Venturing out

Today I woke up at 7:30, or at least I thought I did.  I was really proud of myself.  You see, since I have moved here I have not been able to wake up before about 9:30, which is a major frustration to me.  So this morning when I woke up nice and early I was really excited.  I would have so much time to do things today.  How wonderful!  Turns out, somehow during the night my alarm clock turned back 3 hours, and it was really 10:30.  So much for having a full day.  As it turns out I ended up having a really good day.  The rain held off for most of the day, and I was able to actually get out and check part of the city out.  I went to Insadong as I had planned to do last weekend.  It was the first time I have been out on the subways by myself, and it was a lot of fun.  The neighborhood, I suppose you couldld call it, is a really cute shopping district with little alleys and a ton of shops with everything from souvenirs to teas shops and really nice pottery stores.  It was a great way to spend the afternoon.  There is one main street lined with stores (see picture above) and many small alleys all along the street.  One of the alleys is pictured to the side here.  I will definitely come back here to buy things before I head home, and probably to try some of the restaurants.  There were several places that looked really good. 

I feel pretty comfortable with the Subway system here now.  After lots of research online, and then trying it out on my own, I feel pretty confidant in getting around the city.  Everything is labeled in English as well Korean, so once you get the hang of it, getting around is really quite easy.  The picture below is the sign that is at the subway line as I wait for the train.  It tells what direction the train is going in, what the next stop is, and what stop I am currently at.  I was really overwhelmed by all of this at first, but it just takes 

a couple of times to start feeling my way around.  The next thing I need to tackle is the bus system.  While it is a very organized system, it is still fairly overwhelming to me, and I am not sure it will be quite as easy to familiarize myself with.  

Tonight I went to dinner with some people from school.  I had Korean barbeque for the first time, and tasted Soju (a Korean alcohol)  for the first time tonight.   The greatest thing really was that I went out with people from work and felt like we started to bond a bit (that is I started to bond - they have all been working together for awhile, so I am just the new person).  It has been a tough couple of weeks here with only a couple of friends, all of whom have been out of town.  Not that I haven't been getting settled and enjoying my new city, but it was really nice to go out and actually talk to people out of the work setting.  The barbeque was great, the Soju - not so good.  I hear there are different flavors, maybe that will be more to my liking.  We will see.

Well, it is getting late here, and I am starting "intensives" this week.  That means that I will be going to work for 3 hours in the morning, have an hour break, then go back for my normal 8 hours.  I will be doing this for 4 weeks, and am not entirely excited about working all day.  I know that people all over the world work like that, but I really like the 8 hour a day thing.  The benefit is that I will be making a good amount of extra money, and I don't really have much of a social life right now, so at least it comes at a good time.  

More next weekend probably.  I have next week off, so I should have lots of time to write about all of the fun things I am doing!  :)