INTO the second half of my year's stay in Korea, it's annoying that one of the first things I have to do is say 'Goodbye'.Incase you haven't been paying attention, my friend Aimie has been staying with me in Korea for the last three months and even though she was supposed to come over and see me in August, I think it was definately worth the two month wait.
This weekend saw her third and second last days in Korea as tomorrow she will be heading towards Incheon Airport in the evening before touching down in England on Tuesday morning leaving me with another five months and three weeks without seeing any familar faces from my home country!
I've had a great time whilst she's been here, I hope that she has seen plenty of Korea and has enjoyed the experience even in her short illness ridden stay. As great as it is to have two excellent friends like Charlie and Kevin around constantly, it's always nice to add an extra person (especially from England) into the mix and it's been really fun spending time and letter her experience evening that I have seen in half a year on the other side of the world.
As it was her last weekend we decided to venture out of the house on saturday towards Seoul Zoo as it isn't too far away from where I live.
I'd already been to the zoo early on in my stay in Korea, but what can I say, I'm an animal lover and considering that it cost the two of us 6,000 won (£3) to get into the zoo in total, it was definately worth it.
Unfortunately something which we both had to experience was the disgusting smell of cooking silkworm on the 500 yard walk to the entrance of the zoo. Despite holding back the vomit I also noticed that a KFC had been built, I hope it's only just sprung up since we were last there because if we went through a terrible experience with Loterria last time and there was KFC right there we didn't notice, I'm pretty frustrated!!! (If you don't know what I am talking about see my first trip to the zoo blog!)
The pair of us got to the zoo about 3pm so it was pretty quiet with the avoidence of the manic busyness from last time being avoided extremely well recieved. We took a similar route round to the one which Kevin, Charlie and I took last time and there were no real additions or subtrations in terms of the animals that we saw.
With it being autumn and the temperature dropping off significantly since I was last there I think many of the animals were being confined to inside because it was too cold for them. There's a South American pavillion of animals including monkeys, an ant eater and tapirs and although there were all outside last time they were all only viewable through glass windows as it wasn't quite jungle temperatures for them outside.
Rather entertainingly as we were inside checking out all the monkeys and stuff one of the zoo workers going about his daily duty decided he needed to check of the alligators were still alive (as you do), the best way to do this, or the way he figured best, pretty much involves ensuring they are still breathing by hitting them with a large pole and annoying them. Bashing each one a couple of times the guy seemed quite shocked when the furious animal snarled up at him but I guess it's better than him climbing in the cage and being like 'excuse me, still alive alligator, good.'Inside there were also some rather cute monkeys swinging around with some gusto. One of them must have just had a new born monkey (now I want to say pup, but I don't think monkeys have pups) and this little one was clearly quite disturbed by all the people staring at him so he kept squawking like a parrot. Determined to teach her baby some climbing lessons the mum began to climb up to the top of the cage leaving the baby behind stuck on the bars because it wasn't daring enough to swing itself up to the higher level. Thankfully it's mum came back down, scooped it up in it's arms, and took it into their little house.
After walking round the zoo for three hours and realising that most of the animals had been taken to their respective sleeping quarters for the night, we re-boarded the subway and headed back to Suwon to get some dinner. We did a good job of avoiding the still keen silkworm sellers on our way back to the metro stop and after getting back to the station we had a KFC for dinner and then headed home.
Sunday was mostly filled, as usual, with playing football. We're at the midpoint of our season now and sitting in third place we were up against the team at the bottom of the league this morning. A team which we beat 9-1 in the opening game of the season....missing a few players and generally being dragged down to the level of our opposition we managed to scrape through with a 2-1 win with out keeper saving a penalty in the second half and our right back scoring the winning goal (yes, I play right back.)
Charlie, Kevin, Aimie and Angeline game to watch the final fifteen minutes of the game and as it was a nice day the five of us headed back to Suwon for some dinner before Angeline managed to drag us to the Galleria shopping center for a look around. Uninterested in looking at bags, shoes and makeup, me and Charlie did the manly thing of trying to find some technology which we eventually managed to come across on the very top floor.
Looking to kill some time me and Charlie perched ourselfs in some very expensive massage chairs and spent 25 minutes sitting there and raving about how nice it would be to have one in our house. The one I was sitting in massaged pretty much everything from head to toe, including fingers, hips and head. I'm not sure if the chair was built for a sterotypically small Korean because the back massager was pretty uncomfortable so perhaps it was hitting the wrong part of my body.
The chair I was sitting in was a ridiulous 10,000,000 won (£5,000) so I'm not sure I'll be getting one anytime soon.
Everything in the Galleria seemed to be out of my price range as after looking at watches in the bottom floor of the shop I realised that if I am going to get a new time teller, it's going to have to be a knock off as I can't afford a legitamately good one!
We headed back home as Angeline was going up to E-Mart to look for some makeup and whilst eating our dinner me and Aimie spent the evening watching Fast and Furious and then skyping with my mum for a little while.
Back to work tomorrow and my kids are learning about creatures which live in the sea tomorrow which shouldn't be too difficult to teach. Providing her suitcase is packed, Aimie plans to come to class tomorrow with me to meet some of my kids and then after work tomorrow I'm taking her down to Suwon Station so that she can get the bus back to the airport.
Now it's time for me to say 'See you later' and hopefully next week things won't turn back into pre-Aimie Korea weekends of doing nothing!
Ben x
Where the loser saw barriers, the winner saw hurdles.
Robert Brault
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