HAPPY NEW YEAR

JUST a short post ahead of the weekend (and inevitably going back to work) to wish everyone a Happy New Year.

It was strange not being back at home surrounding by my friends over both New Year and Christmas but the three of us (Charlie, Kevin and myself) kept ourselves entertained whilst everyone back in our respective countries probably partied a little too hard!

I know most people are usually pleased to see the back of an old year, 2009 was actually a throughly enjoyable year for me. What is more frightening is that a whole ten years have passed between yesterday at midnight, and the celebrations which welcomed in the new millenium in 1999. Wow..... So many things have happened.

Of course I would never have been able to predict back then exactly where I would be today, and I'm pretty sure if you went back into the future and told yourself what you'd be doing, you'd probably greet your future self with alot of laughter....

Even though I had intentions to make a change at the beginning of last year, I would have never predicted that in the space of twelve months I would be living on the other side of the world.

I look forward such unpredictable (or a good nature) in 2010, and whether your like me, in being delighted with the way that 2009 worked out, or exactly the opposite, I wish you the best of luck for 2010!

Ben x

“An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves.”
Bill Vaughn

Korean Folk Village....Winter Style

AFTER a brief hiatus to head back to work for one day (Monday) we were back into some much needed vacation time.

With Christmas behind us we now have the week off from work which covers us for New Year and means we don't have to be back until Tuesday next week. Unlike the summer vaction, we have decided to stay around Suwon for our time off so yesterday we decided to keep ourselves busy by heading to the Korean Folk Village which is located just south of Suwon.

When my mum and Aimie came to Korea they both visited the folk village for the afternoon to see what it was all about, but I'm pretty sure that my experiences will be totally different to theirs, thanks to the varying climate.
The snow which made it's way here on Sunday is still around and due to the cold weather the Folk Village had a few different things going on.

The Folk Village itself, to explain it's function, is basically like an outdoor museum. It has a section filled with Korea's take on world history, a small amusement park for kids and then it has an old fashioned Korean village set up where people live and work just as if they were still living life in old Korean times. It's filled with several old style houses, mock ups of farm and other such work places which are designed to give a feel of how far Korea has come since it's development into a first world country.

Not that I am an expert on such things, my Korean history is probably about as good as my English history, but their seemed to be an extremely authentic feel to the village with the people living and working there dressed in traditional clothes and not blessed with any of the modern facilities which Korean's are lucky enough to be blessed with today.

Before going there, thats what I thought the folk village was all about.... but it turns out it isn't!
We met Anna at Suwon Station at 11.10am so that we could catch the free shuttle bus from there to the village and after a twenty minute drive along some very unfamiliar roads we made it there. At the opening part of the village their are some old style Korean houses which you can look in and as you start going further in there are some interesting exhibits and also examples of Korean art.

Thanks to the fact that we all had drinks and food, we weren't able to head into the 'world heritage' folk part of the village so we instead went towards the amusement park to spend some time. Despite it being close to freezing outside we were determined to enjoy ourselves so we braved the cold to ride the pirate ship (not as scary as the Talkster Haloween one!) also also take a couple of rides on the bumper cars. Me and Charlie rode some ride which looked deceptively like a waltzer but after three minutes of spinning around forwards, and then the same amount of time going backwards, it was fair to say we'd had our fill of amusement park-ness for the time being.

We carried on through the sculpture park part of the village before arriving at the special winter 'Sledding Hill' which had been created thanks to the snow which had landed in Suwon earlier on in the week. Unwilling to get himself too cold and wet Charlie decided to sit sledding out but Kevin, Anna and I were eager to find out exactly how dry we could attempt to stay! After a couple of runs up and down the hill, it was fair to say that I had definately got enough snow down my trousers for one outing so we decided to move on.

Back the way we came through the amusement park we headed towards the village itself, but not before finding a lake which was nicely frozen over and which had been set up with several Korean games on there. These were the traditional 'spinning top' game (as seen at the palace I'd visited in the summer) as well as a rather novel take on ice skating which basically involved a couple of skate blades being attached to a piece of wood. The way to get yourself around was to use a pair or small pick-axe looking devices for leverage but as Charlie discovered, these didn't work too well in the thick snow which surrounded the frozen water.

After the lake started to get over crowded with excitable school children we headed to the actual village itself to look around. It was intereting to see what had been made out of the old houses but soon it became way too cold for us to be spending time standing still so we headed for warmer climbs in the form of a restaurant.

Following our dinner we hit a couple of souveneir shops where Charlie purchased some gifts and me and Kevin tried to avoid being hwranged into buying things by a rather pushy bunch of sales people.
We got the bus home at 4.30pm and headed back to our houses after an enjoyable day out. I'm glad that I was able to see the folk village in the winter, I think I probably would have enjoyed the experience in hotter temperatures but the fact that there was sledding set up and a Korean version of ice skating made the experience even more enjoyable.

There's a bunch of pictures like the ones on this blog on my photo gallery website and there's also some entertaining videos on photobucket of our attempts to ice skate and sled if you're interested in taking a look.

For the time being take care

Ben xxxx

“Positive or negative energy is exchanged like a fair trade, the more you give, the more you receive."

Master Jin

A Surreal South Korean Christmas.....

FIRSTLY, Merry Christmas to one and all reading the latest entry in my blog.

I hope that you all had a teriffic day yesterday, and although Christmas Day is over I'm sure there is plenty of celebrating left to be done as most people aren't poor unfortunate souls like me who have to head back to work on Monday!

I think I've mentioned once or twice about the difficulties of spending Christmas in Korea this year. I've never been a big one for celebrating Christmas my doing anything spectacular, partly because I have a small family and also because most of what little family I do have live on the opposite side of the world, or down at the other end of the country. Makes things kinda difficult.....

But this year I guess I am truely appreciative of what little celebrating we usually do as not only did it feel strange waking up on Christmas morning in an unfamiliar bed in my box of a room, but it also didn't truely feel like Christmas because back home in England it was still 1am in the morning!
My body decided that it didn't want to let me have too much of a lie in yesterday morning, so I spent most of it watching a DVD before getting a call from Charlie (who had headed to church in Seoul) to see if I wanted to meet up for lunch.

I was curious as to what exactly a typical South Korean Christmas Day was so heading outside I met by the seeming ordinaryness of just another working day for most people. I realise that about 25% of people in Korea are religious but my family isn't terribly religious yet they still observe Christmas a holiday and a time to be with your family. As mentioned previously, most Koreans don't seem to bothered about the whole thing and I discovered this when asking my kids what they had planned for Christmas Day.
Walking to the bus stop just up the road from my house I soon discovered that it wasn't infact Christmas Day, well not really, it was more like Friday December 25th, same as any ordinary day!

I had a theory that most of the small shops and stuff around me would be closed as they are run by families and perhaps some of the larger business might well be open for a short time. But as I discovered it was business as usual for just about EVERYTHING. Busses were running normally, there were plenty of taxis around to be able to catch and even the two convenience stores which bookend the top and bottom of the road where I live were open for business. It was bizzare.

I met Charlie in Suwon station which by this point was crammed with people, as it would be on any other friday, and we decided to head to a restaurant called Rebis. It's a glamorous looking place on the outside and we always see tons of people eating in there, so it turned out, we actually managed to pick something cheap of the menu and avoid it being ridiculously expensive, as we first feared.
I had a traditionally Christmas spaghetti bolognaise, whilst Charlie had a chicken and rice dish which is exactly what Jesus would have wanted us to eat on his birthday....

Out of the house and with very little to go back for the pair of us hung around the AK Plaza for a little while, spending sometime to see if there was anything on at the cinema before heading into the arcade downstairs. It's a really wierd situation as obviously back home I am used to everything being closed up but here it seems as if everyone in Suwon had come out of their house and headed to the shopping mall to spend the afternoon there doing one thing or another!

We headed home on the bus at about 2.30pm and Charlie decided to take a nap whilst I sat and watched TV and played on the computer for a bit (that seems to be the only thing in line with a 'western' Christmas Day) and then the three of us hug out in Charlie's room for the rest of the afternoon chatting and playing PS3 before it came time to get some dinner.

Going back to Suwon Station we decided to splash out on an expensive hamburger for dinner at Kraze Burger and even that place was unusually packed for a Friday evening. When we headed home I was actually able to get in touch with a few people from home which was nice and it made it feel a bit more like Christmas!
Hans came round to see us later on and the four of us played a couple of games of 'Yut Nori' or as Charlie refers to it 'Pick 'em Up Sticks' before it got a little late and I decided to get myself to bed.

All in all it was an extremely surreal Christmas Day and whilst it wasn't the most fun I have ever had on Decemeber 25th, it wasn't as depressing as I expected it to be. It's tough to be so far away from my family of course, but I survived and I'm sure that when I come back in April I can make up for missing out on things like that by catching up with all the people who I would have liked to have spent the actual day with.

Hope you all had an excellent one and I will report back soon on more Christmas activities! Merry Christmas

Ben x

“One of the nice things about Christmas is that you can make people forget the past with a present”
Anon

The Countdown to Christmas....

MORE in an effort to make it feel like Christmas and post a few of my pictures than a good reason to write a blog I thought I would post a quick message out to accomplish both goals!

This week was a shortened one at Talkster as with Friday being Christmas Day we only had four teaching days to go through before having the 25th off to celebrate Christmas. Throughout the week less and less kids have been in class with many of them either taking a holiday over the period of Christmas or going off to spend time with family in a different part of the country over the festive period.

Towards the end of the week, paticularily in my kindergarten classes I was teaching about Christmas and only then did it become apparent that quite alot of Korean's really don't celebrate at all. I know that around 25% of the country is religious in anyway but my family isn't paticularily relgious and we still celebrate Christmas, I guess it isn't really that way over here and upon recieving some very un-inventive responses from my kids when I posed questions about what presents they'd like or what they spend the day doing, it became quite obvious that they will probably just be spending the day doing very little like myself!

Seems like we didn't quite pull the trigger quick enough on wanting to go skiing, partly because the date of our break changed, but after getting Hans to search for us throughout the week, he came up empty with almost every ski resort in the entire country having no accomodation space for the three of us. C'est la vie anyway.

Today was the last day of school before Christmas so in the morning my kids had performed the singing and dance routienes that they had been practising for the last couple of months. I managed, with the help of some visual aids, to teach the kids to play 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' on a set of handbells so that was first to be performed, followed by a rendition of 'Jingle Bell's (the first verse of it anyway.)

The kids then did some dancing to show off their choreography skills (remember the story about the nightclub and how they like to dance in lines?) and the performed the two Christmassy numbers that are the 'Chicken Dance' and the 'YMCA'. Although not many of them are smiling in the pictures, the seemed to enjoy it. After this we sung Jingle Bells one more time to 'summon' Santa. And then each once of the kids got a present and their picture taken sitting on Santa Clause' knee.

After that we had some pictures taken, and I gave them some presents of my own and then they were allowed to go home as their parents were present. I had four classes yesterday afternoon and then I wish finished for the weekend and when Charlie and Kevin were done we headed to the usual galbi restaurant for a traditional Christmas dinner of 'Wan Galbi' and 'Mondu Dumplings'.

Charlie was getting up to head to church yesterday morning so we didn't stick around for too long and as none of us fancied going to the bar I spent the rest of the evening just watching dvds before my body decided it was time to sleep.

So I guess it's Christmas Day tomorrow..... Seems very surreal indead. I don't think there's any snow planned for Korea, but that's about the only thing that would make it seem Christmassy in anyway at all.

Anyway, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and I will be documenting exactly what I get up to tomorrow so you can hear exactly how Christmas is for 'Koreans'!

Enjoy

Ben

“Christmas gift suggestions:
To your enemy, forgiveness.
To an opponent, tolerance.
To a friend, your heart.
To a customer, service.
To all, charity.
To every child, a good example.
To yourself, respect.”

Oren Arnold

Bargin Shopping in Bulk, Some Time Spent on Pandora and Korean's Prove That Basketball Isn't Really Their Thing.....

....WITH just a couple of days to go before the start of our Christmas vacation, what better way to spend the last weekend before the holidays with a fun packed weekend!

That's what we figured anyway, and after two or three weekends of not really having much to write about, suddenley I have way more to document than I am likely to remember.

I've been enjoying the scenes from back home as for the second year in a row, snow appears to be causing complete chaos in England. Last year was kinda understandable as it hadn't snowed in a long time, but should 5 inches of snow really make the whole country grind to a shuddering hault?

I find it pretty typical that after missing out on the hottest summer on record since the 1940's, I am now missing out on the snowy times back home and what looks set to be the first white Christmas in a long time.
Over in Korea I am having my own issues with the weather, as even a trip to the shop at the corner of my street less than 100m away requires a coat to be worn! Since Tuesday there has been a horrible icy wind blowing in and I'm pretty impressed that aside from a brief flurry yesterday evening, it's hardly snowed a bit.

Deciding to give 'late friday night, early saturday morning' a miss this week, I decided to sit the usual visit to the bar for free french fries and tortilla chips out this week and stay in to watch a DVD instead. Turned out to be a wise idea as I watched the very entertaining 'The Hangover' and enjoyed every second of it before getting some much needed sleep!

On saturday waiting for Charlie, who did go to the bar, to get up, I decided to try and make a bit of progress with the ski trip that we are hoping to make next week, sadly to little avail. Despite being advetised as having an 'English speaking service' the two places I called up didn't speak a word of the lingo so I was left to contemplate the fact that Christmas might actually be spent in my room on Friday (not a prospect I am looking forward to if it comes down to it)

Once Charlie was up we decided to make a trip to Costco in Seoul as both he and Kevin wanted to get some food, and me eager to get out of the house, thought I would go along for the ride. Once we worked out exactly where Costco in Seoul was we caught the train there and then began wondering around the surrounding area to see if it would pop up out of the landscape without too much trouble. Sadly, as is so often with stories about our trips out, it didn't quite work out like that and asking four or five different people from directions was about as useful as a chocolate tea kettle when it became apparent that all of them were pointing us in different directions, and not a single one seemed to know the actual location.

In the end we decided to bite the bullet and get a cab there. As it turned out, four of the five had pointed us in the wrong direction, and even the fifth person had got us taking a ridiculously long route to what turned out to be a five minute journey. Once Charlie had signed up for a membership card, we were good to go and immediately started browsing round the ridiculously unecessary bulk items which were for sale.
The boys made a few purchases and we managed to find a big box to shove them all in so as to be able to carry them back home. For some reason it appears that Costco is the only supermarket in the world that doesn't provide carrier bags....I guess they are not expecting people without a car to be shopping there.

We headed back towards the station to get he train back home and once we'd got back to Suwon we took a rest for a while, Charlie and Kevin unpacked their shopping and then we went back towards Suwon station as we had booked tickets to see Avatar at the cinema that evening.

After seeing a few previous for Avatar and hearing that it was supposed to be one of the 'greatest' films every made, I was extremely sceptical. How often do we hear about great films and they turn out to not live up to the hype after all. I knew very little about the film itself and after discovering that it was three hours long I was thinking that we were in for a repeat of Transformers 2, which we had had our fingers burned by earlier on this year!

Thankfully after sitting through all three hours of Avatar I can say that it definately lived up to the hype and it was actually a phenominal film. I'm not going to spoil it by saying anything too much but visually the film was spectacular and the story (as far fetched as it was) had us engrosed to the point that not once did I look at my watch wondering how long was left.

We got out of the movie at 1.10am (or 25.10 as the movie theater had on their ticket) and managed to find a cab to take us back home for some much needed rest.
On Sunday morning I went on a mission to look for a new hard drive for the computer. This little trip took me in the direction of Yongsan in Seoul after discovering that most of the shops near us were charging inflated prices which I didn't fancy paying.

We'd also agreed to meet with Hans this afternoon to go watch a basketball game so whilst the three of them headed from Suwon to Jamsil (where the game was) by bus. I braved a 45 minute journey on the subway to meet that to go and get some dinner before the game. Despite intial fears that I might not make it on time, I got to Jamsil just in time, and we made our way to the game.

It was being held in the same place what we went to see the NBA Generations team play back in September so we were in a familiar location at least. Today however we were watching some domestic basketball action which was taking place between Seoul Samseong Thunders and LG Cheneon Sakers.
I'm not sure if I have ever mentioned before about the necessity in Korean's sport for sponsors to play a major role in the name of the team. More often than not, the teams are referred to by who they are sponsored by not the place name where they are from.
This causes all kinds of confusion and often means that teams from different areas of the country become rivals simply because the companies they are sponsored by are in similar markets.

So today turned out to be a derby between two teams at opposite ends of the country, just because they are sponsored by the two Korean based electronics firms!

I think over the last couple of months I have probably been spoiled by basketball action as though the game was entertaining, I feel that with a few more inches in height, I could have done a decent job out there! Each Korean team has two foreign imports and unfortunately for the team from Seoul, there's happened to be two liabilities who were probably the least effective players in the game.

The team they were playing were actually pretty decent. And it helped that they had a guy playing centre who was 7'1 and being guarded by someone that was maybe 6'4. They ran up the score a little bit in the end but Seoul still ended up losing by seven points.

After the game we got the bus back to Suwon which took about an hour, and was a million times better than catching the subway. The four of us ate dinner together at a 'Budehgigeh' restaurant at the far side of the main strip of restaurants opposite Suwon station and I'm not sure if it was because it was at a different location than usual, or just because I hadn't had it in a while, but it seemed more delicious than ever. I certainly needed it after the day spent travelling backwards and forwards!

It's been a fun weekend overall, and I am thankful that we only have a short work week before Christmas. My kids are probably needing as much of a break from me as I am from them so hopefully the week will breeze by and we can get around to 'celebrating' Christmas (That is, when I accept that time is travelling so fast that it's finally here!)

I'm going to leave a rather longer than usual blog there for now, but I hope that everyones Christmas preparations are going well.

Take care

Ben x

"Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It's not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything."
Muhammed Ali

Christmas Creeps Up, Getting 'Breaked' and Dinner With Some Friends....

.... AS the title of my blog suggests, the preparations for Christmas are fully underway.

Not in my own life of course, but in the world of Talkster and all things English teaching. Last week I was tasked with 'preparing' my kids for their annual Christmas Party which takes place on the 24th December, their last day of school for the holidays.

Thankfully, unlike school back in England, there's to be no nativity play (I probably haven't got enough kids to accomplish that anyway) but I do have to teach my kids how to play Twinkle, Twinkle and sing a Christmas carol. Twinkle Twinkle is to be played on the bells, with each of the kids having a different note.
Throughout the week we have been practising maybe four or five times a day, and aside from the occasional lapse in concentration when one kid is slightly slow with their ringing, the kids have actually managed to do very well.
I taught them to sing Jingle Bells as the Christmas carol to sing (well the first part of it at least) and aside from a few mix ups with the words they have also impressed me with their ability to catch on straight away.

There's nearly two weeks left before they have to stand in front of their parents and carry out the singing, dancing and playing so I'm sure in between teaching them about Christmas this week, we will be practising to make sure it is ingraned into their skulls.

The wintery weather continues to engulf Suwon with some milder temperatures during the day meaning that you are completely caught off guard when you go outside and night and realise it is absolutely freezing. Most definetely gloves weather, and quite often a hat an a scarf are needed too.

Well aside from teaching my kids about the wonders of Christmas traditions the week has gone by realtively quickly. After finishing on friday I spent the evening writing Christmas cards which I had brought throughout the week and not find time to finish. And once Charlie and Kevin had finished it was time for some galbi, and then a spell in IT Bar once Hans had finished work and could join up with us.

We didn't make it a late one this week and instead headed back to Charlie's for some Yut Nori and some PS3. Amazingly at Yut Nori, I managed to pull out another victory but when it came round to playing for money Hans stepped up his game and beat us!

Saturday was a pretty quiet one the three of us met up around lunchtime and headed out for some lunch early on in the afternoon. I spent most of the rest of the day just playing on my computer and catching up with friends with emails. We went out for dinner in the evening, but kept it pretty quiet with all of us feeling pretty tired.

Today, with no football game for me thanks to the ending of Inter Suwon's season last week was largely spent in the same way, at least in the morning anyway. In the afternoon we headed to the 'PC Bang' which is basically an Internet Cafe as we were meeting up with one of Charlie's students for a much anticipated battle between 'teacher and student' at Starcraft.

Now for those people who aren't in the know (or basically don't live in Korea) Starcraft is the video game-come-national sport in Korea which I would say that basically every single one of my students spends an hour an evening playing. The objective (and yes it really is as nerdy as it sounds) is to build up a fleet of ships and then destroy all the others who are playing and hope that they don't destroy you in the process.

Koreans LOVE this game....you may remember the picture I have of the 'Starcraft' channel on TV. That's how seriously they take it.
Unwise as it may seem, Charlie has been running with a story to one of his students for the last two months now that he is a Starcraft expert and he has been making up lies to this kid in his class to the point where the boy, Kevin, called him out and told him he wanted to play to see how good he was!

Well this afternoon we met the reluctant Kevin at the PC Bang just around the corner from where we live. It didn't take long before this kid figured out that he wasn't much good to be honest and I think the first game was over in about seven minutes. Three minutes slower than Kevin promised to 'break' Charlie in but all the same a comprehensive victory.
By this point, Kevin and I were pretty intregued about joining in so the three of us signed in and tried to help Charlie.
Sadly, neither of us were able to offer much help as Kevin (student) managed to blow all of us up inside ten minutes! Raucus laughter followed as Charlie admitted that he didn't actually have a clue how to play and had been making it up all along.....

After the PC Bang, the three of us headed up to Yeongtong to try and play screen golf, but the place was busy so we ended up coming back home.

Despite the season ending last week, some of my football team were getting together just near my house so I decided to join them for a meal, which was good, and that was pretty much the end of my weekend!

Another quiet one, but a step closer to Christmas and vacation at least! The plans are still underway to go skiing though I am still working on which resort we are going to visit at this moment. Hopefully I can make some headway on that this week....

Take care

Ben
“There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.”
Albert Einstein

A Late Night Date With South Africa and a Game of Korean 'Pick Up Sticks'.....

.....IT's extremely hard for me to believe that it is December already, but stepping outside of my door yesterday to see that snow was swirling around brought it home for me that we really are in the midst of winter.

It's a cliche I know to comment on how quickly time is passing, but to actually consider that it is seven months since I came here and that it's almost Christmas is a ridiculous thought.
I'm sure I've mentioned several times that being in Korea this year we'll be having an alternative anti-Christmas with the opposite of pretty much everything that goes on back in the western world (spending time with family, exchanging cards and presents, and eating lots traditional food) but all the same I am looking forward to what we get up to.

It's less than a month now until we'll be ushering in 2010 and the prospect of that too is very odd. A few of the site I go on to keep in touch with news from back home have been running '...... of the decade' competitions and a few times it's like, wow, it's actually a full decade since the year 2010. This is arguably the first decade that I have been able to remember the most of as the details of what happened between 1990 and 1999 are pretty sketchy in early parts due to my age.
It's nostaligic to think back where I was ten years ago and predicting that I am doing what I am doing at the moment probably would probably be met my extreme laughter if I was somehow able to back and tell myself. But I guess it just shows that with a few things falling into place (or not quite working out) the course of your life can be completely changed and you never know what might happen.

Enough amateur philosphy anyway, and speaking of 2010, Charlie, Kevin, Hans and I spent friday evening (well very early saturday morning actually) watching the draw for the 2010 World Cup. Due to the fact that despite it's name as the 'World Wide Web', the Internet isn't quite as World and Wide as it seems, I wasn't able to catch a feed on the BBC website but luckily it was on Korean TV so the four of us sat through and hour of festivities and braved tiredness to find out exactly what was going to happen.

I think after working in Korea for a year at an American school and having my two closest friends being from America, it was pretty much destiny that England were going to get the USA in the World Cup! Obviously there was some friendly banter between myself, Charlie and Kevin, but when they realised that the other two teams in our group were Slovenia and Algeria, they realised that the inevitable defeat to England in the first game won't be an issue!

Speaking to quite a few of my friends in the football team this (Sunday) afternoon a bunch of them are heading out there and were watching the draw with bated breathe to discover which games they would be able to go and see. A few of them got lucky with games like Brazil vs Portugal and Korea vs Argentina, some of them weren't so lucky and ended up with Nigeria vs Greece!

After work on Friday we finally got the courage (and also convinced Anna) to take us to one of the restaurants they have in Korea where they have fish tanks outside (we presume these fish are for eating, but it has never been confirmed!) Before I came to Korea, sushi was about as far as I'd go but we actually had a go at just eating the raw fish by itself. There were massive amounts of food on the table and believe it or not we actually managed to go through and eat them all.

Unfortunately included on the table in the side dishes was some 'bundegi' or silkworm. The food which haunts my nightmares! Kevin was presuaded to eat one after a few drinks and confirmed that it tasted as bad as it smelt!

We'd spent most of the evening in IT Bar on friday night and after staying up late I was pretty nakered on saturday morning so spent the early part of the day in bed watching basketball on Korean TV.

It was Charlie's birthday on Monday so we agreed to go out for a meal in Seoul with him this weekend at a destination of his choice. On Wednesday the three of us actually headed to TGI Fridays in Ingedong for a meal which was pretty delicious.
Charlie decided that he wanted to check out 'Hooters' which was in Yongsan and expecting it to be just like the ones back in the USA he was disappointed to discover that this one was actually in the backwater basement of the subway station, wasn't very big or very impressive. I'll say one thing though, the food was pretty descent!

We headed back to Suwon on the train and then eager to enjoy Hans' company for as long as possible we told him to come round to Charlie's place for a few games in the PS3.
We ordered some chicken and despite our initial skepticism we played a Korean game called 'Yut' which he brought from the shop and prepared whilst we finished eating.

Now, having worked around kids for seven months it's fair to say that I have seen my fair share of Korean games. The one which is popular at the moment with the kids (and may well be this year's Christmas gift) is very similar to the old victorian game 'Jacks' and involves throwing bits of plastic up in the air and catching them whilst trying to pick other ones up. It's as mundane as it sounds.....

This game however which Hans brought round was quite the opposite in terms of entertainment. I'm pretty sure that over the next few paragraphs whilst I try and explain exactly what happens you will be largely confused but rest assured I'll be bringing one back with me and showing you how it's done properley.

The game board is very much like that of the game 'Frustration'. Each player starts with four pieces and the idea is to get your pieces 'home'. The dots on the board that you can see on the picture above is the pieces direction of travel. You basically have to go round in a big square, but can take a short cut if you land on one of the 'buttons' at the top right, top left or in the middle.
Now, you might be asking, how exactly does one get from beginning to end. Well the answer is with the wooden blocks you might see lying on the floor in the picture. Each one has a 'flat' side and a round side. The flat side facing up is the number of moves that you are able to take with 1 (Do), 2 (Geh), 3 (Gol), 4 (Yut) and 5 (Mo) being the possibly options.
One of the sticks also has an 'x' on there and if you get this one then you have the oppertunity to go one space backwards.

If you land on the same space as anyone else then you get to knock them off the board and also take another turn for doing so. We were all probably thinking when the game started that 'This isn't going to be very difficult' but half an hour later when we were still engrosed in the game without a winner, we'd changed our opinions.
I'm not sure how, but the first time we played I won. Somehow, through a rule I'm not sure about I managed to pile three of my pieces on one another and ride them home then after everyone kept knocking my other piece of the board to stop me from winning about a million times I broke free and was able to finish the game off.

The second time we played Hans stopped giving us hints about what to do as he said we were 'too good' but unsurprisingly he won the second game as he was done making us look good. The two games lasted about an hour and a half which was surprising but we had a good laugh and thanked Hans for another traditional Korean experience.
I retired to my room to watch the second half of the football which was on TV and Hans came too as he was interested to see my room and compare it to Charlie's!
The two us chatted for about an hour or so before the game finished and he went home and I went to bed.

I have to say that there's alot of things I am going to miss about Korea, and Hans is definately one of them. The three of us sing his praises often for the way he goes out of his way to help us or give us experiences we would have struggled to organise by ourselves and it seems as though the more he helps, the happier he is which is just fine with me.

Charlie and Kevin are trying to convince him to go to the USA and visit them at some point in the near future and I will definately up for joining them if I have the chance!

Today was the last game of the season for Inter Suwon and the oppertunity to finish third for the second season in a row. After a bit of a dodgy start and giving the other side a couple of goal headstart we made our way back into the game and in the end thumped out local rivals 6-3 which was pleasing.

This evening I haven't been doing very much, just planning the work for the week and adding plenty of my photos and pictures to my facebook and photo gallery page.

It's been a quiet weekend and although we haven't ventured out very much it is certainly one that I will remember and look back on with fondness when I am back in England.

Take care

Ben x

“One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.”

K. G. Chesterton

A Quiet Night In, Inter Suwon Night Out and Plenty of Blood, Guts and Ninja Stars....

THAT time of the week has come around very quickly indeed and it seems like before I know it we're (almost) into the last month of the year. By the way if anyone has seen 2009 then do let me know....

Finishing work on Friday I was all done with adventures and shopping trips for the time being so I spent a couple of tired hours relaxing and waiting for Charlie and Kevin to finish so that we could do to dinner as usual. The three of us were all feeling pretty wiped so no delicious French Fries at IT Bar this weekend, just back to the room for some video games and chatting was on the adgenda.
After introducing him to our entertaining world last friday night, we decided to invite Hans around again and we spent a good few hours laughing and joking before tiredness caught up with each one of us and we called it an evening.

Up early on Saturday morning to keep up with the NBA on Korean TV I was well rested by the time Charlie gave me a call to see what I was up to. He wanted to go into Songtan to get some stuff so we boarded the train south of Suwon ate some dinner, got what he needed and came back.
Saturday was the annual Inter Suwon end of season 'celebration' so I spent most of the day relaxing, with a heavy night in prospect.

The three of us made our way out to dinner at 8pm before taking a cab up to Yeongtong where the rest of my team were busy drinking and socialising after an afternoon of bowling and getting dinner together. As I don't spend that much time up at NOW bar on a weekend, it's probably the first time I have been together with all my friends anytime other than on a Sunday afternoon and it was cool to hang out with a bunch of different people and for us all to be together and be having plenty of fun.

Before we headed off to Ingydong for a few different bars we had a vote on our player of the season and our goal of the season and I was amazingly lucky enough to be chosen as the Players Player of the Season which, considering I have spent the entire year playing on one leg and/out of position, I felt very proud.
We've got one game left next weekend so hopefully we can finish off the season well and end in 3rd place which will not be bad considering we're had some poor performances and one where we didn't show up at all and were docked points.

Inter Suwon is one of the things I am going to be sad to leave behind when I have to return to England. We have a great bunch of people in our team and I must be honest and say that thursdays and sundays are one of the things I look forward to most in the week. Perhaps it's because I love playing football, and also it's because I get to interact with other people who can speak my language!
Before I go back to England I'll be able to get maybe 3 or 4 games in as the season usually starts in March so I should be around for that. I won't miss running around in the cold whilst it's the off season but I will miss playing every week and I hope to be able to meet up with some of the guys if they have plans, certainly if any of them are due to leave between now and March.

As we'd been supposed to be leaving NOW bar at around 10pm and it was well past 12, everyone decided to rally around and head to a place called Noise Basement (NB) which is between Suwon Station and Yeongtong. We weren't entirely sure where we were going but hopped in a cab in that direction and then spent fifteen minutes following the exit of the cab, trying to find out exactly where NB was.
We got there eventually, losing people every now and then who would wonder off but we spent a good couple of hours there dancing away and enjoying ourselves which was a great laugh.

The three of us all had the same thoughts at about 2am of heading home so we went back to Hwaseo-dong, got some dinner and then some much necessitated sleep.

Up again early Sunday morning (and smelling like an ashtray thanks to the allowance of smoking in public places) Charlie, Kevin and I headed to Burger King to get some nurishment around lunchtime and decided to check out what was playing at the cinema in the meantime. Turns out 'Ninja Assassin' has just started showing, and ironically stars a Korean as the main character. We decided to get tickets and then come back at 7.45pm for an evenings entertainment.

Well entertainment is certainly the word and exactly what you would expect from a film which has the same writers as the Matrix Trilogy. I think it's fair to say that I sure got my fix of gore and violence from that film! It was a good watch, despite being required to turn your brain off on viewing, and it was finally good to go to the cinema after such a long absense!

That was my weekend....short but sweet! I'm about to catch my fix of Premiership football on a Sunday evening and then head to bed so I shall bid you farewell for the time being....

Ben xxx

“The only time you run out of chances is when you stop taking them”
Anon

The Small Things We Take For Granted.....

.... I know I'm not usually a 'weekday blogger' because I rarely do anything outside working and eating, but this evening I feel compelled to add something to my site after an incident occured today which got me thinking.

Aside from the occasional 'hairy' moment in the last seven months (eg. obliterating my right foot beyond proper use) most things in Korea have, in all honesty, been relatively stress-free. I know that my mum will probably say that I live my life stress free but that's due to my outlook on everything, not because of a lack of stressful situations!

This evening however, my patience was tested. Trying to take some money out of an ATM at the neighbourhood branch of my bank I was slightly alarmed when after a couple of minutes standing waiting for money to come out, the screen in front of me just completely shut off, rebooted itself, and acted like I had never used it.

Puzzled by what was going on, and a little angry as this was the second time that my card had been eaten by the very same machine, I headed back to Talkster for assistance and thankfully one of my fellow teachers (who I was extremely thankful for) called the bank and asked if someone could open up the machine to get my card out for me.

After the traumatic experience of thing that I was entirely stuck I was able to reflect on what might of happened should the same thing have taken place in England.

For a start off, the usual thing to do would be to call a helpline and cancel your card and/or ask them for assistance. In Korea, the lack of any resonable amount of Hangul beyond 'hello' and 'goodbye' makes situations such as this pretty impossible to deal with.

I'm not sure if I have really taken things for granted since I have been here (even though the title of this entry suggests) or if I have really been in Korea that long that the lack of common language between myself and 99% of the population goes unnoticed. Now rather than commenting when people don't understand English, it's a phenomenon when people do actually speak words of English, and it was actually pretty poingient that when we got in a cab to go to dinner this evening that the driver upon stating that he spoke 'a little bit of bad English' was able to have a fully fluent conversation with the three of us for the duration of the drive, and not just on subjects about 'Korea' and 'Park Ji-Sung' as is usually the case.

Being in a country where everyone speaks the same language as you, I guess I now realise, is something you do take for granted, unless you are taken out of there and placed in a situation such as the one I find myself at the moment. During most days I spend time speaking to 6-9 year old students, my boss and Kevin and Charlie, and that's about it. There are countless interactions during the day with people in shops, on busses or in restaurants where nothing more than glances, points and grunts take place and I awknowledge that it is going to be pretty difficult (but probably novel) when I go back to England and don't have to speak in broken language to order something or to find out the price of an item.

When you go into a shop here and you're looking for something which you aren't sure if they sell, you are basically on your own, unless you like charades as very few people will be able to understand what you are looking for. Some resturants in Korea don't have pictures on their menus and only thanks to Anna telling us the names of things have we been able to order things in these places, they might serve things which are even more delicious than what we usually order but we wouldn't know because other than reading the word, we don't have any other details about it.

I think I have discussed before how strange it was in Thailand to be able to speak English to people, and hear conversations about me going on but I guess that the incident with the rogue ATM today made me realise again that there will probably never be another situation again that I am basically as helpless as I am at the moment.
There's so many examples in day to day life that it's actually frightning to think about the simple differences between Korean and the rest of the Western world and the language barrier plays a serious part in the reason why I imagine living here and not being surrounded with the few English speakers that I am could make things even more difficult.

I'm pretty lucky as I usually have Kevin and Charlie with me so we can fumble our way though, but without them, the lone ranger role would be an extremely difficult experience.
It's probably very hard for people to understand exactly how not being able to communicate with people on a regular and daily basis feels but I am getting enough of an experience of that for all of you, but I don't think, even in this blog I am able to convey exactly how tough it can be sometimes.

All I can say that after getting my card back, I am very thankful that people in Korea understand how challenging life can be for foreigners who live so far away from their home and don't speak the language. I can only hope that for the next five months the difficulties in the language barrier remain minimal and I am able to reflect on them with friends when I get back home!!!

Take Care

Ben xxxx

“Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.”

Aldous Huxley

Korea's First Snow, Some Quality Time with Hans and an Extremely Cold Penalty Shootout....

UNLIKE last weekend when I had very little productive to speak about, we got our act together this weekend to spend an extremely enjoyable weekend braving the freezing cold!

Surviving another experience riddled week at work, I was feeling the usual tiredness from a combination of teaching and football training on thursday night.

The bitingly cold wind which has been with us all week subsided a little on the penultimate day of the working week, but running around in shorts and a t-shirt at football was still much more cold than I would like to experience.

Thankfully, one thing you can always count on in our rooms is a hot shower and with the temperatures dipping to below freezing a couple of times this week, I've needed no other incentive than freezing my backside off to jump in the bath.
One problem with Korean traditional housing like we have is the heating system. Having the delights of a fire and several radiators at home was obviously taken for granted before I came here as Korean houses are heated through a system called 'Ondok' which basically means 'Floor Heat'.

The system in my room which controls the temperature of the water also controls the temperature of pipes which have been laid under my floor which provide the only heating source I have. At first 'floor heating' seemed like a cool idea, in the Kindergarten classroom in the morning when it's on, it's great to walk around in socks and feel the warmth as theoretically whenever your feet are warm, your body stays warm.
Sadly, this doesn't seem to apply when it comes to the heating in my room as the temperature in there with the floor heating on seems to be not warm enough or boiling and uncomfortably hot. I think I need to work on getting it at the right temperature as normally I end up leaving it on whilst I am teaching in the morning because I'm freezing when I wake up. The only problem when I get in for lunch is that by this point the room is sweltering hot and I could so with letting some cold and fresh air in!

With the temperature dropping to unnecessarily low minue figures outside it wasn't really a surprise on Friday evening when we were 'blessed' with Korea's first snow of the winter.
Being from England, snow isn't something I get to experience very often but being from South Carolina this was the first time that Charlie had seen snow falling before his very eyes and as he hasn't been impressed with the cold weather so far, this didn't do alot to make him embrace it!

In truth the snow was pretty lame, it didn't last for very long for a start and also it didn't settle. It just made the ground wet instantly, so it might as well have rained! By the time we'd come back from dinner, the excitement of the snow was over but today I did see some ice on the ground so I figure it also must have been pretty close to freezing point today.

Luckily I brought with me some winter items of clothing including a gloves, hat, scarf and a coat and all four of them have been getting decent use in the last week or so. Being as that Korean's like to wrap themselves up in the summer, it's no surprise to hear that in winter they like to stay extremely warm and it's not uncommon to see people on the streets selling thickly ladden socks, gloves, scarves and hats.

Despite the coldness the three of us braved the freezing friday and headed to a bar near our house for a couple of drinks and a chat to finish off the week. An added bonus was Hans joining us for the night and he was on top form as ever. Sometimes I wonder if he realises how much he entertains us and if he is deliberately funny or whether it's just the very small language barrier that sits between the three of us and him!

I'm pretty sure that once of twice before in the last seven months I have discussed the repetetive catchy soundwaves which make up Korean music and with the Internet being the only access I have to any kind of music, it's pretty hard to stay in touch with what is 'cool' these days. I'm not sure that's anything I've ever been accused of to be honest, but nevermind.

Keen to open the three of our minds and eager to stop us thinking that Korean music is like a nightmare involving every single manufactured boy and girl band in history peforming a concert in your ears, Hans said he would bring around some music for us to listen to and put on our computers.

Good Old Hans, always taking care of us.
We decided to head back to the house pretty early so that Hans could hook us up with some new tunes and also so that we could play a few games on the Playstation with him! The rest of the early morning hours were spent having a great deal of fun and laughing alot before tiredness eventually kicked in, and I felt it essential to retire to bed before Saturday because a write-off!

Waking up pretty early (especially when you've been to sleep at 3am plus) on Saturday morning, I got my usual dose of NBA and chatting to people back home who are about to go to bed.
At about lunchtime after I had dragged myself out of bed Charlie called to see if I wanted to go get some lunch and accompany him to the opticians so he could take a well overdue visit there to replace his glasses.

It was pretty funny because the guy actually remembered him going in there and getting some glasses before. He wondered what had happened and ashamed that he'd lost them after 36 hours, Charlie claimed several times that they had 'broken!'
He eventually got himselves set up with some and we made our way back to Hwaseo-dong to meet Kevin and head into Seoul for the afternoon.

We managed to catch the last Suwon Bluewings game a couple of weeks ago at the World Cup Stadium, but for the teams who don't suck, the season carried over into he playoffs, the first game of which was being played on Saturday between Chunam and FC Seoul.
Despite out loyalties to the mighty Bluewings, the three of us fancied an afternoon out so we headed on the train for an hour into Seoul to the World Cup Stadium. A place where we've had a various amount of adventures in our time here.

Somehow using sign language and the usual charades to buy things we managed to get some tickets in the lower section of the stadium, right on the half way line and spent the next 2 hours in the freezing cold watching a 1-1 stalemate between two teams who, unlike Suwon, actually managed to pass the ball on the ground.
Waiting two hours for the result in the freezing cold was well worth it as the game ended in a dramatic penalty shoot-out.
Sadly for Seoul a couple of their players couldn't hit a barndoor and they ended up losing when their final penalty taker managed to put the ball close to ten feet wide.

Throughly starving we headed under the World Cup Stadium to get some dinner, and avoid the inevitable maehem on the subway. We stopped off at Pizza Hut which was delicious and shows how long I have been living here to actually now like Korean pizza. It's always good when what you are eating doesn't taste like they coated it in icing sugar!!!

We headed back towards home after that, spending an hour standing up on the subway which was probably worse than two hours sitting in the freezing cold to be honest!
I spent the rest of Saturday night watching football on TV and trying to stay warm, something which would be alot easier if it wasn't for the damn floor heating!

Sunday was a pretty quiet day, early wake up to watch the televised NBA game and then off to football for our penultimate game of the season. Last time we played 'The Jokers' as they are known we beat them 10-6 playing on a pitch the same size as a playing card and obviously playing on a pitch twice the size, we managed half the score but it was a win all the same, 5-3.
Playing further forward than usual I added to my tally of goals this season with a couple from outside the area which is always nice to do.
Thankfully the weather held up for us today and I didn't get my contact lenses poked out like last week so I was able to spend the duration of the game being able to see.

I got the bus back to my house and have spent the evening just taking it easy and planning what I'm doing in class tomorrow....

Well that's been the weekend, it's been fun and entertaining like they all should be...looking forward to the next one!

Take care xxxx

“Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things"

Robert Brault

New Camera, Extensive Video Gaming and Winter Arrives Without Warning....

....Well it's official. Winter is definately here in Korea!

Not that is has been announced anywhere (or that I'd be able to tell if it had been) but yesterday some parts of the country experienced their first snow falls and the average temperature across Suwon and Seoul was somewhere around 2C.
Whilst I was on the bus heading to football yesterday there was a screen which said that at one point the temp had reached a very low 0.9C.
I'm not sure what the weather is likely to be for the rest of the week but I think it's definately time to put away the shorts and bring out the hats, scarves and gloves for the next few months.

Based on things I have found out from other people, and from the Internet, I think that in the winter Korea is hit by low temperatures and cold wind. It still has the same cycles of rain and even though it snowed in November, I think that might have just been a one off. Partly because it's too polluted here! Despite the change in temperatures I have yet to see any ice laying on the ground, and although there isn't that much grass, I haven't spotted any frost. I'll keep a look out though!

The largely unannounced spell of winter that we are currectly being hit by was pretty dramatic and came with few mornings. I guess that in Korea the time when the temperatures are pretty much perfect is Autumn, but that only lasted for about a month. Then again, time is going so quickly here I'd be forgiven for thinking it was only a brief spell when infact it was much longer.

What have I been doing with myself since winter begun you may ask.....?

Well the answer is not alot really. Last week we were handed some assesments to complete so I got started with them throughout the week and finished them off yesterday which was a weight off my mind.

We also discovered that our Christmas vacation was not as luxurious and long as we hoped it was going to be. Because of when Christmas falls this year (a Friday), our vacation is split into to seperate sections. We work all the way up and till Christmas Eve, and are then given the Friday plus the weekend off before returning returning to school on the monday for just two days (until the 30th) and then have from Wednesday to the next Tuesday off before returning in 2010.

It may have scuppered any plans that the three of us were going to make for going away, and theres no chance of me being able to come back to the UK for vacation but at the moment we're working on a plan which will allow us to spend at last the 30th Dec to 5th Jan in another country, potentially the Philippines and for the three day weekend we get off over Christmas we came up with the idea of going skiing somewhere in Korea as apparently there is a resort near us which bid for the winter olympics.

My skiing experience may be based on one holiday in France and a couple of trips to dry slope skiing in Yorkshire but I am throughly looking foward to it. I enjoyed the week of cross country skiing that I did with some friends back at the start of this millenium and I look forward to getting the oppertunity to improve my ability!
Equally after two days at work I am looking forward to heading off into the sunshine (potentially) and relaxing on a beach for some time. Either way, it'll be nice to get out of the city for a while.....

On friday another working week came to an end, and after finding myself a cheap pair of trainers, the next item on the list to buy was a new camera.

Sadly last week after a fun day at the race track I was on my way home and trying to get off the train at the correct station some impatient Koreans decided not to let me off the train and walking into me, causing me to drop my camera on the ground. The LCD screen on the back was damaged and as my camera doesn't have a viewfinder it would be pretty impossible to take decent pictures.

Having spent the last seven months using my camera quite extensively I decided that another one would be worth a purchase as when my mum was here she managed to look through quite a good range to find a new one.

After work I took the bus up to E Mart to see if I could come across anything suitable but after seeing that only a few were in my price range and most of them ran on AA batteries not an internal one I got back on the bus and headed across town to the Homeplus near the Ibis Hotel and the Galleria shopping centre.

There I was greated by the delightful sight of a bit more choice and the option of looking and picking at the cameras not trying to guess how good they were through a glass case. After some time deciding between a Sony, a Nikkon and a Samsung, I decided to pick up a Samsung one very similar to the one I already posessed. It cost me 188,000 won which is roundly £85. A pretty good deal when I compaired it with prices online back in England.
Sadly I didn't get the oppertunity to use my camera very much this weekend as it was a pretty quiet one.

On friday night me, Kevin and Charlie met up with some other foreigners that we know for some dinner and some drinks in Lao Bar near Suwon Station. The three of us were feeling pretty tired so decided not to make it a late one, getting back to the house at about 12.30am.

I woke up on saturday morning feeling refreshed and looking forward to spending the day doing very little. At about 10.30am Charlie called me to see if I wanted to go with him to Songtan, which is an American base just south of Seoul as he wanted to get a new game for the PS3 which had come out.
We got some dinner in the freezing cold of Songtan and then decided to head back on the train and test the new game out.

As it turned out, 'Modern Warfare 2' kept us rather busier than we thought as after being joined by Kevin we spent most of the day playing it and after a break for dinner, completing it! Very sad I know..... I spent the rest of the evening keeping up with football from around the World with England playing against Brazil later in the day and Ireland playing against France for a place in the world cup.

Yesterday was largely spent doing very little too as I laid in bed for a long time watching NBA on TV before having to head out to football for 4pm.
We were playing against the best team in our league yesterday who have won the division countless times in a row and despite losing we put in a good effort.

It was absolutely freezing and there was even a couple of players in the opposition team who were wearing hats, and one who even wore a coat underneath his shirt.....
I came home and went out for some dinner with Charlie and Kevin and then got on with finishing the rest of my assesments as I mentioned before.

So it hasn't been a very fulfilling weekend but after spending enough money on a camera and buying some new trainers early in the week I was probably justified to sit around the room and do something which involved not spending money.

It's monday here now and it's almost time to get back to class so I have to leave it there for now. Hope the winter weather wherever you are is treating you well....

Ben xxx

There are no shortcuts to life's greatest achievments.
American Proverb

Pepero Day....Only in Korea......

...Strange one this, but I felt it worthy of a blog note for you to read during another lightning fast week at school.

I was informed yesterday that today 11th November, universally celebrated around the world as the 'End of all Wars' is in Korea known as 'Pepero Day.'

For those of your familar with Christmas snacks, peperos are pretty similar to 'Matchmakers' but have biscuit inside instead of mint or orange etc....
So Pepero Day is basically when friends exchange chocolates with one another to show their appreciation to each other. It's also a Korean version of Valentine's Day so shops are stocked full of Peperos attached to cuddly toys and gifts that loved ones are supposed to share with one another.

Last friday when I was shopping I saw piles and piles of these and mistakenly thought they were early preperations for Christmas, now I understand what their true meaning is!

I got a couple of packets from the kids this morning and then at various points in the afternoon kids either gave me a packet or just gave me a couple out of ones they had been given which was very generous. Apparently kids have been encouraged to exchange healthier snacks than Peperos but I don't think they would be too willing to say exchange carrot sticks or celery instead of chcolate!

Looking at some information on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepero) about this strange phenomenon, Korean's believe that the little sticks of chocolate look like the number one so 11/11 is a good chance to share chocolate with one another. It's a shame there isn't a 00/00 as I'm sure they would probably share cookies or something with one another!

Not a very long blog post (or a very interesting one) but that's how life is during the weeks (and some weekends) these days. I thought I'd share a little experience I had today which kept me entertained and I now wish there were more days in the year when chocolates were freely exchanged between people!

Ben x

"He who has a thousand friends, has not a friend to spare, While he who has one enemy Shall meet him everywhere."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

An Afternoon at Seoul Racecourse....

....BEING from a city where the local race course holds races on at least three days of every month, it's quite strange that aside from one visit when I was about eight and local football matches being played there I've not spent much time at York's races.

Luckily for me, and many other lovers of gambling (plenty of which we saw throughout our latest adventure) Seoul Racecourse Park is only a twenty minute subway ride from Suwon and after hearing it has the potential to provide an entertaining day out, Kevin, Charlie and I decided to make this saturday our first visit to the Korean races.

The racecourse is a stop after the zoo at Seoul Grand Park so it was a relatively painless one change journey through Geoumjeong to our destination. The three of us had done a little bit of research before arriving and after coming out of the subway exit, it was pretty obvious where the racecourse was. As you get out of the station there begins to be a massive amount of people selling form guides for the races and without you realising you are now in a crowd of about 98% men.

We made our way to the gates of the racecourse and paying the 800 won enterance fee (40p) we headed into the building to first of all get a good look at the place and secondly find out how foreigners were expected to understand everything when it was written in Hangul! The time was about 12.00pm when we arrived and a race from Jeju was just taking place so there was all of a sudden a flurry of people heading towards the bookies to put money on.

Walking up as high as we could go in the building we stumbled across the 'Foreigner's Lounge' and were given a panflet about how to place a bet and also a list of todays races and the horses running. All that plus lots of other information which would be rendered as useless once we discovered what was going on.

As I mentioned before I'm not a big gambler, I've never been in a position where I haven't needed all the money that I've posessed I think that's why! Luckily for us Kevin knew exactly what was going on and after grabbing some pens and some betting slips we prepared ourself to try and find out what was going on. High up on the fourth floor of the building we had a decent view of the track and also the odds board which was outside and letting us see exactly what the horses were priced at.

Rather annoyingly, and typically for Korea, things became rather difficult at this point as the stream of numbers up on the board didn't really relate to any odds which the horse was carrying. We figured out after a few minutes that the close to 1.0 the number, the more favoured the horse was but with the information changing every thirty seconds or something it was initially hard to keep up with what was going on.

We were prepared to make our first bet soon, and on the advice of Kevin we went with a 'Box Exacta' which basically involved picking three horses and betting on them in every possible combination for them to finish in the top three. So if you pick horse numbers 1, 2 and 3, you bet 1-2, 2-1, 1-3, 3-1, 2-3, 3-2 and at 1,000 won a piece you pay 6,000 for the bets to be placed.

After some initial confusion of needing to give hand over money so that you could get a voucher for money (don't ask) and the difficulties of the machine deciding not to read our tickets we were all bet on the first race....of course predictably the first race none of our horses did very well but undetered and getting used to the whole system we bet on the first four races including a couple taking place on Jeju Island but being shown on the big screen outside.

In the Foreigner's Lounge we were basically in a pimped out skybox with none of the hassle of the rest of the track to deal with but on the way in we had spotted a place where the horses were trotted around before the race so you could check out their form. We decided to go out there and see if we could have a bit more luck with a new tactic and eager to try something different I put a place bet on whilst Kevin and Charlie persisted with the exactas.

Down amongst the masses we decided to watch the fifth race by the finish line so we could hopefully cheer our horses onto victory. It didn't quite work out that way but my place bet did come in during the first race we spent trackside and heading inside to jubillantly pick up my winnings I discovered that they were exactly 900 won (90p) plus the 2,000 I'd put on the race.... now we were getting somewhere.

We decided that we kinda liked the new way of checking out the horses better than sitting up in the atmosphereless comfort of the lounge so we spent the next few races going between the 'horse showcase', the betting office and the finish line.

In the seventh race I also had a winner after putting on a 'to win' bet as my horse romped home to first in a close race. Back to the machine I went to discover my winnings which this time were 600 won, plus my stake of 2,000. Happy days!!!

Kevin had a slightly bigger win than I did in the following race when his exacta came in and his horses finished 1st, 2nd and 3rd. He won 31,000 won from a 6,000 won stake so he was pretty happy. Unfortunately he spent the rest of the afternoon gambling that money away and ended up not winning another race!
Poor Charlie knew exactly how he felt however as after continually getting screwed by his horses coming in 1st and 3rd he didn't win a penny and afterwards came out with a classic gamblers line of 'well as I didn't win anything last time, I'm due for a big win next time we go!'

Visiting the races was a saturday well spent with the three of us enjoying plenty of laughs despite a fair few won being lost between the three of us. I'm not too sure it's going to persuade me to head to York races on a more regular basis but the challenge of trying to understand what was going on probably enhanced the experience for me!

Well before you know it, there goes another weekend. I'm not too sure what happened to October but we're well into November now and this week will be official 7 months since I have been here. Five more to go.....


Take care

Ben x

Anais Nin
The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery