Hey folks!After not being able to write too much after doing nothing last weekend I decide to save up a few things that I could write in my pre-weekend blog however as is the usual way I didn't quite get the timings of my typing right and now I end up struggling to remember what I had set out to blog about in the first place!
I'll do my best to try and remember anyway!
The first few days of the week were pretty standard, just working and eating the usual. As I mentioned before Kevin's cousin Joe was staying with him for a few days as part of a trip he had taken to the far-east. On Sunday Kevin showed him the delights of Hongdae and on monday we all met up near Suwon station to grab some dinner together.
Anna, who came along too, directed us to a new restaurant which was down the main street in 'downtown' Suwon and although I can't for the life of me remember that the food was called it was pretty damn tasty.
I'm sure I won't do it justice by describing it but it was basically glass noodles, soy sauce, chicken and vegetables. It was something ridiculous like 26,000 won between five people which is basically like £2.70 a person. There's no danger of getting anything like that back in England that's for sure. Im sure the expense, or lack of it, in dining out is one thing I am going to get all too comfortable with and it's going to be a shock when I return home.
We decided to show Joe and Anna a few places we had discovered along he way and by the time we headed home I was pretty nakered (tiredness in case you haven't guessed will be a constant theme in this story!) On Tuesday at school I started teaching my new class which was pretty fun, and even if I do have to teach for an hour longer than usual, spending time with these kids is an enjoyable ending to the day. It's probably my largest class as there is maybe 9 or even 10 students in there but as these guys have been taught by my boss for the last couple of months they are pretty well disciplined.
On Tuesday something very small and inconcequential happened but it made me realise that perhaps I am doing a good job of making friends with the kids after all. Everyday if they do good work the kids get stamps and when they collect one-hundred they get a 'prize' from the school which is usuall a t-shirt or some stationery. One of the kids in my 3pm class had got to a hundred the day before and during the lesson he proceeded to try and explain that the prize he had got was for me! I was like OK, whatever you say, I don't think one of these small t-shirts for Korean's is going to fit me! To cut a long story short he'd actually got a new bag as a present but decided to donate it to me, he'd even written my name on it and the names of the kids in that class. I thought that was pretty sweet and very generous to say that this boy had been a royal pain in the posteria for about two weeks when I started!
Soon the middle of the week was here and as usual I was wondering where the two previous days had gone! On Wednesday in kindergarten we did about 'hands' and 'feet' so for an artistic task I got the kids to draw round their hands and their feet and then paint them. I have to say it was almost as if this was the funniest thing that had ever happened to them and I don't know what it was about taking a pencil and following the outline of your hand and feet but they loved it (perhaps just slightly less than they love the chicken dance, but it's a strong feeling for both!)
I spoke to my mum on wednesday evening which was cool too. In some ways it feels like I have been away from home for quite a long time but in others I can still remember the first day I got here. I still obviously miss home quite alot and especially my mum and the rest of my family. It's tough to be away from the one person you have spent most of your life with and are very close to, I know she probably misses me as much but needs must I guess, it was either another few months looking for a job which was like searching for a needle in a heystack or take a risk and come here! I still think I have been vindicated by my decision!
Being the huge football obsessive that I am, I decided that it was a wise idea to beat tiredness and stay up to watch the Champions League Final on Wednesday night. I went to bed at about 11.30pm and set my alarm for 3.45am which was the time it was on back home in England. Typically I felt perfectly fine like I wasn't even tired for the first ten minutes but slowly my body started to feel worse and worse! Bad decision Ben! I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the game and was quite happy to see Barcelona win 2-0 however it only dawned on me about ten minutes before the end of the game that it was actually light outside, and yes I was going to have to be up in three and a half hours.
Thursday was a loooooooooong day! I didn't even feel as tired as I did that day when I arrived here! How it possible that the Champions League final made me feel worse than a 28 hour flight from the otherside of the world! I managed to struggle on through the day however and although I was severaly lacking energy the sugary sweets, coffee and chocolate that I consitently pumped my body with throughout the day were extremely beneficial to my cause. All I could think about during the day was actually sleeping and how when I got home I was just going to go to bed but obviously at 6.50pm I wasn't even feeling a jot of tiredness!
We headed to Dak Galbi near Suwon station for tea and I think it was when I got back to my room at about 9.30pm that my body decided it had had enough and shut down on me!
Since I discovered free-will at the age of about 17, I think that is definately the earliest that I have ever gone to bed!
Friday creeped up on me as it usually does and despite still being tired inspite of the extra hours sleep I had managed to pick up I wasn't too fussed that I was still feeling tired, it's the last day of the week after all! Once I had got done with lessons at about 5pm, I decided that as the weather was significantly cooler than it has been over the last couple of days I was in a walking mood and so I headed up to the familiar haunt that is Hwaseong Fortress. I decided to head a different way round the wall this time and after about an hour of walking and taking pictures I reached Na-mul which is a decent walk from Hwaseo. Hopefully at some point of the weekend I get chance to put these pictures online but there was some terrific views from this part of the wall too and unlike the time I walked to the highest point it wasn't stupidly busy.
Still eager for some exercise I spent about half an hour working on my rough round the edges basketball game down at the park.
We headed to the usual galbi place just down the road for dinner and then decided to make a break for Yung-tung to spend the rest of the night in the company of foreigners at Now Bar. We brought Anna with us to experience the delights of the finest that the kinnex has to offer and after successfully managing to end up not on the losing side in a game of darts (of course Charlie lost) it was obviously well worth the journey. No need to tell you that me and Kevin continue to reign supreme!
After the usual conversations with the few people that I actually know there we decided to head home at about 3am and had a rather interesting cab ride (aren't they all) on the way back to Hwaseo with a driver whose mind clearly wasn't on the job.
As you may have gathered from my other stories of cab drivers in Suwon they are all about running redlights, pipping at people unecessary and basically taking the fastest and unsafest route they can home. Aftter a combination of the aforementioned things I experienced something new in Korea and something I hopefully won't again! After stopping at a red light near the Ogari in Hwaseo we stayed stationery for rather long then usual when the light changed. After about a ten second delay Kevin was like 'OK man, the lights green you can go', no response. It was only then that we discovered that the poor old guy driving our cab had actually fallen sleep at the wheel and only when Kevin decided to tap him on the shoulder did he wake up!!!! Boy was I glad we were nearly home! According to Anna the guy said something in Korean when he woke up and appologised because 'his mind was on other things'. Yeah no doubt about that! It certainly wasn't on driving! We're on a meter here, no time for falling asleep!
Once we managed to get back safely we all had a laugh about it thinking that our entertainment for the evening was over. Oh how we were wrong! Slightly more hilarious that our driver falling asleep of the wheel was a full grown man sleeping on a table outside a shop just down the road from Talkster. After staring for a few minutes and seeing if the person would wake up we then decided to see if we could wake him up in our own way! Returning from his room with a tray of ice cubes Charlie decided it would be a good idea to see just how much of a deep sleep this guy was in. First from a distance and then a little closer we proceesed to check just how conscious he was by using the ice as a method of waking him up!
As you can imagine and exactly the same as I would act if someone put an ice cube on my head when I was in a sleepy trance the guy got up with a bit of a jolt, we only saw this from a distance as to ensure that he was unaware how his deep sleep was broken we pretty much got away as quick as we could and after watching from the roof of our school to see him confused about what had happened quick as a flash he had disappeared, hopefully home to a more comfortable sleeping area!
I'm pretty exauhsted now after another stupidly late night in Yungtung and at 24 I clearly am not able to keep up with the 'pace' as readily as I'd like! Today (Saturday) will mostly be spent playing golf and there is a possibility that we'll be headed to Itaewon for a music festival in the evening. Tomorrow I have a game for Inter Suwon against the side at the top of the league which I am looking forward to.
As always I will be letting you know exactly what I have been up to on sunday evening (or monday morning depending on what I am up to!) Hope you're having a good weekend!
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