Adventures at the Immigration Office

So I’m sitting in this quiet, internet-less apartment while Babehoney is off at her first day of work. I met my co-teacher this morning at Dongchon station, clear on the other side of Daegu to register for my Alien Registration Card. It was about a 35 minute ride on the subway from Daegok to Dongchon. My school is going to have two native speaking English teachers, and the other is from Ireland. We met outside of our apartments this morning and walked down to the station for the ride. For some reason traveling in groups seems a bit more comfortable. It’s not like you’re going to be able to hold off a horde of Koreans (not that you would need to) with just a couple of dudes, but it’s easier to ask for directions, find your way around, or not feel so dumb about being lost when there’s another English speaker that looks a bit different than everyone else with you.

Registering for the Alien Registration Card was quick and easy, hopefully I’ll have mine back in 7-10 days as everyone but the Immigration office said it would be, but they warned that it would be more like 3 weeks. I stopped by the back side of the coffee shop on the corner on the way home to try a couple of Skype calls and then went up to Babehoney’s apartment for lunch. We’ve been mostly living out of that apartment, but I guess there’s still plenty of “checking on things” to be done, because someone from her school showed up as I was eating my curry noodles to check on something by the washing machine. After they left I decided it’d be best if I used this time to clean up my apartment a bit to make it at least appear that someone lives here, and if Babehoney doesn’t get a chance to get down to the Immigration office it might be easier if we just set up our internet access here so that we can get going on getting back to normal. My apartment didn’t come equipped with a television or air conditioner as the contract stated it should, and when I brought it up to my co-teacher she said they were already in the process of fixing those things. I was hoping she’d say “wouldn’t you like to just move in with your girlfriend and get paid 400,000W a month extra?” But that didn’t happen. The conversation happened in such a way that I couldn’t suggest it either. We really can’t complain though. We basically have a floor of the building minus one apartment to ourselves. That makes a total of 2 bedrooms (3 if we use the living room in my apartment), 2 bathrooms, and 2 kitchens to work with. Way better than we could have ever hoped for.

I guess now would be a good time to tell you about dinner last night as well. The Irishman, Babehoney, and I had planned to go out for bibimbap, but the place Babehoney had been before wasn’t open on Sunday, and the place that the other native English speaker from her school knew of had closed down. So we were looking for something close by. The Irishman suggested we try the place right next to our building, so we did. It was kind of funny, I guess not many westerners eat there, because we were suddenly the center of attention. We ordered 300 grams of Kalbi (marinated beef short ribs omg(ood)!), a coke, and then watched as two different kinds of soup, a plate of raw kalbi, and a huge helping of onions, zucchini, mung bean sprouts, and lettuce appeared at the table. We stuffed ourselves pretty well (while amusing the onlooking Korean families out for Sunday night dinner) and then  reached for the bill. The total for this feast was 17,500W. That’s about $15.75 in US Dollars. For three people. We had a huge meal for $5.25 each. This is utter craziness. The best part is that it was good too. I noticed a conspicuous absence of kimchi at the meal, and I’m not certain if that’s because we’re westerners and they thought we wouldn’t like or appreciate it, or if it just isn’t actually served with every meal in Korea. I like kimchi well enough, but I certainly didn’t mind not having it at the table last night ;).

Now that I’ve enthralled you with today’s adventure to the Immigration Office and last night’s supper I think I’ll cut this blog post here. While you’re doubtlessly shrieking  “No! Don’t stop here! (yeah, right),” I’m hoping that Babehoney is going to be home in a few minutes. We need to make a trip up to the EMart to get an iron for our clothes (which somehow moved to the living room of her apartment from the laundry room, meaning someone else has been in there today), and to make sure we have some foodstuffs in the house for tomorrow. Tomorrow is a national holiday in Korea, and we’re not certain what’s going to be open or closed, so we’re going to play it safe and stock up on stuff today.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll write the blog I’ve been thinking I need to write about Korean candies.

That’s all for now, annyeong-hi-gyeseyeo!