I know I am in Korea but...

Right now I am sick with some kind of flu like disease and bored and would really like to go to Vietnam. I am trying to figure out if and when in my schedule I could fit it in, without causing too much damage... for instance would it be possible to fly home via Vietnam having just discovered my PGCE starts on September 13th, a week earlier than I thought. Hmmm

cyril

'a south london mouse'. see blog links to the right.....

creative output

www.dailywordsabc.blogspot.com

Korean drugs advice?

Should I trust drugs that are for 'Snivels and nasal congestion'...

What's Sick?

I am. I am on the verge of death -

my head feels like its currently hosting some kind of elephant dancing competition

my throat feels like it has a samurai sword down it,

I have lost all sense of smell, and therefore taste. My Korean colleagues were very impressed when I ate some uber spicey dokboki at work... i was hoping it would clear my sinuses... it didn't.

My body feels like its been crushed by a brigade of tanks on exercise.

I blame, entirely my Wonder 7-1 students, formerly Wonder 6-1 who were the reason for my past near death experience. The reason being is they are all currently diseased with evil Korean germs and have the inability to cover the mouths when coughing or sneezing, or dispose of used tissues, that is when they choose a tissue over their sleeve. I love them but right now they are KILLING ME!

Reading list

I recommend all of this books. Particularly The Snow geese by William Fiennes and Ten Story Love Song by Richard Milward.

Both these texts are total opposites. The Snow Geese being the story of a man who crosses america tracking snow geese, it is just beautiful. Ten Story Love song is based in a block of council flats in the North and follows the stories of the residents in particular an artist who makes it big....

Miscellany of my life

Converse low tops - Converse, these are standard Korean footwear

Tortoiseshell sunglasses - Street stall

Print dress - Ilsan

I heart Tokyo Tshirt - Tokyo

Bizarre fluro Jesus soaps - Gift from Student

Japanese emperor fluoro coaster set - Tokyo

Matrioshka Doll - Incheon

Matrioshka snowglobe - formerly part of the bar decor at Oi Bar in Hongdae. I bought it off them on NYE after too many cockatails.

Hat - Aland 3rd floor vintage market

Pink bag - Aland - I first saw this at 2 in the morning in Hongdae but didn't possess the ability to buy, it I found it five months later when sober...

Choco Instamax

Orange M&M's - Tokyo

Miffy tape - Alpha stationary

Photo - Shauna Browne

Star Fruits Drago Fruits Nivea lipsalve - Family mart - I have three tubes because I always loose it

Hello Kitty contact lense case - because I had too

Scarf - H&M Seoul

Notepad - stolen from Old Rock in Ilsan - normally used for song requests. The owner looks like a hybrid of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. He's about fifty.

My little sister runs faster than me.

My sister is somewhat the polar opposite of me, in the sense that she dedicates her life to running and is pretty good at it. She is on scholarship at University of Florida, in the USA, having sacked of England 3 years ago. I, hate running but hey ho. This weekend she won the NCAA's, the USA National Collegiate Championship, at some track in Arkansas. And when she crossed that finish line she didn't look sweaty at all...

Heavy Traffic

A few weeks I was walking home from work when I was slowed down as around 40 armed tanks came down the road I was attempting to cross. The noise sounded like gunfire, the tanks had armed soldiers on them. Some of the soldiers saw me taking photos and they started waving, their hands, not their guns.

Adventure Korea does the DMZ

Our second trip with Adventure Korea happened today and that was a trip to the DMZ, De-militarized Zone, the 4k stretch of land, technically a no-man's land, between the North and the South. It was an AMAZING day and I have some great pictures, but you are going to have to wait as I have spent the last 3 hours clearing the backlog of pictures and now I have square eyes and blisters on my fingers!

Local Kimbap dude

This dude is the night guy at the 24 hour Kimbap shop near my apartment. The place is amazing and is where the majority of Munsan eat. I am a regular and go around four times a week. You can't really complain when they make great Kimbap's (my choice is either Chamchi (Tuna) or Kimchi (Kimchi) and they are around £1 for a roll. AMAZING! In the day its run by two great ladies. They know what I want as soon as I walk in the door!

Munsan Chicken Galbi

New favourite thing to eat in Munsan... in its raw state... basically chicken, veg in a great spicy Kimchi sauce.

FYI

You may notice that although I have recently been mentioning caving trips in my posts, there are no pictures of caves. This is because despite having an awesome new camera the pictures I have taken in caves tend to still come out black and weird due to lack of light and the fact that the rock looks amazing in actuality and just can't be captured on film. If you are DESPERATE to see photos from inside caves, email me, or wait until the slideshow party I will host when back in the Uk.

New Term

March 1st hailed a new School year for Korean children... they had 3 days to get used to the fact they were going to be in a higher grade and we had 3 days to prepare for the fact our schedule was going to be totally re-shuffled, new hours and new students.

Our first day back, Tuesday 2nd was what we expected, total chaos, the schedules were non existent for a few hours and nobody had a clue what was going on! When we finally got our schedule's we finally had a few hours to figure out what kids we were expecting, what text books they were studying and where those textbooks were located. I lost most of my kids to Jenny and Mary but was lucky enough to keep my worst classes. I also found out that Tuesday will be the worst day of my week where despite only having six classes I will be at work from 8.40AM to 8PM! (ARGH Hagwons) Luckily the first four days of term, we were teaching only elementary students. However last week our Kindergarten kids turned up. I am teaching a group of 'Wonder 5' students which means Korean five year olds whom I teach for an hour a day. Its becoming an interesting experience. Firstly because there are nine students, (this is big for Hagwon, last term there were four!) and secondly because Korean five year old's are Normal age 3/4 and these kids are somewhat obviously younger rather than older. They are BABIES. They were terrified on the first day to the point I couldn't move from my position on the floor in case they freaked out, one child was screaming so loudly you could have heard her for miles. I have also discovered that their favourite thing to do is to pull everything off my shelves, throw it onto the floor and then laugh hysterically.

The best bit of teaching beginners as that I got to give them all names! In the majority of Asian countries, when an individual starts learning English, they are given and English name and their English teacher gets to name them... As well as this beginners class, they were a few other random students I named. Jenny and Mary my fabulous co-teachers and I had great fun coming up with names, Jenny went with names of former pets (Hello Olive and Polly), Mary went with the names of literary greats (Holden) and I went with names I thought were cute...

Ruby

Milly

Sasha

Nancy

Daisy

Lexie

Caspar

Harvey*

Tom

Richard

and

Isis.

Isis, the lucky devil, is the child that screams constantly and demands to be picked up, was names after Isis travel and education, the fabulous company I worked for over the summer. My staff however believe that Isis is simply the name of a Greek Goddess.

Harvey's Mum called a few days after the naming process and asked to have his name changed. This often happens, normally the parents want names that we try to avoid like the traditional John or Alice, but Harvey's Mum? Nope. She wanted Raphael, after the artist. Genius.

Adventure Korea goes to Chungju.

Adventure Korea is a travel company who co-ordinate trips around Korea for foreigners, a service which is mainly used by English teachers in order to save themselves from wasting time navigating bus routes when trying to escape their hometown. It was recommended to me by a person I met randomly in London and then again and again by friends and fellow teachers in Korea. At the beginning of March, what with our recent trip to Tokyo and Lunar New Year we decided to go a bit mental and booked three trips with the company. A trip to Chungju was our first experience of Korea, and luckily for us the company is excellent, and this is from someone who generally hates organised tour groups! The atmosphere is very relaxed, you get loads of time to see everything and the staff are just lovely. The only downside of the first trip was that it left Hongik University station at 7am on Sunday morning, meaning I had to be on the first train at 5.30 in the morning in order not to miss it!

We took the bus to Chunju Province which is around 3 hours south of Seoul, we saw a whole bunch of great sights in the area and even got to ride a ferry!

The ferry port had lots of mechanical rides. We just had to give them a go. Riding that horse has been one of my highlights of the Korean Journey so far...

The sights were BEAUTIFUL... as we headed along the lake.

I love the way the mountains just dissappeared into the sky....

We saw fisherman... they were fishing.

The most messed up Child's toy I have ever seen. It was mechanical. When you pressed a button he thrusted... He also had a very hot girlfriend.

Me and the Adventure Korea bus!

Temple on a rock...

This has a name, but I can't remember it. It is essentially a big cliff with a giant whole in it, it was pretty impressive to see, you could climb over the top of it, I didn't.

Samcheok

The day after the talent show, a bunch of us hauled ass to the Express Bus Terminal in South Seoul and took a 3 and a half hour bus journey to Samcheok... to see one of the 'FHM' magazine featured highlights of Korea... Sunday was great warm weather, blue skies, we saw some great sculptures, an intriguing museum and even dipped our feet in the sea. The next day we decided to go and see a cave, as Samcheok is the self proclaimed 'Cave City'. When we left on the bus it was raining, the rain turned to snow and by the time we arrived at the entrance to the Cave there was four inches of settled snow. By the time we left the caves there was six inches and no return bus to Samcheok city. We managed to get a random Korean dude to call us a taxi and made it to the Bus terminal to catch a bus terminal with plenty of time. The 3 and a half hour journey turned to 10 and a half hours as the roads ground to a halt due to the snow and we literally slithered all the way to Seoul. All in all it was a great weekend with some great people, and a Korean experience to remember!

Boats in harbour...

The sea and some nice rocks...

Barefoot on the beach....

Seconds before I got soaked...

Me and the Irish ladies on the beach...

Some cool looking Anchors etc

When we saw this we knew we were headed in the right direction...

How to decorate the underside of a bridge...

This rocked up and down....

A statement piece for ones garden/patio???

Well obviously we had to get on...

Note there were alot of children wandering around with their families...

Pretty view...

Nice temple, shame about the fence posts...

Yes a random photo of a bath. This is in fact the only time I have been near a bath since leaving England. Korea is all about showering. Baths are found mainly in Communal Sauna's which require communal nudity. My next bathing experience is destined to be one where I am naked and surrounded by ninety year old Ajumma's! This was a wicked bath though.... so nice and hot and just wow. I miss baths..

We didn't expect Snow...

Especially not Snow of this magnitude....

To reach the entrance of the cave, we had to hike up a 1.3k hill in this weather...