Day 2

Due to extremely poor planning, and a lack of willpower to keep my eyes open, I went to bed at 7:30 pm last night, which of course meant that I woke up at 2:30 am on Sunday. This not being an ideal time to wake up, I attempted to go back to bed, but the bane of my existence – a bug – tormented me by buzzing in my ear so that I had no choice but to wake up properly. Thanks to the heroic efforts of Sasha and Sean, I am still connected to the internet, albeit barely. I can access text, and Google chat, but not much else – my dreams of watching the latest Supernatural episode are finished.

To my delight, my mother was online, as it would be only 1:30 pm her time, back in dear old Canada. I am missing Canada quite a lot, but I keep telling myself that I will get over it, because really this is just culture shock. The fact that everything is written in Korean, and people only speak Korean, doesn’t help much. I hope I get my foreigner registration card soon, because I’d like to have a cellphone and bank account. Also, the knowledge that I can go to the hospital without paying exorbitant fees is a comforting one, not that I plan on breaking my leg anytime soon.

With my shoddy internet connection, I whiled away the hours surfing the web and writing my various fanfictions and novels. I wish that I had brought my booklet of DVDs with me in the initial move, because I was hard pressed for something with which to occupy my time. Reading and writing are both fun, but sometimes it’s good to just turn on a movie or television show and while away the hours. Ah well – mother has promised me regular care packages, so hopefully my DVDs will arrive soon!

Around 7 am I decided to go back to sleep – I have my first day of classes tomorrow, so it’s probably a good plan to not wake up at 2 am again. My attempts were successful, and I re-awoke at 10 am to the sound of banging on a door. Not mine, as it turns out, but I got up feeling refreshed and ready for a new day! After twiddling around until noon, Sasha came a calling, and we were off to the airbase!

Today was Air Power day at the Oson American air base, which means that they opened up the base to non-military personnel, as well as brought out a dozen of their planes and helicopters for people to see up close. We took a taxi to AK mall, then hopped the subway three stops over to the town that the base is located in. One of Sasha’s students had told her about a back way into the base, so we grabbed another cab and went in the back way, which was still pretty busy, so probably wasn’t as top secret as we’d hoped.

The air base was very cool – they lined the runway with various types of planes and jets and assorted bombing machines. At the far end was a “missile battery”, and you could sit in a machine gun turret and make the rotating gun barrel thing fire. There were also aerial demonstrations – the planes went by so frequently overhead that we had to yell most of the time to be heard. Planes are loud. The earth literally shakes when a jet flies overhead, even if it’s so high up that you can barely see it.

There was also the food tents area, with everything from bratwurst to Korean short ribs. Apparently “Western” food is very difficult to come by in Korea, because Sasha was beside herself when she saw that they were selling bratwurst. Things that are difficult to find in Korea include hamburger and hotdog buns, celery, dill pickles, and sausages. I’m sure I’ll learn about more soon enough. Sean assured me that in about four months, I’ll be craving Western food as much as they do.

After the air base, we trekked back to “Main Gate”, which is the area around the main gate of the air base. This area is very westernized, because it is where the soldiers go when they’re off duty. There is English on every sign, international cuisine, bootleg DVD stalls, etc. We went into a bar that had a “juicy”, which is a woman employed by the bar who hangs out with a guy, in return for which he buys her expensive drinks. Juicies are not prostitutes, however – they are companions, although I suspect that the line can often get blurred.

At the bar I met Jenna, Jade, and Lynn. Jenna is the fourth and final foreign teacher at our school, and Jade and Lynn work at the Avalon school by the base. I’m a bit fuzzy on how Jade and Lynn know everyone – possibly they were trained with Sasha? – but all the foreigner teachers seem to know each other in some way or another. They complimented me on my sunburn, which I had not realized that I had, until I went to the bathroom. Incidentally, Koreans have a habit of keeping toilet paper outside the bathroom, so you have to guestimate how much you need, and bring it in with you. I will be carrying a wad of tissues around as emergency backup toilet paper from now on, as per Sasha’s suggestion.

We wandered around the Main Gate shopping district for a while, and then went into a Thai place for dinner. It was delicious, but much spicier than I’m used to. I got the lowest level of spice, and my mouth still burned. Then a little bit more shopping – bought all three High School Musicals, bootlegged, for 5000 won – which is like $5. I was assured that they’re good quality, although I haven’t yet had a chance to test them out.

Took the subway back home, and arrived back in the apartment around 9 pm. Sasha advised that I stay up until midnight, or else I’m going to be exhausted tomorrow. I’ll try to make 11 pm, but I doubt I’ll be able to do much later. I would have if my computer was working, but my background image disappeared when I turned the laptop on, and now I can’t connect to the internet.

After about half an hour the internet worked out, although I still can’t have a background image for some reason. Computers continue to baffle and elude me. Bah. I attempted to watch my bootlegged High School Musical DVD, which went well enough, but I fell asleep around 10 pm... so I didn’t quite make the 11 pm deadline!