I woke up this morning feeling distinctly disgruntled. I went to bed early last night, partly because I was exhausted but mostly because I’m trying desperately to get my body to catch up with the time-zone. I really was tired and fell straight to sleep, only to wake up at midnight and lie awake for hours and hours. Also I was hungry. When I did the maths, it would have been around 5pm in South Africa – just the time of day I always get hungry. I realise this is odd – it seems to stem from Res days when dinner used to start at 5pm or something. I don’t know. What I do know is that waking up at midnight and lying awake for hours is not conducive to a good nights sleep. I haven’t started working yet (and it’s Sunday) so I could probably have caught up on those hours after my alarm went off this morning, but I’m now on a mission to convince my body that morning really is morning (and not the middle of the night). I wish there was some tablet you could take that would just ruk’t reg. I realise, with a deep sigh, that this isn’t going to happen. I’m just going to have to force myself to do things like eat at the right time and hope my stupid body eventually catches up.

As a result of the disgruntled-ness, I was restless all morning. Possibly also as a result of spending most of the last four days in my flat and not doing very much. I have been able to chat to one or two of my friends, who are now much closer in terms of time-zone. But a lot of the people I would normally talk to when frustrated and bored are 7-hours behind and not that keen to wake up at 6am and have conversations because I am bored. Also they are now variously at Fest and Nationals. And then I had a flash of inspiration: Johnny Clegg. It is almost impossible to be irritable and restless and unhappy with the world when you have Johnny Clegg filling the house. So I’ve spent the last hour or so with Johnny Clegg, followed by Freshly Ground, ringing through my flat, while I did domestic things like washing up and putting away clean clothes and now feel much happier with life. And a little bit of Mango Groove thrown in for good measure, because, after all, who can resist those penny-whistles?

One of the reasons I was so tired last night was that I went for a long walk around my neighbourhood yesterday. When I first left home to go to varsity (now approaching many years ago) I discovered that one of the best ways to turn an unfamiliar place into home is just to walk around. The area where I live in Daegu (and seemingly most of the city) is fairly built up. By this I mean that there are clusters of sky-scraper apartments everywhere. It’s also surrounded by mountains so the mountains and the skyscrapers battle for dominance of the view from ground level. This is the first time I’ve ventured out for long enough to see much of the area. And it’s fascinating. Just down the road – a marvellous discovery I intend to explore fully as soon as I’m a bit more settled – is an Italian restaurant and ‘Wine House’, with – so it says outside – wines from a variety of countries, including France, Australia, Spain, Italy and – yay – South Africa. Which will perhaps be an even better cure for homesickness than the KFC which is just a little further down the road.

I also discovered a wonderful world of other things. There is a park down the road, for example, with the most incredible jungle-gyms in the world. Seriously amazing castles with slides and bars and huge noughts and crosses games. This is apart from the ordinary swings and slides. Given the number of people who must live in the area – with all the high-rise blocks of flats clustered together, and the lack of open spaces, I suppose these are the only places that kids really have to play. As glad as I am that I grew up in a country with wide open spaces and lots of freedom to play anywhere, I’m still a little jealous that we never had jungle gyms like these.

Little children don’t play in the streets here – the driving is notoriously dangerous – but there were plenty of them walking by themselves or in small groups, obviously off to a park or school-yard to play with friends. Or perhaps an English or music lesson somewhere. Several of the shops I walked past had pictures of pianos and violins and music notes on the outside and I wondered what they were until I walked past one which said in English ‘piano lessons’. The mind boggles a little at a place where music teachers are in such demand that they can afford studios on the very busy (with shops and people, not just cars) streets.

The street sides are literally littered with store-fronts, here. Anything from banks and internet cafés to vegetable shops, bakeries like Paris Baguette (apparently bread is a French invention) and little places with improbably European names like ‘My place Rest & Cafe’ (meaning, I assume Restaurant and Café). I also walked past a driving range (and down the road ‘Hole in One Rest & Cafe’). There are little supermarket-lets and take-aways and ice-cream parlours (with pictures of penguins!) everywhere. And little clothes shops that look just the same as what, at home, have become known as ‘China shops’ after one that opened in Stutt called something like ‘China Shop #99’. If I ever need to get my hair cut – and am willing to trust a Korean hairdresser – I should have no problem, there are salons everywhere,too, with what must be the Korean version of American pop music spilling from their doorways. I walked past several DIY shops (that said Do It Yourself), and through the open door of one of which I could see someone working on the most beautiful wooden coffee table. Garden equipment shops spilling onto the pavement, too, with unattended hoses and watering cans. And despite the plethora of vegetable shops and little take away places, you also have to be careful when walking along the pavements not to trip over people selling vegetables on the pavement, the kind of take-away wagons you find at Fest and street-stalls with more of the kind of clothes found at China Shop #99. I even came across someone selling fish on the side of the road – a slight upgrade from the Mozambique style because she had all her fish neatly laid out in plastic boxes with ice and transparent lids. Probably also not as fresh as Mozambique given that I’m pretty sure we’re not at the coast.

I have been warned that Korean drivers are, basically, crazy, so was very careful to cross only at designated crossings (with local people) and the appropriate traffic lights, and to wait for the lights to be green for me, even if there were no cars coming. Watching the driving, however, I think this has been somewhat overstated. I can fully understand why someone coming from a well-ordered European or American city might find the drivers a little intimidating but I think the South African taxi drivers, even those from a small town, are probably more crazy, and anyone from Joburg – provided they could navigate driving on the wrong side of the road – would probably handle this traffic fine. I do think, however, that it might be a good idea for a country that has crazy drivers and a high death-rate from traffic accidents not to put TV screens in all their car dashboards as a matter of course. Just a thought.

At one point I was walking up a wide, busy road when I came around a corner and suddenly had a perfect view of a mountain. Having spent a lot of time in Cape Town and a fair number of years in a town that is know for it’s forestry industry, there is something secure and welcoming about huge green hills covered in dark green trees. It made me smile. I happened to be walking past a café (Rest & Cafe?) at the time and one of the ladies sitting outside must have noticed my sudden joy and smiled broadly at me. I smiled back. I think she was amused but that’s okay – I’m perfectly happy to be the object of amusement if it means I get to see so many lovely new things.

In my meanderings, I also noticed a couple of churches. Churches are built differently where-ever you go but this was a new one on me. I suppose because of the space constraints when you’re trying to fit 2.5 million people into a limited area, pretty much all buildings are square. The churches, however, clearly feel that they need to have spires. So they put tall spires on top of their square, office-style buildings. Definitely different. There is one just behind my building. I could even hear the morning service singing to familiar tunes this morning. I know, from my reading, that this isn’t true of all churches in the city and definitely plan to go and find some of the prettier ones once I’m a little bit more settled.

One of the last things I did on my walk around the area was to pop into one of the markets, just down some steps into the shop, just lower than the road, and pick up some bits and pieces – in this case some coke and some beer (just because I had to try some local beer). It’s the first time I’ve been into a Korean shop alone but, as expected, not at all difficult. The beer says it is beer (it also says ‘cool refreshing and brisk taste with a twist of lemon’, but that’s a whole other story), everything is marked with numbers I recognise and the tills work just the same as anywhere else. And the shopkeeper – although he clearly couldn’t speak a word of English – was courteous and friendly and smiled a lot.

It’s amazing how people will respond to a simple smile. On the way home – after getting ever so slightly lost – I was walking along the same road as and towards an older lady (perhaps one of the famous Korean Grannies – think super-Gogo) who looked me up and down and scowled somewhat, even though I was perfectly respectably dressed and not doing anything to give her any reason to scowl. Until she caught my eye and I nodded and smiled. At which point her face broke into the most stunning grin.

It was something of a whimsical walk and will, I’m sure, be followed by many more, probably slightly more purposeful, exploring expeditions. But for now I am just, as a friend pointed out, hyper-aware of everything and am revelling in the sheer joy of the newness and differentness of everything I see.