WELL another week goes by in Korea, and while it didn't speed by as fast as the previous one that me and Kevin spent in Thailand (for obvious reasons) it's hard to think that we are at he beginning of August already.
The weather over the last week has been very 'August-like' with today probably being the hottest of my three and a bit month spell in Korea but all week it has been 'shorts and t-shirt weather' with the temperature at night probably being hotter than it has been in England during the day.
Being in the classroom for a large majority of the day I obviously don't notice how hot it gets but the school itself is very warm and after being in an air conditioned room walking out into the corridor after lessons is a bit like opening an oven door in your face.
It was a slow start to the week coming off the back of my throughly enjoyable week away but it was good to see some, if not all of the kids and it was fun to be back teaching the kids again. By the end of the week I was more than ready for the weekend though and it's a shame we weren't flying off back to Thailand again on saturday for another week off.
Nothing out of the ordinary really took place during the week, just lessons as always. Didn't have anything different to teach and all minus four children my classes were the same.
Desperate to beat the trouble which my foot is still giving me despite over two months of recovery time since my injury I decided to test out my ankle's strength throughout the week by going for a jog every evening after class and playing basketball for half an hour or so on a couple of evenings.
Amazingly the pain in my ankle from running was the same as it has been through walking for the last month and on Thursday, after getting an email during the week, I decided to brave it and head to practice with Inter Suwon, the team I played for in my first few weeks here, as they were training for the first time.
It was nice to see some of the friends what I had made throughout my half season with them in April and May and on a positive note in terms of my foot I didn't have any aditional pain, well certainly none that I hadn't experienced before, despite playing for two hours and spending a great deal of that running around and kicking the ball with my injured foot.
Of course it wasn't 100% but at least I now know that I can do stuff like running around and playing football and basketball so I am not consigned to sitting on my hinee after I finish work and feeling very lazy.
Before I knew it the weekend was here though and on Friday one of Charlie's friends, Shaun, flew in from the US. In the evening we took him out to dinner and showed him the delicious galbi restaurant that we often dine at. Then we decided to head to a place which we'd checked out earlier in the week called Lau Bar which is a 'foreigner' bar right by Suwon Station.
We timed our arrival just right as when we came in the door they were preparing for their weekly and customary fire show which basically involves then trying to be Tom Cruise in cocktail and then setting certain drinks on fire for people to then sample. Although I wasn't interesting in drinking any of the Jagerbombs that were on offer I was quite intregued to see exactly what the 'show' would involve.
Thankfully we weren't disappointed as they were clearly trying to entertain us as well as impress because one guy who was doing a mix of juggling and making a cocktail's first act was to drown the people next to us in orange juice when he tried juggling a container of it which wasn't sealed properley (at this point I was slightly worried because they then brought out the fire, but thankfully they didn't drop any of that, although the did have trouble putting it out!) The rest of the evening we spent playing darts and chatting and the four of us were joined by Lisa, Anna and Emily who decided to meet with us too which was cool.
Determined to show Shaun a good night we decided to head to one of the clubs that we are always touted by people on the street to go in. We decided to give it a chance but on the way Shaun became distracted by a shooting gallery game which we'd actually never seen before so him and Charlie decided to face off and play that! A little further down the road he also found a game where you could break bricks with your fists for a prize but after we'd played on all the games we decided to head to another bar which actually turned out to be extremely empty.
Eager to get the party started for all twenty people that were in there all of us got on stage and danced (more than likely to some horrible k-pop) and at the same time we discovered a strange trend in Korea in which people who are dancing together don't actually stand together, but dance opposite each other and then they make a big line and start doing choreographed dances to each song...fair enough if they were playing the macarena or saturday night but for regular music, I'm afraid I haven't watched enough music videos for that one.
Up for some more entertainment we then headed to a swank norebang (karaoke room) back by Lau Bar and spent until about four in the morning singing our hearts out to some classics. Charlie opted against singing Boyz to Men this time but me and him did do a good version of Wonderwall by Oasis and also the Thong Song by Sisqo (which was mainly intended to embarass the girls! It worked!)
Waking up the next morning for the '1pm' meeting time that Charlie had decided to set the night before I spent much of the morning tidying up my room and playing on the Wii before at about 4pm Shaun and Charlie decided to surface. We caught the bus to Suwon Station and had some dinner before heading to a palace in Jeungno that Charlie and Kevin had been to before.
Unfortunately as it was about 6.30pm by that point the palace was closed for admissions so we walked round an open air food market in Jeongno which was pretty cool and then headed to Hongdae for the evenings entertainment. When we got there me and Kevin were already hungry so decided to head for some food at our traditional stop of Dos Taco's and we met Shaun and Charlie in another bar just down the road.
We stayed in there for a bit and then went to Bull's Eye's Darts for a few games and then to a club next to it where we spent about three hours playing a game of 'Guess What Country That Person is From? It was such a success that some Korean people who could speak reasonable English and were sitting near us decided that they wanted to join in too which was pretty funny.
As the evening dragged on and it got to about 1am me and Kevin decided we'd had enough to headed back in a cab home after getting a kebab for the ride.
Today has also been a reasonably busy one as Shaun and Charlie graced us with their presense rather earlier today and we headed to a place called Dongdaemoon which is just past the subway stop for central Seoul and is also the location of a big clothes market. We spent a few hours walking down there and then went to another mall which was about ten stories high which was filled with all kinds of different shops.
Charlie and Shaun brought some things from there, my personal favourite was a t-shirt which Shaun brought for his brother which said 'Happy Earth Day 2007. Protect the earth, save the futrher.'
How I do love an entertaining piece of Konglish! We spent a few hours walking around there and then made our way back to Hwaseo for a little rest before going out to eat dinner. When we were out near Suwon station the other day Shaun had seen to batting cage games so we messed around on those for a little while (I was amazed that I actually managed to hit a few balls!) and then went to eat medeterranian.
Coming back home I spoke to my mum for the last time before she's headed to Korea and watched the first half of the Community Shield game between Manchester United and Chelsea (can't decide whether I should allow myself to stay up and watch the second half!)
It's been a busy weekend though and I am very tired so I think it's time for me to sign off. My mum arrives in Korea on Tuesday evening so hopefully this week will be as funfilled as my weekend was!
Take care x
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