I have many Korean friends, most of whom I’ve met while out having dinner and drinking! I also hang out a lot with my colleagues and students! This helps with my painstaking language acquisition process! The language barrier can be frustrating at worst but highly comedic at best! I have learnt the basics so I can use a taxi without worrying where I will end up, order food without worrying that I might be eating a former pet and understand enough to know when to say my name, how old I am, what I am doing here and where I am from (thanks to the World Cup everyone knows ‘Nam A Gong’, South Africa in Korean).
One quarter of Korea’s population live in and around Seoul, so there are high-rise apartment blocks everywhere and space is premium. My apartment is about 24m squared, but I love it. It is located opposite a convenience store, with a market around the corner, a drycleaner down the way, restaurants all around and close to the bus stop and subway stations. Sadly, there are very few gardens so I do miss my garden back home!
I travel around Korea every month, most places worth seeing are within three hours of Seoul and twice a year I hop the ocean to a new country in Asia! On weekends when I work, I usually do stuff with my mates around Seoul, like head off to Hongdae which is the arty university area with some cool dance clubs. Buying a cocktail in a Ziploc bag to sip while you walk around at night is compulsory!
Compared to a year and a half ago, my life is stress-free, fun, interesting, unique and totally addictive!
