Academies, sandwiches, wine, The Sandwich and Wine Academy

A few months ago I listed a few things I miss from home. Two more you could add to that: sandwiches and wine. Aside from Little Jakob's, which I've really gone off, sandwiches are scarce. They're sold here and there, but they taste weird, really weird. Wet, and regardless of their purported content, fishy. Making your own is fraught with hindrances too, given the lack of real bread in this country, as well as the fact that cheese is either processed or exorbitantly priced. Bread is the major concern though. No bread no sandwiches, and sandwiches, as everybody knows, are the best food in the world.

Wine. Wine, like cheese, is way overpriced - consider that you can get enough soju to send you to hospital for under a tenner, wine doesn't have much a market here. I had my first bottle a couple of weeks ago. The cheapest bottle in the supermarket was six quid and it was a struggle to get through it. Nasty.

Academies. Academies or hagwons are where parents send their offspring when school isn't happening. That means any time from 3pm or so til well, dawn. Well, maybe not, but on weeknights there are buses outside my window at 1am picking up middle/high school kids. There's probably stuff going on til later. Academies cater for any subject you can think of. Around here there are billions of English academies but my kids have told me about their various other extracurricular work, ranging from the normal: maths, science, Korean, to the artistic: piano, guitar, painting, to the leftfield: robots, DJing, lego. That's right. Lego. It's just down the street.

So, considering all this, imagine my intrigue when last November travelling in the schoolbus on a field trip I saw a neon sign flash by for.. wait for it.. a Sandwich and Wine Academy. I've spent the last five months searching for it. I was convinced I'd dreamt it. Then, last week as I was coming home on my bike, I spotted it. Sadly though it wasn't a hagwon, it was just a restaurant. But hey, potentially the greatest restaurant ever! 

Today Chris and I biked down to Hyewha and had a sandwich and a glass of red wine and it was lovely. Real bread, real wine, and some bacon. Cheap too. Fantastic.

I'm cycled somewhere in the vicinity of 80km this weekend. I'm insane. I'm also exhausted. Bed.

Snow

Following my assertion last Thursday that summer had arrived in Seoul, I should've known that meteorology would have taken note and gone out of its way to prove me wrong. Saturday was beautiful, 20+ degrees - I biked to a teacher training course in Jongno in just a t-shirt - and Sunday was passable. As I'm typing though, Tuesday evening, 5.30, it's fucking snowing. Snowing!

Stupid country.

Exercise

The only exercise I got in my first seven months here was walking up and down the copious steps all over the place and occasionally jumping around like an idiot trying to entertain 5 year olds. My diet was such that I didn't become all fat and that, but I wasn't feeling particularly great.

That's starting to change. I started going on long exploratory walks when the weather was clement. Then I noticed the big chunk of mountain right next to where I live and discovered hiking. Last weekend I bought a bike, and Seoul got a bit smaller. Tonight I'm going to cycle the few miles to Hyehwa and back. Granted we're going there for a curry, but still, I'm exercising! Plus I'll save a few thousand won in taxi fare.

Summer appears to be back, too - just as it happened in the autumn, the weather changed overnight. We went from freezing - it was insanely cold at the weekend - to 20 degrees this week. I went to work in just a shirt today. This is welcome news after the bleakest winter ever. Very welcome.