Rising Temperatures, A Traditional Korean Way to Celebrate Friday and Transformers

FEELS like I haven't blogged in a long time...

Probably because I haven't I guess, but with continuing pain and swelling involving my foot it is hard to do very much of interest! I can only appologise to those of you who have been following my blog intently, only to discover that on a weekly basis I am complaining about not doing anything with my time! I'll try to keep the whinging to a minimal, but unfortunately that means that this entry probably isn't going to be very long!

This week sure flew by as has been the way with the month of June for me. It's crazy to think I have been here almost two and a half months now, nearly a quarter of the way through my time in Korea and yet to go crazy. I think that might be an achievement. Discussing with the other guys apparently the first three months of living in Korea are the 'honeymoon' period and it's within the next three that you start to hate the country. Hopefully that won't be the case, but my boss seems to think that Charlie is on the verge of a 'mental breakdown' because of his occasional rants so I am expecting a similar diagnosis when I start complaining about things.

This week in kindergarten we have been learning about telling the time which was a surprisingly easy subject to teach to the kids, well, to the ones who know numbers anyway. By the end of the week I got them to be able to tell both hours and minutes on a clock so hopefully when I ask them what time they go to be in the future they wont tell me '12 and 9'.

The weekend started off with the usual meal of galbi at our friday night restaurant but after that we had a 'date' fixed up with our friend Hans from Baskin' Robbins and we spent some time in a Korean bar talking and drinking. Hopefully it will be something that we are able to do again, I think next weekend he is taking us to go watch a Suwon Bluewings game which should be pretty interesting. With the lack of Premiership action on television I am looking forward to being able to watch a game, even if it is of a slightly lower standard than I am used to.

On Saturday, after a nice lie in, me and Alex headed to Songtan as he wanted to buy a new PS3 game. We spent the rest of the afternoon at his joined by Charlie and Kevin. I know it has been hot back in England but on Saturday it was absolutely beautiful, and although pretty humid, I would say that the temperature can't have been anything more than 90F. I have been warned by my boss, as we all have that the summer is a nightmare, but if that is the temperature which I have to deal with then I would be satisfied. As with most foreign climates compared to the UK, the humidity takes a bit of time to get used to and when you feel the air conditioning on your body it makes a nice difference! The one in my room has been used a couple of times so far and I think in the next three to four months it will be getting some more use.

Sunday involved playing some golf in Yungtung with Charlie and Kevin. Despite playing on the easiest course on the game with very few out of bounds and only one lake, I managed to score almost as badly on 9 holes as I did on 18 a couple of weeks ago. Shows how much of a fluke it was. I blame the foot and the fact that since friday I have been feeling a little ill. On saturday while we were out and about my left arm rather disturbingly went numb, followed by my right one going the same way. I haven't really been affected by my heyfever too much since I have been in Korea but this weekend I have had a blocked nose and all kinds of sneezing fits.
It draws me to the conclusion that because I have been ill so many times already with small things, my body is still doing it's adjusting to Asia. By the time it is finished I'm pretty sure it'll be time to return home.

On the way back from playing golf this evening we stopped to see what time Transformers 2 was on at the movies as we've been planning to see it all week. We has an Italian for dinner and then came back before returning to CGV just before 8pm to catch the movie.
Aside from being 2 1/2 hours long and full of very little storyline, I have to admit that I did enjoy the movie. It wasn't as good as the first one but who doesn't like almost every part of every set being blown up and watching robots fight. There just aren't enough films like that!

Seeing the longest movie I have watched in a while has made me kinda tired so I am heading to bed for an early one this evening. I'm planning to teach the kids about colors tomorrow so it shouldn't be too difficult to work some kind of planning out. Hope you have all had an enjoyable weekend, till next time...take care x

Getting back on my feet, Swimming and Things I'll never understand about Korea...

Two posts within the space of three days...aren't you people lucky!

I felt that I needed to pick up the pace of my blog after recent slacking and obviously give you guys something to read. Perhaps what seems boring and mundane to me might seem a little bit more interesting to people aren't going through the experiences that I am and today presented me with an oppertunity to actually write about a couple of enjoyable moments in the latter part of this week.

Yesterday I had the dreaded dr's appointment at Suwon Hospital. I had to go for another x-ray before seeing the dr and it showed that there had been no further damage to my foot or my ankle which was a positive. The dr examined my ankle and then asked me to walk to see how it would hold up, I haven't walked around for almost two weeks now so I was a bit nervous about putting weight on my foot though once I did it was perfectly fine and even the dr was surprised about how able I was to be able to move.

I am still walking with a severe limp at the moment and a couple of times I have had sharp pains in the top of my foot but they told me I don't need the crutches anymore which is a bonus and to continue walking and see how things go. I still have a bit of a lump on the top of my foot and although the pain is a constant they seemed to think that the swelling would go down soon enough. The problem is now that I am supposed to go a month without doing strenous activitiy which I imagine is going to be pretty difficult for me considering I am about the most active person I know!

Still if a month is all I have to sacrifice for a full recovery then I am willing to do it as the last couple of weeks have been fairly miserable. Who'd have thunk a person needed to use their feet so often to enjoy life!

As well as being of the crutches yesterday we got a double bonus as it was confirmed that our holiday period from school will be between July 25th and August 3rd. Charlie doesn't reckon he will be able to afford to go anywhere outside of Suwon with us but me and Kevin are pretty determined to get out of the country. He eyed up some preliminary flights to Thailand yesterday which sounds pretty good to me. We have a couple of weeks before booking things becomes a necessity but I think I will do a little research to see if I can find us a decent deal.

It's one thing to look forward to I guess and hopefully by then things will be full recovered and I will be able to enjoy the complete experience of Thailand. I think we are planning to head towards Phuket which is where most of the beaches are. I imagine at that time of the year the weather will be absolutely beautiful. I'm looking forward to where ever we go but it would be a fantastic experience to go to a country I have always wanted to visit.

Today it was time for another kindergarten field trip with the kids, and a morning out of school was just what the dr ordered. This morning was the first time the kids have seen me without a cast on for a couple of weeks and almost immediately it was like I'd never had any recent injuries as they were climbing all over me and asking me to pick them up and carry them round as usual. Of course I obliged as I guess the best way for my foot to get strong again is to be carrying 25kg kids around on my shoulders and legs!

This months trip was to a swimming pool, and as it turned out it was actually pretty close to home. Just about the bowling place we visited a couple of weeks ago at the 'sageri' past the market. My boss brought his two kids with him as well and they joined us for a fun morning of swimming, playing with volleyballs and splashing each other. The kids were really good actually, I think they had as much fun as I did in the pool. It has been such a long time since I went to a legitimate swimming pool (and by that I mean one that isn't incorperated into a water park) My boss' wife took some good pictures so if you are interested then they are at he usual website where the rest of my pics are.

The time in the pool was soon up and we went off to a near by 'Lotteria' for dinner. After my last experience with 'the worst fast food restaurant in Korea' I was a little worried and despite my chicken burger being drowned in a couple of kinds of not exactly nice tasting sauce, I avoided the need to be sick like at the Seoul Zoo.
To get back to school we took a route through the market and it was good to get some fresh air after being cooped up so long.

My afternoon classes went by pretty quickly and the kids had their weekly installment of uno in class to give them that friday feeling. After work I was pretty determined not to just stay in my room and play around on the computer so I took a trip up to E-mart by bus as there was a couple of things I needed. As it turned out I didn't come away with anything that I actually went for but I managed to by myself a new pair of shorts and a couple of t-shirts which were very much needed.

This evening we ventured to the usual galbi restaurant and ate like pigs as every friday night. I decided to come home and take it easy as earlier I was falling asleep on the bus which is a sure sign that I don't need to be heading out for a ridiculously late night.

Tomorrow the three of us are supposed to be meeting up with Marie and one of her Korean friends and heading to Itaweon. I say supposed to because I have heard a report that it is going to rain tomorrow and there really isn't anything that exciting that makes me want to head out into the rain! Hopefully it'll hold off as Lord knows I could do with an afternoon out to do something different and do some kind of exploring after the past couple of weeks.

Aside from writing about my thoughts, feelings and experiences of Korea I sometimes feel the necessity to do a little bit of summation for everyone. Usually that turns into the form of some kind of list and this afternoon when I was on the bus I saw something which sparked me into writing the following list about 'Things I will never understand about Korea'.
I have been here about two months now and so far I don't think the novelty of living in Asia has worn off. Speaking to my boss today he says that he can see signs in Charlie that the culture shock is finally settling in, and things about everyday life are starting to frustrate him. I know Kevin loves to rant about things (as he's told me so himself) and inspired by that and seeing a couple of 'dress-a-likes' earlier on I felt it important to share my own little piece of mind with you.

1. Matching Dressers....Matching Dressers, Dress-a-likes (Think I might have made that word up) whatever you want to call them, couples who dress in the same clothes in Korea are everywhere. This may not be a new phenomina as I am sure I have seen some tasteless attempts at fashion before but in Korea, I really don't get it.
If I had a girlfriend who tried to dress like me, firstly I would be a little annoyed that I was going out wearing the same clothes as me, but also I would be a little concerned thinking that I am wearing something very girly, or she is wearing something made for a man.

Whichever, people, seriously, it is not cool. So please stop doing it. We get it. You're together. Dressing alike is just abysmal and especially like a couple I saw the other day who even went to the length of having the same trainers and socks on.

2. Sun Protection...Now I'm not advocating that non application of suncream here. Or doubting that it is very hot in the summer. But when I see fifty and sixty year old people walking down the road wearing big old visors or sporting a parasol, I start to question why they have yet to adjust to the fact the country the live in is hot. It's not just women though. At least parasols are feminine, I've seen plenty of guys carrying them too. They must be very comfortable with themselves. Even so, I can't help but laugh when I see someone carrying an umbrella to protect them from something which is supposed to be used in the opposite kinds of conditions!

This probably shouldn't be on the list as I do understand why Korean's want to cover up and keep their natural whiteness but I think it takes a little bit more than a few spots of evil sunlight to accomplish a tan.

3. Staring...I bet you couldn't have guessed I would put this on there.

Yes, I am foreign. And yes I do look a little different to you. But is there really any need to spend 30 seconds eyeing me up and down like I am an alien from outer space. It's such a frequent occurance now that I have learnt to deal with it and staring back works really well (and is also hilarious to see their reaction) but that doesn't mean that the action of staring isn't extremely rude. I've seen some crazy things while I have been here and that has certainly made stare more than three non-Korean's walking down the road.

4. No Deoderant...I'm sure the answer to this one is out there somewhere. But I have no idea why Korea doesn't sell deeoderant of any form. Have the Korean's secretly cracked a formula for oderless sweat? Or are they just so worried about their damage to the o-zone layer that it has been banned. Sadly I don't have the answer as to why such a crazy 'problem' exists. All I can say is that I am glad I brought some with me. Incase you haven't noticed, it's quite hot people!

5. Neon Lights...I understand the necessity for neon lights. OK so buildings high up need a way to attract people into their businesses and without the use or lights they would have no way to achieve this. But do businesses on the ground level really need them too? Seriously, all over your window? Does that really help? Or does it just give you a massive elecricity bill at the end of the month! I thought that the 'neon factor' was just a stereotype that you see on films with Japan in them but apparently not. Sure it makes the place look pretty but it can't be doing much good to the environment. It's a wonder there are any trees or plants around this place sometimes.

6. Subtly disguising the unsuttle as something subtle....It'll make sense in a second. Now I did some research before I came to Korea and it didn't take many wikipedia or google searches to start digging up dirt about things to watch out for in Korea. I figure if it didn't take me long to work out the meaning of a love heart and pink lights and a building or why some barbers have two rotating poles rather than one and why there are so many buildings around bars that have blacked out windows, everybody in Korea knows the score so why the need to cover it up so much?! The red light district in Suwon is a one minute wrong turn off the main street where the station is one and it's not like the people there are hiding anything so it seems a bit puzzling to me that exactly the same thing going on around the rest of the city is doing it's best, bad attempt to let everyone know what is going on there!

Namul, Songtan and blistered hands...

Continuing my trend of slack recent blog postings I have been intending to put this message on here for about a week now but for whatever reason it has taken me until Thursday to finally get round to doing it!

I can only appologise for my tardyness so many times of course but one more wouldn't hurt! I'm sorry! Blame the injured foot! It's slowing down my walking ability and also my brain processing time to do stuff!

I'm still working on replying to all the lovely emails that I have recieved too so if you read this message before I reply to your mail, don't worry, I will be sending you a response soon! I'm doing my best!

Regarding the foot, I'm back to the hospital tomorrow to get it checked out after almost two weeks of resting, elevating and icing. I'm not totally convinced that I will be off the crutches as although I haven't been putting any weight on my foot, it's pretty obvious that the swelling on my ankle and my foot hasn't really gone down all that much. My foot is continuing the slow progress of getting it's defenition back but there's still a huge lump on the top of there where the original damage was. I'm sure if I tried to walk on my foot it would be with a gangster style limp either that or it will collapse underneath my weight. Something I'm not very willing to risk.

We'll see anyway. You'll be the first to discover if I am able to if you check back at some point in the next few days because I will be ecstatic if I am able to get back on my feet. Quite literally! As the title suggests the pain of my foot isn't the only trouble I am having with the injury at the moment as almost three weeks of crutch use has taken it's toll on my hands. The first week and a bit I was having trouble with painful armpits but this time round I have been able to get rid of that problem, the only trouble with that was that another part of my body has had to take one for the team, those parts being my hands!
I kinda need them quite alot as you can imagine but it's not easy to be able to pick up stuff, play computer games or do anything when there are the beginnings of a blister forming on the palms of my hand. There really isn't much give in the plastic handles of the crutches and having to get up and down stairs three times a day plus scaling the hill at least four times a day has taken it's toll on my palms!

Up and till this point I didn't even think it was possible to get blisters there but I can add that to my list of painful experiences while I have been in Korea.

Anyway. The socialising and schmoozing that I was doing in the first few weeks has continued to be limited to dinner and the occasional game of Playstation with Charlie and Kevin as I have been doing my best to keep the foot elevated and ice so I can attempt to return to the early days of contentment from when I arrived in Asia.

The weekend though was too much, I definately felt like I couldn't take another one of doing nothing and as I had been advised to stay off my feet, that kinda limited my options in terms of things to do! I spent most of Saturday morning watching game seven of the Stanley Cup Final but at about lunchtime seeing the sun shining in through my window, I began to get the itch to go outside and do something!

Luckily Charlie was in and said he fancied doing something so we hopped on the no. 3 bus and headed to Namul which is a small fashion and shopping district about ten minutes from Talkster. If you remember right back in my first week of blogging, Namul was the place where Anna took the three of us to go see martial arts, and although we'd been to part of the fortress there we'd never really been anywhere to walk around. Although walking wasn't on he adgenda for me, we had an enjoyable time looking in several of the local shops and also climbed up on part of the fortress wall between Namul and where we live.

Considering it was pretty much perfect weatherwise before we knew it we found ourselves making our way back home on foot (me quite literally and I guess the 45 minute hobble has something to do with the blisters!)
In the afternoon we decided to go round and meet with Alex to play some video games, Kevin joined up with us for a few hours and on the way back home we decided to sample some more 'cheesy donkas' from one of the restaurants near the bottom of the street where we live.

Unfortunately by this point, whether it was the heyfever or just some bug that I had picked up from one of my kids during the week I was feeling pretty ill and for the first time in Korea inable to eat all my dinner. You know I am ill when that starts to happen! It was time for a good night's sleep and waking up the next morning I had prepared myself for a day of bordam.

Luckily some of the guys were fearing that they were also in for the same circumstances so we decided to head to a place which is about twenty minutes from us called Songtan. Songtan is the location of an American military Air Force base, and because of the presense of so many western people, the small location has become a home to all kind of 'foreigner' shops and restaurants. Most of the shops there were selling clothes as Charlie put it 'in regular sizes' and also shoes for 'people who aren't midgets'!
We had a russle through some of the shops which was pretty fun and took up a couple of hours. Charlie and Alex both came away with a PS3 game each and Charlie also brought a T-shirt and some cd's. I kept my wallet closed but mainly due to the fact that I decided it wasn't worth the hassle to become like a carthorse and be carrying bags whilst not being able to work properley!

Songtan was cool anyway, it was good to be in the majority for a change and it was kinda like being in Korea, but not being a bit closer to home, if you understand what I mean. I'm sure I will be heading back there at some point and I will remind myself to take some pictures so you can see what I mean. Before returning home we sank another delicious meal of Popeye's chicken as they have one in Songtan as well, and that made the journey well worth it!

This week has been the same as usual real, just work, sleep and messing around on the computer. Today was Anna's birthday so we went out for a meal to the usual galbi place down the road a couple of days early. I met a couple of other teachers who used to work at Talkster and it was good to get their experiences and find out what they are doing with themselves nowadays. It has given me some good ideas about potential future travelling plans which I am still working on!

Anyways, as it's getting further and further past my bedtime as I continue typing I will leave it here for the time being. Hope you like the picture which is included at the top of the screen. It's of me, Kevin, Charlie, Josh and Haji, the five foreigners who work at the school, I thought it'd finally be good to put a face to the names I mention so often. I have a couple of some kids from my class to but I will have to add them at another time!

Another Week With Walking Aides, Travel Plans and A Rather Quickly Put Together List to Fill Up Space

UNFORTUNATELY as I don't have the use of both my legs at the moment, I don't have the luxary to blog about anything interesting that I have been up to in Korea, I figured I'd better post something considering I have already had complaints that my 'loyal follower' (You know who you are!) is looking for daily updates on my life in Asia.

I really wish I had something good to report, but apart from riding the bus with a set of crutches and some extremely painful hand and armpit pains, I haven't experienced anything new and of note this week!
I'm not sure if it is the added stress of not being able to use my right foot or just the continuing and daily struggles with teaching English but I am pretty tired as the weekend arrives.

My heyfever decided it was going to kick into action this morning as well and it's really not fun trying to teach when your nose is running with the fear in the back of your mind that standing up and reaching in your pocket for a tissue is a dangerous combination for over balancing!

It's been a mixed bag in terms of classes this week, I feel somehow strangely detatched from my morning kindergarten class because I am unable to run about, dance or basically do anything with them. They have been really good to me by getting me a chair to sit on and also by not taking advantage of the fact that I can't chase them down when they get out of control but it's a bit of a different experience to the last couple of weeks and I'll be glad when I can walk again for the sake of my lessons!

The afternoon classes have been up and down to be honest. I've got three new students in my 3pm class who are from the International School in Suwon where I play football. They have the strange combination of being able to speak English very well but hardly being able to read it. The kids I have in the class already are pretty good when it comes to reading so it's sometimes a bit of a struggle to teach two drastically different levels of abilities the same things as three will rush away and be finished in five minutes where as the other three will be struggling, not only because they don't know what to do, but they don't know how to read the instructions for the exercise so they can understand it!
My one rowdy class on Monday, Wednesday and Fridays have been pretty restrained this week, and they even behaved acceptably enough and didn't speak a word of Korean that we got the oppertunity to play a game. There was one kid missing and it's the first time it's been a pleasure to actually teach them. I think it's pretty obvious where the source of all the noise is in that case!

Work aside, as you can imagine, I really haven't been doing much at all with myself. I had to take an interesting little trip to the bank the other day at dinner time to pay an electricity bill. Unfortunately the midday sun wasn't kind enough to not beat down for the 15 minutes it took me to get from my house to the bank and when I came back I had to have a shower as I was getting a bit of a sweat on!
I've been doing my best to go out with the guys every night and eat but because I haven't been able to play football or go to the park or anything, most of my time has been spent on the computer or playing Charlie at FIFA!

In terms of the foot, hopefully the rest at the weekend will be just what it needs as it's really taking it out of me at the moment. The dr's assesment of my foot on Monday has me worried about how long the 'damage' will take to repair. After icing it for a couple of hours each night it's pretty clear that the majority of the swelling is going down and day by day my foot appears to be getting it's 'defenition' back. My ankle is still pretty big compared to the one on my left foot and there is still a huge lump on the top of it which is quite painful. I'm hoping that in the next few days that the swelling will continue to dissapear and that next thursday I will be able to get this damn cast of my foot and at least begin walking. Until then, this foot is not touching the ground!

As I have had a lot of time on my hands over the past week, I've had to have something to occupy my time with and decided that even less than two months into my time in Korea I should probably start looking at what lies in the future for me.

Kevin and I were talking the other day and initially it was regarding 'summer holidays' as we said we both fancied heading somewhere during the week we get off from Talkster. Obviously Charlie is in for it as well, but as yet we don't know when this five days will be but it's likely to be the end of July from what I understand.

Both Thailand and the Phillipines have been discussed which is perfectly fine with me as I would enjoy either an wherever we don't go on that week we are likely to be heading too during our time off at Christmas because as far as I understand Korea is pretty miserable in the winter. I'm not too up for sticking around during that week if it's going to be horrific and I think it would be kinda nice to have an 'alternative' Christmas in Manilla or Phuket where it will be considerably warmer!

These discussions got me thinking about what exactly my next step should be after I leave Korea. It's far ahead in the future I know, but I have a long distance view of these things! My original plan was to head back to England and have another go at continuing my career in journalism, but the more I think about it, the less it appeals and with the state of the economy the less likely it will be that I will be able to do that.

Whether it's just a brief holiday or a period of time spent travelling I was hoping to spend a period of time out of the country but the more I think about it and the more I reflect on my enjoyment of the experiences so far, the more I am considering spending another six months to a year working abroad. Before I came to Korea I'd done some research online about working abroad in different countries and I think that if I spent some time travelling, either through Asia or around Europe then I would be able to do some first hand research of the kind of things that I would be able to do. I would be hoping to combine travel with work again and ideally I think it'd like to coach football rather than teach English though I realise those kind of oppertunities are limited.
Realistically I think that the transition from living as I am now to returning to England would be a little too much of a reality check than I need and while and I am still young and have the oppertunity to travel I would love to be able to do so! At the moment though I am still very undecided!

If anyone has any good ideas then please feel free to relay them to me because at the moment this little brain has too much to cope with!

Considering it's friday night and I am sitting in my room with a bag of chicken nuggets strapped to my leg to ease the pain I figure it's a fitting time to put my journalistic skills to good use and write a 'list' of some of the 'skills' which I have learnt while I have been here. This compilation of five things should probably be titled 'Things I Couldn't Do Before I Came to Korea'...

1. Speak Korean....
Well fair enough, I still really can't at the moment but I know at least ten words of the language that I didn't know before I left Heathrow Airport in April! I was told the other day that Korean is the second hardest language on the planet to learn and with my limited success at trying to learn the alphabet I realise that is very true. I'm determined to learn the whole thing inside six months and I reckon that by the time I leave next year I will be able to speak a little bit of Korea (or at least I'd hope I could) and I'll certainly be able to remember the two phrases which I picked up this week which as 'Don't yell' and 'You are a dwarf'.

Don't ask me where either would be practical.

2. Teach...
Fairly logical this one, and don't get me wrong I am not claiming to be able to do it very well but 'teaching experience' will certainly be added to my CV (future employees don't need to know that at least half of it is just gloryfied babysitting!)
I've not 'taught' before as such but having coached, and helped my mum with countless lessons at school I have the basics at least. Considering there is no real training as far as this kind of teaching goes, it's really about learning as you go along and I'm sure that even after eleven months in the job I will still be learning new things and picking up what does and doesn't work!

3. Tollerate Spicy Food...
Like being able to laugh at yourself in a classroom situation, this is a must when living in Korea where they put spices in everything. It's only recently that I have started to notice how spicy some of the their food is and it's only just dawned on me that I now no longer taste the spice first. Most of the foods we order now like 'dak galbi' and 'pudeh-gi-geh' as not really that spicy but they sure have a kick to them which I couldn't cope with at first.
I'm a bit of a girl when it comes to eating spicy things and I am not claiming that I will now be able to eat Tobasco and Pepper Sauce like my grandad does on everything but I will certainly be able to eat something a little hotter than a korma next time I have an Indian!

4. Communicate with strangers...
I think I have always been a pretty poor communicator with people I am unfamilar with but when you are 50,000 miles from home and aren't sure what is going on, you really have no choice but to try and express yourself so at least one person understands.
I wouldn't say that we have had the experience of being 'lost' yet, but when that moment comes along there is little doubt that we will be finding our way wherever we need to go and by any means possible! I sure wouldn't have been able to have ordered half the food I eat without the ability to comunicate with body and often sign language!

5. Spending such a long time away from home...
I was struggling to think of a fifth thing but then it dawned on me that this, by a distance is the longest I have been without seeing or actually speaking to anyone of my friends back home. Sure I was at the opposite end of the country for three years at university, but this is a totally new experience and at some point it will dawn on me that I am well out of my depth. So far I think I am doing very well with the homesickness and missing things and people back in England, not to say I don't but sometimes when I go on holiday I start to miss home after three or four days. Perhaps the realisation set in after a week here that I am in it for the long haul. I realise there will surely be tougher times ahead at the first two months have been a bit of a breeze (aside from the leg) but I feel like I can definately do what I have done already six more times to complete the year!

Technology All-Round, Popeye's Biscuits and A Victory For the Invalided

Evening everyone (Well it's evening here anyway!)

Time for the usual weekend update. After the displeasure of spending a large proportion of time in pain last week, I was pretty glad it was time for the weekend come Friday at 5.50pm.
I spent most of the evening browsing the net and icing my leg with the hope that some of the swelling would go down on my foot.

I joined the rest of the guys on a trip to Ocha's for dinner but decided against a visit to NOW bar this week, instead choosing to spend some quality time with the TV! Saturday came and I was booked into for a visit to the doctor. Instead of making the visit this week I decided to give Haji and Elizabeth a call to see if they could help me out and they agreed to pick me up in the afternoon.
Unfortunately when I got to the hospital, it appears that at some point wires got crossed, and pens wrote things they shouldn't have as it turns out that Dr's don't work on Saturday's and there was no-one there to help me out!

I was pretty frustrated as you can imagine, I was wanting to know if my injury had made any progress at all but for one reason or another I guess that wouldn't be possible. I went down to the emergency dept. where I had been the previous weekend and they instructed me to take off the cast I was wearing and give my foot some air over the weekend and then return on Monday.

Pretty annoyed that I wasn't to find out any kind of information, I found walking easier than I though it would be although with pressure being on my foot for the first time in a week, the first few steps hurt like hell. After that, aside from a little bit of a hop-along swagger I was managing to cope. Charlie gave me a call and said he was heading into Yungtung to finally get himself a PS3. In need of a new hard drive I decided to join him and Alex on their journey, mainly to get some fresh air as I have discovered that sheltering inside in Korea is about as fun as it is in England!
Before we met Alex in Suwon me and Charlie headed to a 'Smoothy King' chain to pick up some lunch. I sampled some more excellent food (I realise that BBQ chicken wraps aren't traditionally Korean but it was lovely) I also had a strawberry and lemon smoothy which was fantastic! I'm sure I will be visiting there again at some point!

We headed off on the usual crowded subway to Yungtung and after about three hours of walking around and checking prices we each picked up a valuable item to bring home with us. Charlie got himself a PS3, Alex got himself an HD monitor to play his previously purchased console on and I got a 1TB hard drive for about a quarter of the price you can in England which I was pretty pleased about.
I was even more pleased by a brief stop in the station mall to pick up some food at an American fried chicken restaurant called 'Popeye.' Now I am a big fan of KFC, anyone who knows me will realise that but I think they may have some competition on their hands if Popeyes ever decided to open in England. For 7600 won (about £3.50) we managed to pick up three sizable pieces of chicken, some seasoned fries, re-fillable cups of Mountain Dew and also some 'biscuits' which were actually like warm scones and served with jam. They were absolutely incredible and I reckon that meal filled me up the most since I came to Korea. Not a bad day out at all really.

What I wasn't too delighted about was the horiffic wait for the subway home and then the ridiculous overcrowded compartments which awaited us! I decided to fill in the painful hours journey by playing on my PSP and I couldn't even get any peace doing that as I had about three people looking over my shoulder seeing exactly what I was up to.

Returning home to find that his PS3 didn't exactly 'work like a dream' Charlie and me headed to Alex to rescue his extra controller from round there so we could play some games together. A few hours later we headed back to Hwaseo-dong for some much needed rest.

I decided that after a throughly exhausting week that I deserved a lie in and although I'm not really feeling like it did me any good as I was very tired when I woke up this morning, it was enjoyable to get a decent night of sleep and take away the pain of my foot for a little while.
As we got paid on Friday I decided it was time to spend a little bit of money doing food shopping at E-Mart, Charlie came along for the adventure and tried to help me find the list of ten things I had written down in the strange environment.

Unfortunately for Charlie things hadn't quite been working out his way over the weekend either and in a rash moment of impatience to wash his bedcovers he accidently threw his remote control in the washing machine wrapped up in his duvet! Whoops! He tried his best to find a new one at E-Mart but our TV is made by some very small Korean company and unless you have an LG or a Samsung it's pretty difficult to communicate exactly what you need.

He soon cheered up though when we headed down to the 'food' section of the supermarket though I'm not sure if it was the free samples of pretty much everything that were on offer or the ability to buy American brewed beer which cheered him up.
I'm pretty gutted I didn't take my camera with me actually because the sight of a high-tech supermarket being taken over by vendors trying to upsell pretty much every they had in stock was quite a sight.

We made our way around the outside of the shop picking up all he stuff we needed and basically trying out anything that looked like it wasn't still moving (and of course didn't have tentacles.) We fear at one point we at something which looked like big snout and there was also a lady who forced what looked and tasted like ground up pebels on us but there were some highlights including some nice fresh hamburgers and some cranberry juice!

The evening was spent combining a few games on the Playstation with a re-organisation of my room which gives me a little bit more floor space. When I first moved in I'm sure I tried to restructure my room the way it is now but for some reason it didn't want to work. Yesterday I had little trouble trying to do what I wanted to do and although my room still feels like a corridor with furniture in it, I'm a little happier it's the way I want it.

Later on I joined up with Alex, Charlie, Kevin and Anna and we went to the bowling alley just down the road together. A long time ago we had seen a bowling pin sitting outside our main bank but had failed miserably to try and find where it was. Turns out it was on the floor we hadn't explored so the five of us played a couple of games. It has been a while since I turned my hand to bowling and with a very painful ankle it was less than easy to bowl. The first few frames probably go best unmentioned but I still didn't come last with my score of 80-something as Charlie and Anna tied on 67. It was even more hilarious that Charlie said if Anna beat him he'd go back to the US!!!

In the second game I managed to make a late run at Kevin who was leading by miles and miraculously came away with a win! I think the other guys should be pretty disappointed that a man with basically one leg and little ability to bend or bowl was able to beat them, but I guess it shows that it has nothing to do with finesse and is all about technique.

When I got back I watched the very enjoyable French Open final and at that point decided to call it a night before it got too late.

I really haven't been doing anything of note at all today though I did finally get my Dr's appointment sorted. The news wasn't the best and although the people I went to see on Friday told me to take the cast off the Orthapedic surgeon was pretty clueless as to why hey had instructed me to do that. Apparently now that my foot is a little less swolen, he guesses that there is medial ligament damage to my ankle which is why it hurts so much. He also said that there may be a fracture of some bones in my foot which hasn't shown up on the x-ray but would explain why the swelling is still so extreme.

I have to be honest it does suck that it's taken me this long to actually damage myself seriously, and as I said before, only I could manage to a foreign country and do this. I was well aware that it wouldn't be as simple to cure as a sprain or a twist but I just hope that whatever damage is done can be repaired as I would hate to lose my whole summer or some excellent oppertunities to do anything because of a very inocuous accident which happens to me basically every game I play!

For the rest of the week I will be doing my best to rest, ice, compress and elevate my foot with the hope that by the time I have to return next thursday there is a bit more good news!

Crutches, Kraze and New Classes

Considering that I have some spare time on my hands after partly disabling myself for a week or so I figured I'd get chance to write a midweek blog as I didn't get much of an oppertunity to do so on Sunday because of the hopsital visit.

Aside from the visit to the medical center I didn't really get up to much on Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday Kevin had an earache so me and Charlie headed to the Screen Golf Zon (No not Zone, it really is called Zon.) Just like everywhere else we go to I think we really made the guy in theres afternoon. It was pretty busy when we went in so we sat and waited for a free space and the guy was kind enough to lend us a putter to practice on the rooftop putting green. While I practised impossibly sinkable shots the guy chatted with Charlie and it turns out he's actually pretty damn good at golf.

One the people before us had finished playing me and Charlie got into a full 18 holes of a course which he said is pretty close to him. Luckily for us, this one was actually built mostly on sand so there was none of the 'Out of Bounds' business we had to deal with last time and although I spent quite alot of time hooking my way out of sandtraps, all the practice time I'd had in the garden back home chipping balls into a net paid off. I was a little angry when I hit the flag on three consecutive holes and it then decided to bounce off their and roll it's way further off the green than I'd been hitting from but in the end we both got a score of +31 which is probably about 100-ish and is far better than I did on my last round of 18.

We then headed to Alex's to play some FIFA in the evening and despite the plan to Itaweon we decided it was a little too late for any of those shenanigans and me and Charlie substituted that in favour of a trip to Baskin' Robbins for some delicious ice-cream. I don't remember the flavour that I had this time but it was a mixture of about three four and then it had some strange little bits of poppin' candy in there which were quite tasty. For the rest of the evening I watched the FA Cup final between Chelsea and Everton. It was pretty strange not to be at home watching the game, possibly for the first time in my life but I guess this trip to Korea is about new experiences and I certainly have been getting plenty of them.

I hear that the weather has been nothing short of phenominal over recent days and I'm glad to say that Korea hasn't let us down one bit as the temperatures have been well into the 80's everyday and infact I think Sunday might have been the hotest day of the year at around low 90's.

Following the trip to the hospital on Monday I wasn't terribly excited to be getting up for work on Monday morning and despite the distressed look on all my kids faces when I hobbled into the classroom, everything seems to be working out quite well. I have to say that my Kindergarten class were nothing short of distressed and even Larry, the kid with super ADD was well behaved and he kept passing me my crutches as a apose to what I though would do which is stamp on my foot.

Yesterday I also started my new run of classes which is two extra than when I started at Talkster but feels like alot more as for the last two weeks I have been working till 5pm on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
On Monday's at 5pm I now teach the class I taught on Tuesdays and Thursday's at 5pm and today I teach a new class which is very beginner at 5pm and the class I taught at 6pm for the first time last week now carries on as a permenant fixture. The class of beginners I taught at 5pm is three very sweet little girls who don't know any English at all. They were obviously very shocked to see me teaching them this afternoon and they spent most of the time giggling to themselves. Because they haven't learnt any English at all before their first lesson on Monday today I had to keep it very basic and we learnt about the alphabet (well the letters C and D.) It was pretty tough, and although they were very shy to speak or say anything I am hugely shocked that I managed to teach about four letters of the alphabet for a whole 50 minutes without running out of things to do!

This evening we decided to head somewhere a little different and made for 'Kraze Burger' which is in Suwon Station. One of the guys we work with, Josh, recommended it to us and me and Charlie went in there on Sunday but I didn't get a chance to actually try one of the burgers. I had the standard burger from there and I have to say that it was one of the nicest burgers I have ever eaten. Obviously we got it with French Fries too and because a/ We're foreign and b/ They were entertained us, they brought us some chilly fries too.
It was a throughly satisfying meal and the speed at which they managed to make it an serve it to us was incredible.

I really have to say that one of my favourite things about Korea so far is definately the food. OK, I understand burgers aren't very Korean but the whole meal cost about £5.00 which is just less than a large at McDonalds. The difference in quality between the two is indescribable and also the difference between that and the horrific Lotteria burger I had at the zoo is incredible. I'm sure that at some point I will come across another meal in Korea which isn't that great but at the moment we're in the positive by about 60 from two months worth of food.

So that's the story of the last two days, not very thrilling I'm afraid but I can't be having too much fun while I am incapacitated. I walked, well hobbled back, from the Ogari on the corner of the main road to my room this evening and I feel like I had spent an hour in the gym! Unfortunately crutches aren't as cool when you are the one on them and I am feeling like I will definately be getting blisters on my hands and will continue to have sore arm pits for a long time!

Until next time, take care....