Weekly email - Brrr

A happy new year to everyone. We've had a great Christmas and New Year's here in Korea.

The pic of the week shows Namsam, meaning the south mountain. The N Seoul tower is on top, which is where we went to the revolving restaurant. If you turn right at the green roadsign you're almost at the apartment.

Christmas
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We had 8 people for dinner, from Ireland, Scotland, South Africa and Korea. Clara went the whole hog with a full turkey dinner with all the trimmings. Like most Korean apartments we don't have an oven, so we had to cook it on Christmas Eve in Joan and Stephanie's, and I had to carry it home in a rucksack on my back. We tried to get ham, but they don't have it here. A fact we didn't realise until we put it in the pot and we realised it was pork. It was a good day, and we finished up in the Irish bar down in Itaewon.

New Year
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Both Clara and Norah decided to stay in on New Year's Eve, but I decided to head in to meet friends in Itaewon. We had a great night, went to several bars, and ended up at a house party. Well, two of us ended up where there was to be a house party, but everybody else had sensibly gone home. I arrived home about 9am.

It's Cold
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The weather gets quite cold these days. It's minus one as I write, but it's been down to minus 13. It's a dry cold, and you're fine once you wrap up before heading out. It's difficult to get things to dry on the line because they freeze into boards as you're putting them up. The other day I washed my trainers and put them out to dry. When I was going out on Saturday night I went to put them on, and realised that they had frozen solid, encased in ice. I nearly broke the tongue trying to get them on. They're the only shoes I have (apart from flip flops, and I wasn't going to wear those!) so I went out effectively wearing two lumps of ice. At least they thawed fairly quickly.
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Well, that's it for this week. The application process has started again, and I'm ready to buy another job lot of envelopes!

Until next week,

Annyeonghi kaseyo,

Éamon

Today's headline in The Korea Times: Seoul-Incheon Canal Construction to Start in March