Benjamin has arrived in Korea!!!

Our beloved Benjamin has arrived in Korea! Woot Woot! We are incredibly happy and excited to have him here with us and are so glad that everything is going good so far.

Benjamin arrived around 3:30pm at Incheon Airport via Korean Air Cargo. Evan and I had pretty much no idea how to get to the airport so we foolishly took the subway all the way out to the airport commuter line (lonnng ride). We had thought that when we took the train to "the cargo terminal" that we would step out into something resembling a "cargo terminal" but instead we were in a field. Yay! So we saw a few airport shuttle buses and began our fun adventure. I'm probably going to do a post in the future about the actual process of sending your dog to Korea after you have arrived for other ESL teachers thinking of doing such a thing. We made it through it all but it was a bit of a terrifying process that might not have seemed so scary if we had had more information beforehand. Air Canada & Korean Air didnt really give as much information as they should have.

In any case we met the NICEST young gentleman on our adventure. Tenny was on his way home from work when he realized that we were the two foreigners trying to navigate around the airport to get the dog he had unloaded earlier so he decided to help us out. He spent over 2.5 hours with us, helping to translate and get us through all the paperwork required. Thank you Tenny! Long story short, Benjamin is now safe and sound in Hwajeong after an 18 hour adventure and is loving it so far. We've taken him on many long walks and he is already charming all the neighbours. We will obviously have more to report in the coming days! The true test should be this week as we head back to school now that our vacation is over, and Benjamin will be left to fend for himself during the day.

Welcome to our humble abode

So we've been here about a month now, and finally got around to taking a few pictures of our apartment as well as the view outside. Not much to report really, it's a pretty small dwelling, about a third of the size of our last apartment in waterloo but it's functional so really we havent been feeling too claustraphobic. I'd say its about the size of a spacious hotel room. We are on the 9th floor, and we have yet to meet any neighbours really. It's a very quiet floor, fingers crossed that the walls are soundproof and that's why it's so quiet: then perhaps we wont get any complaints about Benjamin! You can see from the pictures below that there are two big doors that open and close to create the smallest kitchen space you've ever seen. They're above our rad korean washing machine that washes AND dries your clothes all in one. However it takes over 3 hours usually so we have started to just hang dry all our clothes. In the picture of the bathroom notice that the entire room shares one drain hole so everything gets wet when you have a shower. Not really sure that I've figured out the logic behind this but at least we have the enclosure which is apparently a bit of a rare find in Korea, or so I've been told.

Chuseok in Hwajeong

Chuseok has arrived here in Korea. We have been reminded of this fact for the last two weeks every time we visit a grocery store and see the women sauntering around in hanboks, see all the crazy giftsets and look at the month of september on the calendar and drool: 4 days off and then a weekend! You might want to see the picture at the bottom of the post-- a package of 6 mushrooms with a price tag of about 700 dollars. Crazy eh? We got a bunch of canned tuna and some canola oil, but to be honest we were a little sad that we didnt get the spam gift we were really eye-ing up at the supermarket-- not.
Anyways, at work this past Friday we had a Chuseok party with all the kids. Cheusok is like a Korean Thanksgiving, where people all over the country celebrate the harvest season and visit family. They also wear this beautiful traditional clothing called a hanbok. There are a million colours, textures, styles and patterns. They are beautiful, especially on the little ones. I had seen pictures before but nothing compares to seeing about 60 of these kids all decked out in their hanbok wear. It was great. Evan and I got to wear hanbok, learned how to bow and then learned a bit about cockfighting and jegging. Afterwards we made some ricecakes with the kids and then had about an hour to kill, quickly realizing that structure is key with these kids.

Idle time really is the devils plaything when all the kids quickly turn crazy and someone starts to cry. We had a really great time overall, and we were really glad to have an opportunity to see this! Now it's Tuesday, the first day of Chuseok and we are looking out the window and quite saddened by what we see-- huge thunderstorm happening that looks like it will have us cooped up for the remainder of the day. There goes any plans to do anything exciting!

Oh well, we've been trying to catch up on Private Practice starting
with the first season--so maybe that will keep us busy for the day. Seoul is supposed to be dead as a doornail this holiday, as most people flee the city to visit their families and most businesses are all closed. It's quite the sob story that we dont have our ARC (Alien Registration Card) yet in order to leave the country and see Thailand or hit up Boracay so it looks like we'll be in Hwajeong! Oh well, its not like we have a paycheque that could have funded either of those ideas just yet. Later this week we may check out some palaces, do the infamous Everland or Lotteworld but we've got diet coke, rum, lots of cheese and some meat in the freezer so we wont have to go far for now!!

Yongsan Electronics Market

I've got a few posts to catch up on here. You see we've been doing alot of sightseeting and not much reporting/reflecting! So last weekend Evan and I visited a place in heaven (woops I mean Korea) called Yongsan Electronics market. What is Yongsan Electronics Market you ask??


Twenty buildings and over FIVE THOUSAND stores that sell electronics, appliances, and so on. Why would we care? Camera supplies. Cameras, lenses, camera bags, camera accessories, everything camera related apparently lives at this wonderful place. The kicker? We left thinking we had actually seen the place but apparently we had only ventured into the very beginning---the I'Park Mall. Either way, here's a picture. I would like to live here. Evan's a little skeptical that my saving abilities are going to wither away with this place in existance. Either way I can't wait to go back and see the rest!! Ugh payday is faaaaar too far away. Sigh....

Introductions

Welcome to the Blog. Okay I suppose we should start off by explaining the name of the website we chose.

Korea is different, and not in a "oh wow, they have even bigger walmarts kind of way" or a "look at those palm trees" kind of way. It's different in a way where it feels super familiar but every once in a while you step back a moment and think "hmm, yes I'm really not in Canada anymore."

This happened probably for the first time when we were in Costco. We heard about Korean Costco and how we had to go to one. It just so happens that we have a costco 2 subway stops away from us. This wasn't really a coincidence but more of a pre-mediated factor. We found it during the first week we were here and let's say it's a little slice of heaven. Cheese! Booze! Tortilla shells! Ground Beef! Basically all the comforts of home. We walked around the joint for an hour or two and it honestly felt like being back in KW on one of our regular Costco stints. That was until we hit the food court. Everyone's gotta know the Costco foodcourt right? Stampede hotdogs, pizza, french fries and every other delicious thing.

In Korea it's exactly the same thing, with one exception. You know how they always have the condiments section for your hotdogs? Onions, hot peppers, ketchup, mustard, relish...and so on? Well the onions come in what looks like a feeding trough. And all the people at the foodcourt fill entire plates with these onions, and then top them off with ketchup and eat them like that. We saw the patrons of the foodcourt even filling up soft drink cups with onions to take home with them. We laughed about it for an hour and then mentioned it at school the next day but apparently this is just normal. And this concludes the story of why we would create a website called "A Plate Full of Onions." We hope to continue posting lots of pictures and share lots of stories about our trip that maybe nobody cares to learn about but that we'd like to share if you so desire! Enjoy!