1st official day as an Ansanite

When we got ourselves settled in last night, we took a wander around the local area, looking for somewhere to eat. We ended up in something a little more familiar to us Europeans, a chicken and pizza place. We were sat down into a booth slightly away from the locals. Not sure if they wanted us out of the way, but we went with the flow. We quickly became aware of a plume of smoke coming over the booth wall separating us from the next one. It's quite easy to forget how clean the restaurants and bars are back in the UK being smoke free. We were handed a menu card, all in Korean – duh, but some pretty pictures pointed us in the direction of a pepperoni with stuffed crust. The meal was quite tasty, again accompanied with the Kimchi side dishes. We also tried the local hooch, called Soju, which is a 20% spirit fermented from rice. Tasty, once you get over the initial sweet vodka-like taste and usually served as shots.
We paid our bill, which came to something like 12 GBP in total, which was about half f what we could have expected to pay back in Blighty. We headed back to the hotel, when we heard a scooter scream up and pull in beside us. We thought we were about to get mugged! The guy on the scooter offered out his hand and gave me my newly acquired mobile phone – I had only gone and left it on the table! If that was back home, I could have said bye bye to the phone.

Saturday started out with a bit of confusion: I got a call from reception last night after coming back from the pizza place, telling me that I was going to be met in reception at 8:00am to go to a meeting at the plant. I got ready and made my way down. At 8:15, I knew something wasn't quite right, so called the CEO to ask if I was going to be picked up. There was no meeting, no pick-up and no-one any the wiser. It turns out that we foreigners all look the same to Koreans and the receptionist had me confused with another Westerner businessman Oh well, I went back to the room, and we both went for breakfast!

One thing on the menu was Spam fritters! Spam for goodness sake, but it turns out to be a luxury item over here. They have a festival that is not dissimilar to thanksgiving in the US around October, and the giving of gifts is usual practice. Tins of Spam nicely wrapped up with pretty bows and paper is considered highly prized!

After breakfast, we got our warm clothes on and went out for a walk. It was -2 Celsius outside. Bearing in mind it was about 10:00am, we we very surprised to see that there were no shops at all. It turns out they usually open at about 11:00 each day, but stay open til late. We need to bear this in mind for future shopping. We headed back to the hotel suitably frozen.

We got a call from the Ops Director, who is Canadian, and the only other Westerner in the plant besides me, who asked if we would like to have a tour round the city. He would come and meet us at around 12:00. Our first port of call was Lottemart and Tesco. These are the grocery stores where we can get just about anything we are used to plus some. The local kids in the store were keen to shout at us, and asking our names, and how were we? We replied we were good, and they seem to love this. We are the entertainment here.

We were invited to join the OD and his wife for dinner that night at his apartment, which we have found out is the block opposite from our new place. The apartment is identical to ours, so gave us some idea of size, and what furniture will fit where. We are going shopping on Sunday for sure! We had a good night with them leaving after 12, having talked about everything, anything and also shop. You get a general feel for someone in the first few minutes of meeting them, and we think we will become good friends over the coming months.