Chusok and beyond

Well, that's it now. No more holidays until Christmas, ouch! Chusok was a fun three days off. There was a lot of partying and even a bit of sightseeing thrown in. I managed to get over to a different area of Seoul called Insadong where there are some quaint little tea shops. Tea shops are a traditional Korean place which sell tea of all different flavours. I had some lemon flavour and it was pretty nice, although it did taste a bit like lemsip! Insadong also has a nice little park containing a war memorial and an 600 year old pagoda.

This week we had another public holiday on Wednesday which was a nice suprise. I don't really tend to know about the holidays until a day or two before so its always nice to have the good news that I don't have to work the next day! The Tuesday night was someones birthday so I ended up going out to Hongdae and Sinchon. Sinchon was another new place for me and it seemed like a lot of fun. There were lots of mad little bars and the streets were lined with high buildings and neon signs.

Wednesday was another fun day as it was the birthday of the owner of my local bar. There was a private party for him from 5pm with free food and booze. Wahey. Unfortunately, after the previous nights activities I didn't manage to drag myself down there until 10pm!

On Thursday it was quite depressing to realise I'd had my last day off until 25th December, but on the brightside, hey, it was only 2 days until the weekend! Saturday was a good day, I met up with a girl I used to work with back in London who is also out here. It was great to see a familiar face again, even though we didn't know each other all that well back at work. We went over to Sinchon again at night and it was even madder than before. The top 2 univerities in Korea were having their equivalent of the Oxford v Cambridge boat race day, but here they play each other at football, rugby, ice hockey and basketball instead. There were thousands of students out on the streets, one lot dressed in red and one lot in blue. Songs were being sung and conga lines snaked down the streets but nothing was too rowdy and there was absolutely no trouble, as there almost certainly would've been in England!

As for my Korean, its picking up ever so slightly. This month I've learned:

Win chuk = left
Orun chuk = right
Chingu = friend (I think!)
Mek ju = beer
Dak = chicken
Dok = rice cake
Chi geh = soup
Dweji = pork
Yok = subway station

Hmm, writing it down has made me realise that at least half of my Korean skills are food and drink related! I'm really going to have to diversify. I also need to learn to read a bit I think. Wish me luck with that!