Here’s my blog of my second week in Korea:

The Introduction to Korean Culture class I’m taking is really interesting and we’ve already been taught so much stuff that even a lot of Koreans I’ve spoken to don’t know it. We’ve had an exam, and I passed (with a 100%)!

From the language class I can now introduce myself to people, tell them where I’m from, say nice to meet them, count to ten, ask how much something is, and order beer; all the important stuff. But I still don’t understand much (any?) Korean when I’m spoken to, so I ask them in Korean to please speak English as I don’t speak the language. This confuses them, and me too. Kind of like a paradox… I think? Aaaaaanyway.

The teacher keeps showing us K-Pop songs to help us learn certain words, and this one helps us learn the numbers, allegedly.

It’s fun learning a whole new language, but I’m still slow at recognising the letters as the C shaped letter is a T, or a D; but it is the 7 shaped letter that is the C, or, just to make it really easy, a G; the Z shaped letter is an L, or sometimes an R; and the L shaped letter is an N.

The food is still as delicious as ever. Been eating lots of kimbap/gimbap (the whole k/c and g thing again!) which is rice etc rolled in seaweed, kind of sushiesque. Discovered a little local place that does the best beef soup which has a proper rich Sunday roast flavour to it. One of the volunteers from the university took us out to an amazing local food market where we were the only Westerners there and it had the most amazing food for so cheap, a rarity in Korea as I mentioned in my first blog. We were taken for “drug kimbap/gimbap” which is named so because you feel like you’re on drugs when you’re eating it as it’s so delicious. Not sure who came up with that moniker but it did taste amazing, especially as they give you a sachet of mustard to go with it. Then we were taken for raw beef. I’m glad I can say I’ve now tried it but I didn’t like it. Actually felt bad because we wasted quite a bit of it as Koreans love to order enough plates of food to fill the entire table.

The Koreans are OBSESSED with their mobile phones. Being on the Seoul Metro is just like looking at a bunch of zombies just staring into their phones, it’s worse than back in the UK. They even seem genuinely amazed when I show them my phone which is a Nokia 100, that then turns to shock when I tell them that this is my actual daily phone back in Edinburgh and not just a phone I use whilst I’m over there; they haven’t even seen or played Snake before! They are very proud people though as they all have Samsung phones, and I still haven’t seen an iPhone out here yet, comparable to Irn-Bru outselling Coca-Cola back at home! The main reason I don’t have many pictures is I always forget to take my camera out with me, and, well I’ve already mentioned what phone I have, don’t know if it can even spell camera in predictive text, let alone can take pictures on it. But here’s some nice/crazy Koreans who posed for a photo.