-15!!

It's been cold and this morning it's -15 outside...

Snow!

On Tuesday I visited the place where I lived for three months in 2009. The area is called Sinchon and underneath my apartment there was a very good fish restaurant that I used to eat in often, so I had lunch there.
After that I did some shopping at Coex mall and I was going to walk around Bongeunsa temple, however it began snowing so heavily that I decided to stay in the mall before going to meet up with the others for dinner.
Because of the snow we changed the restaurant and I had to go to the other side of Seoul but it was great to see the city covered in snow on the way, especially the whole of the Han river frozen and covered in snow.

Seoul in the winter!

Had a great first full day back in Seoul (Monday). Tina has business meetings all of this week but we had some time in the morning so we went and got my haircut and had an early lunch. Since I spent a long time in Seoul before, despite it being such a different culture and country everything seems quite familiar, as though I have only been away a few weeks. It feels fascinating to experience how the mind processes the experience of living in different places, how it becomes more flexible and accepting of new surroundings and new ways of doing things. You realise that the world is much bigger than the small bubbles of comfort zones we like to create for ourselves in daily life, and how breaking out of them does you a world of good.

We are staying at Tina's sister's house which they have just moved into a week ago. I have found out that ' ondol' (the under floor heating system in Korea) is wonderful. The whole floor in the house acts as the radiator and sitting and sleeping on a warm floor when it's cold outside is lovely.

Also on Monday, by an amazing chance of fate I met Hyunwoo Sun and the other staff who work on the Korean language learning websites I have been using for the past few years. To bump into them in such a big and busy city is nothing short of amazing and later on Tina and I went to their language practice group at a coffee shop in Hongdae.

It's great to be able to spend time with Tina's family and they have made us very comfortable. It feels exciting to be in such a lively and energising city, with young people everhwhere and so many things to do. However you have to contrast that feeling with the fact that life here is tough when you are working, and that the reason everything from floors to public services is so clean, modern and efficient is because people are working very hard. Things generally don't work very well in the UK but that's because people are relaxed/lazy/not doing tons of unpaid overtime, which may well be a good thing (except the laziness which is an unfortunate offshoot of a relaxed culture in some people!)

Seoul. January 2012.

30th January 2012.

Arrived in Seoul after really quite a comfortable journey. Thankfully I was working nights before hand which meant I slept until 2pm before getting to the airport at5pm. Managed to sleep an hour on the plane and half an hour in the car on the way to sol hye and hobin's house, were we are staying for two weeks. It feels exciting to be back in East Asia again.