A Month in Korea...

I have now been in South Korea for one month. A couple weekends ago the bunch of us went to Seoul Tower (basically the Seoul version of the CN Tower). On all the windows looking out they had the exact distances to major cities around the world. Paris, London, New York, Sydney, etc. I looked around until Toronto showed up. The exact distance was 10,607.77 km's to home. It was then and there that I realized just how far away I really was from everything I've known for the last 22 years of my life...

The last month has been a rollercoaster ride to say the least.The ups and downs of travelling to the other side of the world andattempting to start a year long adventure has been quite the experience. All signs point to this being an awesome time and I am now just starting to feel somewhat settled into this crazy place. The culture shock is wearing off and the jetlag is long gone. In a city that has the population of Canada within its greater area, its been a hard and sometimes annoying process to get used to but at the same time a pretty funny experience. The poorly written english signs and terrible driving were expected, but there are many customs and quirks here in the Korean culture that requires some getting used to. Bumping shoulders with someone, where back home one would expect a "sorry" or maybe even a fight doesn't get a second look here. Just accepted happenings of walking in downtown Seoul.

I arrived at the beginning of March not really knowing what to expect. Would it be hard? Would it be crazy? Would I like the food? Could I get around not knowing Korean? Many questions bobbled in my head, but I figured I'd just go with the flow and hopefully things would work out. To my surprise it's actually quite welcoming for a foreigner to come and live here. A lot of signs have some sort of bizzaro enlgish written on them to help you understand. Many people in stores do understand some basic english, if you use exagerated hand signals. It's fairly westernized over here and that makes certain things a little more familiar to all of us. The Koreans at my school have also made sure all of us foreigners feel super comfortable giving us directions, showing us ettiquette and the other day even helped me translate the instructions on my washing machine. Now if only they had dryers, I would be set. I've found it a little easier to settle into my surroundings though with all this in mind. Still, Im 10,607.77 km's from home and it's hard not to feel the distance at times. But thankfully, if you ever get homesick, there's always a Starbucks or McDonalds just around the corner.