit scattered in terms of thoughs. put some pictures below. enjoy! :P

From afar yet another church 

Heres the sub-way, but wheres the sassy girl? hmmmmm 

In korea, Churches abound. And they are built nicely. 

Moving out to the main city 

Bye bye Changi Hello Incheon

Well now, finally I can start writing my jounals. To my family, cg, children church people, juniors, and simei kids, I'll definately miss all of you tons and tons. Was so surprised at the no. of pp there. Felt like bae yong jun Thanks for taking the effort to come down even though the distance was great and your time was short. :) Those who can't make it heee i got your regards through sms msn calls so no worries k?

Everything is fine here even though not many koreans can speak english, I found that a fair number can converse in chinese pretty well! Better then most singaporeans i would say:) no offense though :) anyway, did u guys know it actually started snowing here? brrrrrrrr it always look nicer on tv. too bad the flakes were too small for me to take pictures of though. but...u get the idea. haw haw. anyway its just sorta like white rain. :). haven been to many places yet but planning to do so soon. :) Dun worry about me, I'm fine, cool too which is not that difficult considering the fact that the whole place is pretty cold.

One more thing I am going to get thinner. Apparently the idea of a in campus shuttle sevice has not caught up here. so picture me troughing through numerous knolls just to get to the city from school. groans. 20 min fast walk through the worst uphill terrain u can imaging. hills everywhere. almost like taiwan training. good thing though, air is thinner and the exercise should improve my ippt. :) oh well guess thats it for today cya guys in 6 mths!

:P

P.S Daosong get a gf soon.

My room has a nice view 

My School's Secret Garden! sssshhhhh 

A typical Seoul Street 

My juniors from Anglican!!!!!!