Daegu with Jae Won

Today Erin and I and another teacher at my school (Nicola) were taken around town by my Korean partner Jae Won. First we went to the Arboretum. It wasn’t the best time of the year to be going, but we got a small sampling of Korean plants and had a pretty nice walk around. There was also this greenhouse full of desert plants and cacti that was pretty kool. Jae Won picked us up at my school and drove us out there. We got to see lots of the city by driving out there. Usually when we travel long distances we take the subway, so we miss lots of the sights, and don’t learn our way around the greater Daegu area. With Jae Won we learnt, amongst other things, where the American army base was, it’s a fairly big landmark, and people use it to give directions all the time, so it’s handy to know. So yes, there is an American army base here, but I don’t know if anyone knows what the soldiers do all day. We see them at the pubs at night and they are usually pretty rowdy, really… what’s the point of having American soldiers in Southeast Korea? On a side note, American fighter jets fly over the city every day. You can only sometimes see them, but I think it’s pretty kool, they’re fast and noisy :).

After the Arboretum, we went to Jae Won’s College, the College where he got his undergraduate degree. He got his degree English and Literature and is in the process of becoming a public school teacher. It’s a Christian College, so it had a church at the top of a hill, and from the church was a pretty good view of most of Daegu. It’s a pretty kool school. It was designed by an American, so all of the buildings have a Southern Colonial feel to them. There were a couple traditional buildings too, I think Jae Won said they were built to be a mock up of a traditional Korean town.

From the College we dropped Nicola off downtown and then went to Costco. Jae Won wanted to use us for our Costco memberships and we wanted to use him for his car. It was a win win. It was a great day all in all. By talking to Jae Won out of the office we learnt allot about the Korean way of life, and he helped me with my Korean.

Erin and I failed our Korean test on Tuesday. We felt so confident going in... then we bombed. The test was all writing though, and we weren’t really taught how to write during the class, it was mostly speaking oriented. It was the first time the teacher had taught the class, so he realized the mistake, but I think Erin and I should take the class again, so we can learn how to write. We know how to pronounce most of the characters (except for the confusing combined vowels), we just don’t know exactly what to write when things are said to us.

Erin and I are going to Seoul tomorrow! We get Wednesday, Thursday and Friday off because of Lunar New Year, so we have to take advantage of it. We are taking the fast train and will be traveling at over 300 KM/H. Apparently the train isn’t that thrilling, but I am excited for itJ. We don’t now exactly what we are going to do in Seoul, but we are staying in a Hotel in the cultural district, so we know we will have enough to do. We want to see some temples and we want to go downtown, and it might be worthwhile to go to the Canadian bar in Seoul, but there’s so much to do there I don’t think we’ll be disappointed. Apparently there’s a Van Gough exhibit in Seoul now too, I would like to see that if we could.

So no blog until Saturday night (our time), but I’m sure the next blog will be a good one. And sorry for not blogging about cultural differences, I’m saving that for when we have nothing to write about.