Moorrnning.
Sitting in the internet cafe, a grey haze soaking into the city, waiting for my comptriots to emerge from their peaceful slumbers, get their lazy arses out of bed and deal with probable hangovers. Me I'm fine, though after spending hours lying awake thinking I should get up and waiting for others to do likewise I would now prefer to be back in my own sleepy cocoon.
Attached are some photos: the two linked to this email are of the temple behind Shinchon I talked of in my last email where Dom took me on day 1; and the street below where I'm staying. In the following email "freaky stuff," are a few photos of the highrise accomodation that a huge percentage of the population lives in. They appear almost normal to me now but I
know that when I first arrived they completely freaked me out, especially the way big companies buid/own them and then sell/rent them separately. I'm not quite sure how that works yet. Seoul is built around the mountain ranges here and the buildings tend to nestle
into them. What is really nice is there are big chunks of parkland at the top which you can escape to and look out over the freakiness of the city!
Friday night Jonathan arrived in Seoul, his first time here after spending the last four weeks in sleepy Masan, down on the south coast, well not that sleepy but the difference between four hundred thousand and ten million plus living in alien housing, or stubbed cigrette butts as J. refers to them! After sitting up all fri night drinking Soju, the local lethal rice concoction, J. and I explored the back alleyways of Itaewon, local street sellers who looked surprised to
see foreigners only ten minutes away from the military/teachers hub of Seoul but light years away culturally. From the Mosque there are spectacular view of the surrounding section of the city, which in itself goes on for miles, and continuing down curvy laneways we happened upon the Han River in the far background which slices the city in two. A mixture of cloud, pollution and low winter light its always a dull pink; pretty but ominous in shade. J. and i fell
into a succession of manic laughter fits after looking at each other and realising we're both in Seoul, staying on Dom's floor, another of those bizarre MacUni contingents that seem to follow me around the world, or maybe I create them, I'm not sure.
Last night we went out to someone's farewell, a friend of Dom's, I get the impression there will be many farewells in the future, a city with a stably transient population, or transiently stable? A city where people stay for months or years but eventually move on from, a city where hard work can be compensated by hard cash and playing hard is compulsory if your brain isn't to go soft!
Seoul, and Korea, seems predominantly settled by canadians paying off extensive uni debts. A
conversation last night:
Tara, canadian: I'm here cause I have tons of debt
Melanie, south african: I'm here cause we have unemployment
me, aussie: I'm here cause we have John Howard
Melanie declared me the winner and after hysterical laughter and much stupidity we drank to the beginning of a new silly friendship. YEAH, AT LAST! Have been craving silliness since I left australia: someone to have stupid conversations with, play BMX bandits with, go skinny dipping, skipping, giggling through the joyous craziness of life with. Hannah, Trina, Romeo,
hakisack was great but kevin has been lonely! Alice, loved hearing about the wedding, rejoice in your style. Viva la revolution!
So the friendship was sealed when Men at Work came on and after lots of cheesy eighties stuff I had to grab fellow aussies and dance my arse off to vegimite sandwiches. The south african joined the crazy aussies as the canadians and koreans stared at us in wonder and cleared the dance floor for us. Outnumbered we weren't deterred!
So I'm starting to build up a really nice community here in Korea and things are beginning to fall into place after the rollercoaster of recent weeks. Waves of culture shock, despondancy about job hunting and wondering how I can live in such an outrageously developed urban sprawl have all taken their toll on my stress levels but the good outweighs the bad by far
and i'm working really hard at looking after myself. Have been hanging out with an ex-Melbourne chick who used to live in the first house I moved into in Kensington. Yup its a small world. I guess in melbourne its pretty common to have lived in the same houses as people you meet but when you meet people across the world it can blow you away a tad. So I'm
fortunate to have excellent people around me once again; there has only been minimal time since I've been travelling that that hasn't been the case, I'm fully appreciating how lucky I am, hey.