What Cold?

Being a week into January, I frequently hear people go on about 'How freaking cold it is'. Yes, it's a hard life out here - we reach lows of -7 Celsius (and sometimes get bitterly cold nights of -10). For the second time this week, we were even in the positive numbers. Suffice it to say, i'm really not complaining.

The first full-week of work since mid-December has been good. It's felt great to get back to a regular full-week routine - not that I didn't appreciate the time off, but between having a day with nothing to do or working, i'd much rather work. I'm one of those weirdos who likes their job, I s'pose. I'm also happy to report that i'm back to full health, so I can afford to venture a little further than my room.

Pictured at the top is the remnants of a meal from last Tuesday, when we had a birthday dinner. It's an awesome soup called Shabu Shabu, which is a pretty unique thing to eat. The soup cooks in front of you, while you're constantly adding things to it. The first part, you add thinly sliced meat. Once you're finished, and the servers decide you've eaten enough, they fill up the bowl again, and you dump in some noodles. Once you're full (and i've never seen 4 people eat all the noodles), they empty the bowl, and fry rice in it (with an egg). It's one of the meals i'll definitely miss when i'm gone. Korean food (especially Kimchi!) has really grown on me.

Tomorrow, i'm off to the immigration office to get a multi-entry Visa, which will let me re-enter Korea when I return from Hong Kong (which is now in under three weeks!). The original Visa I got in Canada was only a single-entry one - i'll have to pay about 50$ to get one that'll allow me to go in-and-out. I'm not too sure that i'll be leaving the country again, before August, but i'll take the chance - maybe it'll act as a motivator to book some more trips, in a few months.

Hope the first work/school week of '09 is going well! (Well, at least for those not dealing with that Strike. André Cornellier seems like a bit of a douchebag - good luck with that.)

Cheers.