UNLIKE last weekend when I had very little productive to speak about, we got our act together this weekend to spend an extremely enjoyable weekend braving the freezing cold!Surviving another experience riddled week at work, I was feeling the usual tiredness from a combination of teaching and football training on thursday night.
The bitingly cold wind which has been with us all week subsided a little on the penultimate day of the working week, but running around in shorts and a t-shirt at football was still much more cold than I would like to experience.
Thankfully, one thing you can always count on in our rooms is a hot shower and with the temperatures dipping to below freezing a couple of times this week, I've needed no other incentive than freezing my backside off to jump in the bath.
One problem with Korean traditional housing like we have is the heating system. Having the delights of a fire and several radiators at home was obviously taken for granted before I came here as Korean houses are heated through a system called 'Ondok' which basically means 'Floor Heat'.
The system in my room which controls the temperature of the water also controls the temperature of pipes which have been laid under my floor which provide the only heating source I have. At first 'floor heating' seemed like a cool idea, in the Kindergarten classroom in the morning when it's on, it's great to walk around in socks and feel the warmth as theoretically whenever your feet are warm, your body stays warm.
Sadly, this doesn't seem to apply when it comes to the heating in my room as the temperature in there with the floor heating on seems to be not warm enough or boiling and uncomfortably hot. I think I need to work on getting it at the right temperature as normally I end up leaving it on whilst I am teaching in the morning because I'm freezing when I wake up. The only problem when I get in for lunch is that by this point the room is sweltering hot and I could so with letting some cold and fresh air in!
With the temperature dropping to unnecessarily low minue figures outside it wasn't really a surprise on Friday evening when we were 'blessed' with Korea's first snow of the winter.
Being from England, snow isn't something I get to experience very often but being from South Carolina this was the first time that Charlie had seen snow falling before his very eyes and as he hasn't been impressed with the cold weather so far, this didn't do alot to make him embrace it!
In truth the snow was pretty lame, it didn't last for very long for a start and also it didn't settle. It just made the ground wet instantly, so it might as well have rained! By the time we'd come back from dinner, the excitement of the snow was over but today I did see some ice on the ground so I figure it also must have been pretty close to freezing point today.
Luckily I brought with me some winter items of clothing including a gloves, hat, scarf and a coat and all four of them have been getting decent use in the last week or so. Being as that Korean's like to wrap themselves up in the summer, it's no surprise to hear that in winter they like to stay extremely warm and it's not uncommon to see people on the streets selling thickly ladden socks, gloves, scarves and hats.
Despite the coldness the three of us braved the freezing friday and headed to a bar near our house for a couple of drinks and a chat to finish off the week. An added bonus was Hans joining us for the night and he was on top form as ever. Sometimes I wonder if he realises how much he entertains us and if he is deliberately funny or whether it's just the very small language barrier that sits between the three of us and him!
I'm pretty sure that once of twice before in the last seven months I have discussed the repetetive catchy soundwaves which make up Korean music and with the Internet being the only access I have to any kind of music, it's pretty hard to stay in touch with what is 'cool' these days. I'm not sure that's anything I've ever been accused of to be honest, but nevermind.
Keen to open the three of our minds and eager to stop us thinking that Korean music is like a nightmare involving every single manufactured boy and girl band in history peforming a concert in your ears, Hans said he would bring around some music for us to listen to and put on our computers.
Good Old Hans, always taking care of us.
We decided to head back to the house pretty early so that Hans could hook us up with some new tunes and also so that we could play a few games on the Playstation with him! The rest of the early morning hours were spent having a great deal of fun and laughing alot before tiredness eventually kicked in, and I felt it essential to retire to bed before Saturday because a write-off!
Waking up pretty early (especially when you've been to sleep at 3am plus) on Saturday morning, I got my usual dose of NBA and chatting to people back home who are about to go to bed.
At about lunchtime after I had dragged myself out of bed Charlie called to see if I wanted to go get some lunch and accompany him to the opticians so he could take a well overdue visit there to replace his glasses.
It was pretty funny because the guy actually remembered him going in there and getting some glasses before. He wondered what had happened and ashamed that he'd lost them after 36 hours, Charlie claimed several times that they had 'broken!'
He eventually got himselves set up with some and we made our way back to Hwaseo-dong to meet Kevin and head into Seoul for the afternoon.
We managed to catch the last Suwon Bluewings game a couple of weeks ago at the World Cup Stadium, but for the teams who don't suck, the season carried over into he playoffs, the first game of which was being played on Saturday between Chunam and FC Seoul.
Despite out loyalties to the mighty Bluewings, the three of us fancied an afternoon out so we headed on the train for an hour into Seoul to the World Cup Stadium. A place where we've had a various amount of adventures in our time here.Somehow using sign language and the usual charades to buy things we managed to get some tickets in the lower section of the stadium, right on the half way line and spent the next 2 hours in the freezing cold watching a 1-1 stalemate between two teams who, unlike Suwon, actually managed to pass the ball on the ground.
Waiting two hours for the result in the freezing cold was well worth it as the game ended in a dramatic penalty shoot-out.
Sadly for Seoul a couple of their players couldn't hit a barndoor and they ended up losing when their final penalty taker managed to put the ball close to ten feet wide.
Throughly starving we headed under the World Cup Stadium to get some dinner, and avoid the inevitable maehem on the subway. We stopped off at Pizza Hut which was delicious and shows how long I have been living here to actually now like Korean pizza. It's always good when what you are eating doesn't taste like they coated it in icing sugar!!!
We headed back towards home after that, spending an hour standing up on the subway which was probably worse than two hours sitting in the freezing cold to be honest!
I spent the rest of Saturday night watching football on TV and trying to stay warm, something which would be alot easier if it wasn't for the damn floor heating!
Sunday was a pretty quiet day, early wake up to watch the televised NBA game and then off to football for our penultimate game of the season. Last time we played 'The Jokers' as they are known we beat them 10-6 playing on a pitch the same size as a playing card and obviously playing on a pitch twice the size, we managed half the score but it was a win all the same, 5-3.
Playing further forward than usual I added to my tally of goals this season with a couple from outside the area which is always nice to do.
Thankfully the weather held up for us today and I didn't get my contact lenses poked out like last week so I was able to spend the duration of the game being able to see.
I got the bus back to my house and have spent the evening just taking it easy and planning what I'm doing in class tomorrow....
Well that's been the weekend, it's been fun and entertaining like they all should be...looking forward to the next one!
Take care xxxx
“Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things"
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