Today I finally happened across the foreigner area, totally by accident. Ran some errands, had a delicious bibimbap lunch, spoke some basic Korean and was understood. Oddly, none of the Koreans outside my school have evinced the slightest bit of surprise at hearing my Korean. I suppose there must be enough soldiers who try to study the language a bit. I picked up a phone (far from a level one quest in Korea) and some trash bags (another quest you'd think would be level one... but Korean trash is right up there with Canadian in terms of necessity of sorting various recyclables. I still don't know how to actually throw out my trash here. There's a box which, it turns out, is only for clothing, and a note in Korean downstairs which I hoped would clear things up but which only exhorted us to throw out our trash beautifully (direct translation there) and then something about parking which I didn't bother to read carefully.

Korea played its first World Cup match tonight and, just as the last time I was here, I could follow the match simply by listening to the noises from neighbouring apartments. There were fireworks for ten minutes after Korea's win.

I will perhaps try to document Songtan a bit more in later entries, but for now, here are two things that amused me: