Luc Here

I Played hockey today with about 12 other teachers from the area. There were teachers from lots of different schools, but most of us were with the company Erin and I are working for. It was lots of fun, even though it was pretty rainy the whole time. I kinda forgot I was in Korea for awhile there because we were just playing and talking about hockey for three hours. The only time I realized I was in Korea was when we had to go off the parking lot to find the ball.

I’m not finding a hugs difference between Korea and Canada. They speak a different language and the food is a little different, but other than that it’s pretty similar. Neal and Whitney took us to downtown Daegu tonight and it was just like downtown Vancouver. The side streets are narrower, and the shops don’t have as much to move around in, but if you change the signs to English it would be pretty familiar. Tell Grandma that it feels like living in Coquitlam :).

Sometimes I wish things were a little more different than they were. Part of the reason I came here was to experience a different way of life, but I think after long enough the diversity will become more obvious.

The language barrier is sometimes enough difference, but in the end it’s mostly an inconvenience because we can get what we need, we can usually find a restaurant with pictures on the menu, and sometimes the person at the store will have enough English for us to work something out. There’s definitely more English here than I expected. There was even a whole English section in the book store, it had all the popular and classic books you would need. Lots of signs have English on them too, it doesn’t always make sense, but you usually get the point of what they are trying to say.

Walking home from hockey today it was still raining pretty good. I had gotten pretty wet while playing, so I wasn’t worried about getting wetter. Apparently, Koreans hate the rain, and will have an umbrella up at the slightest sign of it. While at a crosswalk a lady asked (gestured) if I wanted to go under her umbrella, so I did. She then gestured allot across the street and I thought she was telling me I could get an umbrella over there. Once we crossed, she got under the umbrella with a friend and then gave me hers. I refused, but she insisted, and I got a new umbrella :). I just thought that was a nice story about a Korean lady helping a foreigner. You guys should tell grandma that one too.