I've definitely settled in now.

I've been here over two months now, and wowee it goes fast soemtimes. Although at other times it kind of feels like the batteries on the Earth's clock are losing power and times is ticking slower.

My Korean is coming along. I've been learning the alphabet and I can almost read the signs on stores and labels. Well, I can slowly work out how they would be pronounced. My "Hello" and "Goodbye" (same word - ahnyonghaseyo) has been perfected to a t, and my "Thank you", is also good. They don't seem to use thank you here very much though, it seems to be reserved for special occasions when they really mean it. So everytime I leave a shop and say thank you they find it mildly odd, instead they always say goodbye. I'm trying to adjust my manners.

I think, given a few more months, I'll be able to read words a lot faster, which will be good for trying to work out what film or program is going to be on telly next. I forked out 30 quid for Sky, as just having that one US military channel was driving me nuts, so I get some good movie channels now. Woo-hoo.

I'm getting quite into Korean food here. I don't eat in Korean restaurants much, as the language barrier is still a bit of a problem in such a small town as mine, but I eat Korean food at school everyday. You get a bowl of rice and a bowl of some kind of soup, and then you sit at a round table with lots of additional dishes in the middle. You then pick from the bowls bit by bit as you work your way though the rice and soup. My chopstick skills have come in extremely useful and everyone at school seemed very impressed that I could use them when I first came. And some of you mocked me! All those years of cooking stirfry's and eating them with chopsticks at home have really paid off.

The food is good. The main thing they love here is called gimchi (or kimchi, depending on how they choose to spell it). It's a vegetable of some sort, mostly chinese leaf cabbage, that has been soaked in a red pepper spicy concoction. It sort of pickles it, but in a very spicy way, and they spend early November making loads of this stuff so that it lasts them through the barren winter. The spices here are definitely hot, but I like them. Unlike spices from places like India, which hit the back of your mouth and your throat, Korean spices hit the top of your mouth and your nose. This seems to suit me better than Indian spice, and I can manage most food, even when my colleagues warn me that it's hot (another way to impress them). Korean cooking also includes tofu, green vegetables and, unsurpringly for a country that is 70% surrounded by the sea, lots of fish. I still steer clear of big fish, as big bones freak me out somewhat, but the little dried ones aren't too bad. Good for the brain.

So I'm learning the language, I'm liking the food, and I'm getting used to the manners. I think it's fair to say I've settled in.