....WITH just a couple of days to go before the start of our Christmas vacation, what better way to spend the last weekend before the holidays with a fun packed weekend!That's what we figured anyway, and after two or three weekends of not really having much to write about, suddenley I have way more to document than I am likely to remember.
I've been enjoying the scenes from back home as for the second year in a row, snow appears to be causing complete chaos in England. Last year was kinda understandable as it hadn't snowed in a long time, but should 5 inches of snow really make the whole country grind to a shuddering hault?
I find it pretty typical that after missing out on the hottest summer on record since the 1940's, I am now missing out on the snowy times back home and what looks set to be the first white Christmas in a long time.
Over in Korea I am having my own issues with the weather, as even a trip to the shop at the corner of my street less than 100m away requires a coat to be worn! Since Tuesday there has been a horrible icy wind blowing in and I'm pretty impressed that aside from a brief flurry yesterday evening, it's hardly snowed a bit.
Deciding to give 'late friday night, early saturday morning' a miss this week, I decided to sit the usual visit to the bar for free french fries and tortilla chips out this week and stay in to watch a DVD instead. Turned out to be a wise idea as I watched the very entertaining 'The Hangover' and enjoyed every second of it before getting some much needed sleep!
On saturday waiting for Charlie, who did go to the bar, to get up, I decided to try and make a bit of progress with the ski trip that we are hoping to make next week, sadly to little avail. Despite being advetised as having an 'English speaking service' the two places I called up didn't speak a word of the lingo so I was left to contemplate the fact that Christmas might actually be spent in my room on Friday (not a prospect I am looking forward to if it comes down to it)
Once Charlie was up we decided to make a trip to Costco in Seoul as both he and Kevin wanted to get some food, and me eager to get out of the house, thought I would go along for the ride. Once we worked out exactly where Costco in Seoul was we caught the train there and then began wondering around the surrounding area to see if it would pop up out of the landscape without too much trouble. Sadly, as is so often with stories about our trips out, it didn't quite work out like that and asking four or five different people from directions was about as useful as a chocolate tea kettle when it became apparent that all of them were pointing us in different directions, and not a single one seemed to know the actual location.
In the end we decided to bite the bullet and get a cab there. As it turned out, four of the five had pointed us in the wrong direction, and even the fifth person had got us taking a ridiculously long route to what turned out to be a five minute journey. Once Charlie had signed up for a membership card, we were good to go and immediately started browsing round the ridiculously unecessary bulk items which were for sale.
The boys made a few purchases and we managed to find a big box to shove them all in so as to be able to carry them back home. For some reason it appears that Costco is the only supermarket in the world that doesn't provide carrier bags....I guess they are not expecting people without a car to be shopping there.
We headed back towards the station to get he train back home and once we'd got back to Suwon we took a rest for a while, Charlie and Kevin unpacked their shopping and then we went back towards Suwon station as we had booked tickets to see Avatar at the cinema that evening.
After seeing a few previous for Avatar and hearing that it was supposed to be one of the 'greatest' films every made, I was extremely sceptical. How often do we hear about great films and they turn out to not live up to the hype after all. I knew very little about the film itself and after discovering that it was three hours long I was thinking that we were in for a repeat of Transformers 2, which we had had our fingers burned by earlier on this year!
Thankfully after sitting through all three hours of Avatar I can say that it definately lived up to the hype and it was actually a phenominal film. I'm not going to spoil it by saying anything too much but visually the film was spectacular and the story (as far fetched as it was) had us engrosed to the point that not once did I look at my watch wondering how long was left.
We got out of the movie at 1.10am (or 25.10 as the movie theater had on their ticket) and managed to find a cab to take us back home for some much needed rest.
On Sunday morning I went on a mission to look for a new hard drive for the computer. This little trip took me in the direction of Yongsan in Seoul after discovering that most of the shops near us were charging inflated prices which I didn't fancy paying.
We'd also agreed to meet with Hans this afternoon to go watch a basketball game so whilst the three of them headed from Suwon to Jamsil (where the game was) by bus. I braved a 45 minute journey on the subway to meet that to go and get some dinner before the game. Despite intial fears that I might not make it on time, I got to Jamsil just in time, and we made our way to the game.
It was being held in the same place what we went to see the NBA Generations team play back in September so we were in a familiar location at least. Today however we were watching some domestic basketball action which was taking place between Seoul Samseong Thunders and LG Cheneon Sakers.I'm not sure if I have ever mentioned before about the necessity in Korean's sport for sponsors to play a major role in the name of the team. More often than not, the teams are referred to by who they are sponsored by not the place name where they are from.
This causes all kinds of confusion and often means that teams from different areas of the country become rivals simply because the companies they are sponsored by are in similar markets.
So today turned out to be a derby between two teams at opposite ends of the country, just because they are sponsored by the two Korean based electronics firms!
I think over the last couple of months I have probably been spoiled by basketball action as though the game was entertaining, I feel that with a few more inches in height, I could have done a decent job out there! Each Korean team has two foreign imports and unfortunately for the team from Seoul, there's happened to be two liabilities who were probably the least effective players in the game.
The team they were playing were actually pretty decent. And it helped that they had a guy playing centre who was 7'1 and being guarded by someone that was maybe 6'4. They ran up the score a little bit in the end but Seoul still ended up losing by seven points.
After the game we got the bus back to Suwon which took about an hour, and was a million times better than catching the subway. The four of us ate dinner together at a 'Budehgigeh' restaurant at the far side of the main strip of restaurants opposite Suwon station and I'm not sure if it was because it was at a different location than usual, or just because I hadn't had it in a while, but it seemed more delicious than ever. I certainly needed it after the day spent travelling backwards and forwards!
It's been a fun weekend overall, and I am thankful that we only have a short work week before Christmas. My kids are probably needing as much of a break from me as I am from them so hopefully the week will breeze by and we can get around to 'celebrating' Christmas (That is, when I accept that time is travelling so fast that it's finally here!)
I'm going to leave a rather longer than usual blog there for now, but I hope that everyones Christmas preparations are going well.
Take care
Ben x
"Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It's not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything."
Muhammed Ali
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