So yesterday I had a bit of an interesting day. Fridays are normally pretty scerene, I don't have many classes to teach which is pretty nice, especially after a hard day of a thursday, where I am busy all day. So generally the day was pretty quiet, but after lunch I had the 6th grade and that was good and then I should have had the 5th grade. But as usually most of them were a no-show, just one turned up in fact. He was not terribly bothered about learning any English, plus I had two random 4th graders in my room. We played some random games with the stuff in my room. But then, what happened well, it's rather embarrassing, I ripped my pants, almost in two. At that point I needed some way to cover myself. I was not terribly embarrassed, but still signs of modesty are greatly appreciated as a teacher. So I shooed away my students and had one of the teachers drive me home. I'm going to try and sew them back together when I can get a needle and some thread, but it looks like they may be beyond repair.
Today I wentout to buy some food, I had decided that I would just take the day to do some of the chores in my house that have been mounting up. I had a couple of things to buy and I decided I would brave the market with my tiny amount of Korean. Thankfully I didn't really have to use it, but the prices were pretty amazing, so much cheaper than the shops and those shop prices are generally about half what I would pay in the UK. So I made some pretty good savings on my fruit and veg for the week. I think I may well take to going every week that I am at home for it.
Saturday 28 May 2011
Thursday 19 May 2011
Update
I have failed to blog for almost a month, this mainly due to the fact that they have banned access to the site at work, but also because for the last few days the site has been down for maintenance. But one of my friends suggested to me that I should write my blog on a word document and then send it to myself, so all I have to do is upload it. So that is precisely what I shall do.
Changwon/Masan
I had two days off in quick succession, one for children’s day on the 5th of May and a second one for Buddha’s birthday on the 10th of May. I did nothing special on either of those days, which I suppose some would say was a waste, but it allowed me to relax and get some stuff done in my house that I had meant to get around to, but hadn’t. Also by having those days off I was finally able to bring myself to make the trek over to Matt’s. The journey in theory should only have taken about 2 hours, but I believe that that is an outdated calculation, plus due to heavy traffic it took me almost 3 and a half hours. So as one may expect by the end of it I was pretty fed up. But I arrived and grabbed a taxi over to meet Matt. I was not in his city though, we were out in Changwon for the night.
I knew we were meeting Chris, Tim and Barry (although Barry took a billion years to get there) and there was another guy, D. I have to say when I sat down after my obscenely long bus ride I was pretty confused by the insane conversation they were having. They were talking about the end of the world and aliens. Now I’m sure many of us have had these conversations before, but the thing that surprised me was that there was no voice of scepticism, they were just nodding along blindly, that is except of Chris, he looked bemused.
After the strange greeting we went off to get something to eat. We had something rather different than the norm for Korea though, we had Indian curry. It was run by a guy from Pakistan originally. The food was good, not the best by any means, but a welcome change. But it was super expensive and there was not much meat. From there we moved onto a local bar. It was alright, but it was tiny and created simply for foreigners. I would find it difficult to see any Koreans frequenting the place, other than perhaps women who wanted to hook up with white guys.
After that we split ways with the D character and moved onto a bar that Tim and Matt wanted to go to. It is pretty obvious what they wanted to get out of it, the very same thing they want from everything. It wasn’t all that far and by this time Barry had joined us. The place was pretty cool and of course Matt spent most of his time eyeing up women, while Tim did his best to reel them in with his proficiency in Korean. It can be pretty painful to watch, because while they may be successful of times, it seems to be all they can talk about when they are together. That much became evident when they were at the EPIK training together.
We had a few drinks and we turned to the girlier drinks, since in Korea it is completely acceptable, although I did not quite go as far as to have an Appletini as some of the others did. The night was alright in all, but it came to a close uneventfully.
However as I was settling in to go to sleep at Matt’s I received a text from Chris telling me that he and Barry had gone on to another place afterwards and Barry had successfully spilt 4 drinks and they were now dancing. The next day I found out that things continued to get messier from that point onwards, with sick being a re-occurring theme.
The next day I got to see where Matt lived and how he spends his time, when he’s not complaining about how easy his workload is. It’s not a bad place at all, it has everything you need, much more than I have even an hour from me. It’s not the nicest looking area, but that’s not so bad when there are places to go and people to see. The bus ride back was shorter than going, but it still took me about an hour and a half and I was lucky, since the second bus was more or less just waiting for me.
People come to Tongdosa
This weekend Jake and Matt made the effort to come over to my house. There’s not much in my town, but it does have the temple above it in the hills. Jake had seen the main temple before, but not Matt, so we headed there first. It’s about 1km from the town to the temple. After a couple of snaps, we moved on to the hills for the hike. I was out walking for a good 5 hours going on for six. I came back before the others because the flies were getting right in my face. They were not biting, but it was enough to annoy the crap out of me. So on the way back I walked at full pelt, I decide it would be good to break a sweat and get some proper exercise. By the end of it I was aching all over and I had chafed my legs somewhat. However it was a good day out and it was definitely good for me to get some extended exercise.
In the evening we had some food and then Jake and I wandered up to the roof to have a few light drinks with the guys from Tongdosa, well Jeff and Tim anyway. Jake settled in before me and I stayed up a bit longer. The night was quite sedate and then in the morning we had lunch before they left. It was not all that an exciting weekend, but it was good to get exercise, talk with friends and not have a hangover the next day.
Changwon/Masan
I had two days off in quick succession, one for children’s day on the 5th of May and a second one for Buddha’s birthday on the 10th of May. I did nothing special on either of those days, which I suppose some would say was a waste, but it allowed me to relax and get some stuff done in my house that I had meant to get around to, but hadn’t. Also by having those days off I was finally able to bring myself to make the trek over to Matt’s. The journey in theory should only have taken about 2 hours, but I believe that that is an outdated calculation, plus due to heavy traffic it took me almost 3 and a half hours. So as one may expect by the end of it I was pretty fed up. But I arrived and grabbed a taxi over to meet Matt. I was not in his city though, we were out in Changwon for the night.
I knew we were meeting Chris, Tim and Barry (although Barry took a billion years to get there) and there was another guy, D. I have to say when I sat down after my obscenely long bus ride I was pretty confused by the insane conversation they were having. They were talking about the end of the world and aliens. Now I’m sure many of us have had these conversations before, but the thing that surprised me was that there was no voice of scepticism, they were just nodding along blindly, that is except of Chris, he looked bemused.
After the strange greeting we went off to get something to eat. We had something rather different than the norm for Korea though, we had Indian curry. It was run by a guy from Pakistan originally. The food was good, not the best by any means, but a welcome change. But it was super expensive and there was not much meat. From there we moved onto a local bar. It was alright, but it was tiny and created simply for foreigners. I would find it difficult to see any Koreans frequenting the place, other than perhaps women who wanted to hook up with white guys.
After that we split ways with the D character and moved onto a bar that Tim and Matt wanted to go to. It is pretty obvious what they wanted to get out of it, the very same thing they want from everything. It wasn’t all that far and by this time Barry had joined us. The place was pretty cool and of course Matt spent most of his time eyeing up women, while Tim did his best to reel them in with his proficiency in Korean. It can be pretty painful to watch, because while they may be successful of times, it seems to be all they can talk about when they are together. That much became evident when they were at the EPIK training together.
We had a few drinks and we turned to the girlier drinks, since in Korea it is completely acceptable, although I did not quite go as far as to have an Appletini as some of the others did. The night was alright in all, but it came to a close uneventfully.
However as I was settling in to go to sleep at Matt’s I received a text from Chris telling me that he and Barry had gone on to another place afterwards and Barry had successfully spilt 4 drinks and they were now dancing. The next day I found out that things continued to get messier from that point onwards, with sick being a re-occurring theme.
The next day I got to see where Matt lived and how he spends his time, when he’s not complaining about how easy his workload is. It’s not a bad place at all, it has everything you need, much more than I have even an hour from me. It’s not the nicest looking area, but that’s not so bad when there are places to go and people to see. The bus ride back was shorter than going, but it still took me about an hour and a half and I was lucky, since the second bus was more or less just waiting for me.
People come to Tongdosa
This weekend Jake and Matt made the effort to come over to my house. There’s not much in my town, but it does have the temple above it in the hills. Jake had seen the main temple before, but not Matt, so we headed there first. It’s about 1km from the town to the temple. After a couple of snaps, we moved on to the hills for the hike. I was out walking for a good 5 hours going on for six. I came back before the others because the flies were getting right in my face. They were not biting, but it was enough to annoy the crap out of me. So on the way back I walked at full pelt, I decide it would be good to break a sweat and get some proper exercise. By the end of it I was aching all over and I had chafed my legs somewhat. However it was a good day out and it was definitely good for me to get some extended exercise.
In the evening we had some food and then Jake and I wandered up to the roof to have a few light drinks with the guys from Tongdosa, well Jeff and Tim anyway. Jake settled in before me and I stayed up a bit longer. The night was quite sedate and then in the morning we had lunch before they left. It was not all that an exciting weekend, but it was good to get exercise, talk with friends and not have a hangover the next day.
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