Living with Joone has been going alright. I'm slowly getting used to a new sleep schedual but when I only work half days I shouldn't complain if I get to bed later than I want. The worst thing in this place is Joone's ashtray. I know what he's getting for his next birthday.
A couple of weeks ago my former student's family asked me to go out for dinner. We had agreed to sushi a few weeks before but I was thinking sushi meant the Japanese variety with salmon and tuna as my options. Instead we went to a Korean restaurant where the first floors holds the fish for you to pick and upstairs we eat it. Luckily they had 도미 in Korean which my phone tells me is a sea bream. Neither word means anything to me but it is tasty when paired with soju. 
SeChan giving his normal look when asked to do anything. 
The family finding out the weight and price of dinner. 
After dinner we went to the pub for more drinks and fun. 
Around the time the soju and beer started to kick in so did the sugar from Sechan's multiple coke's and ice cream. Being a good Korean kid he started showing off the latest dance craze every Korean knows. 
SaeBin took a break from hanging off my neck to pose for her picture.
Good times.
Hard to believe this man is an actual professor travelling the world going to conferences and earning a living molding the minds of MBA students. No wonder businesses the world over are all failing.
Tony had his birthday a couple of Friday's ago. We went to a Thai fusion restaurant with the obvious name of Berlin, where Tony treated us to a set menu he had specially made for the group (the starter was a Korean dumpling but it was wrapped in rice paper, a chicken salad was next, followed by the best sliced steak and some chicken dish, we then had some fries and a green curry served with noodles). The food was amazing and I will definitely have to make it back there before leaving Seoul. 
It was the usual gang and things started off quietly. 
The late comers. 
Raidar was also there for his last night in Seoul before he headed back to Norway early the next morning. 
Things got a little louder after this when we all started in on the helium balloons that Chan Young brought along. Not wanting to be banned from the restaurant we headed off to Bliss where we could be louder and later in the night up to Soho. Here things turned dramatic when a pick pocket stole Tony's wallet from his bag but the bar staff saw it all and they caught the guy. Other than the wallet fiasco it was a great night out.
When you get news you have to be moved out in one week's time and your house is full of crap it leaves you with no time to post. We had the option of not taking the offer on the house but in Korea when you rent you deposit key money and you get it back when the next people take over your place. We had 10 million won tied up in the place and didn't want to risk having the place sit empty and then trying to get the money back while in Canada so we it took it. We also took being homeless for the last month we are here but thankfully Joone offered up a place in his house to keep us sheltered. He lives in Pucheon (the city between Seoul and Incheon) so it takes just over an hour to commute to Seoul but for my work it is relatively close and is about the same commute time I was doing before. Thankfully I'm on holiday for two of the last four weeks here so it isn't too bad.
The move itself was simple but the sorting of stuff the week before sucked. I threw out ten, twenty litre bags of garbage. Gave away another five boxes of stuff and then chucked the "maybe will keep stuff" into boxes we stored in Saejin's office that I have to sort through. The rest of the stuff all belonged to my school and we hired a moving crew to come pack it up and take away. (If you are looking for a job where you can smoke and ash on apartment floors, be rude and you like carrying sofas on your back the mover gig is worth checking out.)
When I got to Korea my first job was working for a shady, shady man who used to pay me in little white envelopes full of 10 000 won ($10) bills. It took two of them to pay me (envelopes not bills) and then I would rush back to my apartment and make tiny hidden piles of money in case I got robbed. Just a few weeks ago the newest, biggest bill came out, a 50 000 won. They have been talking about it for some time and had hardcore debates over who should be on it and then once decided they had a usual Korea argument over the size of Shin Saimdang's head (thanks Don). Anyway yesterday a student showed me the first real one I have seen. They are still in limited circulation. 
My socks have been wet all day long. My pants from mid thigh down have been soaked and dried four times today. My shirt on the side I wear my purse (I don't need to label it a man bag, it's a purse) has been rung out only twice. Since seven this morning until three in the afternoon it has been pouring rain with winds to make an umbrella a useless accessory. It wouldn't have been too bad but today I went down to the Canadian Embassy before work to get a new passport made. So I was drenched walking to the subway, drenched again walking to the embassy, drenched a third time coming to work and to add insult to pickled skin just walking twenty meters to lunch today ended up with me and all the kids drenched again. It's just drizzling now and I can't wait to get home to change my clothes.
Seeing as we are moving out in just over a month our apartment is on the market for new renters. We had to get an extra key made and dropped it off with a real estate agent. They can now show the place whenever a client drops by looking for a place fitting the size and budget they want. Yesterday a young couple came by to see the place and because the agent is an ajuma she didn't even bother knocking on the door to see if we were home. Instead she jammed the key into the lock then started trying to open the door with all here might. Luckily, we had the security lock on because had they wanted to see the bathroom they would have gotten a sight of Saejin lathering up. I often forget to lock the door (a huge annoyance to Saejin) but will now have to remember to not only lock the door but to set the tiny security bolt.
Ajumi is the plural for an ajuma. An Ajuma is Korean for a married woman but it's in your best interest to avoid being hit to not to use this term for anyone younger than forty. Ajumi can be the nicest or evilest of people you will meet in Korea and tend to have many similar characteristics.
The look of an ajuma is easy to spot. They tend to have tight curly perms and their uniform is a floral shirt matched with a pair of comfortable pants. They are easy to spot because they travel in packs and will never stand behind you in line. If you are waiting for the next subway they have the sharpest elbows in the world and will sneak past you no matter how hard you try to keep them at bay. They also have impeccable aim and will throw their purses to lay claim to any empty seat available in the rare case they are behind you when entering a train or bus.
Once seated they will then quickly get a sense of the environment by staring (and I mean full on staring) at everyone around them. If there happens to be a drunk, or a crazy person, near them who is disrupting the atmosphere on the train they have magic powers that puts that person in check. It's an awesome sight to see.
If there is a toddler nearby, ajumi will volunteer to hold the kid and if the kid is unwilling out comes candy from their all important purse. (I've also been given candy from ajumi multiple times.) Because they have given everyone around a once over any flaw they see they will go about fixing the problem. On two separate occasions yesterday I saw ajumi pick stray hairs off the backs of unsuspecting strangers without their knowledge.
The scary side of the ajumi comes out when they go shopping. Give them a shopping cart and you will be run down if you are unlucky enough to be in the way of a sale. If no sale exists they will bargain to get the cheapest deal available. They are also scary when they are out drinking for the night. This usually only happens on rare occasions and they make the best of it. They love to eat, sing and dance.
When they head out to eat they make sure to hand feed anyone else looking hungry. They sing oldies but goodies and have a special dance where their thumbs, bums and heads to most of the work. Don't worry about them getting drunk though. They will drink anyone under the table and are often seen carrying their husbands home on their backs while yelling at them.
Sadly, I believe they are a dying breed. The next generation of ajumi are very conscious of their appearances and with plastic surgery being more of a right of passage than a trend new ajumi will stay young forever. Long live the ajumi.
Normally test days fall on a Wednesday a few weeks before the end of the term. According to the yearly schedual it was supposed to be next Wednesday but when I showed up to work today the kids were all last minute cramming with worried little looks on their faces.
Had I known it was today I would have asked for the morning off to run down to the Embassy to apply for my new passport. Instead I brought in nothing extra do to to kill time. I guess it's a day of YouTubeing (is it a verb yet? Do you drop the e? Add a b?) and reading for me. I may need a drink tonight to kill this boredom.
