Fun, games and a little bad news...

It is very hot today in Mokpo so I am particularly glad that they seem to have found the on switch in the PC bang today- might find myself spending more time here as the summer progresses. But what of other summer past-times? Well, the World Cup is just a dim and distant memory here in Korea (obviously we are still all wearing our Be the Reds t-shirts but not on designated days and only because none of us had realised how well we suited that shade of red before!) though it is still possible to find the games repeated in the wee small hours on cable. Trying to fill my days without the help of a tournament calendar and thinking of small talk which doesn't rely on talk of Beckham and Owen and Ahn Jung-Hwan has all made this a trying time for me.

To be honest I have been bored! Yes, just when you thought that it was impossible for me to ever stop finding things to tell you all about I stopped finding everything so interesting. But you will be glad to know that it only lasted about a week all in and I am once more full of the wonders of life in general and life in Korea in particular. Let me share my latest discovery with you and maybe you can tell me if this is a normal thing that happens everywhere which I have only just noticed. It is something that I first became suspicious of a few months ago when I was walking into the supermarket and could hear barking but could find no dog. I looked around until I realised that I was (yet again) becoming a bit of a spectacle and hurried my way inside to spend a pleasurable half hour or so telling all of the demonstration people that I wasn't American and sampling their wares. I didn't dwell on the whole dogless barking affair because, as I have doubtless told you before, most of the dogs here are of almost rodent stature and it is very easy to over look them. But the next time I went in I had a bag with me and went to put it in a locker (as you have to do, presumably to stop me filling it with suck delights as seaweed and dried fish once you actually enter the purchasing part of the store) and found that it was lined with newspaper. And the bottom seemed to be a tray that could be pulled out if necessary. On closer inspection I found the picture of a dog on the door and thereby completed the mystery- rat like dogs are put in small lockers by the door while the owners go into to buy the weekly shop. I thought it was odd anyway.

In an effort to be rid of the ennui that has been caused by the lack of things to actively look forward to post-WC me and Rebecca headed to Gwangju for the night to see what it was like there without the soccer. Must have been good as we didn't leave the pub until 7 on Sunday morning and didn't make it back to Mokpo until 2pm. There are many more foreigners in Gwangju than Mokpo and we stood staring at them- worried that our country manners wouldn't be acceptable in the Big Smoke- eventually we relaxed and set to having a good time. Things were starting to look up for me and on the Wednesday after we had a National Holiday (god bless the Korean love of National Holidays- I guess that is what comes of having an annual vacation of around 2-3 days! And I am far more used to having a few weeks off each year) and a day of barbecue and volleyball. You can guess where I was- sat firmly under a tree reading one of the books that my wonderful little sister had sent me the day before. That evening we had a 'girlie night' that is we ploughed our way through four tubs of Hagan Diaz while watching Hugh Grant movies- grand!

By now I was beginning to feel like my usual not-bored self. I was also curiously worry-free having transferred enough money home to pay off my student loan at last! Yep, you can call me Debt-free Hels if you want! I phoned the Student Loan Company to tell them that I wanted to pay back my student loan and they asked me how much of it and I replied ALL OF IT. There was a strange silence at the end of the Scottish end of the phone- I guessed that they don't have many phone calls like that and so were lighting fireworks or something to celebrate. The one small downside of no longer being in debt to a company based in Scotland is that I will no longer have an excuse to get my annual fix of that lovely Scottish accent. Ah well, guess that I can always ring them to see how they are!

The only fly in the ointment of my happiness now was arriving at school on the Monday after the heavy sesh in Gwangju to discover that whilst I had been enjoying myself indulging in the sins of the flesh (well, some people feel very strongly about dancing to the Prodigy) Beckham, my last remaining hermit crab, had been slowly dying in his tank at school. I was particularly upset about this as I had been reading up on hermit crabs on the Internet (yes, there are pages and pages of it and not all of the writers are introverted lunatics who talk about their hermit crabs as if they are family) and had found out lots of cool stuff that they like. Obviously the subsequent improvement to Beckham's living conditions had been too much for the poor crustacean to bear and, throwing off his shell, he had crawled (or rather sidled as that is what crabs are good at) into the corner of his tank and died. I was sad but the hardest thing was telling the students who had all become a little attached to him- I discovered that the best way was to draw a picture of the deceased on the board with a little halo. One class got very carried away and added wings and a harp to the picture and soon there was a whole host of angel crabs on the board.

I think that is all the news I can bear to give you right now- more later on this last weekend where we went a-visiting another time
Love H x

Dreams and Typhoons

Hi again,

So I forgot to mention that I am over the halfway mark now- I came over here on a twelve months contract and as of 28th June I have broken the back of the contract and am on the downward slope back home. Those of you that I have spoken to (either on the phone or by email) have expressed surprise that it has been only 6 months. I guess that in a way it feels much longer to me too. I certainly feel very well settled now and if you could see the state of my room you would know that it takes a long time to gather that amount of crap around one's self (favourite trash item in the last month or so has to be the rather large and ugly cuckoo clock now hanging above my bathroom door. Not sure if it works or not but I am not taking the risk and putting batteries in it as I already have three ticking clocks in my room and anymore would just tip me over the edge of craziness I fear!). My Korean lessons never really amounted to much though I am thrilled to bits that I can read things and even more so when the thing that I am attempting to read turns out to be an English word- hooray!

Though being able to read Korean does pose its own problems for me- I am a compulsive reader as many of you know. I read EVERYTHING- backs of shampoo bottles while in the bathroom, roadside billboards whilst on a bus, the side of beer cans in the off license- you get the picture. Now I am the same with Korean- I spend half of my time in front of the TV trying to read the subtitles quickly enough before they change. It gets much worse when I am drunk and the locals are off amused at the presence of a swaying foreigner staring at a sign above a shop mouthing 'Oo- you- sung- ba!- Ooyousungba! Ha I got it!! Sometimes I wish that I could turn off my knowledge of the letters so that I could get home from the pub much quicker- especially when my bladder is feeling that special tug for home. But it is handy when trying to get around to be able to read the place names and it actually helps with the pronunciation a bit too. Overall I am proud of myself!

What else has changed for me in the last six months- when I went to Seoul recently I realised that there was something that I take for granted here which I can't do when I get back home- that no-one else can understand what we are saying when out in public. Therefore we can talk about really intimate things right in front of grandmothers without the risk of shocking them to the roots of their blue rinse. Also we can comment on the people around us without them understanding which can brighten up a long train journey. But I found myself doing it in a western bar in Seoul and was taken aback when the Irish guy that I was talking about spoke back! I am worried this might be a hard habit to break and that my nose is more likely to get broken in a pub first.

Something which I think will be great whenever I get to an English speaking country again will be how easy it is to make yourself understood. Example, when we went to the now sadly departed Subway sandwich place here in Mokpo we had to stand next to the counter during the sandwich making process so that we could nod of shake our heads as appropriate depending on what ingredient was being held up. Then I saw our Korean friend go in there and order a sandwich and tell them exactly what he wanted and then go to his table until the sandwich was delivered to him. I was jealous at his ability to communicate and I fear that it would take a lot of Korean lessons to get that fluent. Another example was yesterday I went into a camping shop and saw a poster for tents. There was one that I wanted to look at. I pointed at it and said 'tent' the lady agreed with me. I said 'here' (one of the Korean words I know) the lady smiled and nodded and carried on with what she was doing. I tried to indicate that I wanted to actually see the item and she replied in a burst of Korean. I left the shop without seeing the tent. Imagine being able to walk into a shop and ask to see something and then ask intelligent questions about it- I had to work out how to use my camera myself as the instructions both verbal and written were in Hangeul. I am not complaining about this you understand and certainly don't expect the people around me to speak fluent English just because I have walked into a shop- I just look forward to the luxury of being understood without ten minutes of miming first!

One other thing is that I am having a recurring dream about being in a large bookshop and actually being able to read all the books! The first time this happened it was clearly a bookshop in Sydney and I was grabbing books off the shelf and running up to people shouting 'I can read this!! I CAN READ THIS!! YOU DON"T UNDERSTAND HOW GREAT THIS IS!!!' Though I do seem to have gotten over my other recurring dream about going to a fish and chip shop and coming out with a large portion of chips and garlic sauce !!!

Please share with me any similar experiences so I can feel more 'normal' again!

But I am loving my time over here and it is certainly a huge eye opener to be in the (ethnic) minority. Not much to report in terms of life over here today- we are catching the end of a typhoon which has been fun and windy though the rain is a lot lighter today. There was no rain yesterday and so the mogee thought it was a good opportunity to go out for dinner and I was eaten alive while on the phone to my sister yesterday. Ah well, another day another mossie bite.
I will leave you there and get back to you next week I am sure!

take care H xx

Monsoon Season

Hello again - yep twice in one week to make up for the once in three weeks previously,

So the World Cup is over. Not sure why but this week seems to have gone a lot slower than the last month. Maybe because we are not just coasting through the school day eagerly anticipating the next match. For most of the games that we didn't actually go to, we gathered at the big screen outside the local supermarket and harassed the poor people in Subway to make us sandwiches and bring us beer until way after they would normally have been at home in bed. Nearly every night there was a meeting of foreigners there and this week I have gone home after work each night and it has just felt a bit odd.

But we did have Monday off as a National Holiday to celebrate how well Korea did in the tournament. And during June we had a National Holiday to commemorate something (that was as much as my kids could tell me), a day off for Election Day and several early finishes and late starts due to footie intervention. In July we had 1st off and we are off again on the 17th (I think) and then onto August and the annual summer vacation of around five days. Nice!

While I miss the regular evening meeting for the watching of football games I don't miss the wildlife that we seemed to attract there. Yep, mosquito season is well and truly upon us. And the ones at the supermarket hurt when they bite! They are the toughest little suckers that I have ever come across - you can feel when they bite you and then the bite swells up and is painful for days afterwards. They can even bite through denim, a fact that I discovered the night I was clever, and wore long sleeves and jeans - only to return home with around 30 new bites on my legs. So I have put up my mossie net in my room which recreates old childhood games of building 'tents' out of the sofa cushions or dining chairs and sheets, and also allowed me to pretend I was in Glastonbury (big UK music festival that was on this last weekend for those of you not in the know), though my toilet wasn't as smelly - not far off it though since last week I had another visit from the water stealing fairy. Yep, water was gone for around three days. No toilet, no sink, no washing machine which meant that I had to go out and buy a new 'Be the Reds' t-shirt ready for the match for third place on Saturday night as my others were in the laundry basket. As before it was a without-warning thing - I woke up, went to the toilet and flushed it - thereby, unwittingly, using up the last of the water in the pipes and only discovered the true situation as I went to wash my hands - DOH! At least this time I was a little prepared as I had 8 soda bottles filled with water stashed under my sink ready for just such an emergency. So it was back to the bush baths in the washing up bowl and eating out to avoid the growing pile of washing up in my sink. It was back by the time I got home on Saturday night though which was a relief.

Yesterday we were at 100% humidity I have been told. I don't know what that means in real terms but for me it means that my long overdue washing just hung dripping from the line all day without seeming to make any attempt to dry (have just attempted to find out exactly what it means for you but was faced with a page full of scientific jargon with little attempt at formatting - as far as I can make out it means that there was a lot of moisture in the air!) - and eventually the humidity leaked back to us in the form of slight rain. Today it feels more like the proper monsoon season as it is raining pretty hard, it is not all yucky and sticky and hopefully the little mossies have been driven away by it - though hopefully also not into my flat! The lack of mossies today is no real boon though as it is too wet to sit outside also - hum. At the weekend we went to a couple of National Parks which were really pretty. Each of the parks had Buddhist temples nestled in secluded locations - though not that secluded any more in reality - which were really pretty. We spent the night at the second park - Wolchusan National Park which is actually not that far from Mokpo. We had gone there to eat at this really nice restaurant at the park entrance. We sat outside to begin with but even the mossie coils weren't enough and it was difficult to concentrate on the important task of eating when we knew that we were also on the menu. I eventually freaked out when I looked at my foot and saw about 15 of the little blighters feasting away and asking for the dessert menu - ENOUGH! We moved indoors and finished the evening playing cards in the hotel room which we had to debug before settling down for the night. It did rain a bit too which allowed us some respite from the mossie (mogee in Korean) hordes as we went onto the roof of the hotel to gaze over the park shrouded in darkness.

Back to school on Tuesday and I discovered that one of my hermit crabs (Owen) had died over the weekend which was very sad. But Beckham still seems alive and well so we shall see. We have pencilled in a quiet month for July to make up for the amount of money spent on our temporary football madness- I now own 10 World Cup related t-shirts - doh!

So I should have plenty of time to write to you all even if I don't do anything to tell you about!
Love H xx
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