Little differences

An interesting little difference I encountered so far is the counting. The girls in my office were curious about my age and after I told them, I asked them about their age (this is not impolite in Korea, since age is a necessary information to judge the status of a person here, as far as I understand). Anyhow the response was: "My Korean age is..." Reason being, that upon birth your age is one in Korea. So a 28-year-old Korean is 27 according to European counting. Similarly, the ground floor of buildings is the 1st floor. So while my office would be on the 3rd floor in Europe, it's on the 4th here.
Finally, I am currently drinking a "Japanese apricot" juice - quite tasty as a matter of fact. Since I couldn't read what it was, my office mates used the Korean version of Google to figure out the English name and played a sound file reading it out loud. That's what I call service :-)
All in all the workdays start early, end late and are pretty exhausting. Once back in Nok-Du (or so, i.e.: my part of town), I usually meet Joahnnes for a beer in one of infinitely many seeming bars to share the latest news of the day. Two of the pictures show Nok-Du, once around 7 p.m. and once when it's dark. One can say that Koreans like flashy signs, that's for sure... And no, it is not a very exceptional quarter.
The last picture is of a probably artificial, but very nice, litte pond on campus. I decided to go nearby for some suntanning after lunch, but alas another European decided to interrupt my plans. He was actually really nice and I figured this might be a good thing, but he turned out to be one of Jehova's witnesses. Already my second encounter with 'missionaries' here. Last time a Korean woman invited me to her Christian church on the bus. Wonder why they are all so interested in Europeans. Anyhow, the relaxing pretty much turned into taking a picture and then going back to work. Tomorrow five German DAAD students will arrive here to stay for 7 months. Can't wait to see their reaction to the "cultural shock", which is certainly more substantial than when travelling inside Europe :-)