Update on a Sunday

Well, the tail end of my week has been fine. Friday was sports day (or 'P.E. Festival' they called it), and I thought I was going to get to help out, set up, referee, or even play a bit with the kids. However, I had to sit a watch them all and didn't get to do anything. Then my co-teacher, very kindly, made me take about a litre of different traditional Korean medicines and teas for 'the very bad cold' he thinks I have (it's just a regular cold to me). It tasted ok for the most part, but I tipped one small bottle down the drain when he left the room because it was disgusting. I don't think it did anything other than make me really need to pee about 20 minutes later :)

Me and some students on sports day.

I didn't get to see which class won sports day because I had to go back to the hospital and get one of the tests re-done because something had gone wrong with the first one. The second one came out fine (after waiting around for over a hour), so that's all good.

I had an awesome chat to mum and dad on Skype yesterday, and they suggested that a good way for me to view my time here was like I'm on holiday. I guess I am, a working holiday :) So, after talking to home for a couple of hours I went out and caught the train into Seoul. It was a good thing to do because the journey was long and crowded and I didn't have time to dwell on the fact that talking to home just made me want to be there more!

Imagine this so crowded with people they're squished together.

I went to the giant COEX mall in Gangnam. It took me a good two hours to get there, and about three hours to get home again, because I got on the train headed in the wrong direction twice! I just strolled around the mall, looking at some of the shops. There was a Hello Kitty store which sold everything with Hello Kitty on it. I'm not kidding, they even had Hello Kitty toilet rolls. Seriously. There were a bunch of cute stores all together, and in one of them I found some awesome stamps! I bought a few, and an ink pad, to put on student's work (if indeed I actually ever end up teaching them and having work to mark!). I may have to set them work they have to hand in, just so I can use my snazzy stamps :) I also found a sweet stall selling things like sour gummy worms and whatnot, and I bought some. They are one of the few things I've gotten that has tasted like I expect it to! A lot of the food over here (not counting vegetables ad meat), even if you recognise it and think you know what you're buying, it turns out to taste quite different from what I'm used to.

That's a lot of Hello Kitty!

Everything is so cute! It's a cute overload!

Awesome stamps!

For example, after travelling for three hours to get home, it was about 7pm and I was pretty tired. I wanted something a bit healthy for dinner, and as I was walking out of the Osan train station I saw that the stalls were selling cooked sweetcorn on the cob. I bought some and took it home for dinner. I put some butter and salt on my first piece and got ready to bite into my crunch sweetcorn! Only when I did it has the texture of chewy pork rind! You know when you cook a roast pork and some of the skin doesn't crackle, but turns a bit chewy and gooey? Like it sucks on your teeth? Well, this corn was exactly like that! It tasted fine, but man the texture was weird! I'm going to put the rest of it in a chicken soup.

Here's the food stalls at night.

Also while on the train, there was a girl with awesome, pretty, sparkly nails polish, so I bought some on the way home and painted my nails. I haven't had painted fingernails for ages!

Ooooh, pretty!

So, I didn't get home until 7pm. I was planning on going out to an open mic night at a nearby cafe, but not only was I exhausted, but a bunch of the people going to perform had to cancel because they all caught a cold (same one as me??). It's on every Saturday though, so maybe next week or the week after. I'm thinking that next weekend I might go and stay in Seoul for the night. I want to go to the park to see the (reportedly) amazing autumn leaves, and I also want to explore the Hongdae area some more, and perhaps venture into Itaewon. It's too far to travel in and out on both days of the weekend, so if I just sleep in a cheap hostel for the night, that might be a good solution.

Today I'm just going to hang around Osan. I need to clean my apartment, do some cooking and shopping, take some more photos of the area, and then go to dinner at my co-teacher's house.

I have resolved to stop talking about wanting to go home. I still do, but it's not very interesting. I'll know when the time is right to go, so I'll leave it at that, unless it has some bearing on events, or I really need to write about it.