South Korea - Orientation The other Days

The rest of orientation was all lectures, bad food and going out for drinks...pretty much like being a child dependent on a drunk I suppose...yeah, I said that.
The lectures were like something from Guantanamo Bay, right up there with waterboarding. Whenever I sat down, I would start falling asleep. There was a constant internal battle during class and I would often succumb to it willingly; this is known territory for me though, many of my previous co-workers would confess that I am notorious for falling asleep in meetings (I like to think that I am subtly expressing my opinion).

The teachers are a good group of people, some of the Americans couldn't understand my accent at times though, some seemed to struggle with a few accents actually and one also lay claim that the South African accent is the heaviest, yeah, sure, what a tall glass of wadder that guy was. Met some really cool people but I tried keeping a low profile, still had to determine what the score was (barely even got tipsy and I was so reserved that I hardly offended anyone :)...you know, suss things out before you break out. I will mention these cool people if they ever pop up again, else to hell with em, in a really nice way of course. No seriously, I'm not going to ramble off a list of names here.

Lectures were in Seoul, very big, very busy city. I discovered that the statistics about the average height of the men were distorted by all the short old men and that the younger generation were actually surplisingly tall. All the Koreans dress very nicely, even those who just projectile vomited against the wall of a club...inside...three awkward steps from the loo...blech!...and it was a chick...
That happened at The Bunker, very cool place, listened to some cool Korean rap until the DJ spotted us, then it was Britney Spears and pop music, yay! I confirmed that I still can't dance to that music...can you say "uncomfortably sober"? My favourite dance move is saying that I can't dance to that music (which is actually a very effective move when there's some dude breakdancing in front of you). The Bunker was located at the end of gigawatt road or whatever it was called, it's a street that would scar your retinas if you chose to read all the adverts. A place where you should wear shades round the clock. A place with many clubs, dvd lounges and people dressed up in costumes advertising beer.

On our second last day, we went to a museum, and it bored the hell out of my skull to be honest, mostly pots and other clay things, many paintings that are drawn in the exact same style (imagine flipping through a Zoolander-style calendar) and a few cool buddha statues. Then we missioned to a palace, which was a better experience as I enjoy the outdoors. I was peer pressured into watching the changing of the guards, yeah, I wish they would just have run up and skewered me, super boring, but oh so very cultural the posers would tell me. At this point of the day, Inga (cool guy from Eastern Cape) and I believed that all was lost. There was a hanta show later on. A co-ordinator had told us hanta rocked and we had seen a show with him on our second day and it did not in fact rock, in fact it had sucked...hard. He was also the one that told me the changing of the guards was awesome. Unbeknowest to me, there genuinely was a cool show waiting on us. Hanta is basically the Korean word for a percussion show, but man oh man, was this group great, nay AWESOME! Check out the youtube link below if I ever get around to adding one. One of the BEST shows I have ever seen.

The last day of orientation I got on a bus and that closes this chapter.

Wow, that makes for some quick reading and that's pretty much how it felt...like I got there and the next moment I left...whooosh...

Soon I will post photos, but I was lazy and took none.

My next post will be covering this week, my first week at the school. Lovin it!