The Beginning, The End and Water Gun Fighting...

JUST a quick post I thought I'd better put up this evening as over the weekend I will likely be indisposed and unable to reach the computer to blog about what I have been up to over the last seven days.

The last week before vacation started with the beginning of some new classes which Talkster had decided to put on because of the public school holidays. As it turned out my new classes totalled three students in my 4pm, and one of them I had taught before anyhow. Unfortunately that did mean that that class is now up to a whopping 10 (yes, a whole 10) people but I guess that just means it takes long to get things done.

Some of the 'native speaking' students out of one of my other classes were in their last week at Talkster however which means that when I return to school I will have a class of two students (unless anyone else decides they want to join it.) Class sizes aside everything went pretty well throughout the week and I survived to the end of it without spending too much time wishing that vacation time would come up faster.

Activities outside of the classroom this week have been limited as I have been doing my best to save money, I took a walk out and through the market a couple of days just for some fresh air and I had to deal with a bank a couple of times as I am still trying (and failing) to send money home, but aside from that, nothing groundbreaking.

I worked out my KU schedule this month very well that the last day before the break turned out to be a field trip and although I wasn't sure what a 'Water Gun Survival' game was it turned out to be pretty fun. I took the kids down to the park where I had spent much of my early few weeks and once we'd dished the water guns out it was time to find the nearest 'watering hole' (or tap) and let the chaos begin!

Obviously when it comes to shooting water at people I was a prime target but once the kids realised that I was able to dodge their water pretty easily and wasn't scared to aim for their faces they decided it would be good for us to all gang up together on one person, until that one person decided they want to be part of the team too.
The rather troublesome kid in my class spent a lot of time toweling himself down after I absolutely hosed him for five minutes none stop but once he learned to run away I started attacking the innocent little girls in my group who would tell me not to shoot them, and then as soon as I turn away start firing at me!

A good time as had by all and once we got the bus back to Talkster and changed clothes we had some dinner and then drew some pictures about what we spent time doing during the day. It's incredible how these kids memories work as most of them drew themselves not getting wet and them shooting other people, one of them even had the cheek to draw everyone but themselves in tears because he was able to shoot them all with his pansy-ass gun in one go! Kids! I dunno!

Afternoon classes went by pretty smoothly too with quite a few of my students starting their vacation early and not turning up. After work I begun packing my bag (which I still haven't got round to finishing) and spent some time dabbling with my new Wii Motion Plus device which got delivered yesterday.

This time tomorrow I will hopefully be sitting on a beach in Thailand somewhere watching the sunset, and incase you haven't read my previous few blogs I am very much looking forward to it. My flight leaves at 8.30am so me and Kevin are getting up tomorrow morning to head to Incheon Airport at around 5am. I'm taking my computer with me so I should be able to stay in farily reasonable touch should you choose to email me and imagine that given the oppertunity I will be posting pictures either on Facebook or on the Shutterfly site as we go along.

Now I think it's time to bid you all farewell and head to bed as I really do have to be up at a Godly time of the morning.

As always, take care and try not to miss me too much x

WA Bar, Norebang debuting and Monkey Beach

ONLY one week to go left before Talkster vacation, not that I am counting or anything, and I have to be honest and say that the last three days may have just been the most enjoyable (and random) since my arrival in Korea!

As per norm, the week travelled by at some pace and it was Friday before we all knew it. We were planning to meet our friend Marie for some dinner but she called it off after damaging herself so we headed to our usual galbi restaurant for dinner with Haji and then decided to check out another bar called 'The WA bar' which is about five minutes away from where we live.

Haji had mentioned it to us before but as yet we hadn't managed to venture there. By the end of the evening it was a decision which we were glad we made!
After a few drinks we made friends with a couple of people sitting at the table next to us, a Korean girl named Emily and a guy from Ohio named Alan. We chatted to them for a couple of hours and just as me and Kevin were thinking about heading home, Emily decided to 'challenge' Charlie and the rest of us into visiting a Norebang with her. I know there is a big stereotype in Asia, paticularily Japan, that people in the country love karaoke. Korea is no different in conforming to that stereotype as a norebang is a personalised karaoke room and they are about as frequent as neon cross symbols around the Suwon area.

Reluctantly we agreed to on the premise that we'd give it a few minutes and see what it was like....well those few minutes turned into two hours and possibly the most entertaining 120 minutes of my life! Anyone who knows me will know that my voice wasn't exactly built for singing and I have the musical talent of a sheep but it's amazing how much you are willing to make a fool out of yourself in front of strangers in a foreign country!

Unfortunately for us Emily was actually a really good singer and in terms of talent she put us to shame! What the three of us lack in talent, we make up for in comedic value and effort! Charlie got the party started early with his version of Boyz to Men's 'End of the Road'. That song has taken on an entirely new meaning to me and as Kevin agreed Charlie's version only enhanced what it already a great song! We did try and get him to sing another Boyz to Men classic but he refused, instead deciding to form a trio with me and Kevin to sing Queen's 'Bohemian Rapsody'.

Many other classic tracks came out in our singing room session including 'Celebration', 'Take it Easy' and Charlie spoiled us with his version of Prince's 'Kiss'! We finished the night of in style with me crooning to 'play that funk music' before heading back to Hwaseo-dong with sore cheeks and voices from both singing, and in my case laughing!

We agreed to meet up with Emily again the next day as she wanted to take us to a bar in Apujong called 'Monkey Beach'. The three of us decided to start of the day with nine holes of golf at Screen Golf Zone. We played Pebble Beach in California and amazingly after double parring the first two holes I scraped myself down to finish second with a score of +12. Kevin continued his record of winning everytime we've played with an outrageous round of +4!

We rendezvouzed back at Suwon station at about 7 where we met Emily and made your way to Monkey Beach. We stopped off for a bit of food first and met one of her friends who is learning to be a singer and dancer. Thankfully I got him in the picture at the top of the page so if he ever becomes famous I'll be able to say that I ate noodles with him whilst he was a nobody!

Monkey Beach was a basement club that we probably would never have found if we'd had tried to navigate our way there alone and from the beginning it was pretty packed. Thankfully it broke Korean club tradition by not filling it's playlist with K-pop garbage and the three of us spent the next four hours dancing our behinds off on tables to anything that was being played! Sadly I missed Charlie doing the 'Stankey Leg' but the three of us had a throughly enjoyable time!

We ventured home at about 1.30 and got back to the station at about 2.15 in a cab. This morning I spent most of the time catching up on my sleep and after sitting on the computer for a little while at about 11am, I decided that my body needed further re-couperation so I returned to bed! This afternoon me and Charlie went out to get some dinner and then met up with Kevin to go to the movies.
Unfortunately there wasn't anything decent on offer with neither of us wanting to see Harry Potter 6, Transformers 2 (again) and a bunch of Korean films which we wouldn't understand anyway so me and Charlie ventured off into Namul for a walk and he brought some new PS3 games which we spent the evening playing.

So that was my weekend and as much as I dread how fast sunday travels buy I only have five days until our vacation so I am feeling on top of the world right now! This time next week I will more than likely be lying on a sun drenched beach in Phuket! And I cannot wait!

Time to sign off now, I'm feeling pretty tired and should probably have headed to bed a few hours ago!

Until next time.... Take care!x

A South Park-esque 'Dude I Learned Something Today' to fill in some space

CONTUNUING to feel guilty that I don't get to update my blog very often I decided this evening that I was going to post a few of my thoughts rather than that I have been up to this week.

I guess it's my blog, and that's kinda what it's for but today I got thinking that in the three months that have flown by I really have learnt alot about a new culture and a new country.
It's a little too early to go drawing conclusions about my time in Korea but here are four things I thought of that I have learnt since April...

1. Stereotypes are called such for a reason - In my experience some are justified, some are false and some are as yet unproven....

I'm sure when I told many people that I was coming to Korea they gave me the deer in headlights look as if to say 'Why on earth would you want to do that?' Knowing slim to nothing about the country itself I did a few Internet searches and of course came across a mix of good and bad 'reviews' from people who had been here.

Over zelous neon lighting, eating dog as a regular part of their diet, zenephobia and working all manner of hours for no extra pay were all things I read about before coming and whilst I would like to say that most stereotypes of life in Korea are unfounded, perhaps some of the things I have yet to experience have just not been proven either day.
One thing I should definately say is that (and I'll put this in caps) ALL KOREANS DO NOT EAT DOGS!! This is a complete falsehood and infact not all Korean's are able to because of their religion. There is a rumour of a 'dog day' which does exists when natives cook 'man's best friend' but these aren't just any old dogs, these are dogs which have basically been genetically created to become food!

2. Being far away from home doesn't always being 'far away from home'

Obviously since the invent of the Internet communication across the world has become completely possible and whilst I feel I would have gone insane without the use of a computer there have been many reasons which have meant me not going grey (or bald). Whilst I'm not trying to suggest that Korea is some western paradox where everything is available, the only thing aside from deoderant (you can actually get women's but not men's) that I have seached for and not found is blu-tac.

I guess globalisation is a core reason for the fact that chains like Domino's Pizza or Baskin' Robbins are widely available in Korea. And although apart from the delicious 31 flavours of ice cream I haven't turned to western food very often, it is comforting to know that they are there in the background should things go sour.
Although Korea is extremely technoligically advanced Yungsan Electronics Market is a fine example of somewhere where you can get almost anything from across the world should it have been impossible to find anywhere else. I am sure that I will come across other things in the next nine months that Korea doesn't have but so far I'd say one thing isn't bad.

3. A safety choice isn't always a safe choice

While we're on the subject of globalisation and food I thought I'd harp back to the moment in the early going when Charlie, Kevin and I thought that buying a burger would be the cure to all our hunger problems. Sadly that burger happened to be from Lotteria, which I admit has improved in my opinion after a chicken burger which I ate there, but will forever get the blame for making me ill within the first month.
As easy as it would be to eat familiar foods such as chicken and pasta, not only would that be disgraceful way to spend a year in a foreign country with so much good food 'Lotteria-gate' proved that reverting to type isn't always the way forward. Taking risks is sometimes beneficial. If it hadn't been for a risk then we'd never have found delicious foods like dak-galbi and donkas. All I'm saying people is don't be afriad to be adventurous!

4. Attitude is the key

Moving to Korea was probably one of the toughest but well thought out decisions I ever made and I'm sure that a few people reading this still think I am made for doing it. I think that one of the reasons I am succeeding so far, and hope to for the next nine months, is the way in which I have been able to apply myself. A new experience such as this is always going to be over-rawing but you can choose to be swalled up by the magnitude of the odds you are facing or you can decide to stand-up tall and take whatever life throws at you.

I would like to think that in this situation I have done the latter, and to my credit and benefit. Things which are now routiene to me such as ordering food in a restaurant or riding the subway were in the beginning taxing situations in which I was very wary of the outcome. I guess that completing such activities on a daily basis has given me the confidence to do them without even thing and although it probably brings a lot of stares I'd like to think that me, Charlie and Kevin are setting a fine example for the USA and England respectively.

A Return to Now, Hongdae and Some Retail Therapy

MY stories from this weekend can't quite top the excitement of going to watch Suwon Bluewings play last saturday but I figured it was time to blog again and make what has been a fairly routine week sound interesting - something which I feel I do very well.

My third last week before Talkster vacation in a fortnight didn't quite travel by as quickly as the last few have but each day was pretty enjoyable non the less. This week was supposed to be the start of the Korean rainy season as we were warned by our boss and on wednesday we got a pretty impressive constant day of rain which when you live in the middle of a hill is pretty frustrating.

Lessons trundled by on most days but the week in general went by very quickly and come friday it was time to head out for some galbi as usual. In a bid to prevent ourselves from spending a fourth consecutive night doing very little we decided to head to Now bar for a few drinks and although we were braced for the prospect that it was going to be very quiet because most foreigners were attending the 'Mud Festival' which is held near Seoul we decided that it would occupy some of our time.

We met Alex and Ian there as well and although there was literally about 20 people there it was nice to actually get a game of pool and darts without having to wait in a queue about three hours long.

Making Friday a quiet one meant that for once Saturday morning wasn't a complete write-off for Charlie and he decided that after three months of jokes about his vision, it was time to go and get some glasses. I decided to go along with him for moral support and considering that my glasses are as bent as hell, check out exactly how it is done!

As it turned out, it was alot easier than we both thought. Once we managed to find someone in the opticians who spoke English the eye-test was free and Charlie soon found himself with a new pair of glasses for 70000 won (about £35) which is definately a bargin. Whilst I was waiting for him to get his eyes tested some lady very kindly hooked me up with some orange juice and some Korean M+M's which again proved my theory that it pays to be a foreigner in Korea!

Whilst we waited for the lenses and frames to be readied we decided to lower ourselves and get some dinner at Burger King!
Saturday's late afternoon and evening consisted of meeting up with Alex and Ian at Suwon station to travel to Hongdae to celebrate Alex's birthday...which was on Wednesday!

We started off the evening by heading to Dos Taco's by request of Kevin. Rather entertainingly I learned that Ian has a phobia of cheese and that Alex nor Ian has ever eaten a taco before! Understandably Charlie and Kevin being close to the border of Mexico found this rather funnny! We headed to a place rather originally called 'Bull's Darts Bar' for a few games of darts and a few drinks. We then decided to do some bar hopping from a few places and wound the night down at about 1am, with me, Kevin and Charlie deciding to head back to Hwaseo-dong after a chicken Gyeros!

Today has been a pretty quiet one. I took pleasure in grabbing a lie in and after the ATM at my bank decided that it wasn't going to let me transfer money home for the third day in a week I decided to head to E-Mart and do some shopping. I picked up some food I needed and also walking around the clothes section I brought some new shorts and a new t-shirt. Hopefully this week I will be able to get hold of some jeans as two of the four pairs I brought with me have developed rather revealing holes and are ready for the bin!

This evening I went and grabbed myself a pizza from 'Pizza School' and have been listening to the latest Ashes test. I've also been doing my best to reply to all the emails I have had this week.

Time for me to sign off now and play a few games on my Wii before it's Skype time with my mum. Hope you are all keeping well x

Re-Introducing Football Into my Life...

IT feels like it has been a long time since I was able to write about a truely 'cultural experience' enjoyed in Korea, and although this weekend wasn't exactly what you might call 'eye opening' or 'soul searching' it was one of the more fun weekends I have experience whilst being in Korea over the last 10 weeks.

Since mashing my foot a couple of weeks ago and putting myself out of action, and the Premiership season finishing back in May, for a 'football addict' like myself, I have been quite starved of my favourite sport. Even though I think I have managed to cope admirably with not being able to do any kind of sporting activity, my first 'real' injured has shown me how much I rely on physical activity for entertainment on a day to day basis.

This weekend I was able to get my 'fix' however as after the comedy of spending an evening in true Korean style, our friend Hans decided that we hadn't scared him off adequetly and offered us the oppertunity of hanging out again, this time spending a saturday going to watch the Suwon Bluewings, our 'local' football team in action at the 'Big Bird World Cup Stadium' which is about a 20 minute ride from our house.
I have to be honest and say that it is something which I have been wanting to do for a long time and had I not been on crutches I probably would have attended a game sooner and I know Charlie and Kevin wanted to go and watch a game at some point.

We met up with Hans, Alex and Ian at Baskin' Robbins at about 4pm and hopped on a bus to Suwon station for a pre-match meal. I'm not sure if I mentioned it before on my blog but we were all throughly disappointed recently when one of our weekly haunts shut down and turned into a 'Nature Republic' and since that point all three of us have not eaten, but have been craving, dak-galbi.
Hans told us last week that he knew a restaurant to take us to, and rather comically it turned out to be the one which we used to visit which had closed! Luckily for us though he knew another place just down the street and it was as delicious as ever with me, Kevin and Charlie particularily excited to be able to experience the delightful taste once again!

After a brief stop at KFC to pick up a half time snack we hopped in two taxis and headed off towards the stadium. I've been past the World Cup Stadium before but only Alex out of us 'foreigners' had been inside. I'm pretty sure England played a World Cup game there in 2002 and it was no less impressive than it had seemed on TV. With a capacity of around 44,000 people, it's about the same size as Anfield or Elland Road.

Soaking in the atmosphere I took some pictures while Charlie went a step further than us all and brought a scarf from the club shop. Merchandise was a little beyond me this time but perhaps in the future if we repeat the experience I will be doing exactly the same thing!
We went inside the stadium and were behind the goal with all the Suwon fans in what is know as the 'supporter area'. Considering that the tickets to the game cost us the unbelievable price of 8,000 won (about £4) the seats were amazing and we had a perfect view of the action! Luckily for us that got going early as Suwon netted within the first ten minutes to take a decisive 1-0 win.

For me to be at a game in a foreign country is not a new thing and as I have been to quite a few games in England I probably shouldn't have been as excited as I was to be seeing the action in front of me. Although the game wasn't of the highest quality and it was by no means the Champions League or Premiership I really enjoyed being in the stadium and being a part of a fantastic and atmospheric experience.
The game eventually finish 1-0 to Suwon although Seongnam were robbed when they had a goal in the last minute, in my humble opinion, wrongly ruled out for offside! I wasn't complaining though as just like when I went to watch Djurgarden in Sweden I had seen the team that I paid money to watch win!

After the game we took a taxi back to Hwaseo-dong and had a few drinks in 'Munchen Ice Beer Pub'. Alex and Ian departed at Saturday turned into Sunday and we decided after much discussion about where we live that it would only be proper for Hans to experience how westerners manage to cramb their life and luggage into one small Korean room. He seemed very entertained by the fact that all three of us have many pictures of our home life around the room and the fact that we spend some much time using the computer and keeping in contact with people who are thousands of miles away.

I can't say enough how much I enjoyed the say and of course how much I appreciated Hans' willingness to take the five of us to a game. I feel like he goes above and beyond the call of duty to take care of us like we are his brothers! The whole day he spent carrying a massive bag around with food and drinks etc.. to keep us going and it was obvious that he had merticulously planned out every step of what we were going to be doing throughout the day!
I hope to be able to get the oppertunity to not only spend time with him but experience another K-League game with the Bluewings as I think they have definately earned themselves another five supporters after yesterday!

After the enjoyment of yesterday, today I took rather easier spending most of my time relaxing and recovering as well as watching the Wimbledon Final, playing on my Wii and speaking to my mum on Skype.
Tomorrow marks the beginning of my 11th week in Korea. The last few weeks have absolutely flown by and I'm not even sure what happened to the month of June because it disappeared so fact into the distance!

Only another three weeks until we have a 'Talkster vacaction' another thing which I am very much looking forward to, and in the mean time I am hoping that we spend more time doing what we did yesterday and less time doing what I did today!

There's plenty of pictures that I took yesterday posted up on my 'Shutterfly' photo gallery and also at some point I'm going to get the ones of Alex and Kevin as I know I am probably in very few of my own. Hopefully you'll get the chance to take a look and see how much I enjoyed myself!

Until next time...take care x