Korvia Summer Barbecue

Hello from your friendly neighbourhood BBQ assistants~

Another incredibly late pre-summer catchup, this time it's the Korvia BBQ!

For anyone that doesn't know, the wonderful Korvia is the company that helped myself, Nick, and hundreds of other people from around the world make the move to South Korea.

The barbecues and parties that Korvia throw for their recruits are there to let people meet the people that helped them share the bureaucratic deadweight that is trying to get work abroad, as well as other native English speakers that might also be in or near your placement area. It's a great idea to help you feel a little bit less of a tiny fish in a huge ocean, and is actually one of the things that really drew me to Korvia over other recruitment agencies when I first started my research.

I actually met a lot of my really good friends over here via last year's (and our first) barbecue. My idea was that if I volunteered to man the grill, I'd HAVE to crawl out of my comfort zone and actually talk to new people. And hey, it worked! Since then, it's always been fun to help out with setting up the venues, because it's basically an easy excuse to doss about with my friends before everyone else arrives. ;p

One of our main tasks was to set up the photo wall in the picture at the top, which was surprisingly difficult considering there were so many people trying to set it up. (And it all ended in disaster, RIP photo wall. I say that, I think we fixed it, but it DID fall on me, and I valiantly tried to leap out of the way like an action hero. Expectations vs Reality, I probably looked more like a kid faceplanting than Indy with the giant rock, but don't crush my dreams, okay?)

Ignore my sweaty mess and focus on Kiegan's dazzlingly adorable smile.

Our other task was to set up the food tables ready for the masses, and get the coals burning and ready for meat, glorious meat. Also: ASPARAGUS!!

The Korvia Summer BBQ!

Woo, it's been a while! In fairness, this is the longest-running and most consistent blog I think I've ever had (and, being a child of the internet, I've had a LOT of blogs...) so I'm not going to lie, I'm quite proud. It probably helps that my life is a lot more interesting now. Let's face it, "I went to a palace" is much better than "I slept for 13 hours then went on Tumblr" ;)

ANYWAY. Quite a few weeks ago now, Nick and I went to the Korvia BBQ. For the uninformed, Korvia is the recruitment agency we used to get our jobs in Korea. It's a great agency, with kind and caring staff and I don't think I'll ever be able to stop singing their praises. 

One of the many great things they do for their recruits is they hold a party or barbecue when the weather is good, to give teachers old and new a chance to mingle and meet some fellow English speakers. It's really nice when you're far away from home with very little in the way of home comforts. I'm quite lucky, because every day I come home to my own little slice of England, but for many people, especially those in more rural areas, I can imagine the homesickness can hit hard.

So, after doing some shopping in the morning (we wanted to buy a "thank you and happy birthday!" present for our lovely recruiter, Daisy) we hopped onto the subway and headed off for Yatap. Annoyingly, we had to take quite a convoluted route there, which meant that we ended up taking the same amount of time as some people that came from much, much further away! However, the subway here is very comfortable so I'm not complaining too much.

When we arrived in the right area, we found some helpful posters dotted around, and slowly the sound of very non-Korean voices drifted over. Yaaay~

Pictured above: the aforementioned sign, my plate piled high with lovely lovely food, and the obligatory photo of Nick eating and wishing I was doing something other than taking terrible photos.

"Is that man pooping?" | Seoul's Trick Eye Museum

In the name of the moon... and cutting off your ear for love~!

So, quite a while ago now, f(x)'s Amber posted a series of photos to her instagram from the Trick Eye Museum in Hongdae, Seoul. When we found out we would be meeting up with some lovely Korvia recruits in Hongdae, we took the opportunity to head off to the museum first.

Being completely unaccustomed to Korea's odd street labelling system (or lack thereof), combined with the fact we didn't have our usual option of Google Maps to fall back on (all hail the Googly Overlords), it took us quite a long time to find. The museum itself is in a basement, so the entrance at surface level is only really big enough for a staircase. I think we wandered all over the place in completely the wrong direction before finding it pretty much right where we started. Sigh.