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...

Kim's Island

On one of my trips a few weeks ago we watched an amazing Korean film on the coach. The film was Kim's Island AKA Castaway on the Moon. Watching it on a coach and trying to see the English subs was a bit tricky but the film was great. I am currently attempting to commandeer a copy from somewhere... if you get a chance you should watch it.

Cuties do Talent Show

The Talent Show is an annual event hosted by the school, celebrating the talents of the fulltime English students in the Kindergarten. It was also a dreaded event for most of the staff. The dress run through somehow ended up an hour and half shorter than the actual performance length... so on the day we had to sit through 2 three hour performances. I also got roped into being on stage by my co-teacher which made the situation far worse as I had to dress up both as a Butterfly and as a Dog! The whole day was totally chaos, but the costumes the school hired made up for the fact you couldn't hear or understand what the kids were saying for the majorit of the performance....

Backstage was chaotic. The kid in the bowl hair cut and black Unitard at the back is Peter. He was a cat and he is possibly my favourite child.

The cast lining up for an 'adapted' performance of Snow White

A dwarf (her character) having false eyelashes glued on. This child is Korean 7, English 6!!!!

Snow White was a great peformance....

Especially when you have a 6/7 year old kid aiming a giant gun at Snow White!!

My cuties doing their performance of the Lost duckling. I was a butterfly in this bit, the kids came up to my knees!!

The end A performance, with sign language, of a horrific song called 'Mommy I Love You'... it made you want to vomit. Alot. All the kids also wore MJ Style white gloves. So classy.

Cuties

Before my schedule re-shuffle I took my camera into work and got some cute pictures of all the kids I teach. It was pretty lucky really, on the last day (when I didn't have my camera) My co-teacher told me that two of my favourite students Brian and Rebecca, weren't coming back. I was nearly in tears....

This is Brian and he is so cool, its disgusting. Unfortunately his parents decided to move house and now he goes to another school...

Rebecca, another quitter. Her parents decided to send her to Elementary school a year early!

I still have these kids. But they are now in a class of seven, as opposed to four. Amy was away today.

This angel, has bitten me twice, punches other kids and spits on the floor. Apart from that shes pretty cool.

Such a brainiac

Mentalist...

Eight girls and only one boy. He is the cutest boy but some of the girls are devils...

Uber cool big kids, they got take away from me.... they get Mary Teacher now.

The kid on the lower left is AMAZING, she made me the best birthday card in the world. Her name is Lois

My favourite kids. They are soo cool I once bought them pizza just for the hell of it. I don't teach them now... WAAAH

Incheon Part 2

Pictures I promised from our trip to Incheon. Like I said previously, we went to the airport to pick up our visa's for our Tokyo Trip, whilst we were there we thought we would go and see Incheon City itself. We went for a wander on the streets, took in 'China Town' the biggest china town in Korea, and went up to Jayu Park and saw the statue of General Douglas McArthur who was an important guy during the Korean War... The are was beautiful and although these shots were taken with my rubbish Korean phone camera, the way the light fell alot of them came out looking rather beautiful... well thats what I think anyhow...

Jayu Aprk had lots of random things to see. Like this statue....

And this statue....

Their signs were pretty....

And they had this giant random wooden pipe...

A whole menagerie of birds...

The statue of General Douglas McArthur...

A pretty cool view over the port...