A Mexican in Itaewon....

SADLY I am yet again unable to provide pictoral evidence that I didn't just sit in my room all weekend but like last weekend when Ice Skating was the only exciting thing on the adgenda, this weekend's activity probably isn't worth blogging about but I am still disappointed about how little I have been blogging recently.

One of our friends, Marie, was celebrating her birthday this weekend, and was kind enough to invite Kevin, Charlie and I to celebrate it with her. Her, and it seemed like pretty much every foreigner in Suwon and Seoul, were all headed to Itaewon, which is one of the military base areas in the capital, for the evening so we decided to join in the 'party' and actually do something with our weekend for a change.

Despite the temperature dropping to below freezing for about the 100th day in a row we braved the weather and boarded the train to Yongsan, before catching a cab over to Itaewon, which is about five minutes away. It's pretty ridiculous to think that first the first six months we were here, and heading to Yongsan regularily, we were taking a 1h 30 min subway ride, but these days we are able to get there in about 25 mins, in the comfortable seated surroundings of a train! How different our stay might have been had we not had to board the damn subway to get everywhere!

Anyway once we were there we met Marie and she showed us the Mexican restaurant where we were eating dinner. Being in Itaewon was a pretty surreal experience to be honest. Maybe this says something about how long I have been in Korea for now, but it was actually a shock to see that it was pretty much 50/50 in terms of foreigners to Koreans. A ratio that I have always been on the negative side of (baring my week in Thailand) It's not that I was put off by this of course, but it did seem very strange to be surrounded by so many western people.

The Mexican restaurant where we were was already filled with alot of Marie's friends and we got chatting with a few of them before ordering our meal. Kevin and Charlie are big fans of Mexican food so they were pretty pleased to be eating there, but not having much experience I was just delighted to be eating something different for a chance (no offense Korea!) I think that my six or so experience of eating Mexican have proved that I do actually like it quite alot, and although we're not lucky enough to have Taco Bell or anything in England I look forward to the oppertunity to sample it's cuisine in the near future.

I had a combination meal of a chicken taco and a chicken burrito (inventive I know) it was extremely delicious and for around 15,ooo won it was well worth it.

After eating we headed off to meet some of the group who had headed to a bar which was just down the road from the restaurant and then we went to another place, which pretty ridiculously was laid out like a beach with deck chairs and sand everywhere! But as it started to get late, the three of us flakes were getting tired and decided to head back to Suwon.

Grabbing a delicious Moroccan sandwich for the ride (I know, I'd just eaten right) we got back to Suwon after some much needed fresh air and a good evening in the company of friends.

Speaking of which, next weekend I am playing tour guide for (possibly) the final time in Korea as my friends James and Luke are coming over from England to visit me. They will be arriving on Friday morning and staying for a couple of weeks, in my extremely small room. It's going to be good to have some familar faces around and show two of my closest friends exactly what I have been doing with my life in the next nine months, and hopefully it will make another two weeks pass by as time drizzles away on me heading back home and leaving Korea behind.

The foreigner football season also kicks into effect for it's spring season soon which is something to look forward to. Considering I have done very little exercise over the winter, and not kicked a ball since our last game it is going to be an extremely interesting first training session! To be honest it will just be nice to do something but go to work, eat or sleep!

Well, that's my blogging finished for the week. I hope that wherever you are spring is close to arriving, it's still pretty cold in Suwon, but hopefully we are leaving the snow behind us.

Take care

Ben xxxx

“The best way to waste your life, ... is by taking notes. The easiest way to avoid living is to just watch. Look for the details. Report. Don't participate.”

Chuck Palahniuk

Ice Skating... (Now with added picture-y goodness)

...FINALLY able to escape the classroom for a little while, Friday was as much of a treat for me as it was for the kids.

Each month in Kindergarten we have some kind of organised activity but as it's turned out, every single one of them since September has involved doing something in the classroom (except the Halloween party, but that was still within the grounds of Talkster.)

Thankfully this month, the last month before the kids leave, we'd managed to work it into the schedule so that this months activity was to be able to go ice skating.
Korean's are pretty big on ice skating as Kim-Yu-Na, the number one ranked ice dancer, is one of the countries national heroes (not quite on as big-a scale as Park Ji Sung, but she sure is popular!) But despite that I wasn't expecting too much from the ice rink that we would be heading too.

As it turned out, it was actually of a decent standard as it was home to Suwon's Ice Hockey team (yeah, I didn't realise they had one either) and there was actually quite a lot of people there when we turned out. Possibly because it was the last official day of school holidays for children.

Once we'd geared up with skates and helmets, yes, helmets. It was time to take a first few daunting steps onto the ice and to make the kids feel a little better about themselves I decided to go first. It's been about a year or so since I actually donned a pair of ice skates but after steadying myself for a few seconds I was pretty confident about not falling over.
The kids on the other hand....they had a few issues.

Andrew, the oldest kid in my class was actually a pretty decent skater. He could manage to make it around at a pretty good pace without too many incidents of him falling over. Elizabeth, the only girl in the class, started off at a struggle but once she stopped relying on me for momentum she actually managed to pick it up pretty well.
Larry, who I expected to struggle with skating, took some time to pick it up and by the second hour of us skating he'd managed to ensure that on average he only fell over one time every circuit.

Now I'm not sure how I was the first time I set foot on ice but I'm pretty sure that Sun, who struggled most with skating, was an accurate representation of how I might have got on. I'm not entirely sure of what his problem was, but I reckon that it took roughly five seconds before he fell over, and once I'd picked him up, it was roughly three seconds before he fell over again.
He really just couldn't cope with being on the ice at all.

No sonner had he stood up was he on the floor again, and the problem, not very accurately diagnosed can only be through his confidence that he was going to be able to skate as fast as everyone that he saw there. As soon as his legs were about to fall from underneath him, he'd panic and start moving his legs even faster.....the outcome of this was obviously for him to call over quicker than he was already going to.

It's tough to count the amount of times that I had to pick the poor kid up of the floor but at least there were no tears and he was quite happy to get back up on his feet and try again!
I was extremely impressed with the kids and their attitude actually, because I'd say that ice skating is very difficult and even as an adult if I wasn't able to do it then I would be getting pretty frustrated with the amount of times that I feel over. But they always had a big smile on their faces and would pick themselves back up and try again.

Unfortunately despite finding it necessary to blog about the most interesting I have done in the last couple of weeks, I am relying on someone elses photos to show picture evidence that I was actually able to get out of the classroom for an afternoon. Hopefully I'll be able to attach them soon.

Apologies about the lack of recent blogs folks, I haven't been up to very much at all and it seems that it is finally coming to 'winding down' time in terms of my activities. Something that I was hoping wouldn't happen....Hopefully within the next few weeks I'll have some more entertaining things to blog about....

Ben xxx

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.

Sir Francis Bacon