So, the first night we went straight out to find some food. But as we arrived in the middle of the national holiday we were a bit limited, so ended up buying a tin of tuna, some pasta and a pasta sauce. Fun! The next day we just wandered about a bit exploring the local area and went for dinner at a restaurant, which may be called Duck and Duck, which had the Korean table barbecue (there seems to be some kind of importance attached to ducks in Korean restaurants. Almost all of the restaurants we've been to have 2 ducks in their window, or on the signs... A quick google search has revealed this - 'Traditional Korean Weddings always include a pair of Korean Wedding Ducks to represent a peaceful marriage with many children and no separations. Mandarin Ducks mate for life, and are revered by the Korean people as symbols of loyalty and fidelity in a marriage. After the marriage, the Wedding Ducks are placed in the home of the newlyweds where they can be easily seen. If the ducks are facing each other, nose to nose, then the marriage is happy. If the ducks are facing away from each other, tail to tail, then the couple is fighting. If a Korean couple is fighting, then one of them will often point to the Wedding Ducks, reminding them both of their peaceful Wedding, and they will stop fighting.' Wow! Not sure what this has to do with restaurants though). We walked into the restaurant and were greeted by all of the very excitable staff. We sat at our table and were given a menu which sadly had no pictures or english writing, but luckily the really helpful waiter quickly realised we were lacking in the Korean language department, and brought out three dishes for us to choose from. We picked one and were soon given a large dish with meat and veg all covered in sauce, along with a bowl of cold bean sprout soup, some kimchi, pickled radish, a small bowl of peeled garlic cloves, some large sesame leaves plus some other bits and pieces. The idea is to cook the meat up yourself, then make little wraps out of everything. Luckily, we already knew this, as we would've been totally baffled! Anyway, the food was really good and really cheap so we left very happy.
The next day we were at work. Jason picked us up and drove us to an Italian restaurant for lunch. His cousin Liam also works at the school and joined us for lunch, so we had a long chat and loads of tasty food, although it did seem a bit strange to be eating Italian food. Turns out we were quite lucky anyway, one of the girls at the school was apparently taken to McDonalds on her first day! We were given a quick tour of the school, introduced to the other teachers and spent a couple of hours sitting in on lessons. Luckily we didn't have to stay for a full day, as we were both still feeling quite jetlagged. Over the next week we gradually went from observing lessons to taking some over. We are now mostly teaching on our own, just being observed every now and again. It's quite fun, the kids are mostly very well behaved and the day passes very fast.
But talking about work is yawnsome. At the next weekend we were shown the way to downtown Gwangju and wandered around the streets looking at all the dressed up Koreans and saw our first examples of a Korean couple dressed in matching clothes - quite a common sight! Weird. We sat in Starbucks for a while people watching and chatting with Jasmin, Liz and Jocelyn, then met up with Sophie, Freya and Mel to go for some food and drinking fun. We wound up at Mike and Dave's Speakeasy, basically a bar started by Canadians for foreign teachers. There was a live band playing a mix of covers and originals which was pretty cool, plus a dj playing all kinds of different western music. We ended up staying until about 3am meeting various other people from all over the place and dancing like fools. Was very very fun. See the drunken looking pics in our album for evidence! I woke up the next day with a hugely swollen elbow, and assumed I must've fallen over and bashed it at some point. But despite the swelling going down quite quickly at first, it's swollen back up this weekend so we're wondering if maybe it's a weird infected bite or something. Hopefully I'm not going to have to have it amputated or anything, that'd be inconvenient. I like having two arms.
Ok, this post is getting long and I want to do other things now. Basically the first 2 weeks of our lives in Korea have been great and filled with copious amounts of good food and fun times. Hopefully this shall continue! Bye!
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