-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.

4th Aug: Insadong; Jogyesa

Jogyesa is the largest single floor temple in Korea, and the main temple for the Jogye order of Korean Buddhism, which represents the traditional history and culture of 1700 years of Korean Buddhism. It was built in 1910 and is pretty impressive. There are 3 massive Buddha statues inside and the outside is beautifully decorated. Buddhism isn't really a religion as such but a philosophy. Seon (more commonly known as 'Zen' from Japanese) Buddhism was introduced to China around the 7th century and spread into Korea and Japan, and greatly influenced culture and development in those areas. For example the Samurai culture in Japan was inlfuenced by Zen Buddhism.
We met Tina's best friend Seung Jeung in nearby Insadong which was quite helpful as she is Buddhist so that's where I got my information from!

3rd Sep: Namison - (Nami Island)

We haven't been to many places outside of Seoul so on Wednesday we got the train out to visit Namison (Nami island). Namison is a small island in the pukhankang river which was named after a famous Korean army general (General Nami) who died aged 26, and was the filming location for a TV drama which became massively popular in Japan 10 years or so ago. Since so many Japanese came here to see the island it's been turned into a bit of a tourist attraction. You take a 5 minute boat ride out to the island which is tiny but beautiful, it is basically one big garden. There are quite a few wild animals to be found running around including ostrich's. You can hire bikes and tandems and all sorts of other vehicles to travel around on or just walk around and admire the place. We were really lucky to find the ostrichs as they roam free on the island and currently have a baby to look after so they normally stay hidden. They also had a Bonsai garden which had some pretty cool Bonsai trees that looked very old.

We also tried an old style korean food which is basically a rice dish served in a hot metal box which needs to be shook up to mix everything, so to do this you get a pair of gardening gloves to hold it with (it's red hot!). 30 or 40 years ago this was a normal school packed lunch. All the kids would put there box's together in a heated area and use gloves to get it out and mix it up at lunch time.

Language learning made easier

If you happen to be learning Chinese, Korean and Japanese at the same time you want to be getting your hands on one of these; an electronic dictionary. Since everyman and his dog in Korea is learning either English or another language there's no shortage to choose from, but this one (Nurian X30) seems the best for multiple languages and pen-recognition. Now I no longer have to spend 10 minutes trying to find a character in the dictionary by stroke order. Life just got a little bit easier. Also my mp3 player is on the way out but since this little wonder plays mp3's and videos I don't need to buy another mp3 player just yet either, bonus.