Yesterday was a big day! My Alien Registration Card (or, as the other foreigners call it, the Alien card) came in the mail. This means that I'm officially a resident of South Korea! Pretty neat feeling :) It expires on 2012 April 14, a month after my contract is up, so I think that means that if I feel like exploring a bit in Korea after work, I can do it all nice and legal-like...it also means that now I can exchange money at my bank (for some reason, some branches won't let you do it even with a passport), I can have my own internet and a cellphone! Oh yeah...and I can finally get paid :)
Here it is! (I blurred out my Alien Registration Number, for obvious reasons)
**Picture deleted due to privacy reasons**
Just before I got it, I went to the bank with my coteacher to exchange some money (I was down to about $25) and we thought the Alien card would take much longer...which kind of sucks because I'll get paid today or tomorrow, and would rather have kept my dollars, but oh well.
After work, I went wondering across the big storm canal and explored a bit more of Hogye (where I teach) and Jung-ri (where I live...though I teach and live on the other side of the canal). It was pretty cool...tons of little shops, and for some reason a TON of kids said hi to me, some were even encouraged by their parents to try and strike up a conversation with me. I'm used to kids in their school uniforms coming up and saying hi in the street, but it usually happens once or twice on a walk. Yesterday, it happened like 8 times...weird...but cute :)
Also, now that I'm starting to (still not there yet, but slowly getting the hang of it) learn Hangul (the Korean alphabet), some stuff is hilarious...they LOVE adding I's and U's to words. For example...Mart becomes "Maru"...and Nestea...becomes (roughly)... Nae-su-ttee. I also saw some almond cereal that had a label that said "Alumondu" or something in Hangul haha.
They borrow quite a few words from English and add their I's and U's, so just learning the alphabet is helping me understand more stuff, even without learning more words...for example, even if there was no TAXI sign here, it would be easy to figure out...the Hangul translates roughly to: ttaek-si
The annoying thing is that they have certain letters that change their sounds depending on where they are in the word. BUT...for some sounds they also have two letters...so, for example, for the CH sound, they have two letters...one that's always CH the other one can act as either CH or J depending on where it is in the word. Why they couldn't have one of them be CH all the time, the other be J all the time is beyond me. On the bright side, they're so proud of their written language that there is a national holiday for it...so I get a paid day off thanks to Hagul :) .
Random stuff from Korea...most people have their cellphone numbers displayed in some form on the bottom of their windshield...for most people it's a simple plaque, others have ones that are lit by colourful LEDs at night. However...a TON of people have these little embroidered pillows with their numbers on it...whether they make it themselves or there are stores that do this, I have no idea, neither do I have a clue what the point of having your phone number (maybe if it's towed?) on your windshield is...but here you go:
Okay...that's all I have to report...oh and that the little veggie cocktail sausages are delicious. Below are some of the pics from the weekend...I just started going through them, so it'll be a little bit before I get to all of them, but I'll put them up a few at a time.
Some big general at the fortress (by the way, this would be the equivalent of a national historic site back home...at home, it's about $10-15 bucks to get in. Here, admission is free for Jinju residents and about 90 cents for non-residents and includes the admission to an awesome national museum). This guy still strikes fear into the humble citizens of Jinju!
Huge bell in a beautifully decorated tower outside a Buddhist temple (and I think Confucian school)
The inside of the nearby Buddhist temple:
A memorial to one of the generals who fought the Japanese at Jinju fortress
Massive gate at the fortress:
The bridge with the golden rings (can't really see it in the pic) commemorating the woman who jumped into the river with the Japanese general to save Jinju...also, the part of the fortress on the left, then the Nam river (goes through the middle of Jinju) and part of downtown Jinju on the right.
That's it for today...thanks for reading, and I'll try to have more tomorrow...although it may be a while as I'm FINALLY getting around to unpacking my suitcases (instead of grabbing whatever I need out of them) and making my little apartment a little more home-like, so I might have some pics of my home soon!
Cheerio,
T
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