NBA Legends, Entering Without Breaking and a Bluewings Goalfest...Just Another Surreal Weekend in Suwon....

...BUT a fun one all the same!

I'm slightly lagging with the latest entry to my blog so I do appologise but I didn't get back until late last night and I've had plenty to keep me busy this evening which has meant that I will probably end up producing this in two parts as I'm sure tiredness will defeat me after a while.

This weekend has been more action packed than usual and it's been great. I have been getting upto plenty of things and it feels like I have been more of a tourist this weekend than a citizen, which is something that hasn't happened to often in the last couple of weeks.

On friday when I finished I popped down the road to post a letter, only to discover, to everyones horror when I told them that the galbi restaurant we usually head to on a friday was closed. My excellent hangul abilities manage to decypher the banner hanging in front of the door, but sadly there were no English words translated in to Korean, meaning I couldn't understand a single thing what it was on about. Except the bit in the middle which said '19/9' which I take it is their re-opening date.

If you went down the street where I live you would see that competition is fierce, especially when it comes to galbi, but I will be mightily surprised if this place has actually closed down because it always seemed to be doing such good business, it's one of a number of places down our street which is as busy at 3am as it is as 10pm when we go in there!

My boss read the sign and suggested that it is closed to refurbishments and that they will be re-opening with a different name and a few new specials but hopefully it will be the same in spirit. With the same delicious food and the same people who work there that hook us up with extras and freebees everytime we go in. Only time will tell....

You're sure to find out if it's not though as this blog may have a slightly less happy tone to it!

Disaster aside we headed to another galbi restaurant further down the road, one which I actually thought was pretty decent but the guys weren't too impressed when I tried to make a claim for this place being a potential new hang out! None of us were feeling in the mood to really hang out in the evening so I had a bit of an earlier one than usual for a friday night as was actually pretty well rested by the time it came to getting up on Saturday morning.

We headed to 'The Yuk' for some food and as we were walking past the bus stops we noticed a stand of the dancing pororo creatures which had caught my attention and I wished I had brought last weekend while I was in Hongdae. This time we didn't spend a moment messing around and we brought a complete set which has actually yet to be tested.
Laughing to ourselves that we had actually been able to purchase them was only topped off by seeing some girl and her friend fall over a two foot by two foot concrete pillar which was in the middle of the street!

Where it's two men taking their shirts off and fighting, dancing critters, people trying to 'sell' us religion or people falling over, there is always something funny or strange happening when we go to Suwon station thats for sure.

Last weekend whilst we were in Hongdae, we'd seen posters for an 'NBA Generations' game which was in Jamsil this weekend. And all three of us being big basketball fans we decided to head down and check it out. I guess the NBA, like most sports organisations, is trying to break into the Asian market so this year for the first time they decided to bring a bunch of NBA D leaguers and mesh them with a team of four hall of famers to take on the Korean Basketball League Allstars.
A hilarious prospect on paper seeing three players who retired in the mid to late 90's and one guy who retired a few years ago taking on some sprightly and energetic Asian players in an exibition game, it turned out to be as funny in real life as we thought it might be.

'Sports Complex' where we headed to is just outside Seoul and near a place called Jamsil which is where the 'Olympic Village' was for the 1988 games which were held here. Making ourway through the ridiculously crowded subway station and the 'nut to butt' experience of the 'circle line' which is the subway line running through the middle of Seoul we found ourselves following a huge crowd of people going to watch the game.

'Sports Complex' as the name suggests housed a few olympic events and was the main location for all the track events, swimming, basketball, boxing and also has a baseball stadium where two of the five teams in Seoul play.
As we walked to the gym there was a montage of Korean athletes who were successful at the Olympics (all the way through to Athens) and also a list of every single person who won a medal at the Seoul games carved on a stone in the middle. it was pretty cool actually.

We managed to negotiate our way past a few ticket touts who tried to sell is a few tickets at a 'cheap price' (business sense tells me they were either lying or making a loss!) and we found our way to the top tier of the stand where our seats were. Within two minutes of sitting down we thought we'd done something wrong as some guy tapped us on the shoulder and in broken English told us that we were able to move. We later discovered that this was because there were some spare seats further down and not because we'd broken any rules!

We had a decent view about five rows back from the courtside seats and the gym wasn't that full anyway so there was plenty of space. The game itself was pretty inconcequential as the Korean team, as expected, won in a blow out. Though mind you if they couldn't beat a team which had at least three players who were out of shape on the floor at all times, they should probably have given up right there and then.

It was an extremely strange experience and honstely something I never thought i would be doing. I am a big basketball fan and although I don't know a great deal about the history of the game seeing the all time leading scorer in NBA history sitting about twenty foot away from me on the bench was pretty incredible. That combined with Vlade Divac, Dominique Wilkins, Robert Horry and Tim Hardaway all virtually being at touching distance when they were on the floor was one of the more memorable moments of my time in Korea.

It was a strange juxtaposition being in an arena full of Koreans but seeing some people I have only ever seen on the TV or on video performing in front of me. I'm a big 'live sports' person and even if the standard wasn't the highest, that was enough to leave me happy that day.
Slightly disappointed that the New Jersey Nets cheerleading team hadn't managed to pick our goofy faces out in the crowd when they were throwing t-shirts and posters out, me and Charlie decided to take matters into our own hands by swiping one of the arena wall on the way out.
It was pretty funny as many Korean's started to realise it was a good idea and followed suit by doing the same so we didn't feel so bad!!!1

We headed back to Suwon and on the way home our friend Marie text us asking if we wanted to head out for a few drinks that evening to meet her and a couple of her friends. So we got back to our rooms had a rest and then decided to go eat and go meet them in Lao bar which is just near Suwon station (the place last time where during the fire show we saw a group of people get covered in oragnge juice!)

Although we didn't see such hilarity this time it was good to meet up with some new people and also I think it has been nearly three months since we met up with Marie as either her or us have been busy whenever we've tried to do it before. We had a couple of games of darts and then at about one the three of us decided to call it a night as Charlie had plans for the next day and I was feeling pretty tired.

Another refreshing nights sleep followed and as my game of football had been cancelled on thursday I had the whole day to myself. As we didn't spend too much time in Jamsil before or after the game, but there were plenty of cool things to see, I decided to get the subway back into Seoul and take a look round to see what else there was. I figured that they did tours of all the stadia and stuff and I knew it would fill up some time before the evening when we were going to see the Suwon Bluewings play.

I got some lunch and then went and caught the subway which took about an hour or so to get me back to 'Sports Complex'. One of the two baseball teams who play at the stadium right there were playing that afternoon so I got about as far into the stadium as I could without a ticket, took a few pictures and then went to see what else I could do.

I visited the boxing arena, the swimming venue and also the hockey stadium which is now open to the public but it was pretty the Olympic Stadium which interested me the most. First I walked around the outside to the 'auxilary' stadium where athletes were allowed to warm up during the Olympics and also where some of the field events took place. I continued to walk around the outside of the stadium but was disappointed to see that I couldn't even get close to going inside because all the gates were locked.

I'm not entirely sure what was going on but I think Seoul is trying to hold the Asian games or something and are doing up their stadium because builders were at work in there as I walked further round, and thanks to some stelthy tactics and the door being left open I snuck through and open gate and into the arena.
With the place to myself and no idea of how long I had before someone saw me I obviously went up into the stands and took a few pictures before deciding to head to the track for a walk around and also to see the pitch which sits in the middle.

I managed to take a few good pictures before I heard people talking pretty close by so looking for the gate that I got in through I scampered back up the stairs and carried on walking around the outside as if I hadn't even noticed the open gate.
A bit further round there was another open space which I was able to sneak into which is where the press box was so that was pretty cool to be up there, somewhere I hope to be able to be in a few years, without sneaking in if possible!

Once I felt I had outstayed my welcome and done enough things I probably shouldn't have been doing and visited enough places that I shouldn't have been able to I headed back to Suwon and agreed to meet up with everyone at the station so we could get the bus. Last time we went to see the Bluewings we had Hans with us but this time we were very much on our own with just me, Kevin, Alex, Marie and Marie's friend Kerry to try and work out what was going on.

Thankfully it was just a case of getting one bus up there and we managed pretty easily which was cool. We arrived perfectly ontime and brought some seats in the same section of the crowd that we headed to before.

Suwon were playing Gangwon this week who, as a little research was able to uncover, are actually pretty decent. Quite surprsing then when the 14th placed Bluewings netted first! Hoping for more goals we weren't disappointed as before half time we saw two more and then in the second half we saw three more as the game ended in a 3-3 draw with Suwon scoring in the last minute and going very close in injury time.

It was a throughly enjoyable game and again for 10,000 won (£5 to you and me) it was money well spent. Especially to see six goals!
We tried for an eternity to get a cab back to the station and about thirty minutes later me and Kevin decided that we would go back and get some food as all the waiting had made us starving (a hunger which not even the chicken at half time could cure!)

We got some grub and then headed back to our houses throughly tired and not altogether ready to be going back to work today...thankfully I survived!

As previously mentioned I had a fun-filled and very sport orientated weekend which suited me just fine. Sadly today we had to say goodbye to one of our teachers, Josh, whose year contract was up today and who is heading back to America this week so there's just the three of us now at Talkster fighting to foreign fight!

Anyway guys, I've had plenty to blog about this week and writing about it has made me very sleepy, so even though I've made it on one go I think it is definately time for me to head to bed. Keep an eye out for pictures and videos which will be posted to both my sites this week...just haven't quite got round to it yet!

Take care

Ben


Success is simple. Do what's right, the right way, at the right time.
Arnold H. Glasow

A Missing Train, Pet Rock's Last Stand and Bagging a Brace

ALMOST time for the end of another weekend, sadly.

Another entertaining two days is left behind as like all hard working English teachers my mind goes back to what exactly I am going to get my kids to learn tomorrow.

Before I get round to planning for tomorrow's lessons I thought I'd better fill you in about exactly what I have been up to this week. With my Mum gone, things haven't exactly been thrilling and with no one to be a tour guide to I haven't had the chance to go out this week and have any 'adventures', bit it was fun all the same.

The week at school was basically the same as any other, or at least it must have been as I am thinking now that nothing paticular stands out about it! Tells me that my memory is bad or that nothing out of the ordinary took place.
Friday morning with the Kindergarten kids was 'field trip' day for the month though which was pretty good. It's always nice to be out in the classroom and show the kids that not stuff which I actually teach them in the lessons is not made up.

For this month's trip we went to the train museum which isn't far away from Suwon at all. It wasn't terribly interesting but in a choice between that and watching snoopy for the 80th time, trains win.
The kids seemed to enjoy themselves anyway. They were intregued by a minature railway show which we saw when we first arrived and they definately had fun playing on the trains outside which you could actually walk on.

We've been learning about transport this week so it wasn't long before there were alot of "Ben, train", "yes, that is a train", "Ben, two trains", "Yup, we're in a train museum, you'll be seeing alot of them!"

After we'd finished school for the day we headed out for galbi as usual and then me and Charlie decided to hang out at Wa Bar for a little while, where Anna decided to grace us with her company for a little while.

I woke up on saturday morning pretty excited as for a while now we had been planning to go to a food festival in a place called Chuncheon which is famous for it's creation of dak galbi. I'd estimate that me Kevin and Charlie probably eat it about once a week so a whole festival about it was a pretty exciting thing. We'd also agreed to meet up with a friend of a friend of Charlie's who arrived in Korea on Tuesday to be a teacher.

We met her and her friend at a station called Samseong which is about an hour and a half away from us and then we continued on to Chuncheonyangi which is where the internet had instructed us to go. Having not really done much research (something which in hindsight probably wasn't wise) we came out of the station and quickly found outselves wondering exactly which was we should be going and where abouts we should be turning.

We did a full circle of the market which is a few hundred meters from the station, careful not to lose sight of exactly where that was and despite Charlie questioning a cab drive on the whereabouts of a 'Dak Galbi Party' we decided to call the information line which helps out stupid foreigners like ourselves when they are lost.
We managed to signal another cab driver and were prepared to give him some instructions when Kevin relayed the information that we were actually in completely the wrong place!!! It was only this afternoon when I looked on the website that upon closer inspection I realised that we needed to get a train to wherever we were going and although we probably could have done it in the afternoon we were all quite let down by the fact that for the second time since we've been out adventuring we've ended up in completely the wrong location!

Whoops!!!!!

After a spot of lunch we got ourselves back onto the subway to go to Hongdae for the evening. I think I have probably mentioned before that a couple of teachers who work at our school are in a band, we've been to see them a couple of times and they have been really good. But sadly three quarters of the band are leaving Korea so they played on last show before the curtain fell on their stay in Asia.

As we hadn't killed that much time in Chenonyangi we headed to a few bars and played some darts while we waited for our friend Hans to meet us and then we could head to the bar where my friends band were playing. As usual in Hongdae we had Mexican food for dinner and then went to a club on the main street of the city.
I throughly enjoyed listening to my friends band 'Pet Rock' play for the last time, and although I was pretty tired, I managed to stay away for long enough to see the whole thing!

During the intermission the owner of the bar in his band, who were all Korean, played a few songs which were something different but very good. We didn't think that we'd have any reason to head back to Hongdae to watch music but after their performance we may just have found a good reason!

Me, Kevin, Hans and Charlie all headed back to Suwon in a cab after our enjoyable, but long day. And with just a few hours sleep under my belt I woke up this morning feeling extremely tired, and really not in the mood to play football.

Thanks to H1N1 (swine flu to you and me) the school where we usually play football is off-limits after there was a suspected case of the disease there so the game was switched to an away game in the middle of Seoul. Today we were playing the team who I injured myself against last half season so I was pretty wary about the same thing happening again to say the last!

I met the rest of the team in Yeongtong and we caught to bus and then the subway together to Apujeong which is where the game was. The field was pretty small and at first the opposition we were playing against suggested playing a 9-a-side game as they didn't have many players and due to the lack of space. We decided against that idea though and it soon became apparent that it was an extremely wise choice as we were 2-0 up within twenty minutes. Yours truely, believe it or not, was on the scoresheet. It's pretty funny that despite not being fully functional I was still able to score and then five minutes later when one of my teams mates crossed me the ball I netted again to make it 3-1!

The other team, who we had stopped from winning the league last season, we probably fed up by then and despite a barrage of attacks from them for the rest of the game we managed to hold on into the last minute at 4-3 and snuck one in injury time to make it 5-3 and keep up our unbeaten record for the season so far.

I made my way back to Suwon which seemed to take an eternity and a half and then made the decision to go out and get some dinner with Kevin and Charlie as I was pretty hungry! It's been a fun but tiring weekend and although I am not ready to go back to work tomorrow morning, I've got to earn money somehow!

Finishing Off the 'Great Wall of Suwon', Saying 'Goodbye' and Making a Full Return to Action

FLASHING by in an instant go another week and another weekend in Suwon-si.

Spending most of last weekend in Seoul with my mum I didn't really have much time to relax and by the time it came 10am on Monday I was still feeling pretty tired. Still, I managed to make it through another week of teaching to complete my fourth and a half month in Korea.

Evenings this week were spent entertaining my mum and although I finish work at 6pm or 7pm every day we weren't able to go out and do very much exploring but I think my mum will definately be satisfied with the amount that she achieved whilst she was here. The first task of the week, unfortunately, was to finish off school assesments for each one of my kids. It's strange that it has been three months since I wrote the last ones but lucikly this time I think I have less students than before so it actually only ended up taking me about two hours to get them all out of the way.

On Monday and Tuesday we just went out for some dinner and had a little walk around Suwon station but on Wednesday we managed to make our way to the cinema to see GI Joe after I'd finished work. I didn't know too much about the film (or even the series) before I saw it but I was very impressed with the story and it was just my film as it was a combination of intregue and action. I think it was actually better than Transformers 2, mainly because it was about an hour shorter and actually had a storyline, something which I'm sure you'll agree is slightly vital to a film.

The week was soon coming to an end and as my mum was going home on Saturday we decided to finish of walking around 'The great wall of Suwon' which we'd started last Friday night. We took the bus to Paldalmun and then climbed up a great deal of steps to re-start walking around the final quarter of the fortress wall. Most of it I have walked before but it was good to go back to what is surely the highest point and look off there in the daylight. It truely is a great view of Suwon and is probably one of the outstanding memories I will be taking back home to England with me.

As the sun started to set we walked back down from the small palace on top of the hill and headed back home to get some dinner with the rest of the guys. As has now become traditional on a Friday we had some galbi at the usual restaurant and then as my mum headed home, Kevin, Charlie, Haji and myself decided to go up to WA Bar for a little while. I was feeling pretty tired and not even the delicious french fries that you get there could wake me up so we decided to get a taxi home at a respectable time.

On Saturday morning I woke up and headed to my mums hotel to spend some final moments with her before she made her way to the airport. She checked out at about twelve and then spent some time showing me the art park, sculpture park and Olympic park that she had seen on her earlier weeks travels and then we went to Homeplus to get some dinner as I needed a few things. My mum was going to stick around until 4.50pm but as we'd spent about as much time as we could doing everything that didn't involve travelling round and going too far away from Suwon she decided to catch an earlier bus from her hotel to the airport so after sitting in the lobby for a while and waiting for the next bus we said our goodbyes and she headed off.

It has been really good to have my mum around for the last couple of weeks and I am pleased that she made the decision to come here after I thought I might not see her for a year. I know that she had a good time while she was here and she certainly came back with a greater experience than she thought she would have. Hopefully this will encourage a few more people to come out and see me while I am here as I would certainly appreciate a visit any time you want to come over!

On my way out of the hotel I actually saw a big group of people checking in and when I saw that they all were wearing the same t-shirts and carrying the same bags I figured that they must be some kind of team. On careful inspection of their attire I discovered that it was actually a professional football team called Incheon United FC who were playing Suwon Bluewings this evening! Unfortunately none of the players were famous enough for me to feel inspired into getting their autographs!

I took the bus back home to Suwon to see what Charlie and Kevin were up to and we decided to go and play golf and check out what was on at the movies on the way there. Sadly there wasn't anything on at CGV but we went to play screen golf in Yeoungtong. I haven't been to play screen golf in a couple of weeks so it was a bit of a struggle to get going and sensibly we decided to play quite a difficult course this week. I finished at +16 this week but I'd like to say that was only after a few dodgy putts on the last whole which I was just wanting to get out of the way and get some dinner.

By this time as I probably would be after a round of golf was pretty starving so we headed to Kraze Burger to get some dinner and then head back to our rooms for the rest of the evening. I spent most of the evening watching Premiership football on TV and also listening to the cricket at the same time.

This morning required me to wake up early as I had decided to make my return to Inter Suwon this week for the first game of the new season. Admittedly this may have been one of the worst ideas I've ever had as after one training session under my best and my foot still not back to 100% I probably shouldn't have even considered getting out of bed at 8am this morning. Nervousness aside I made my way to Suwon station and met the rest of the team as we traveled to play Bundang.
We hopped on the train (and at one point left our goalkeeper behind) and then had to change to the subway before getting to a stop which was close to Mokadong just shy of Seoul.

We then had to take a taxi to get to the stadium where we were playing this afternoon and after finding the hockey and baseball stadiums of professional teams we eventually found the football stadium hiding just behind. Now, I've played in a few impressive venues in my time thanks to my experiences of playing for Barbados and North Yorkshire but as far as games for amateur teams go I'm not sure I have ever played in a 30,000 al seater stadium before!
It was a pretty impressive sight to be honest and it was a shame that only about 100 people were sitting up in the stand.

With a few new players in the team we started with an untried and untested formation of 3-5-2 with me at right wing back. The team we were playing had split last seasons matches with us but I played my first game against them last time when we won 3-1. Bundang took an early lead in the game despite us starting pretty well and even hitting the crossbar from one of my corners.
We stayed patient and soon one of our defenders had smashed the ball in to make it 1-1. I won a penalty which the same player converted to make it 2-1 and then we went riot on them and when I came off after 75 minutes in the second half we were 7-1 up.

An impressive start to the season I'm sure you'll agree. Some of the guys were heading to Itaewon to watch the cricket and football this evening but I decided to head back home and take a bath and rest before school tomorrow. I've spent most of the evening in my room on the computer making worksheets and things for class tomorrow and I'll be spending the rest of the evening listening to the cricket and watching whatever game is on TV.

It's been another good week in Korea and although I was sad to see my mum go back home, it was lovely to have her over here and it makes me look forward even more to returning back to England and seeing her and everyone else in eight months time!

Jungno-3, Dongdemun and Seoul Tower

WELL it wasn't quite sunday as I expected but us teachers are busy people you know! (especially when you're given assesments to write, not something you really need to be doing while entertaining visitors)

Despite the rude interuptions of work throughout the week as I mentioned in my last blog me and my mum have been having a fabulous time together, getting out and doing plenty and hopefully showing her that I am looking after myself well! It's strange to think that she has almost been here for a week already and I will definately miss her when she has gone but at the moment it's great to have some company and somebody to share the wonderful experience of Korea with.

I think/hope that she is not only enjoying seeing her son but also having a fantastic time, we did some good stuff over the weekend and I definately think that Korea has surprised her. I know that she probably needed the excuse of me being here to come over to this part of the world but I definately think that she is loving how surprising Korea can be and who knows if I ever decide to go to another slightly offbeat destination for work or pleasure, I know I will have at least one visitor.

After our long walk on friday both of our feet were aching pretty badly but as this was the only weekend she was going to be in town I promised that whatever the pain we would visit Seoul this weekend as who knows if she will ever have the chance to again. Saturday was a pretty hot day so we decided to get up pretty early and head to the palace at Jungno-3 in Seoul. It's the one that the four of us tried to get to last week but was closed.

Thankfully this time around the palace was open and following the points the guide map directed us to we walked around the lovely grounds of a fantastic palace. Mum took plenty of pictures and she was surprised to see how beautiful the architecture of some of the buildings was. Despite the fact that there are palaces around almost every corner in many parts of Korea it was only the second time I had been into a royal structure, the first being at Hwaseong Fortress and the second was the one at the City Hall in Seoul which wasn't quite as impressive.

I'm glad to report though that this one was fantastic and it was very big so took us about an hour and a half to walk round. By this time (as we met at 11am) my mum, who had initially rejected my offer of getting diner, decided that she was hungry so we decided to head to Dongdemun as I said I would take her there to walk around and buy some presents for people anyway.
Dongdemun is actually another of the spots we hit last week with Shaun but this time me and my mum walked through the shopping centre rather than the underground market. We headed up to the top floor to get some dinner before heading to the souvenir level which showed me for the first time that Korea does actually sell momentos of your time here. Not many postcards. But still there were some decent gifts which I will be purchasing for myself and other people back home when I return.

Mum wanted to buy some clothes, or at least see what they had so we headed to the underground section of the shops where she was surprised to discover the truth about how much Korean's love shopping! After a few hours spent in there we decided to head back to Suwon for some much needed rest and we ended up hanging around at my place until Charlie and Kevin came back from the movies where they had been to see public enemies.

Charlie had been mentioning a potential BBQ and after Shaun had brought him some traditional South Carolina BBQ sauce he decided to go ahead and test it out. Managing to light the cooker without blowing ourselves up we hooked my ipod speakers outside and spent the next hour cooking chicken, making baked potatoes and then enjoying a delicious meal. Whilst we were eating some fireworks started going off in the neighbourhood which was kinda cool although we didn't know where they were coming from until I went up on the Talkster roof and discovered that they were infact coming from the fortress.

Whilst we were outside enjoying the fireworks a local man who Charlie later described as being 'hateful' started shouting at us, Charlie paticularily, for no reason what so ever. He was pointing at the school and we think he was trying to communicate with us in Korean and then when we looked at him blankly he started asking why we didn't speak any Korean. If he's reading this (on the off chance!) WE DON'T UNDERSTAND KOREAN! SORRY!

My mum got off safely home and after a good night's sleep we met up again the next morning to take on Seoul Tower. For those of you who are ill informed (like me) Seoul Tower is probably the one outstanding landmark in the country and even though you might not have a clue what I am talking about, trust me if you saw a picture you'd be like 'ahhhh I know what you mean now Ben'

I'm surprised it's taken me so long to get there to be honest as I am a bit of a landmark lover but I think the wait was definately worth it. Aside from knowing which stop to get off at I didn't really know very much about how you get up to the tower as I know from looking at pictures that it's up in the mountains. As it turns out you walk up this windey little hill before eventually being presented with the choice of a walk in the 90F sun or a cable car. And even though my mum doesn't like heights she made the wise choice of taking the motorised option.

So after being crammed into a cable car together you ride up into the mountains to find the 'plaza' level of Seoul Tower. Once you've brought a ticket you're good to do and ascending up the however many feet in an elevator you eventually get to the observation deck, from which you can basically get a brilliant view of the whole city and beyond. On the top level of the deck there are windows placed all the way round the outside to give you a 360 degree view of the city and also there are places listed in the windows with how many KM they are from your location in the tower.

North Korea is only about 300KM away with Argentina being a little further at just over 14,000 KM. Rather strangely they also had the South Pole listed on the window which incase you wondered was just 12,000KM away. After a good walk round and a look out of each window we headed to the next viewing point which tells you wnat you can see in Seoul through each of the windows. Back on the plaza level you can walk round and see the view of the city without looking through grubby windows which is kinda cool and then we decided to make our way down and back to the bottom of the hill (which we walked) and to get some dinner.

Eager for some more adventuring I suggested we head to the Korean War Memorial which is in Samjagki just a few stops down the line so we jumped on a train and went there. Although we didn't actually go in the memorial we saw plenty looking around at that they had in the gardens, including a huge memorial to the fallen soldiers of the conflict and also a map of the country before and after the war. In the further past or the area that you could walk to they head models of several planes that were used in the Korean war along with tanks and submaries. On the opposite side they had several statues which were built which signify the end of the war and also one which depicts the hope that Korea are reunited someday.

Pretty cool stuff I'm sure you'll agree.
The pair of us headed back to Hwaseo for another rest for the evening and planned to go and get some tea before my mum headed back to the hotel and I trudged home to work out what I planned to do today in class.

So that was our packed weekend! It's much more fun having people around and venturing out into Seoul I have decided! There's so much to see there and all it takes it a little reading of the book I brought about Korea and some wonders can be found! After class today I met up with my mum to go and get myself a new pair of glasses. Discovering that they cost 70,000 won (about £35) mum decided she's going to go there tomorrow and get herself a pair.

For dinner I introduced my mum to some Dak Galbi which she enjoyed and we stopped in at Baskin' Robbins at the way home to get some ice cream so even though it was only a couple of hours we spent together today it was action packed too! Not sure what we have planned for tomorrow but my mum is heading to the Korean Folk Village tomorrow after she's picked up her glasses and then we might walk the rest of the fortress wall!

Photography Work, Mum Arrives and Lots of Walking

Slowly recovering from a weekend of fun with the guys out in Seoul last weekend it was time to return to normality on Monday when work came rushing around, but I'm pleased to report that I have now made it to the four month mark of my stay in Korea which I guess means I just have to do what I have done twice more and I'll be all set to return home!

While living over here hasn't been as easy as I might make out, keeping track of time aside I am not in a rush to end the experience as I am fully enjoying my time in Korea but in times when I think I am losing the plot it's good to have something to aim for and while a few weeks ago that was going to Thailand, the 6 month mark and Christmas break are definately in my sights and hopefully I can get to them and through them as I have done with everything else that has been thrown in my path in the last 4 months.

This week has been a rather good one to be honest as on Tuesday my mum arrived in Korea to visit her favourite son for nearly two weeks and I have to say that the company was more than welcome. On monday though we took Shaun out to eat Dak Galbi for the first before heading back to the batting cages for some more baseball practice, something which is rapidly becoming a favourite activity of mine! Good job we went walking down there by accident I have to say.

Well on Tuesday it was time for my mum to arrive and although he fligh got in at 8.05 there was no danger of me making it there on time as I only finished work at 7pm and then had to work through a long and complicated series of trains to get to Incheon Airport. For some reason even though Incheon is only about 50km away on a map both driving and getting the train take about two hours which makes about as much sense to you as it does to me.
But I'm pleased to say that after only one error in getting off the train too early I made it through about 50 stops to Incheon and found my mum after only a little walking through the terminal.

We made our way back to Suwon-Si together and were more than likely on the last train back to Suwon when we arrived at the station at about 12.15. Feeling confident after navigating the train I was extremely surprised to discover that for once the cab driver we picked out could understand my English accent and take us to my mums hotel which is about a 7 minute ride from Suwon station.

The Ibis Ambassedor hotel where she is staying is extremely swish, I think it's pretty new and I am extremely jelous of the surroundings she has during her time in Korea compaired to the corridor that I live in. The hotel is close to Suwon station but also, as I discovered the following day, has plenty to do in the surrounding area and it's probably alot safer than staying in any of the motel-hotels which are near my house.

On Wednesday after recovering from going to bed at 1am I met up with my mum at Suwon station to discover that she had been doing all kinds of exploring without me (see Korea isn't that scary at all...I'm talking to you people who are thinking about coming over here to see me but are worried!) and we ended up spending the few hours we had together in Suwon Station eating dinner and then travelling to E-Mart to get my mum a much needed new digital camera.
I showed her my room and the area where I live before we decided to walk back to her hotel to see how long it would take. About an hour, and no wrong turns later, we made it make to the Ibis and agreed to meet up the next day.

My mum put her camera to good use taking plenty of pictures of the 'soju tent's they have set up near the station and also of many other things that I now recognise as the accepted norm, but to an 'outsider' still seem quirky. That's how I know I have been living here too long! Whilst we were catching up, Charlie, Shaun and Kevin decided that tonight was going to be the night that they ate dog for the first time.

Now I know there are a lot of stereotypes that the sentence I typed just there confirmed but I was informed the next day that it was actually delicious and as I have said before, not all Korean's eat dogs and as I have seen the all packed in the back of a truck before (it's a picture I will definately have to post somewhere, trust me) It's not like eating Snoopy or Beethoven! Somehow (I suspect soju was involved) they also managed to almost get the neighbours to call the police because they were scared when the Shaun and Charlie came home at 3pm shouting their heads off. Although they were in the room next to me and I didn't even stir at all their noise, I somehow managed to get the blame from my boss who said that the neighbours had picked me out personally as someone who was making a lot of noise. I've always thought I was incredibly, but being in two places at one time, as I tell my kids, is something that I have yet to master!

By Thursday my mum was starting to feel pretty tired and also having some problems sleeping so I told her that after she'd finished exploring she could use my room to nap in until I came back from work and then we'd go out so yesterday involved a lot of walking as we went round Soho Park which is just across the road from where I live before meeting Shaun, Charlie and Kevin at Ocha's for galbi so that they could meet my mum and we got a chance to see Shaun before he left this morning. She also came into kindergarten for a bit during the day to meet the kids but they were playing all shy and just about to have dinner when she came in so I guess she will have to return to the classroom next week before she leaves to assess my 'teaching abilities!'
Following the meal, me and my mum decided to join the three of them in a late night walk around the city walls as none of us had been up there when the place was lit up.

The Suwon Fortress wall looks pretty impressive during the day but even the evening it looks even better than usual and the fact that you can walk on the wall at anytime of the day is very cool. It's lit up all around and the views are spectacular. Last night we just walked along part of the wall from the beginning of Namul back to the closest point near our house where we can get off it but today we went back and walked around the other half of the wall after we'd eaten dinner and i'd finished work.

It took us about two hours to walk around and we walked from one end of Namul to the other so the both of us were pretty tired by then. We walked back to Suwon Station so that we could get the bus in opposite directions but we are planning to meet up again tomorrow so that I can take my mum for her first experience of Seoul. Hopefully the weather will be nice and we can visit the Palace which we tried to see last week that was closed and then travel on to the market which me, Charlie and Shaun visited last week.

Hopefully I'll have some good stories to tell and some good pictures to show after the weekends events so you can expect a blog at some point on Sunday!x

Returning to Action, Charlie's Visitor and a Busy Weekend

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

Videos

Hey everyone!

Just a quick mini update to let you know that I have finally got round to uploading a few videos from my trip to Thailand on the third of my websites. There's some pretty cool ones which show what the beaches were like, just how safe me and Kevin were on scooters and that 20-something year olds still like to dig holes.

If violence is your thing then there's plenty of videoes from the Muay Thai Fighting we witness.

Incase you've forgotten the address is: http://s76.photobucket.com/albums/j28/benjsmall_0014/ Once you're there scroll through my Korea videos if you haven't seen them and then the Thailand ones.

Enjoy

Ben x