Making even more new friends...

Despite the fact that I have only worked four out of five days this week, I'm sure that I am glad as everyone else that it is Friday.

Sunday will be the end of my fourth full week in Korea and already the time is rushing by. I'm sure the weekend will fly past as well and i'll be almost through my first month of living and working in Korea! Just eleven more to survive through!

Today is 'Parent's Day' in Korea (Yeah, I know the celebrate pretty much everything!) so I was entrusted with the task of helping the kindergartener's make carnations out of crate paper some green wire and a few roles of tape. It didn't help that the instructions I was given were all in Korean but I managed to bumble my way through that with the help of my Korean assistant. Each of the kids made at least two flowers and I'm sure the ones I helped them with look like they have been made by a five year old! At least those ones will be authentic!

I'm just between classes at the moment but thought I would update my blog as I haven't had chance to over the last couple of days and am sure I won't get round to doing it again till Sunday.
Not much interesting has happened but I have managed to make a few friends which is worth writing about.

Most afternoons after Talkster is finished I head to a local school to take out some of my frustrations on a football or try to re-create what I have seen at lunchtime in the NBA on one of the basketball hoops. On Monday when I was playing down there a couple of kids 'dropped their English on me' and asked me to kick around with them. I told them that I come down quite often and sure enough when I went back on Wednesday when I went back, there they were waiting for me. They managed to communicate that they had been there the day before for a couple of hours waiting to see if I turn up! I was obviously unhappy at dissapointing my public so decided to kick around with them.
As we were playing around a Korean man (possibly one of their brothers) turned up and joined in too. He introduced himself as Yung-Ji (I'm working on an English name for him that I will remember!) He seemed pretty cool and soon the game developed into me and him against about 14 or 15 of these kids.

Obviously we managed to beat them hansomly as most of them couldn't kick the ball very far but their insistance on playing the full length of the pitch wasn't easy on the lungs. I like to try and play everywhere normally but not at the same time. I don't think they understood the concept that it wasn't that difficult for them to score when they have three of them standing on the line and I'm down at the water fountain at the opposite end of the pitch trying to make sure I don't de-hydrate!

I went back down there last night for a game with them too and it turned into me and Yung-Ji against about 20 of them this time. Yung-Ji is a decent player actually and excuse the stereotype but he likes to run around alot and chase my bad passes which is fun! I tried not to knacker myself out too much yesterday as I had arranged my first training session with Inter Suwon earlier this week for the evening so I figured it might be best if I didn't turn up completely in pieces.

I figured that being a decent standard of team they probably wouldn't train on a dirt field so tried to get myself some boots. I tried the shop near where I live and then the one where I brough my actual football from but the guy communicated that he didn't accept cards so I had to visit a cash point. It was just then that a well organised afternoon went down the creek as the Korean ATM machine (clearly powered by microsoft) decided it was going to crash on me!
I must have stood there for at least 30 minutes while the machine said 'Please wait a While', it wasn't wrong!

I started to sense that something was awry and needing some dinner in a hurry I head to 'Pizza School' just around the corner. I checked to see if the ATM had quitted spazzing out on me but it was still broken and even the natives were taking a wide bearth of the strange noises it was making! I headed back to my flat still slightly confused but aware that this could probably only happen to me! Had to jump in a cab pretty much straight away which dropped me off in Yungtung just outside the GSIS International School where Suwon trained.
I met a few of the other people who had arrived early and introduced myself to them. They seemed very cool and were very welcoming to me, probably due to the fact that I don't 'belong' in Korea either!

About 13 people turned up to training in the end, some English, a couple of scots, an Australian and a few American's. We had a decent session and they have asked me to join them for a game on Saturday against Anyang FC so we'll see how that turns out. Hopefully I will get a decent amount of playing time and show the team that they were clearly missing my ability earlier on in the season. And if it wasn't for damn passport control and immigration I'd have been here at the start of the season!!

I didn't get back till about 12:30am after training so I was pretty tired this morning when I got into work but as it's friday I'm sure I will struggle on through.

Speaking of which I didn't go through the usual ritual of planning my classes last night so I'd better go do that now.

Will update over the weekend on how I got on with Suwon and also whatever else we decide to get up to on Friday and Saturday!