Siwa Bazaar: South African Friendship Group

I seem to be running a week late with everything, but anyway, last week we went to the Grand Hilton to help out at the South African table at the Seoul International Womens Association (SIWA) bazaar.

It was quite nice, and we stocked up on a few of our favourites, like Nando's, Mrs Balls, ProNutro (not that we really bought Pronutro while we were in SA), and some cook-in-sauces.

We went there on the scooter, which was a bit of a problem for a few reasons, firstly winter has started, so it was about zero degrees, secondly we did not know the way and the GPS is in the car and finally we ended up falling off the scooter when we stopped to look at a map and slipped on some leaves. No one was hurt though.

The good thing about the scooter is that it is really easy to find parking and you don't have traffic problems in getting out.

We looked around and had a hotdog each, but Carla saw a place selling crepes, so wanted to have one. We ended up waiting 50 minutes and got the second last crepe before they ran out of batter.

The Crepe Queue

Successful!!!!

Storm's evil sibling

Are they related?

Meongdong Church

I have been going to a church in Myeongdong. It is actually a cathedral and has been undergoing some removations ever since we arrived, hopefully they are nearly done.

There is one English mass at 9:00 on a Sunday morning, so I go through on the scooter. It is getting more difficult now as the temperature starts to drop.

The priest is quite funny. He is the one that sat Carla and I down to have our marriage counselling. It was just before the soccer world cup, so the only thing we talked about was soccer.

Sunday out and about

Last week Sunday, we were feeling rather lazy, but decided we should get out of the house and go for a ride on the scooter around Seoul. We decided to head for Songbokdong, an area on the northern side of the city, near the city hall and the "Blue House", which is the presidents residence.

As we started to get near City Hall, we noticed police everwhere and riot vehicles had blocked off most of the area. It turned out there was a major demonstration against the Korea- US Free Trade Agreement. The demonstration had not been approved so was illegal and they expected there could be some issues. This is actually the second time we have been caught in a demonstration around that area, the other time was with Carla's parents in March. It is not so good for us to be around the area when these happen, as we look like we are American, so it is qite possible that frustrations could be taken out on us. Nothing like this happened though, and we stayed away from the actual demonstration.

We then found an area with a lot of very nice restaurants leading up to a small mountain, so we found a spot for the bike and decided to climb the mountain. It really is nice with all the colour changes of the trees.

The hike up the mountain was really nice, except the battery of the camera died after 2 pictures and we were still at the bottom.

We are still surprised sometimes by how people find us "interesting". When we got to the top of the mountain, we sat down to enjoy the view overlooking Seoul. We then had a large group of Koreans come over to have their picture taken with us. They then offered us various biscuits and left. It was really nice.

We then had an easy walk down and went for coffee at Dunkin Doughnuts. Unfortunately it was terrible coffee, but nice to watch everyone go by.

Visa issues

At the beginning of the month, Carla received an sms from the government that her visa would expire at the end of November. There was a lot of confusion about who should renew it, as my work arranged the original visa's and then ECLC (Carla's school) had the visa changed to allow her to work while she was here.

After a week and a bit, nothing had happened about the visa, so Carla started asking what was happening. Eventually we found out that Carla still had a spousal dependant's visa that needed to be renewed by my work, but this had been adjusted to allow her to work.

It then turned out that Carla's work visa expired on the 13th (last Tuesday), so there was a sudden rush to ensure that everything was completed in time. Carla ended up having to go to the immigration office with one of my work colleagues and after this visa was extended, ECLC had to quickly renew the work visa.

Everything was sorted out though.

Maybe to give you some history, when Carla arrived in Seoul, we were not married, so the only way she was allowed to stay in the country was to come here as my "house keeper". We had to have contracts of employment and everything. Once we were married, this was then possible to change to a spousal visa, and then this was adjusted to allow Carla to work.

Old Bird Flying Tea Shop

Yesterday we went to Insadong and had tea in the Old Bird Flying Tea shop. This time we took a video of it.



The last time we were there was in March, check out our blog then for more info.

Golf Practice

I forgot to add, I did go to the "driving range" on Sunday before the game. The range was at the Seoul Club, on the 3rd floor.

Here is what it looks like. Not quite what I'm used too.

Golf

On Friday I was invited by Citibank to an "economic briefing and golf game". The "economic briefing" is more of legitimising the idea of taking a Friday off to go play golf. This is very different from South Africa, where if you are invited for a game of golf, nobody even gives it a second thought, it is a good place to discuss with suppliers, customers, colleagues etc. But here it is completely the opposite, golf is seen as very elitest, and normally can only be played if you are quite wealthy. The typical round of golf will cost between US$ 200 to US$300 for green fees. If you are taken for a game of golf, it can quite often be seen as a type of bribery, or in the case of pharmaceutical companies and doctors, as a form a rebate or discount.

Anyway, I went along for the game, which is only the second game of golf I have had since being in Korea (so currently averaging 1 game a year, no good my score...) and the last time I played was in Germany last year May, so that was 17 months ago.

The golf course was East Valley Country Club, which is apparently in the top 5 courses in Korea. I was considering buying a membership, but then at a fee of US$1.2 million I thought it was just out of my price range.

The course was really fantastic, it was in some mountains about and hour outside of Seoul. The mountains were beautiful, as all the trees are changing colours, the hills were an array of reds, yellows, oranges mixed with some green.

My game went a lot better than expected, except I was putting birdie 8 times, and only managed 3 pars, ...

After the game, the shower and the hot bath, we went for drinks and dinner. This is where it gets very different, and where the Relationship Managers in Korea really earn there money. I have mentioned sometime before about the requirement to drink in Korea, and when you drink, you are really required to drink until you fall over.

By the end of the evening, I think the only people that could stand properly were the foreigners. Most people could not string a sentence together, even in Korean. I really felt sorry for the Relationship Managers from Citibank, they are mainly ladies in their 30's, and have to drink with all the "macho" men who show off how strong they are by the amount they can drink. Then with everyone completely legless, the RM's have the men hanging all over them.

It all ended well, but I am sure that there were many headaches the next morning.

Oh, nearly forgot, as Korea's legal driving limit is 0.02, Citibank arranged drivers for everyone, so I was then shown to my driver, who drove me home, and then dissappeared into the night. This is a really nice convenience in Korea, if you have been out and had some wine, etc you are able to call a driver, they will come to you, drive your car home, and then dissappear into the night. It is also not very expensive, so is definitely worth it.