day two of orientation

We have been getting up fairly early every day. We try to stay up as late as possible but so far have ended up getting up for a few hours every night before falling asleep again. I’d say we are sleeping about 8 hours but they are broken up.

Our first lesson today was some basic Korean language including reading, writing and some basic phrases. This was taught by Ms. Kim who is a supervisor at the Office of Education. The Korean alphabet is called Hangeul and is fairly easy to learn consisting of 40 characters. It was invented by a Korean king and his scholars since Chinese characters were thought to be too difficult. So it really is easy to learn although some of the pronunciation can be difficult since some of the vowel sounds seem very similar or are not used in English. We will bring you more language updates later as Laura and I are going to make the effort to learn. For now an-nyeong-ha-se-yo (casual hello) and gam-sa-ham-ni-da (thank you) are getting us by.
In the afternoon it was more info from Chris about living in Korea. The highlight was the end which was drinking and eating etiquette. It is important to let the elder at the table do everything first, in our case this will most often be the principal at school dinners. The drinking etiquette is interesting since glasses are often shared. At a formal drinking event you never fill your own glass, another person fills it, you drink it and then refill it for them and so it goes back and forth. Soju is the most common drink here and is a kind of rice vodka. It is almost always drunk as shots in one go. There is quite a drinking culture here but it is always okay to say no thank you or to request sprite. Apparently as a male my drinking stamina can be expected to be tested soon by the male teachers at my school.

This evening was a highlight and the first time Laura and I made it out on the town. Chris and some other returning teachers organized an outing to the local foreigner bar, The Speakeasy.  There was a flip cup tournament which for those of you who don’t know is a drinking game played by teams. It is a race between two teams to see who can finish their drinks first; with the next person only able to drink after the previous person has successfully flipped their cup from upside down on the edge of the table to right side up.  The whole experience was a blast and included watching a dance crew perform outside a department store, a side trip to KFC for Laura and walking around the shopping district. Everything there was bright, lit up in neon and not even the big stores close until 11. We didn’t close the bar down but we did stay out late and I ended up entering and winning another drinking racing game with pints and no flipping. Good Korean Times. I only regret being so full, I’ll have to try deep friend street octopus another time.