Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Another perk of being a foreign teacher is the snacks that other teachers give you/buy for you! In general, Asia doesn't really know what it's like in America. They usually see it as more of one culture like it is here, and that you can't get the food you eat here in America. Soo, everytime I'm out with my coteacher on some errand and she sees some snack (manjuu yesterday) she buys it for me ;D They also give me a bunch of snacks at school.
Most of the people here are really nice to me. My coteacher says that people at our school at all nice, but beware of people outside of school. She fears for my safety :D Most of the people outside of school including vendors have also been nice but I have met quite a few clothing vendors that are just plain rude. I can't understand them, they can't understand me, but when we're writing down numbers and pointing (basic basic stuff) and then they turn to the nearest Korean and laugh at you, that's not very nice. It's not going to get me to buy anything ever from them. And no, I'm not mistaking their laughter, it was like pretty mean make fun of the foreigner laughter-- even the other customer looked really uncomfortable that the vendor was laughing at me.
Ah.. yea so that aside, I tried to go clothing shopping this past week. Clothes here are really expensive! If you can, don't do like I did and bring a bunch of bath supplies (unless it's something of quality that would be expensive here.. they have Aveeno here but it's very expensive), instead, bring enough teacher/plain clothes. Every nicer looking thing is either super expensive (minimum 40,000 won) or too fancy with frills and whatever. The cheapest shirt I've found so far was 3900 won and that's plain white, without any shape. I bought a long sleeved one for 4900 b/c I thought, they wouldn't sell things that looked bad right? no, it really did look bad.
This Sunday I went to Seoul to visit Tanner's friend Joonho and his family. Him, his wife, his daughter, and his son pretty much spent all afternoon with me. Sunday was his daughter's birthday (age 8) so there was a birthday party for her for lunch. Food was great :D Joonho's wife is a good cook! His daughter, Emily, had pretty good English since she had her early years in the states. His son (5 years old?) was super cute! They're both really good behaved children. Anyway, in the afternoon, they drove me around Seoul and took me to Myeong-dong. We shopped around there for a bit. It's like shoppers heaven lol. Anyone who wants to shop in Seoul should definitely go there! We also went to Migliore department store. It totally was nothing like a regular department store. The inside is made of tons of small clothing shops like at a market. Clothes were fairly cheap. I got a nice white wrinkle free blouse for 23,000 won. Ashley, we're going back when you get here :p
Sunday was also the first day I went on the subway. The subway is actually fairly easy to get around. There's English on all the signs and they announce each stop in English after they say it in Korean. My landlord had given me a U-pass card to ride the bus but I thought she had said it was just for busses. I found out that it worked for trains too after I bought a T-money card at the subway station lol. So now I've got 2 cards that do the same thing- work for busses and trains. I don't know how much the U-pass costs to begin with, but the T-money card cost 3000 won. The card comes with a really handy subway map and a map of Seoul. It also comes with a coupon book of I guess famous attractions/stores in Seoul that you can use the coupons at. Some of the coupons are specially labeled "foreigners only" lol.
Aside from clothes shopping, I explored my area a bit more and bought a whole lot of other stuff. I've spent maybe 400-500$ in household items, food, transportation, stickers for students and other stuff for school, clothes, and other random stuff. It really does add up!! I brought $1000 US with me to start with and I think it's a pretty good amount because unless your coteacher and school is crazy speedy in getting you your health checkup and then ARC, you're not going to have access to the 300,000 won settlement allowance. I think my first water bill is also going to be sky rocket high because they didn't clean the apartment until after I moved in.. as in all the water they used while scrubbing, washing, wiping, and all the cleaning I did on my own is all going to be on my bill :x
Labels: ARC, clothes, useful items
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3 comments:
Hmmmm... I guess you meet all sorts of people no matter where you go. I think we should try to memorize the korean numbers. There's two sets, one is pure Korean and the other one is Sino-Korean. I think this may help when figuring out prices. Maybe people won't be rude if we try to speak Korean. Maybe not.
Thanks for the interesting post!
Your blog posts are so detailed ... I love it! I couldn't get on to comment on the most recent post, so I'm commenting here. Looks like you're having a great time in Korea but boo to rude vendors.
The classrooms look so technologically advanced! A big screen TV in the middle of the room + computers at each terminal =O, I'm surprised. Is the school you're teaching at a private school?
I can't believe you're super independent in Korea and even getting a bank account! I think I would be so scared on my own. haha.
But hope to see more updates soon =)
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