Been here for about a month now, and I think I’m taking the change pretty well.

Pros:

• Nice to have someone home-cook all my meals for me :D
• Shopping is hella fun cuz everything’s so inexpensive
• Fun to people watch cuz the girls here make so much effort (heels and makeup to go to the supermarket? Of course!)
• The subway is clean and cheap (’bout 90 cents to $1.20, depending on how far I go)
• Made new Canadian friends! Tiffany especially is awesome-cool.
• My uncle’s apartment is on the first floor. So far we’ve not turned on the AC once but there hasn’t been a need to… Lower-floored apartments for the win!
• I feel like my family here actually cares about me and my well-being (besides my dad)
• Have a good, steady job that’s not too demanding
• Opportunity to travel to new places for trade shows
• My cousins are all adorable and fun
• Heard it’s been raining buckets in New York. The weather here, while muggy, has been pleasant. I think it’s only rained about 2 days here so far.
• Lots of time to do the things I’ve always said I’d “get around to” doing. Setting up websites and reading, mostly.
• Prepaid cell phones are cheap. 2 cents for sending a text, free to receive, free incoming calls… awesome.

Cons:

• Fruit, however is NOT cheap. $5 for a little tub of blueberries? $20 for a watermelon? Gack.
• Pizza is also expensive.
• A lot of clothing here is made in one size… I hate that
• My aunt & uncle expect me home by a certain time
• I miss Jamar, my friends, and Aji a lot
• The aforementioned make-a-lot-of-effort girls usually are with boyfriends that are way less good looking and way more casually dressed
• Generally less freedom and privacy, though it hasn’t been too bad
• The subway stops running at midnight arrrgh <– hate that
• Some of them really do eat dogs :( But never tiny purebreds… those they keep.
• The time difference from here and NY makes it hard for me to take care of billing calls / anything that requires calling to NY

Hmm, I guess my pro list is way longer than my con list. I’ve thought it would be a lot harder for me to adjust and get used to life here but it’s not. I can actually see myself staying here for a few months with not much trouble. And the trip has forced me to put my long-idling laptop to use. A perfectly good laptop that I didn’t use for over a year… Shame.

I’ve been here a couple of weeks now and have started to settle into a comfortable rhythm.

I wake up around 8am. This sounds early and normally it is for me, though living with a family whose kids get up at 7:30 and usually go to bed before midnight gets you in the habit of doing the same. So far this hasn’t been too bad at all.

I wash up and have breakfast. No toast, cereal, or oatmeal to be found here… Usually the first meal of the day consists of rice, sometimes soup with fish/tofu/beansprouts, and a bunch of side dishes including kimchi. Yes, their breakfasts are very similar to their lunches and dinners. At times there’s good protein like bulgogi (seasoned stir-fry beef), eggs, or fried fish. I’ve been eating more fish since I got here; I like that. It’s good for you!

After that I get dressed and head out to the office with my uncle. During rush hour the drive takes an hour to an hour and a half, ugh. He’s the one with the impressive packaging factory. I had no idea how big his company was (not in physical size but the amount of business that they do) until I got here. He makes boxes for Wal-mart, Samsung, Hyundai, cigarette companies, and countless food and beauty products across Korea. Although with this current economy, even he’s struggling to stay afloat. It seems very few are immune.

For the first couple of days at work I thought I’d die of boredom. I basically surfed the web for 6-8 hours a day. But now I’m working on getting their catalog online; been working on it since yesterday. I won’t bore you with the minutiae of this task; suffice it to say there’s a whole lot to be done for something that sounds so simple. I’ll probably finish it by today though. (I need to take breaks though; hence this blog post!)

Office workers in Korea generally get lunches (and I’m told breakfasts and dinners if they work those hours) for free. Pretty sweet. My other uncle runs the cafeteria here and his wife is a factory worker. Employing family members since 199x…

I finish up around 5-6pm and head home, but don’t get home till around 7pm. Then it’s leisure time. One thing I must say is that though deli’s here are plentiful (mistakenly called “supers” as in “supermarkets” by the locals) actual supermarkets are not so common, at least in my area. I found myself wanting to buy fresh fruit and healthier stuff other than chips and ice cream at the “super”. Also why tf is a watermelon $18, ughhh. I need to find out where to buy inexpensive produce. I haven’t been eating too well because of it :\

My next adventure will be trying to buy a prepaid cell phone… I totally wanna go to DongDaeMoon this weekend and go shopping. Yay for getting spending money. Eventually I wanna make my way to Lotte World and get on a couple of roller coasters but all my cousins like wussy rides. Mope.

Jenno out.

P.S. — Apologies for the lack of pictures. I took a ton and need to upload them; the next post will be a picture extravaganza!