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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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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posted by Helen @ 5:11 PM
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