June 30th - Day 3 in Korea

Today will be my second official day of teaching! Yesterday was a lot of fun. I only taught 3 of 5 classes because the last two have final exams this week and they need to study hard. So it's nice that my first couple days are kind of half days.

The time change has been a little difficult, but I went to sleep at 8pm last night so I got up at 5 and was ready to go explore some more! Everyone here says Suncheon is a small city but it's not that small (population roughly 300,000), there's definitely a lot to see. But maybe after a year I'll have seen most of it, I doubt it, I think there's plenty to see and do for a while!

So because I know much more about Japan than I do Korea and I have been to Japan before I tend to take note of all the things that are similar or different about the two. A couple of recent things I've noticed: department stores are basically the same, super nice clean stores of purses and make-up and all kinds of clothes and then restaurants on the top floor. Also, although there's no Blendy to drink, Pocari Sweat (another popular Japanese drink) seems pretty widely available at convenient stores! I personally don't like it but if you do you can find it here!

Today I wanted Iced coffee from a coffee shop instead of MiniStop so the first place I found was Benisaf Coffee which seems to be a big chain store because it was very nice and clean and Starbucks-like. It was pretty good, but for 3000W (about $2.50) I think I'll just stick to MiniStop in the future (only $0.80)!

Tonight I am going to try to stay awake and go experience some nightlife hopefully! First Vlog soon, I promise!

First blog in South Korea!

Okay so I'm hanging out in the Seoul Airport and thinking of lots of things I want to share. I'll probably say a lot of the same things in a Vlog but anyway.

14 hour plane from Chicago to Seoul was LONG. Only because I was expecting to watch movies the whole time but the only movies available were TERRIBLE so that didn't work out. Anyway, made it okay and it was all worth it...

After getting through customs and all that, I walk out into the airport and the first business I see is FAMILY MART! Yes, one of the the conbini (convenient store) that I fell so in love with in Japan! I got so excited. The first thing I wanted when I went in was a Blendy (cold coffee drink comparable to convenient store Frappacino) but apparently those are a Japan-only item... Luckily I found an exact equivalent called French Cafe that was just as good and just a cheap! (There's also 2 MiniStops in here, I LOVE conbini so much)

We got in at like 4:30am and by the time I made it outside around 6am it was still cool and foggy but super humid. Since then I went outside again at about 8am and the sun was out but it was still cool mostly, luckily. I don't mind it being too hot, but it's annoying when you're hauling luggage.

I'm trying to get some basic Korean memorized but it's proving to be really difficult to get anything to stick. I know 'hello' and 'thank you' as of now... And it's really difficult to use them because I'm so unsure of myself. I love Japanese and I loved speaking it it Japan, maybe I'll just speak Japanese here and maybe people here will know more basic Japanese than basic English. Maybe? They'll probably just think 'why is this American speaking to a Korean in Japanese?'

Also, thanks to Mat Harris, for whatever reason that silly Die Antwoord song has been stuck in my head all morning.

The bus ticket from Incheon to Suncheon was only 37,000 Won ($31 USD), which is awesome. (There's dogs barking in the airport?) Otherwise that's about it for now I guess. I've got a bunch of video recorded so I'll start that new YouTube channel soon. In the mean time feel free to see my current one and BOOKMARK it or something if you don't have an account, if you do then SUBSCRIBE. (I'm tryin to blow up so I can get partnered and make $5 a month from YouTube! haha)