Korvia Autumn Party 2015

Basically, I'm so bad at blogging that I decided to combine two draft posts into one thing.
I'm also so bad at remembering to document these things, that I've just stolen all the nice photos of me from Korvia's facebook page. Why bother taking photos when you've got paparazzi documenting everything? ;D

Also, I blog so infrequently that I wrote half a blog post about the summer AND autumn parties, before realising I'd already written about the summer party half a year ago. Oops.

SO. Here is is, the Korvia Autumn Party.

I retract my former statement, hahaha.
Nick and I decided to combine our trip to Hongdae for the party with one of our Once in a Blue Moon trips to the hairdresser, so naturally we looked awesome. I re-installed my full fringe out of nostalgia for the good ol' days when hair was thick and plentiful.

However, nostalgia is one of the worst inventions ever and rose-tints everything, cutting out all the bad stuff. My greasy forehead and lots of running around excitedly nattering to people at 100 miles an hour in the hopes they'll not notice I'm secretly bricking it means I ended up with a clumpy, hairy mess stuck to my forehead before it was even dark.

Turns out, that's exactly the reason I grew out my last full fringe. Sigh.

Anyway, we needed to arrive early since Nick had signed up to help take photos. I hadn't signed up to do anything, because I'm a poor excuse for a citizen, so I tried to take the edge off of my guilt by pretending to be staff. To be fair, I usually help out at the parties and all my friends were there as volunteers, so it felt weird to just sit around like some kind of dictator while everyone else works.

Vadering

I decided my skills as an anxious, introverted human shell would be most well-suited to meeting and greeting hundreds of strangers and helping them make their way to the party. Hence the sweaty face.

I mean, that mostly involved just standing at a table with some of my friends, saying "hello" to anyone that walked up to us or looked lost and not-Korean, and providing them with pens and stickers for making a name tag.

Also, since we were outside and upstairs (the party was at Mike's Cabin in Hongdae, which is a roomy, comfy bar in a building's basement. It's nicer than I've made it sound.) we decided to bring the party to us, by messing around with the photo wall next to us.

Once the stream of arrivals had died down, we called it a day and went in to grab food (pizza and crisps, courtesy of Korvia, thank you!) and find everyone else. There were some funny games, some presentations, some dancing, standard party fare.

I'm not very good at talking about parties, and I've talked enough about how great I think Korvia are at every stage of the application and transition process to Korea, so there's not really much else I can say other than it's always a lot of fun and I'm glad these parties exist. I'd never have met a lot of my friends here without them. </cheese>

This is the best photo because it looks like I broke my leg or something.

Seoul Land

Terrible selfie brought to you by Budget Power Rangers

So, we've been to Everland and rated it, so this time we went to Seoul Land for Nick and Justin's joint birthday party, even despite the forecast for rain, because what could possibly be more dismally fun than a slightly creepy off-brand theme park in the pouring rain?

But first, I want to turn your attention to this:

This is human ingenuity at its finest.

I'm totally blown away by this. I'm not even kidding. I was so amazed. This, my friends, is basically the best snack invention ever. Why fumble around with a box of popcorn chicken in one hand and a paper cup of cola in the other? Why not combine them?

Basically, it's a specially designed cup that you fill with a drink of your choice, and then a tray of popcorn chicken slots in over the top, with just enough room for a straw to poke out. Bam. Problem solved. They even give you little sample sticks so you don't have to worry about getting your hands dirty (or your dirty hands on your food, whichever).

"Elephant Train" sounded a lot cuter and less ethical than it really was.

Seoul Land is in a huge area of Seoul Grand Park, along with a couple of zoos, a lake, an art museum and basically all kinds of cultural development and entertainment. Due to this, there's a little 'train' that drives around, similar to the ones you find at the beach (at home, anyway), to save you some time.

Quite possibly the most confusing sign if you can't read Korean. One is for the exit and one is for the entrance.

We bought tickets for the little train because, in addition to being lazy, it was also raining a lot and we didn't really want to be soaked before we even got there.

We also bought some cheapo ponchos from some entrepreneurial old ladies and ended up looking like some sort of superhero team. I'm not sure what we were fighting against. Soggy jeans?

Looks nothing like an elephant tbh

영국여행 | England (Day 15)

Last one! This was the last day before we packed up, headed to the airport, and got on that long, long flight back to Korea.

First of all we met up with one of Nick's friends, and I'm glad we got to meet and walk around Liberty for a while. It's a beautiful shop full of beautiful things and I like to daydream about filling my non-existent house with their products.

But then I had to zoom off to make one of the last arrangements of my holiday, which was with a group of people I've known for a very long time, but never actually managed to meet (other than Syd, once) before now. So I was super nervous as well as excited.

We decided to meet at Five Guys (yet another burger! What am I doing?!) which was great because I'd been meaning to go there for a while. I mean, I know it's just another US burger chain, but with all the hype I at least wanted to check it out.

Actually, we stayed at Five Guys for about...five hours. Quite possibly tried every one of their multitude of soft drinks (they seem to have every shade of Fanta, Coke and Sprite under the sun) and some combinations, which lasted us well after the burgers and fries were long gone, supplemented by the free peanuts. Free peanuts!! After a while we were just cracking them to have something to do with our hands. Not wanting to waste anything, we took all the shelled nuts home in little boxes 🙈

영국여행 | England (Day 14)

Photo stolen from Loti. Sorry/thanks Loti 🙈

So, I got up bright and early the next day to speed my way to Stratford to meet up with Loti from uni and actually meet her son and husband-to-be, for the first time. Even though it was only a few hours I was glad to meet up, have a wander and catch up before heading on to my next appointment. 

Busy busy busy.

Sadly, these are the only two pictures I have from Nat and Andy's barbecue that we went to. The picture on the left being a wasp we trapped and shamed for bothering us, feat. excellent lamb cooked by Andy (or what was left of it). The picture on the right is some remnants of the cakes that I devoured before considering the fact I should maybe take a picture. If I remember rightly that green cupcake was alcoholic. Gin and tonic? Tequila? I can't remember because someone kept providing me with generous glasses of white wine. ;p Either way it was all delicious, as expected, and absolutely hilarious, as expected. I think I had a cry on the way home. I cried a lot that week and continue to despise my slow descent into being a massive crybaby.

We did take some polaroids, but they don't photograph well, so you have my apologies.
Nick also took one where we look like some kind of dysfunctional Victorian family at a funeral but I forgot to take a picture of it, so you'll just have to imagine that one :p

This is the strangest and most wonderful photo I've taken so far

Nick x Monkey = true love

Weekday Clubbing

Everyone always seems quite surprised when they find out we haven't been clubbing in Korea yet. There's quite a simple explanation for it though. We hate clubbing.
I can't dance, I don't like dancing (unless it's a choreographed performance), and I don't like sweaty crowds of people with no concept of personal space. I don't like people in general. I've spent a long time crafting an online persona of being very outgoing and sociable, but this is the glass-shattering moment I reveal to you that I'm a massive introvert (and possible misanthropist) and anytime I meet up with people I'm in a constant effort to force myself out of my warm, soft, fluffy pokeball of safety and into a slightly more sociable world that doesn't involve cookies and snacks in bed at 7pm on a Saturday. Even if I really like you. Sorry about that.

ANYWAY. One of the things I really try to embrace while I'm here in Korea is meeting up with Korean friends and hanging out with them and generally making the most of the fact I'm in a super cool new country and I know plenty of people from said country that are happy and excited to share their culture with me. So we met up with our friend Nathan again, in one of our once-in-a-blue-moon meetups.

Except this time he also invited his girlfriend! ... and his girlfriend's friend. And his girlfriend's friend's boyfriend. And his girlfriend's friend's boyfriend's friend. I think. You get the picture, haha.

We met up and finally ate 족발 (pigs' feet) which was DELICIOUS, and drank a lot of beer and soju. We then went to look for a second round and happened to see what was labelled as a "British Makgeolli House", so we were ushered in by our friends to celebrate our home country.

Turns out, the establishment was British by name...and name only. Nothing on the menu was in any way British other than the potato pancake we ordered, that was tenuously similar to ham, egg and chips. It was hilarious and confusing. But we drank a lot of makgeolli.

One member of our party had clearly been hit with the alcohol stick a little harder than the rest of us, and she excitedly asked me a question. In English. I couldn't understand anything other than she was asking a question with two options (because it was quite slurred), so she said it again to Nick, who also couldn't understand. She turned in desperation to her boyfriend, repeated it in both English and Korean, at which point he announced he couldn't even understand her, so there was no hope. We ended up all just taking the nod and smile and she happily led us to another building.

It turned out she'd been asking where we want to go next. I don't know what the other option was, but the one we apparently chose was "go to a nightclub". On a Wednesday. At around 9pm. Not exactly peak service hours.

The hilarious thing is that it was a club that only played K-Pop hits, sort of like a Now That's What I Call Music nightclub. (I've just found out that these albums also sell in South Korea under the title "Now That's What I Call K-Pop!", which should totally be the name of the club)

The second, possibly MORE hilarious thing, is that, understandably, it was totally empty. Other than the staff members (including one girl that I assumed was a uni student, who knew the dance routine to EVERY. SINGLE. SONG.) we were the only people in there, which was great because we had the dance floor to ourselves, but also terrible...because we had the dance floor to ourselves.

In the end, they did manage to get me to dance a little (only a little) and we did, admittedly, have fun, until we realised we all had work the next day and should probably head home.

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!!

Filipino Restaurant

On a horse.

We don't get to meet up with people as often as we'd like, considering we're all on different, busy schedules, so it'd been a LONG time since we'd seen Ziggy. Naturally, we decided to go full Filipino and headed down to the Filipino restaurant she'd found in Dongincheon a while ago.

I'm used to eating Filipino food like at least once a week at parties, if not more (depending on what mum makes up for us) so I've been pretty deprived recently. Whenever I try to make it, it's always missing...something.

In addition to this, Nick hasn't had as much exposure to it as I would like, so we went for the classics:

Pancit and lechon. Yeeee~!

Eli Came To Stay

Thought I'd show you what a Korean copy of Harry Potter looks like. It's CUTE!

As we were feeling pretty exhausted from Tokyo and the subsequent onslaught of visitors, we decided to not go anywhere for Seollal, the Korean Lunar New Year holiday in February, and just spend the week relaxing.

I tend to get a bit antsy when we don't do much because half of me feels like we're wasting time, but it was also pretty good for my health, because I did feel a big difference when I eventually went back to school.

Anyway, our friend Eli came all the way up from Jinju (on the south coast) to hang out and spend a couple of days with us!

On the main day of Seollal, we went to Gyeongbokgung, as there was apparently something going on there, but by the time we got there we were really hungry. And, like Christmas Day at home, almost everything is closed. Gah.

After a lot of searching, we found a donkatsu place and I burnt my mouth on cheese. As usual.

Obligatory "why" photo. Eli hasn't faced the horrors yet.

By the time we'd finished searching and eating, it was kind of...actually quite late. Oops. So the museum had started closing up and everyone was leaving, boo. I felt a bit bad, considering Eli told us he hadn't ever looked around Seoul aside from the glimpses he'd seen at orientation, but there's always time for more!

While we were waiting to cross the road, I snapped this photo of two young girls in their traditional hanbok, taking selfies together which I thought was a really cute contrast of old and modern. I posted it to instagram and they actually found it, haha. They were really lovely and it was a nice coincidence!

Nathan's Treat

When we met up with our friend Nathan (a few posts back) we arranged to meet up for food and drinks, because our schedules very rarely allow for us to hang out together.

So, on the Friday, we headed out into Seoul after school and dug in. Nathan directed us through some quieter parts of Hongdae to what turned out to be an incredible bossam restaurant not too far from the You Are Here cafe. It's one of those places that looks very small, homely, and impenetrable for foreigners, but serves incredible food like your Nan would make. (At least, my Nan. If she'd been brought up Korean, I suppose.)

Nathan kindly (not sure that's the right word. "Irresponsibly" is probably better) taught us how to make and drink somaek a portmanteau of the Korean words soju and maekju, "vodka" and beer respectively. (Still not sure how to classify soju. Rice wine? Spirits? Death/Happiness in a green bottle?)  You can guess what you do with the two drinks.

All of my photos from this trip out are taken from Nick because I think my phone must have died before I had a chance to take any pictures. That or I was genuinely just too busy eating.

Anyway, Nathan showed us a few techniques that can be used for optimum amalgamation of the two drinks, which usually involve being violent and dangerous with your metal chopsticks.

We ended up in Wolhyang for a second round, for some makgeolli tasting and some of their fun and delicious food. Nathan wanted to talk a bit longer than our train allowed, so he paid for us to take a taxi (so nice!). Why didn't Cinderella think of that? I'm glad taxis are a lot cheaper here than at home, otherwise I'd feel really guilty! We finished up with ice cream from a convenience store nearby and ended up having a bit of a laugh with the poor young guy having to man the graveyard shift in a quiet part of Hongdae on his own.

Ahhh, too much laughing. It's good~

Happy New Year!

I finally bought AC:NL on NYE and partied like an animal. In my pyjamas.

UPDATE: Again, this is another post that was just languishing in my drafts. Bad Bloggers of the Internet Unite!

New Year's Day was a holiday! Woo! But...it was also cold and we were tired (what with it being just another random holiday in the middle of our working week) so we just stayed indoors and played with our new Korean Pokemon cards!

It's pretty fun because the rules are very simple (more simple than Yu-Gi-Oh! which I love, but it drains me a lot more mentally) and we try to do as much of it as possible in Korean (emphasis on try).

I was really worried at first, because with this game there are various effects and things that you use to your advantage, and obviously we don't know enough Korean for that.

What we quickly learned, however, is that it's like 60% Konglish (English written in Korean style) which makes it a bit easier to guess at what's going on. The rest is easy, because in the bottom corner of all the cards is a serial number. Thanks to the magic of the internet, we can search up this code and just find all of the information in English. Imagine doing that 15 years ago. Wow.

Post-Christmas Rush

UPDATE: I've just found this tucked away in my drafts more than a month after I'd written it. I don't know why I never posted it!

It feels like I haven't posted anything in ages, but I've realised that actually it's only been about 2 weeks so now I a) don't feel bad but also b) am quite horrified at how quickly time feels like it's going by. It's been a busy 2-3 weeks though, so I hope you'll let me off.

So, the weekend after Christmas we finally had a chance to meet up with our Orientation friends. What cruelty is this, giving us friends then making them live in all different corners of the country?

We met up with Cherie, who had to come via Seoul anyway, and got on the train to Hongseong. What we didn't realise, is that Hongseong is actually REALLY FAR AWAY. Also, the fact that we'd be buying proper train tickets, not paying with our subway cards. (Maybe everyone else knew this, but I didn't, haha)

The result was us buying tickets for a train that was ages away, and not getting reserved seats because a) it's the super busy winter period on a weekend and b) we didn't think it'd be that long of a journey. Oops. (I seem to be really enjoying lettered lists today, sorry)

2 or 3 hours later, and several hours late, we finally reached Justin's place (after an exciting, frosty walk in possibly the most remote place I've been to in Korea so far, although that's not saying much)

We ate food and tried to make gummy bear soju (red was great, green...not so much), and mug cakes (which we ended up being too full to eat) and generally made the most of the toasty ondol. We ended up staying the night and heading back very early the next morning before the sun was even up.