She's in Korea

I guess that I should explain

2005-02-24T00:12:00.000+09:00

Why did the trail go cold? Well, this journal was all about my time as a clueless foreigner in Korea- that is not to say that I am now a near-native, am in fact just as clueless and with less excuses- and I am nearing the end of my third year here. And I have a new plan which is on a new blog.

I am leaving this here in the hope that other people will find it amusing to read about a poor English girl struggling to make it through the average Korean day.

And, who knows, she might be back in Korea in the Fall of 2005!!

Thank you for reading!

Welcome to 2005

2005-01-02T10:38:00.000+09:00

Well, here we are- big and live in 2005. Weird. Seems like just five minutes ago that we were discussing whether we would say ‘the year two thousand’ or ‘20-oh-oh’ and now we are halfway through the first decade of the new millennium and it isn’t as exciting anymore.

Not that life in general isn’t exciting. Life is infinitely interesting but this email will contain a finite number of interesting incidents. The fun all started on Christmas Eve where much of the teaching day was spent making Christmas cards with kids that can’t read or write English so came up with some interesting ways to spell Christmas- bless ‘em! I did write it for them to copy. Actually, the fun really started on the Wednesday before Christmas when the first snow of the winter fell during my kindergarten class. Snow is so much more magical when you are with kids. Thursday it snowed all day but it had all gone in time for Christmas so I was denied a white one.

To solve the conumdrum of how to get ready to go out while having arranged to meet folk immediately after class on Christmas Eve, I decided to have my last class of the day in my house. I only have the one student at that time and we had great fun opening some of my Christmas presents together. We chatted as I got my make up on and put my hair up. The owner of Bumpin had got a turkey in for our Christmas Eve dinner which was very thoughtful of him. I woke up the next morning, gathered together all my Christmas presents and went back to bed to open them. I watched the soap operas and opened presents- it was great!
Later that day, I met up with mates and we had Chinese food for dinner. Then we went to the DVD bang and watched a movie. We arrived in the bar to discover that all had been drinking in our absence and were quite mullered already. However, everyone appreciated the chocolate and Yule log that I had been sent. My friends’ gifts made me look really good in the bar that night!! We ended the day at the singing room and everyone came back to mine- left just before 7am. It was a good day.

Boxing Day was another movie day- we went to see Polar Express and had dinner again. Monday I went to Seoul, more socialising and another night in the singing room. Tuesday, was spent shopping, movie and dinner again. Wednesday- see Tuesday! Thursday was different altogether.

On Thursday we got up at 5.30 (me, Sam and her mate, Liam, that is) am, in the morning, o’clock. Why so early??? Because we were heading off into North Korea for the day. Well, almost. I have visited the DMZ (demilitarised zone) a couple of times before and been done the North Korean tunnel and spied on the farmers on the other side of the border.

But this was different because we went right into the heart of the DMZ. The DMZ itself goes from coast to coast in Korea and is four miles wide. In the middle of it is the MDL (the military demarcation line) and that is where you can find the object of our attention that day - the JSA (the Joint Security Area) which straddles the border between North and South Korea. We arrived at that place and went into the building on the South Korea side that was built for family reunions but has never been used for that purpose.

We were told that when we got outside we had to walk quickly, without stopping, in two lines to the MAC conference building. This building is half in each country. So when we got there we were able to walk around and so actually stood in North Korea for a few minutes. The guards in the room are South Korean and we were told that the door to North Korea had been locked. After that we were taken to an observation tower and allowed to take photos but told not to point at the North Korean soldiers. We saw the World’s most dangerous golf course and tennis court- we were allowed to take photos of the one hole golf course but not the tennis court, for some reason.

It was an immensely strange day but really interesting. The tour finished at about two after which we went home to nap. Friday was NYE and we went clubbing. It was a massive venue in the COEX mall. It was good but not as a good a show as last year but fun nonetheless. Probably because the beer was free until midnight. We got a taxi back at around 4.30. Yesterday I got the bus back to Gangneung, downloaded the New Year soaps and relaxed. Tomorrow I am back to work- bugger, bugger, bugger!!

I am attaching some photos for your viewing pleasure.
Happy New Year to you all. Hope to see you all in 2005 and catch up on all the gossip.
Love, love and more love
Helen
xxx

Changes in plans and then changes back again..

2004-10-05T10:40:00.000+09:00

Let’s face it, it is never going to be easy to leave Korea. It is a compelling place, once you have got over the sheer panic of actually making it here in the first place, the late night bars, the friendliness of strangers, the lack of small talk in the hairdressers- just some of the reasons that I find it so hard to imagine packing my room into a backpack and heading off into the sunset.
But I got dangerously close recently. So close in fact that I had started to downsize my possessions and send out emails tp people who I considered might have room on their sofas for little old me. The reasons for my change of heart are difficult to put my finger on even for me. I think that I had had enough of always being the largest person in the room, being afraid to walk into clothes shops because of the petrified look of the shop staff, often being the tallest in the room (even if it was full of men), consistently being told by men that they ‘just prefer Korean girls’, sending people into fits of giggles just by speaking English, never getting enough vacation time, being so far away from my family and, I guess, having fallen out with two of my closest friends here in Gangneung didn’t help either.

I began to have doubts about my continued presence in Korea about five weeks ago. Then I woke up one morning and realised that I was mentally packing everything in my room into boxes and decided that it was time to go. I told everyone, except the boss, and started looking for work back in London. I think that the idea that I might have been leaving soon made me appreciate Korea more. And my friends here have been amazingly supportive of my indecisiveness. Then, two weeks before I was due to resign, Sam talked me round with talk of how much more fun travelling would be if I stayed until the end of my contract, picked up my severance pay and free plane ticket and scooted off into the world with more than fifty quid in my pocket.

So I have changed my mind once more and committed myself both mentally and physically to being in Korea until the end of my contract in March next year. The plan after that is still in the construction stage but has been tentatively entitled ‘My Dream Holiday’- so let’s just say that kangaroo is probably on the menu- though probably not literally! Just five and a half more months of kindergarten to get through- that’s around 55 more classes full of the cutest and most infuriating four and five year olds you could ever meet.

As you can imagine from the above mental anguish, a lot of the two months since I got back from Cambodia has been spent sitting alone in my beanbag in a darkened room, rocking slowly backwards and forwards…… well, that is not entirely true. In fact, I had a great weekend in Mokpo, yes Mokpo- my original home in Korea way back in the good old days of 2002. There was a bit of a reunion going on- class of 2002- and it was great to meet up with people, some of whom I hadn’t seen for nearly two years. A weird sports day had been organized, I am not going to go into too much detail but I did spend quite some time throwing ping pong balls into glasses of beer, it was fun. And we stayed in the craziest motel you ever did see- with a dildo vending machine in the hall and everything! I had a great time with everyone and it certainly justified the fifteen hours that I spent on buses getting to and from the south that weekend.

And that was not the end of the fun! I have also been to Seoul a couple of times recently and had friends visit the other weekend for Chuseok (Korean thanksgiving- a glorious holiday that lasted for five whole days this year and yet somehow still doesn’t make up for so many holidays this year landing on the weekends!!). My mates from Naju showed their dedication and followed in the footsteps of my Mokpo trip and came up here to Gangneung. It was good to have them up here and I really enjoyed showing them around Gangneung and indeed showing them to Gangneung. They came up on a good night as there was a concert in one of the three bars that I usually go to.

So we went to Absolut (the new bar owned by the guy that owns my other fav, Bumpin), the Warehouse (my boss’s bar) and finally Bumpin. People here usually go to those bars so we are starting to wonder why we even ask people where they went the night before- it is usually just a matter of trying to remember which order you did them in! To top it all off, Neil and Chris gallantly fished a sofa out of a skip for me in broad daylight and it has certainly added a little ‘je ne sais what’ to my room!

The Najus left on the Sunday and Monday saw me off to visit Mona in the back of beyond- ie less than an hour away on the expressway. It is really beautiful around her house and nice and quiet. We celebrated the solitude with a very enjoyable meal and bonfire. There was just four of us out there and it wasn’t so cold last week either. The next day we decided to go out to some caves. And rather then go to the local ones where the carpark is just step or two away from the stalagmite action, we drove for ages through the countryside only to find ourselves in a fake cave!

The drive was gorgeous and soon enough we were at Hwanseong Caves. Or very nearly. All that was left was a hike that was nearly to prove the death of me. I was hot and the walk was steep. Then we saw a sign saying that it was still another hour away. I was ready to quit there and then but they talked me round and Patrick actually pushed me for the last 400m. It was all worth it though. The caves were magnificent- huge and cavey with plenty of streams and waterfalls. Unfortunately my camera was out of action so no digital images to share with you. Which is a shame as the drive was also gorgeous.

Back to work for Thursday and Friday last week then off to Seoul on the Saturday. Now it is Tuesday and cold. Last time I wrote one of these things I broke into a sweat just putting my fingers on the keyboard, this weekend it got cold and I was so unprepared I found myself buying a poncho just to stay warm enough to get to the bus terminal in Seoul for my return trip on Sunday. Yes, PONCHO- wanna make something of it?

Today I got the devastating news that I have to teach my housewife class an English Folk song for them to perform at some event in December. I am toying with the idea of teaching them a Billy Bragg song- the sight of 20 housewives trilling ‘The Union forever, defending our right, down with the blacklegs, all workers unite!’ would be something to behold. But have decided to cheat a little and teach them an Irish classic, Molly Malone!

I am sure that I have forgotten loads of stuff that I meant to tell you but I have to get back to my sofa and staring at my lava lamp now. Who said that I never do anything useful!
Thanks to everyone for their love, support, advice, shoulders to cry on and offers of sofas, spare rooms and tents in the garden!
Love
H
xxx

Rainy days in Gangneung

2004-09-01T10:35:00.000+09:00

Today I have that slightly cloudy headed feeling you get when you have spent most of the previous day in bed. Predictably enough this all day bed fiesta was the result of a prolonged drinking sesh on Saturday night. I feel that the weather has been driving me to drink recently- and it is no wonder that I feel this way once you know that it has rained here every day for the last three weeks- well, admittedly it didn’t rain on Sunday but it was too late by then. What kind of weather is this- months after the end of the official rainy season?

Wednesday night saw the usual hump-day party at Bar Bumpin where the boys did their best to forget the rain by all flirting with the same girl. The fact that this girl wasn’t me did in no way contribute to my early departure from the bar and the onset of a mild bout of depression that lasted until a particularly loud bout of shouting at my students on Friday afternoon. Nope, indeed I put the mood down to ‘cabin fever’ brought on by the rain- you see, it is actually possible to blame the rain for pretty much everything if you really put your mind to it- a year and a half in Dublin taught me that!

Thursday was a quiet night in for me. The newly instigated ‘British Comedy Night’ went ahead- the attendees being me and another English ex-pat plus some lager- shamelessly gorging ourselves on ‘Blackadder’ and ‘Red Dwarf’ episodes that I had managed to download off the internet. This week’s BCN had a distinctly Celtic edge to it since I had managed to get hold of a couple of ‘Father Ted’ episodes to the delight of all involved.

I thought that Friday night was going to be a quiet one as Rory had his Hapkido yellow belt test on Saturday. How wrong I was! I left work only to find a couple of foreigners sitting quite literally on the doorstep of my school- or at least in the barbecue tent opposite it. I bounded over and introduced myself. They had only arrived in the country three days before and so were thrilled to meet the first foreigner they had seen since they landed. They live in my apartment block and, after establishing that they were like minded individuals, I drew them a map to Bumpin and shared my knowledge of the city with them- namely the one store you can buy cheese and the one store that sells English language novels (and the correct way to pour soju but that is another matter). I was just taking leave of their jetlagged company when my phone ran and a slightly slurred voice came onto the line to tell me that he had been ‘forced’ to drink soju by his school and how I had to come downtown to make sure that he didn’t drink too much and miss his test the next day. As, apparently, I have the semi-official designation of ‘Rory-handler’ when he is drunk I felt obliged to go down there and nag him into going home- a seemingly impossible task which I finally achieved at around 3am.

When I eventually woke on Saturday I was determined to leave the house- rain or no rain. Despite the CNN weather page telling me that it was currently raining in Gangneung it seemed fairly dry outside. And it remained that way until I got out of the apartment block and into the car park. Fortunately I had planned ahead and had my umbrella with me. So I set off to the beach. To get there I had decided to walk down through the Uncurdled Beancurd Village that I live in, down the narrow lanes at the end of the houses, across the fields and take the 4km detour around the lake. I took loads of photos of the area because I have been very lucky in living in such a nice area this year. The results of this wandering photography tour are accessible through the link I sent you at the weekend.

It was great to be out of the house and breathing some fresh air. The footpath around Gyeongpo lake is usually jammed with people at the weekend- on bikes, skateboards, inline skates, with buggies, running, jogging or walking. But on this rainy Saturday it was almost blissfully empty. I watched the fish jump out of the lake like reverse lemmings and even saw a brilliant blue and orange kingfisher darting amongst the reeds. As I reached the other side of the lake (by circumnavigating it, of course, no walking on water for me) I became the sole diner in a food tent showing Korean baseball. I was so hungry that the Dol Sot Bi Bim Bab I had there was the best that I have ever tasted (steamed vegetables, rice, spicy sauce with a fried egg on top served in a sizzling stone pot). The last time that I actually made it to the bed in daylight hours it was totally covered in tourists and the hawkers catering to their need for cold drinks, watermelons, the odd henna tattoo or string of beads. Standing on the beach this Saturday I was hard-pressed to find enough people to make it worth counting them on the fingers of one hand. It reminded me of when I first stood on that beach nearly six months ago when, though still barefoot, I was wearing a duffel coat and scarf wrapped tightly around me. This time I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt.

But the weather had definitely taken a turn for the chilly as I drained a coke while sitting outside a convenience store on the beachfront before deciding to treat myself to a cab home.
Having walked for a couple of hours already that day it seemed time to give in to the hangover that had been pressing on the inside of my skull for much of the day and get back into bed for a couple of hours kip before heading out to celebrate Rory’s newly acquired yellow belt.

Sometimes sleeping is just the best thing that I can imagine doing and the most rewarding. Even better was the fact that it was finally cold enough to get under my duvet and snuggle down properly- heaven! I woke up just before Nanette rang to invite me out for dinner and managed to pull myself out of bed an into a cab in the wholly unimpressive non-record time of half an hour. After dinner we met up with the rest of the usual suspects (well, those who had fought their hangovers well enough to make it out of bed) at Bumpin for a night of the usual drinking and debauchery- though, as usual, the scales were tipped more to the side of drinking than debauchery. A hundred and one photos and short pointless videos were taken on my camera before the end of the night. I got more than a little bit stroppy when everyone else wanted to stop drinking and go home though, given the hour, perhaps I was a little bit too free with the big girl’s blouse taunts.

I made it to bed around 8am- still laughing at the image of the boys indulging in a little Hapkido- both armed with a cuddly toy in each hand- one of which made kissing noises before shouting ‘I love you!’ every time it made contact with its opponent.

Now I have made it to Monday with the minimum of damage, cloudy head and scratch on my cheek not withstanding. I am putting off planning today’s lessons by writing to you guys, counting the days until my sister gets here (five) and the working days until the five day Korean Thanksgiving vacation (seven).

Hope you all have a good week, keep those emails coming and I’ll try to get another of these group things out once my sister has left in a couple of weeks.
Take care, each and all,
Love
H
xx

Students and friends

2004-08-26T10:58:00.002+09:00

Hello all,

I am sorry that I am being a bit rubbish at the old emailing thing at the moment. So many of you wrote and sent me big long updates and I meant to reply to each and every one of you (and will do at some point in the future but not today). Things are still going well here in Korea, although some of you seem to be offering sympathy where it is not needed. I think that I told you about the school and how it isn't all sunshine and roses. I have to admit that it took me a long time to settle into the new school when I first arrived and kept waiting for my old students to show up. And they didn't since they go to a school at the other end of the country. But since the English camp at the end of July I have realised how attached I have got to some of the kids here.

I think that their behaviour at the camp was just awesome, they had plenty of other people who they could talk to in Korean but so many of them chose to spend time with me instead. And indeed got very excited everytime I reappeared from doing some pointless waiting around in another room to be told what to do. It was also the first time that my director has seen me with the kids and I think that it was a bit of an eye-opener for me. I am naturally pretty quiet with the other teachers (it doesn't help when I can hear them talking about me all the time but don't understand what they are saying!) and they seemed to think that quietness extended into the classroom. Needless to say it doesn't and the kids know a very different me from the one the teachers see.

And the trouble at the school just reinforced how great the friendships that I have are- whether it was support and sympathy through the email, in a letter or meeting up with people here who offered me help finding work and somewhere to stay should I need it- I realised just how many special people there are in my life. I guess that what I am trying to say is that there is no need to worry about me. But thank you for doing so!

A very close friend left Gangneung a couple of weeks ago and it has led to periods of introspection for those of us still here- you know the kind of thing- what am I doing with my life and what am I going to do in the future and other such searching questions which are best avoided. And that is part of the reason that I haven't been able to get it together to sit and write long and (hopefully) amusing emails for you all. Day to day life is still day to day life whether it is in Korea, England, Ireland or Australia- just that the day to day trials are a little different here- I don't worry about getting bills every month, I worry about trying to find out what they are for and whether I should pay them or not and whether they are really for me or for the person before me- damn that language barrier! I worry if a shop assistant will let me into a clothes shop in the first place, never mind if they will actually find something that fits me once I am in. I worry that I have to travel three miles just to buy diet coke and that I can't seem to find skimmed milk anywhere. I got excited when a new supermarket opened up near my house last week which should give you an idea that life isn't a constant whirl of excitment.

Anyway, obviously, I still have a shedload of stories for you all- I have to tell you about the bath house and clubbing in Seoul but I am not going to right now. Be warned that I have bought a digital camera and so there will be photos online- feel free to ignore the invitation to look at them if you want to- most of them will be of the same people in the same bar anyway. I have always been snap happy and my new toy isn't really helping that. All it really means is that my poor old mum won't have to worry about storing even more photos albums at the end of each trip. I am going to try and take some outdoor shots soon too so that you can see a bit of this country that i am living in.

So this is just a touching base email really because I don't really have anything to tell you but felt I should make contact. I do feel guilty if I go more than a month without sending one of these group things you know.
Take care each and all
love
H
xxx

Happy Cambodia

2004-08-13T10:48:00.000+09:00

It is hot in Korea. Not just a little bit hot but stiflingly so every minute of every day. The nights don’t offer any reprieve from the heat and the humidity seems to climb into bed next to me and snuggle up for a nap. My fan is working on overload and I have to reposition it every time I move in my little room. With the fan directly on me at all times I stand a chance of not suffocating but when I go to the bathroom I have broken into a sweat before I have even lifted my toothbrush out of its holder. The only relief is the air conditioning unit at work. Which is good and cold and yet is only available when I am in that one room. And I teach at several locations. Only one other has an air con unit and that is slightly less effective than getting the students to use their books to fan the air around. Kindergarten is just totally oppressive with the heat of 25 little bodies crowded together throwing themselves at me. And on Tuesday I actually slipped on the sweat that my shins had produced as I tried to get off the floor in the kindy. Nasty.

Which is just another reason why having a week out of Korea was so exciting and rewarding. Me and Sam decided ages ago that we would go away for the one week of summer vacation this year, rather than just get pissed up in Seoul like we did last year. I was put in charge of phoning the travel agents due to the fact that Sam’s phone is buggered. Well, I said that we had talked about it for ages but by the time I phoned to book it all the flights seemed to be full. It was a very stressful time- I was on the phone to a Korean lady with a slightly dodgy kiwi accent while at the same time relaying the conversation to Sam via MSN messenger. But it all worked out in the end and we ended up booking flights to my first choice. So this time two weeks ago found me frantically washing clothes and drying them within seconds in the heat of the Korean summer and just generally preparing to fly to Cambodia the next day.

Now, I have been out of the country a few times since I have been in Gangneung and have still not mastered the art of the perfect way to spend the night before we go. I always head up to Seoul after work and then am at a loss with what to do until the buses start running to the airport. We tried something new this time- the soju solution. Me, Sam and James settled down into a bar and proceeded to drink a bit. After James had gone home I was getting tired and wanted to get a motel for the night but Sam was insistent that it wasn’t worth it so we went to a DVD room- she watched the movie and I got an hour or so’s kip.

And then we slept again on the bus on the way to the airport and I dropped off again on a bench while Sam was pottering around the airport trying to find somewhere to get passport photos for her Cambodian visa. We hadn’t even left Korea yet and already I was exhausted. I think that I had also worn myself out a bit the previous week by getting all excited about the holiday. I think that there wasn’t a person in Gangneung who was unaware of my intentions!

Finally it was time to drag our tired hides onto the plane. We flew with Vietnam Air so stopped in Ho Chi Minh City airport. Where I ate the other half of the Subway sandwich that I had brought with me from Incheon and generally ooed and aahed over the selection of Cadbury’s chocolate at the airport until it was time to get on a smaller plane and head to Siem Reap.
The flight from HCMC to Siem Reap was only about an air and, after complaining on the previous flight that we are always given seats on the wing, it was disturbing to get on the plane and realise that this time we had seats under the wing. But we had great views coming into both Vietnam and Cambodia (I had my first glimpse of Taiwan from the aeroplane window) and finally we were there. The flight had been delayed but the guy from the guesthouse had waited for us and collected us in his taxi. Which he then persuaded us to hire for the next two days for $20 a day.

We had a fairly quiet evening on that first night- looked around Siem Reap a little and commented on the amount of signs in Korean we had seen on our way from the airport. But your average Korean tourist in Siem Reap apparently tends to stay in the 5 star hotels outside of the town as there was little sign of the kimchi munchers where we were. The evening was quiet by necessity- not only were we knackered from the previous night but the taxi guy had also talked us into agreeing to get up at 4.30 the next morning to go and watch the sunrise at Angkor Wat.
We retired to our (air conditioned) room and slept til the alarm woke us up the next morning.

It was still dark. We arrived at the entrance to the temple area only to realise that we had forgotten to bring passport photos with us for our temple passes and so had to be photographed there and then- at 5 am o’clock in the morning- not a photo that I want the world to see!
The taxi driver took us to Angkor Wat and we crossed the bridge spanning the huge moat and through the gateway to the temple. There was something very magical about being there in the dark waiting for the sun to come up and the hordes of tour groups also doing the same thing didn’t detract from that at all. In end we were not rewarded with a beautiful orange and pink sky, just the colossus that is Angkor Wat slowly emerging from the night. Very cool. It is big. There is no other way to put it. Big, bigger, biggest. As it became light enough to see we set off to explore. Feeling for all the world like a cross between Lara Croft and Spiderman we spent the next few hours clambering around and casting admiring looks over almost every inch of the temple. It is awesome and it is fair to say that I did take a photo or two.

Having gorged ourselves on the splendour of Angkor Wat, it was now nearly eight o’clock and the day was heating up a bit. As we reached the next temple it was obvious that we were in for a day of heavy duty perspiration. Ah well. We were amazed and smitten with every temple that we saw that day but one that was unique (hang on, they were all unique, is it possible to say that it was ‘more unique’? My grasp of English lets me down here!) and really stood out was Ta Prohm. This temple was built around 1186 and sometime between then and now the jungle has reclaimed it. Massive trees sprout from the walls and towers of the temple, their roots dripping down the walls like wax from a candle. The power of nature was very much evident here, huge chunks of masonry have been shifted and sometimes knocked to the ground by these gigantic trees. Hollywood could not have made anything better than this. I can’t say enough times how awesome it was and how no photo will every truly do it justice, believe me, my camera and I tried very hard to capture something of the spirit of the place.

It was a long, hot and awe inspiring day. At the end of which we were knackered and deserved a beer and a nap. We had a short sight seeing tour in a tuk tuk before heading back to the guesthouse. We were asleep shortly after nine that night.

The next day we were meeting the taxi driver at a more sociable hour to go to a floating village. The location of the village depends on the season and at this time in the wet season it lines the banks of the river. In the dry season, when the water level decreases, the whole thing moves back onto the lake. There are three ethnic groups living in a variety of boats and floating structures, the Khmers, the Vietnamese and the Khmer Muslims. And everything is on the water- the schools, the houses, the churches, we even saw a pig sty! At the time that we went the kids were all coming home from school, rowing themselves down the river back to their dwellings or lolling on the platforms in hammocks. We hired a boat which took us up the river to a restaurant and crocodile farm, where we drank coke and took photos. The boatman pointed out some things to us and told us that every one of the houses has a telly- powered by a car battery. It was really cool.

After that it was back to the guesthouse for lunch and then out to see another temple- stopping by Angkor Wat on the way home to take a couple more photos in the daylight.

Tuesday morning saw us up early again and on the 7.30 bus to Phnom Penh. A comfy six hour bus ride later, we found ourselves in the capital. The old colonial houses there were very different from the traditional houses on stilts that had lined the roads all the way to the city. Getting off the bus proved to be a hectic experience as hordes of people descended on us offering us everything from sightseeing tours to guesthouses to their grandmothers for a bargain price (OK, not quite that last one but then I didn’t quite catch all that they said). Fixing on one sign held in the hands of a smiling man we made our choice of guesthouse and were ushered to the waiting scooters. Perched on the back- one a piece- we saw the city on the way to the lake. On arriving at the guesthouse we were delighted with the view over the lake, the cheap beer menu and the hammocks at the guests’ disposal. We were told that a twin room was $2 a night but if we wanted to go a little crazy and spend an extra dollar we could have our own bathroom. That was three dollars BETWEEN us. We thought we should splash out.

We were hardly given a moment to rest before the moto drivers (scooters) took us off to the Royal Palace, a beautiful golden building very similar to the one in Bangkok. It was a very calm place, made all the more so since we had to take off our shoes to enter any of the buildings. Then back to the guesthouse and another early night.

The next day was to be the most intense and least talkative. Once more on the back of the motos we went to the Killing Fields and then onto Tuol Sleng- aka the genocide museum. We didn’t say much to each other as both of these places seemed to be very private. The Killing Fields were smaller than I thought they would be. The shallow dips in the grounds show where the mass graves were excavated and the signs next to them tell you what was found in each. Nearly 9,000 thousand people were buried there and there is a building containing shelf after shelf of skulls which were exhumed from the site. On the way there my moto driver told me that he had lost both of his parents, his sister and brother to the Khmer Rouge. The sheer ordinariness of the location and the butterflies and flowers make it all the more poignant.
Tuol Sleng would prove in some ways to be an even more solemn experience. This old school was the largest detention and torture camp during the Polpot years and more than 17,000 people were ‘processed’ here. Only seven inmates were still alive when the Vietnamese army liberated Phnom Penh in 1979. Many of the rooms have been left how they were found- with the instruments of torture still there. The Khmer Rouge photographed everyone who came through the centre and several rooms have row after row of these photos- men, women, often holding babies, and children all look out from these boards and it is impossible to imagine what they saw in their last few days. As I said, it is a very personal experience and so I can’t share my thoughts with you here.

After looking around the school in silence, wiping involuntary tears away, we sat in the courtyard for a while to regain our composure before heading back out to modern day Phnom Penh. My moto driver told me that I was lucky that I came from England, a country with no war. I could only agree.

We rounded off the day with a trip to the Russian market and some heavy duty shopping..
Thursday was our last day in Phnom Penh and our last full day in Cambodia so we felt we had deserved a day of relaxation. Therefore a majority of the day was spent swinging in hammocks and reading. Friday morning we caught the 6.30 bus back to Siem Reap, finished the souvenir shopping and went to the airport. We arrived back in Korea around 9am on Saturday morning and I made it back to Gangneung at around 4 in the afternoon. Tired, dirty, smelly but immensely enriched by a week in Cambodia. A beautiful country with a rich and, at times, tragic history. I would go back there at the drop of a hat! It was an amazing experience and the warmth of the people just added to the charm of the country which seems to win the hearts of everyone who goes there.

And so I will finish here. I recommend the country to anyone and hope to go back there again soon. One last point- Sam did all of the navigating with exceptional style and skill- all of it and we didn’t get lost once!
Love
H
xxx

Helen Goes Quiet...

2004-07-21T10:53:00.000+09:00

Well, it happens to the best of us. Even I go through a quiet patch every once in a while. It has been rainy season here in Korea and rain here doesn’t bring a respite from the heat- in fact it manages to rain and be humid at the same time! Nice. But the rain has disappeared since the weekend to be replaced by blistering heat- I am fully fostering the English habit of always talking about the weather in my students here- with a good dose of complaining thrown in for good measure. Under my tutelage, you could pop one of my students into London and be hard pressed to notice the difference between them and a local when it comes to discussing the weather. I am so proud of them! Next step is getting them to refer to their umbrellas as brollies and stop them mentioning how handsome Beckham is every time England comes up in the conversation.

Since it is hot in Korea I could think of no better time to go somewhere even hotter. Me and my mate Sam should be heading to Cambodia in ten days for a wee look around and maybe a touch of shopping. I have wanted to go there since I first arrived in Sydney and met someone who had already been. Ever one to jump on the bandwagon at the point where it is getting dangerously crowded to do so, I have waited nearly six years to go myself- thereby ensuring that it is now firmly on any backpacker’s itinerary for Asia. I have never claimed to be anything more than a backpacker (no hint of an adventure traveller in me, it is not that I like my comforts, I just enjoy the company).

Other than gorging myself on the beauty of Angkhar Wat, I am hoping that the influx of backpackers will mean that I will be able to surround myself with ‘normal’ sized women. Over two years in Korea is doing nothing for my self confidence and self perception. I am overweight in any country but it is only here that I get escorted out of clothes shops by horrified shop assistants, fearing for the safety of their petite clothes. Part of me thinks I should lose weight to fit in, however, the more persuasive part of me tells me that even if I was tiny by western standards I would still be huge here so I might as well enjoy that ice cream(!) And the practical part of me points out that I have to stay the same size as when I arrived here otherwise my clothes won’t fit anymore and I will have to try and force my way into a Korean clothing store to re-clothe. Don’t let the practical side of me see the mirror by the way!

So summer is well and truly here- yesterday was the day for eating dog soup for the maintenance of stamina- man thing- and chicken for the fainter hearted. My local supermarket has piped in cicada sounds throughout the food department. At first I was slightly disturbed by this but now I have realised that it makes it possible to enjoy the sounds of summer in an air conditioned environment which also stocks cheese. Every summer the sound of cicadas dominates the outside world in Korea. I like it but until yesterday had never actually seen one of the little fellas.

I finally came face to face with one while I was waiting on the pavement for one of my students to pick me up and take me to work (ah the benefits of adult students and their air conditioned cars). I heard a loud, almost electronic, noise. I looked down into the gutter to see something that looked like an enormous housefly. It seemed to be having some problems getting off the ground and I watched it as it tried, and failed, several times to take off. It looked like it was finally going to make it- having just got itself the right way up again which has to be a good start- when my student’s car pulled up and ran the thing over. Ca la vie!

While it is great to live in a city so close to the beach it isn’t that interesting during rainy season- nah, it is much better to wait until a typhoon has been forecast before cracking out the barbecue. We had a farewell party for Katie, my American neighbour and at times voice of sanity, and her boyfriend a few weeks back. We sat on the beach for a while, obviously just killing time until the clouds were in the correct formation where the appearance of food and a barbecue would summon rain. It was a great day- saved by the procurement of several large parasols from a nearby convenience store. We stayed on the beach until it got dark, set off some fireworks and decamped to town.

And since then I have been away at weekends. Fridays just aren’t the same without Katie and our favourite dak galbi dish. Two weeks ago I went south to visit my mates from the first year (a.k.a. the reason I came back to this country)- the land where the lemon soju flows freely and the mosquitoes hurt like hell when they bite! We threw a small fortune into a crane machine- I managed, helpfully, to set the toys up for the others to win but didn’t manage to win anything myself.

This last weekend I was in Seoul. I only intended to stay for the night which is why I didn’t bring a change of clothes with me. But a hungover Saturday morning ensured that I would still be in town when the drinks hit the table on Saturday evening. Oops! And still wearing the same clothes- which only got more attractive as the day turned into Sunday and the sun came out. Saturday night we were in Gangnam and then Itaewon- the GI and general sleazy foreigner district- where we entertained ourselves by watching men either be pulled into brothels or saunter casually in of their own accord. Add to that the sight of the military police going about rounding up the GI’s and escorting them back to the base- leaving a string of irate girlfriends alone in bars- and you have a pretty fun filled evening.

Me and Sam stayed in Jongro-sam-ga the next night and had a drink up the tower the next day- where the view of the city from the toilets was amazing. We walked through Insadong and with that nod to culture out of the way it was time to head back to Itaewon for our traditional Sunday afternoon pints of Stella.

As if the weekend wasn’t good enough, I met a guy on Friday night who possessed the holy grail, the elixir of life, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow- that is to say, the internet address of a site where it was possible to download the soaps and sitcoms from back home! A truly incredible claim which actually turned out to be true! I have been gorging myself on Eastenders, Corrie and Wife Swap since Monday night. My joy knows no bounds at the moment! But it was weird to leave the house after a double bill this morning to discover that it was still Korea outside my front door. I think that I have found this site just in time as, even as I was watching on Monday night, understanding the accents which were once my own has become more difficult! A truly unsettling experience! Going to need some speech theory when I get home, methinks, plus a vocab coach to wean me off saying things like garbage can, bathroom, pants, soccer and sidewalk. Don’t even get me started on leaving perfectly useless but decorative ‘u’ s out of words and asking questions like ‘did you eat breakfast yet?’ and them being grammatically OK in the context of American English. I am not saying that there is anything wrong with AE, just that it makes me homesick sometimes.

Anyway, it is too hot to be slaving over a warm laptop at the moment (oh matron!) so I will just leave you with something that one of my elementary school students wrote today (there I go again, junior school). We were doing ‘Have you ever …?’ questions today. One of the students, for reasons unknown and not anything to do with me, has the English name of Willy. Another student is a bit of a wise-guy which is, I am sure, why he asked Julie whether she had ever ‘eaten Willy?’ I had to laugh!

And on that note I will go
Love
H
xxx

My Birthday

2004-05-30T11:04:00.000+09:00

Well, what can I say? I will, of course, be sending out individual emails later- once I am fully recovered from the festivities but I thought that it was a good idea to get something out now so that you know I am still alive.

Alive but only just. It all started on Friday night- I thought that a quiet night would be in order so I went for dinner with Katie and onto a movie. We saw Troy which took up a good part of the evening. Which meant that we arrived at Bumpin just as the fun was really beginning to start. Left the bar when it shut and went onto the Warehouse (my boss’s bar) and stayed there way above and beyond the call of duty. Then hit the norae bang- the singing room for a bit of three way karaoke. Forgot that I was losing my voice due to the cold that I had picked up earlier in the week so it really wasn’t my finest performance. Leaving the darkness of the singing room only to walk into daylight was a bit of a shock to us quiet night girls. Obviously we didn’t even question the fact that some mates were outside sitting in a car and we just got in and went to thesounded good and really gave us no hint that the finished product would also contain peanut beach. Watched the sun reach even further into the sky then went for breakfast. Weird fusion breakfast. Which took ages to prepare and wasn’t exactly what we had ordered, The owner of the coffee shop told us that it would be ham, cheese and egg sandwiches all round. Which butter and strawberry jam along with the promised egg, ham and cheese. The guy seemed pretty put out when we showed our disgust and only replaced half of the original quantity.

Back to the beach and then home at around 8- I had got visitors coming over that afternoon, after all. Got home around twenty minutes before the school started a festival complete with drums and shouting- which was challenged by the dogs next to my house to see who would win the crown of thing most likely to keep Helen awake when she really needed to sleep. It was too close to call and I know that it doesn’t help but I still had to shout at them both. Did manage to get a few zzz’s though. Then Margo arrived and the fun started. We chatted and hungout for few hours before Sam plus entourage arrived.

With the addition of Sam, Cam, Sejin and Heidi things were getting a bit crowded at Chez Helen so we hit the beach. And polished off a bottle of wine at the great wine bar overlooking the beach there. Soon we had been joined by Nanette and Jennifer, Gangneung locals, and bottles of beer seemed to keep appearing. And being emptied, Back downtown and it was time for dinner and welcoming James. Totally overwhelmed the poor galbi restaurant with about 12 foreigners walking into the restaurant hungry. There was live music at Bumpin that night which was pretty cool but we had to hit the Warehouse sooner or later. Not before Sam hit the pavement pretty hard with her arse though. Then she fell asleep in the Warehouse, as did Sejin from what I could make out. Probably time to go home. Which we did and slept around 5ish, I think.

Up the next day and down to the beach to catch up with the Seoul bunch who had slept at a motel there the night before (Margo was safely ensconced in my place). Had a coffee then went for pizza, after which my guests left. And I hit my bed in amazing style- refusing to leave my house again that day.

Monday was a run of the mill day (apart from the addition of a whole big stack of parcels in the mail!!! Hooray!!) and Tuesday I got all excited about my birthday so the nine classes that I had that day hardly even registered on my consciousness, My first class was at 9.15 and I didn’t have time to have my usual afternoon nap before I was in the afternoon classes- leaving them at 9.30 to go to the Warehouse. Where I was overwhelmed by the amount of students that had turned up to drink with me (one of the benefits of teaching mostly adults I guess!) and, more importantly, give me presents! We had to put four or so tables together to seat everyone and set one aside for the gifts.

Steady drinking ensued and many beers later it was time to go back to Bumpin for some tequila abuse of the highest order. I have been told that we left Bumpin only when it closed and we hit a 24 hour sam gyup sal joint for a pig barbecue. Left the restaurant and into daylight and, in an increasingly familiar scenario, went to the beach. And drank lemon soju. And as my day reached its 24th hour we went out on a speed boat for a blast along on the beach. Nanette and Ben went for a swim, having just bought some new swimming clothes from a shop on the seafront (yep, the shops were opening now too!) which I couldn’t, having been told that there was nothing in there to fit me. Yes, I did shed a self pitying tear about my anti-social bulk while my Korean friend tried to comfort me. But they told me that it was effing cold in the water so perhaps it was for the best.

Somehow the time seemed to just rush by at this stage and all of a sudden it was midday- we had drunk several beers sitting on the beach- so we put our heads down for a nap and when I awoke a little while later with a very full bladder, it seemed like a good time to go home. I got into my bed finally at 2pm, Wednesday rather conveniently being a public holiday as it was also Buddha’s birthday- though he failed to make it to my party. The plan to go out and eat spicy food had to be changed as I realised that it was going to be a challenge to keep oxygen down at this stage. I slept for a bit and then some mates come over in the evening. They brought pizza and sympathised with my state as I lay in the beanbag unable to move. Except for Nanette that is, as she was in exactly the same state on my bed. One mouthful of pizza was enough to send me to the bathroom to heave it all back up again. I must say that I felt about a million times better when I got back into the room and was able to be a little sociable finally. Went to bed about midnight last night and don’t feel too bad today- though a little tired,

If anyone tried to call me or talk to me online yesterday I apologise for being unable to communicate at all well.

Thanks for all the cards and gifts and kind thoughts on the day. I will write emails after the weekend as I am heading off to Seoul for the last hurrah of my birthday this weekend before I finally let all the excitement go for another year.
I will be less crap soon, I promise!
Love a totally 30
Helen
xxx

Visa Run to Osaka

2004-05-15T14:13:00.000+09:00

Just when we had all given up hope that I would ever make it to Japan, it happened, And with typical Korean efficiency I was told for definite that I would be leaving on Friday late on Thursday night. Never mind, I was glad to get away for the weekend. I decided to combine my visa run (yep, you have to leave the country in order to get a new visa) with a tad of a vacation. Originally I thought that I would head to Tokyo to visit some mates near there but it turned out that I couldn’t get my visa in a day though- so Osaka became the choice of the moment.
Now I went to Japan for the first time last year for approximately seven hours, just enough time to get to the Korean Embassy, get a visa and get back on the plane to Korea. The next time I went was for the sumo tournament in November, when I actually stayed for a whole and entire night. This time I was planning to stay for two whole nights- I would be practically a local by the time that I left on Sunday night.

My flight was leaving at 10am on Friday morning so I caught the last bus out of Gangneung on Thursday night, arriving into the bus terminal at around 2.30am on Friday morning. I looked for a sauna at the bus terminal but the express bus terminal is a scary place in the middle of the night. I got into the elevator and discovered a portal hole into an alternate universe on the second floor. There were people scurrying in and out of the lift on the second floor, all laden with flowers. It was a hive of activity. I can only assume that the portal is only open for a few hours every night and the inhabitants have only this limited time to remove all the flowers from their universe and deposit them in ours. When I reached the sauna door, wiping the pollen off my shirt sleeve, I realised my mistake- this was definitely the kind of sauna where a woman wouldn’t go unless she was ‘working’. I hurried downstairs and through the darkened bus terminal and into the more brightly lit central city bus terminal next door. I spent the night on a bench at the bus terminal.

When I say the night, obviously I mean that I dozed off until 5.30 and then lay awake and got on a bus at 6. Which meant that I arrived at the airport at 7. My luck was in as the checkout desk was open but then it ran out when the lady noticed that my visa had expired the day before and sent me off to immigration. I humbled myself before the immigration guy, apologised for not having left the country the day before, promised never to do it again and left the office with permission to leave the country. Back to the check-in queue, checked in and made it through the gates with plenty of time to spare. Got on the plane and fell asleep immediately. Woke up for food as we were flying over Gangneung, the town that I had left jut 11 hours previously, and shortly after that we were in Kansai airport in Osaka.

I love Japan! What can I say? I have never been there for long enough for things to go wrong or get boring. I was really looking forward to some time away and some time alone. But, being me, by the time I was through immigration (they have changed the entry stamps into Japan so I have a new adornment for my passport!) I had picked up four ‘strays’ and two more people joined us on the subway. Such is the nature of the visa run for English teachers in Korea. When you see a non-Korean face in Korea you tend to assume that they are teachers and so when you see non-Korean faces on the 10am flight to Osaka you tend to assume that they are English teachers on their way to get E2 working visas for Korea. We all seemed to have slightly different variations on the directions. We all agreed on two things- that we had to get off the subway at Namba station and that we should leave through exit 25. Easy enough to get to Namba, only to discover that there were no exits numbers in that part of the huge complex that makes up Namba subway station. It all got a bit ‘Challenge Anneka’ or ‘Amazing Race’ at that stage as we all tried to help each other a little bit but not too much as we all wanted to make it to the Embassy first. But in the end we all made it around the same time, handed over the forms and the money and headed off for lunch.

At which point our group split into those who wanted McDonalds, those who wanted to shop and those that just wanted to piss the next couple of hours away in the pub until the passports were ready for collection. No prizes for guessing which camp I was in, I had come to Japan to shop and this was to be the start of the shopping extravaganza (ha, fooled you there, bet you thought I went to the pub!) Had proper chips and pizza with a Kiwi girl I had met and nosed around the shops for bit. Back to the Embassy and said goodbye to everyone. Back to the shops for another look around. I had already booked a hostel online a few days beforehand so, after an hour or so of looking around, I caught the subway to Nakatsu and found the hostel pretty much straight away.

There is something really satisfying about negotiating your way around an unfamiliar subway system alone. Feeling all smug I checked into the hostel, Sumo backpackers. The prices were cheap, the shower was amazing (though after my night at the bus terminal I probably would have made do with a bucket of cold water and been glad of it!) and the dorm was very pretty and clean. Each of the ten bunks had curtains which could be drawn to make your very own ‘den’ of solitude. I had a nap.

Later I heard some people come into the dorm and so I popped my head out to ask them if they had a guide book that I could have a look at. I saw that there was a tower at Umeda that was open until 10pm which offered great views of the city. I had also spotted Umeda on the subway map earlier so was very confident of myself as I headed out. I am sorry to disappoint you all but I made it with no problems. When I got out of the station I had to walk around a bit before I found the tower. Once there I got into the glass sided elevator which shot me up 35 floors to the glass sided escalator which took me the rest of the way.

What can I say? The views were amazing and I went into my usual photo overload. The viewing deck was actually outside and it was cool which was nice as the day had been so hot and sticky. Inside was a restaurant and a gift shop. I also stopped long enough to win a couple of Tiggers out of a crane machine I found there. Result! Feeling pretty pleased with myself, I caught the subway back to the hostel, after stopping in a sandwich shop and speaking Korean to everyone in there.

Back at the hostel I felt the start of my usual Friday night thirst come on. I went out to the local convenience store to buy some beer to sit on the roof and drink. Halfway to the bright lights of the nearest 7-11 an icy chill touched my soul as I remembered one of the major differences between Japan and Korea- in Japan you can’t buy beer at every handy convenience store and, sure enough, all were dry. Desperation started to hit and I started an increasingly frantic walk to find somewhere to buy a beer, I remembered the beer vending machines in Fukuoka but they proved elusive that night in Osaka. After about twenty minutes I realised that I was back at the foot of the tower that I had so proudly caught a subway to and from earlier that night. It seemed like a good time to give up and turn around and went back to the hostel. And sat on the roof and drank coke and ate Kitkat Chunky. Not the same.

The next day I walked back to Umeda and found the beer vending machine- just the other side of the station from where I had given up the night before. Dammit! Someone else must have felt my frustration to a degree since there appeared to be two large fist shaped dents in the plastic covering the display cans. Never mind, I was pretty certain that I would just have a beer as some as was decently possible. And this proved to be in the grounds of Osaka castle just under an hour later. The castle is a modern reconstruction of the original which burnt down years before (after over two years of living in a country where every building has a plaque outside proclaiming that the original had been burnt down by the Japanese it was good to see that the Japanese had the same devil may care attitude towards fire safety in their own country). To get to the castle I caught a subway ((I was getting pretty handy at this by now) to the Castle stop and then walked through the park to the tower itself. The park was lush and green and a great place to be on a sunny day in Japan. Another thing that I love about being in Japan is people’s total indifference to the fact that I am not a native of their shores. After the ever watching eyes of Korea, it felt good to go about my business unobserved.

I climbed the stairs to the top of the tower to enjoy views of the city in daylight. Then it was back to JR Osaka station and Kyoto, which I had been told that I had to go to by my mates on Thursday night in the bar. What more validation did I need?

The one thing that my mates didn’t mention (and probably didn’t know to be fair) was that there was a festival in Kyoto that day and, although I would be arriving too late to join in the festival madness, I would still suffer the consequences of the lack of accommodation. I made a desparate call around all the hostels I had found in the Lonely Planet the night before but nothing. Shouting over the loud music in the station and fast running out of change, a hostel passed me onto a guesthouse which had space for the night. They gave me directions which would have been fine had I known which part of the station that I was coming out of.

Through the tears of frustration springing to my eyes I saw someone that I had seen the day before at the Embassy. I called out ‘Hey Kiwi’ and she looked up and smiled. Even better was that she had stayed at the hostel the night before and was heading back there herself. Unfortunately she also had no idea where it was. But she did have a map and knew that it was next to Toiji temple so with that information we were able to get the general direction and off we went. We walked through the temple grounds to get there, which wasn’t strictly necessary but it was a pleasant addition to the route dictated by my new geographically challenged mate. We hit the hostel, checked in, got changed and caught a bus out to the red light district- or Geisha district to give it a more tourist friendly name. We had beer and pizza before locating a beer vending machine (with surprising ease) and bought some Kirin and Asashi beer to take to the river, We sat by the river and drank until something had to give and we rushed off to find a toilet. We had a bit of a pub crawl through several bars and generally did a lot of wandering around before it started to rain and it seemed like a good idea to head back to the hostel. I wanted to stop drinking early so I could go sightseeing in the morning- I hadn’t planned on the weather remaining shitty until I left Japan the next day.

But shitty it was. We ran through the temple grounds the next day and got onto a bus soaking wet. There was no shower in the hostel and we had been very hot and now were wet, I was glad that I wasn’t sitting next to our fragrant persons! Forty minutes later and we were back in Namba and finishing off our shopping. Cherie was booked onto an earlier flight than me but, given the blisters, the rain and the alarming lightness of my wallet, I decided to head back to the airport with her. Spent the last of my money in the airport (nice bottle of Baileys to warm me on these cold summer nights, or something like that!) on a variety of crap. Including a lovely new Japanese style dressing gown, Not a kimino but some cotton thing starting with Y, that I forget the name of, but also has large sleeves and is cool as hell (I am wearing it right now!).
Through the gates and skint now I met the girl that I had had lunch with on Friday and we swapped stories from the weekend (I had actually bumped into her in Kyoto the night before, she was heading out as we were heading home). Then it was just a short bus ride back to the express bus terminal in Seoul and three hours over to Gangneung and shortly after 1am I was home. Tired, skint, stinking but very happy with my weekend in Japan.

Lots of love a soon to be 30
Helen
Xxx

Don't worry, be happy

2004-03-24T10:56:00.000+09:00

Hello

Dare I say it? Not sure. Well, I will take the risk. Things seems to be going OK this week. Phew, it is good to get it out in the open. I have been so afraid to say anything good for the last few weeks for fear of jinxing the situation. And I appreciate all the guarded congratulations from you guys too.

Let me fill you in on the details- last week I did my last two days at the school that I have been working at for the last year. The bitch owner found out that I had also done a couple of classes for my new school. So she promptly and totally unfairly decided that she would keep my last two weeks wages- you know, just for fun. I was also told that if I walked out there and then I would get NOTHING! As you can imagine, there was quite a cloud over my last two days at the place. The cherry on the icing on the top of the cake was Miss Kim’s ‘thank you for working so hard for the last year, pop back often to see us’ speech which delayed my journey to the bar. At least that is what I was told she said- Min translated so, really, she could have been saying anything. I was just pleased to be out of the school and on my way to the bar- I did have a brief look around the bitch’s office for my ‘missing’ degree certificate but failed to see it anywhere. I am sure that she will have it framed along with the one million won she ‘stole’ from me to gloat over in the future. I know that I paint her as a vindictive old cow, who is past marriageable age in this country therefore destined to live with her parents forever and bitter at the world in general. I only portray her this way as these are the words that most accurately describe the money grabbing ?@&%!!

But for all that I was now a free woman and working for another boss I was still living in the apartment provided by the old school. It took my new boss a few days to find a new place- we had already moved everything out of my apartment in anticipation of the bitch telling me to move the moment I had erased the last of the chalk from the blackboard in my final class- but I finally moved into the new place on Sunday. After a large sized night out with my mate, Margo, who had popped over from Cheonan for the weekend. The new place is grand and bigger than I thought it would be. The only drawbacks are the single bed (sleeping in the single always makes me feel like a kid) and the loss of all the good cable channels on my TV. But I got hooked up to the internet at home today so things are looking up. And my favourite thing about the new place has to be the décor. The walls are covered in very tasteful wallpaper with a very discreet gold pattern repeated throughout the apartment. On closer inspection the gold motif turns out to be the English alphabet and the best bit… wait for it… is that is all UPSIDE DOWN! Every last letter! On every wall, in both rooms! Fantastic! Wonderful! Something new to laugh at every day.

The new school seems fine. I am teaching mainly adults so getting a different perspective on life in Korea, plus the fact that taking me out for lunch and paying for it is the highlight of my students’ week! Nice! Also, my new boss owns and works in the newest bar in town to attract a foreign crowd. And he doesn’t seem to mind me drinking on a school night. In fact, it is encouraged as so many of out students also drink there and appreciate the chance to practise slurring in a foreign language. I have been playing it cool this week though as I am still finding my feet in the school. There is a lot more effort to be put into teaching adults, in my opinion, as they are less satisfied with being fobbed off with a word search or a game of Go Fish than the kids were J . That said, we played Pictionary and Scrabble this week so it isn’t all work, work, work!

I went and saw my mates’ baby the other week and so am attaching a photo of me looking petrified while holding the little fella. Why parents insist on throwing their most precious thing in the whole wide world into the reluctant arms of a hapless singleton is beyond me! That said, I am secretly always happy when it happens. And little Tommy is very cute indeed. After spending just over five hours on the bus it was a relief to get off it and see the wee fella and his parents for a while. But four short hours later I was back on the bus and on my way to Seoul. I reached Seoul just before midnight and hit the university district with my mates with some gusto. We had a quieter day the next day, we went to the COEX mall and Seoul aquarium- I was disappointed by the lack of sea monkeys in the gift shop, but you can’t have everything, I guess.
So there you go. The last few weeks have been a bit of a blur all in all. But mostly in a good way. I am now living downtown (a mere seven minute walk from my favourite bar, not that I timed it, oh yes, I did time it actually!). Last night I was able to walk home from the bar and stop long enough to win a teddy bear from a crane machine and all that in less than twenty minutes- nice!
And I think that is all my news. I will let you know my new address once I know it- and shortly after I have told the local pizza place what it is.

Take care all and keep going with the news from your corners of the world!
Love
H
Xx
PS_ we drank green beer in our local bar on Paddy’s Day and had to make do with two half irish people as there were no real ones in town. Was weird!

New jobs and happy days..

2004-03-08T10:45:00.000+09:00

Today I started teaching at a new school here in Gangneung. This is a project I have been cultivating for the last two weeks and it finally came to fruition this weekend. Now, I know that you are thinking ‘cunning old Helen, can’t believe that she didn’t tell me, her best friend/sister/brother/mother/pet cat/ someone she met on the street and forced her email address on…’ but superstition dictated that even though I have known about this job since Friday I couldn’t say anything until I had real confirmation. Even now I don’t have a contract yet as my contract hasn’t finished at my old school, so don’t break open the champagne yet!
So the deal is this- I am working at both schools this week and until next Tuesday and as of Wednesday I will just be at the new school.. The new school is located in downtown Gangneung- so my new apartment will be there too. I will be teaching mostly adults but some kids classes in the afternoon. The owner speaks fluent English- thereby getting rid of some the communication problems so common here in Korea.

Anyway, onto other things. It snowed here last week-loads of snow. It started on Thursday in a rather half hearted manner and was still like that on Friday morning. But shortly after I went to school it started to get heavier and after my first class one of my kids brought me up a wee snowman which was very sweet of her. I went outside with the kids during my free lessons to play in the snow but they liked me too much to throw snowballs at me so we just played catch with them until they disintegrated. I took some photos of my kids which I will attach to this mail.

So the snow was pretty and fun and everything but hit at a very inconvenient time- I was due to go to Gwangju on Saturday morning to see my mate’s new baby. I had been looking forward to a bit of hardcore cooing action and was in the restaurant on Friday night insisting to my other mates that I was still going to Gwangju- snow or no snow- when they pointed at the news coverage on the TV- miles and miles of traffic at a standstill, toll booths shut and the expressway closed. When it was still snowing at midnight I knew that it was time to give up the travels as a lost course. Therefore I didn’t make it home to my house until nearly 5am.
Saturday I went to the beach to play in the snow and get some photos. It was q warm day despite the snow and there were loads of people on the beach- taking photos of each other as always. I saw two businessman walking along the beach in their suits, clutching cans of beer at 3pm. I love Korea! Someone had built a snowman on the beach which was pretty cool. Even so I had to leave after about an hour as the sun was going down. I stayed in Saturday night and yesterday I went to a DVD bang and saw a Korean movie. The movie’s English name is ‘Please teach me English’ and it was hilarious! Maybe because it gave us a bit of an insight to the other side of the teacher’s desk. Very funny indeed! Sunday night I had a meeting with the new school’s boss, at his bar downtown, then dinner and a couple of celebratory beers at Bumpin.

And that is all of my news!

Sorry I have been rubbish at responding to your mails. Now I have some good news the sun is out again and I promise to be less crap with replies this month- bearing in mind I have to move next week so maybe without internet connection for a couple of days
Take care all and thanks for all your support over the last month or so.
Love
H
xx

Getting ready to turn 30

2004-02-15T11:08:00.000+09:00

Good news- well good news for me. I am staying on in Gangneung for at least another six months. The bitch- sorry, boss- finally agreed on Thursday afternoon to extend my contract. I am sure that all the drawn out worrying was to stop me asking for a pay rise or any of the other things that teachers tend to ask for on their second year. But I saw what happened when a mate signed on for another year and asked for more money- the school said yes and then three days later told her that she had to move from her lovely apartment into a shoebox.

The economic climate is not good in Korea at the moment. Schools and universities are all seeing student numbers decrease and are letting teachers go all over the place and not replacing those that are leaving. Some parents are having financial problems too which has led them to put English lessons for their kids at the bottom of the shopping list. Hopefully it will all pick up again soon. But until then I am holding onto the job that I have now! Yes, I have had a lot of problems with the school over the last eleven months but they seem to have stopped now. I actually have a good working relationship with the other Korean teachers and since the boss lost my degree certificate (and denied it) there is not a lot else for her to muck up really! My house is lovely and I am well settled here (as are the remaining goldfish). I have been seduced by the idea of spending more than a year with the same group of friends too and am pleased to say that all those here now are staying on for at least another six months too- not to say that I don’t miss those that aren’t here anymore as I miss the company of all those I have met in various countries at one time or another.

So, other than worrying about the job situation, life here has been pretty much the same. Three weeks ago I was returning from Hong Kong. The next weekend I went to Seoul to meet up with Eddie, one of my colleagues from Selfridges, who was in Seoul for a couple of weeks on business. It was good to see Ed though I was embarrassingly hungover it has to be said. Another 'all you can drink for very little money' at all night at Bumpin the night before saw me getting home about four hours before I was due on a bus to Seoul. I did my best to show him some of the sights of Seoul but the motion sickness from the revolving restaurant up Namsan Tower almost got the better of me. Since I worked with Eddie for a couple of years before I went to Australia I don’t think that he was surprised to see me in that kind of state and was ready to reassure me that I hadn’t changed a bit- though my face was a little greener that usual!

But did I learn my lesson from all this? Did I hell! The next weekend I was due to have a quiet weekend in Gangneung until Rory rang me from the rest stop to let me know that he was on his way to Seoul for the weekend. 12 or so hours later so was I, accompanied by Mona, Heimi and Katie (Canadian, Korean and American respectively). Rory took us to a couple of great bars until he ‘had’ to go home and we hit the Hongdae university district for a bit of dancing and all round merriment. Got back to the motel around 6.30 after a brief stop in a gamza tang restaurant. The next day all we could manage was a trip to Itaewon for subway sandwiches and a shopping sesh in the western supermarket up the road- time for more tomato soup for me!

Quiet weekend nothing! Got home and straight into bed. Didn’t move. Not a muscle. Great!
Monday, I met Mona for dinner and then we went to a DVD room where I finally achieved my aim of watching a Korean movie (with English subtitles, my language skills haven’t really increased much over two years). We saw ‘Joint Security Area’, a movie about the relationship between the North and South Korean soldiers based in the Demilitarized Zone which is four miles wide and splits the country into two. The movie was due to be my first Korean movie when my friends Alan and Eun-Kyong invited me to watch it with them in Dublin. However when we got there it had sold out and we went to see ‘The others’ instead as I was too embarrassed to admit that I hated scary movies! Having lived for nearly two years in Korea now I have to say that had I seen JSA in Dublin I would have missed so much of what it was trying to say due to my complete ignorance of Korean history back then. It was very moving, sad and frustrating.

At this point I think that I should also add that DVD rooms are the best invention ever- a room you can hire out to watch a movie of your choice with a large and comfy sofa in it. I guess that they have been made a necessity for all young couples since most people still live with their parents until they get married and for a lot of young people it is still a shameful secret to admit that they actually have a sex life. My Korean co-worker blushed when she told me that she does actually sleep with her boyfriend, while reassuring her mother that she is still as pure as the day that she was born. But she was keen to let me know that he is the only guy that she has been intimate with. Thank goodness she didn’t ask me about my experience!!! Hee hee! But whether you can openly spend the night with your partner or not, I think that DVD rooms are a great idea and should become part of the social landscape of every civilised country- and Australia too!!!

On Thursday I got the news that I would be staying on. I celebrated with a group of mates that night. We were also celebrating the return of all the travellers- mainly the university teachers as they get lovely long vacations during the winter which some of them manage to fill with winter camp work while others bugger off to the nearest sunny country. I managed to scrape a mere five day vacation in Hong Kong but still had more photos than the rest of them put together! No surprise there really. Got home around 4.30. Slept until work which was a mercifully short day. After which I got back into bed again before starting the night with Nanette for dinner. Sam came over from Seoul for the night so we could baffle people with a mixture of British slang, private jokes and generally talking too fast for others to understand. The night finished around 5.30am.

Yesterday we went to Rory’s for coffee then I saw Sam off home and went and bought a web cam! And stayed in. Just plain stayed in. Was asleep before midnight. Woke up this morning to find that one of my goldfish had died- not necessarily linked to having to share the room with one of Sam’s stinky socks which she left behind my beanbag but until the post mortem results come in I am not ruling out a link either.

One of the benefits of being in Korea is that Valentine’s Day has a different meaning here. It is not a day for lovers per se. Or a day for secret admirers to send badly written cards to the objects of their admiration. In Korea it is quite simply a day for girls to give boys chocolate. At last, a day where I don’t have to get sad about the fact that my life does not impact on the sales figures of hallmark one bit. Some of the kids gave me chocolate on Friday which I ‘recycled’ into a Valentine’s gift for Rory yesterday! And I did get a call from the guy that I met last week in Seoul so overall probably my most successful Valentines Day ever!

And today is 15th February which must mean that it is a year to the day that I joined the Stop the War demonstration in London. How much the world can change in a year!

And how fast time flies! Distressingly so in some cases as every day brings me another twenty four hours closer to the big 3-0. I am pretty philosophical about the whole thing- all of my mates in their 30s seem to have survived somehow and have reported back that the world doesn’t change (that much). I guess that I have got used to ten years of saying my age starting with ‘twenty-’. But since I have been in Korea I have been Korean age 30 since January (I think). It doesn’t help that Donga TV keeps showing the Friends episode about turning 30. But I think that I am reasonably happy with what I have achieved thus far. However, I will save the real panicking until the beginning of May!

But I am getting off topic now so it must be time to stop this missive. Enjoy :)
Helen
xxx

Five static-free days in Hong Kong

2004-02-10T11:10:00.001+09:00

We have just celebrated the changing of the year here in Korea. I say 'we' but since I was in Hong Kong at the time it doesn't really count. Yep, me and Sam headed south for the winter in the hope of finding a place warmer than here with some proper honest to goodness celebrating to see in the year of the Monkey. Five whole days out of Korea, well, three whole days and two halves. This is something that we have been planning since the sumo trip in November.
I have to admit to being extremely excited about going away (not just because it took my passport well past the halfway stage stampwise) last week. I could hardly control myself at work on Tuesday and actually told a couple of the students what my plans were. I zoomed out of school so fast I was only a blur on the stairway. And promptly arrived at the bus terminal over an hour early- now that's what I call keen(!) I gulped down some rice, changed my ticket to an earlier time and headed off on a mostly empty bus. Sam woke me halfway through the journey with a phone call and when I looked out of the window I saw that it was snowing.

But that didn’t slow the bus fortunately and we made it in a very respectable three hours. Sam was there to meet me at the bus terminal in Seoul and it seemed only right on such a cold night (it was FREEEEEZING) that we head to the bar for a few before doing anything else. Two pitchers later and time to try our luck at getting a taxi out to the airport village where we intended to stay the night to miss the bulk of the new year traffic. Everyone else had the same idea and we slipped along a very crowded road out to the airport. We found a hotel, ignored the funny smell and bedded down for the night. The next morning we got up and ventured out to get some food- snow everywhere and the ice made things hazardous. As we turned a corner to the shop an artic gale took my breath away and we headed back to the hotel to thaw out and await the arrival of the shuttle bus.

The bus was waiting for us when we ventured downstairs. We clambered aboard and off we went- into the biggest skid that I have ever had the misfortune to experience. 360 degrees of skidding later and we were again facing the airport and we continued on our journey. It took about ten minutes before we could talk again though.

An uneventful flight later and we were in Hong Kong. Almost too quickly- it took around four hours to get there. A short flight but a lifetime away from Korea. It took us some time to pull ourselves away from the chocolate counter in the airport (Maltesers, mars bars, milky ways and other such long missed items) but we made it out to the bus station. Where a double decker bus was waiting for us! Another taste of home. We sat on the top deck at the front of the bus so we could ‘drive’ it to Causeway Bay and our hostel. The hostel was fine and so centrally located that we got off the bus and straight into the crowds heading to the park for the New year late night flower market. It would have been churlish to ignore them so we dumped our bags and joined them. The flower market was incredibly crowded and very exciting. So many people! And so many hot men!!!!!!!!! But I digress. We didn’t buy flowers and just indulged in a little cuddly toy monkey buying- year of the Monkey after all!

The next day we headed to The Peak- a mountain offering amazing views of the city and incredible looking apartment blocks. Dreaming of living there we got off the bus at the Peak and luxuriated in the view of the famous Hong Kong skyline. Skyscrapers lined the river and we could see out to sea a short way. It was breathtaking. We also did some shopping there too- we are girls after all! We got the funicular back down to earth and headed to Kowloon Park ready for the New Year parade. The parade was disappointing in that we couldn’t see anything over the crowds but exciting in as much as we had spent the previous three hours indulging in some Happy Hour binge drinking (UK government ain’t here anymore and can’t stop us) at a great Irish bar. That night we went off to a nightclub but had misjudged the day and walked into something resembling a badly organised school disco. We beat a hasty retreat.

Friday morning saw us up early and on a ferry heading to Lantau Island and the Po Lin monastery. It was cold on the ferry journey which lasted much longer than we had anticipated. The day before we had spent a very exciting five minutes on a ferry and hadn’t really considered that this day would see us on a forty five minute journey on a cold and shitty day. Getting off the ferry (and buying some more Cadbury snacks and maltesers) we got on the bus to the monastery. The clouds were really beginning to descend but we still had amazing views from the bus and all of the passengers let off an excited eeppp when we saw the Buddha at the monastery perched on a hill in the distance. However when we got off the bus we dashed to the loo and then to the veggie restaurant there. By the time we had taken care of our needs the clouds had engulfed the Buddha almost entirely. We climbed up the hill anyway and got some great atmospheric photos of Buddha in the swirling mists.

After such a spiritual day it seemed only fair that we reward ourselves with a couple of pints in the bar at the ferry jetty- such a joy to order actual real pints!! Back to Causeway Bay and some stunning fireworks then onto the nightclub which proved to be all that we had asked for and more. Saturday was a quiet day. I spent most of it in the park reading my book. Great to be in an actual park- there really aren’t that many in Korea. Also I had got up that morning and gone to a coffee shop and read the newspaper- again something that we really miss in Korea. Saturday night we had our last dinner in Hong Kong.

On Sunday we got a bus to Stanley- via the bottom of the Peak. The weather was the best that it had been for our last morning. Stanley was amazing. There is a great market there where I indulged in some heavy duty purchasing of hippy clothes. We sat by the ocean for a while. Then we sat outside a bar by the ocean and ate pizza and drank pints of Stella. Happy? Couldn’t have been more so to be honest! But all too soon it was time to go back to the airport. Which proved to be exciting enough since we were able to got to WHSmiths and buy some books. Two and three quarter hours later we were back in Seoul and four hours after that I was at home in Gangneung looking at my photos on my computer.

We had an incredible time and some of you will appreciate that a trip to the Marks and Spencers sale was more exciting that it would have been if we were both back home. The joy of standing in a clothes store knowing that there were loads of clothes to fit me- that I actually had a CHOICE was quite a heady feeling. Both Sam and I had to work hard to control the tears of joy as we skipped between the clothes rails. We also had a look around Ikea and HMV and did a whole host of other retail things that can’t be found in Korea. The static was gone from my hair for the whole trip and I wasn’t stared at once in whole time I was in Hong Kong. Overall I would have to say that what little we saw of Hong Kong led us to want to stay there forever, it seemed (at surface level at least) to be the perfect mix of the Asia that we so love living in and the UK which we miss so much.

Now I am back at work and only four weeks away from the one year mark. What happens next? Well, that is up to my boss and I am waiting to hear if she wants me to stay on. Everyone cross your fingers for that one. Miss Kim has certain bitch like tendencies so I need all the help I can get! I’ll let you know the outcome when I know. Can’t say fairer than that,

Love
H
xx

Cold Days and New Year's Days

2004-01-07T10:43:00.000+09:00

What is with all this static electricity? Given much more of this and they might as well shut down all of Korea’s nuclear power stations and replace them with me. My fleece blanket fizzles with electric when I shake it, I can hardly get out of my house before my skirt is stuck to my tights, if I try and get close enough to give my friends a friendly peck on the cheek they are repealed backwards with a resounding crack and the other week I was so electric that when one of the students tried to give me a piece of candy it was thrown across the room with the shock. I won’t even go into what a nightmare my hair is at the moment. And this is the least frightening aspect of winter here in Korea. My skin is so dry that I find myself admiring the complexion of passing bulldogs. My fingernails just manage to teeter over the edge of my finger before snapping off in the cold.

But the worst bit, worse than it being too cold to drink all night outside the convenience stores, more scary than the prospect that every wintry day brings me 24 hours closer to my thirtieth birthday, more chilling than a day sitting on the beach in January, has to be the introduction of the winter schedule at work. The kids have just started their two month long break from school and we are the people responsible for keeping them off the streets. Since that pesky rival we call school is temporarily out of the picture the kids are free to come in earlier and study more than ever. Hence my horror- my start time has been brought forward to roughly one hour before the time that I usually get up (admittedly this is still only 10am and therefore I am not realistically expecting much sympathy from you nine to fivers).

But let me stop with the whinging for a moment and tell you all about the festive season here in Korea. What there is of it, that is. I think that I told you before that there is not much of a Christmassy buzz here (I have escaped the whole season through without hearing a Cliff Christmas Classic- old or new- and am yet to hear a Slade number from any speaker in this country). The kids never really got the hang of the advent calendar- I was having to glue the 24 door shut at the start of every day- it was a wonder they still managed to prise it open each day but they are determined little so and sos. My Christmas cards finally made it to my desk this week (ie. in January) and not a drop of sherry or a crumb of a mince pie was to be found anywhere. But we still did our best to enjoy the day. A group of us got together for dinner on the day (and I had had the best part of a bottle of wine to myself before heading out to try and take my mind off missing the Christmas ‘Only Fools and Horses’) which was a buoyant affair. After dinner I was finally able to negotiate the time difference and speak to the folks back home which was good. And English girl brought some crackers to the bar so we were able to tell rubbish jokes and wear paper hats which is basically Christmas for me.

A few Long Island Ice Teas later and it was all over. I went home and didn’t have to work the next day so had time to slob around and do nothing. By Saturday however the appeal of not doing anything at all had started to wane so Sunday saw me getting on a bus and heading over to Seoul. Had a couple of pints of Stella in Itaewon before heading off the nori bang (singing room) and a jjokki jjokki bar (chain in which I used to earn frequent drinker points last year in Mokpo, or would have had such a scheme existed). Monday was shopping day though it only took the usual four minutes or so of being in the vicinity of a Korean clothes shop (where the shop assistants run in horror upon laying their eyes on me and selflessly throw themselves onto the racks to protect the doll size clothes from being corrupted by my presence) before I had had enough. Time to go to the movies and the most Christmassy part of the festive season for me- that was a very happy two hours spent watching Christmas in London through the medium of ‘Love Actually’. It was a friend’s last night in Korea before heading back to Canada so we went for barbecue before the nori bang and a different jjokki jjokki bar. Limping home (Sam’s home that is) at 5am it was a wonder that we were able to get up at all the next day to help Danielle get her bags to the airport.

But we made it in time and saw her on her way (well, through the entrance to the departure gates anyway which, despite what a hundred Hollywood movies may show, is as far as you can get without a boarding pass). That night saw a well deserved pizza and quiet night in. The calm before the storm you might say.

Wednesday was, of course, New Year’s Eve. Wow. And we had big plans for the night. But first me and Sam had something VERY important to do. Rushing to Jongro, we found the correct office, got stacks of cash out from the bank downstairs and picked up our tickets to HONG KONG!!! Oh yes indeedy! Heading to China for Chinese New Year, very VERY exciting indeed. We are flying out on 21st January for four nights and five days of shameless gasping at fireworks and unadulterated admiration of the dragon parade. Not to mention a sup or two at the nearest English theme pub. But more on that closer to the time.

We made it back to Sam’s and she managed to find someone to bust open the bathroom door that had ‘mysteriously’ locked itself just before we rushed out in the morning. We got ready and headed into town for the HUGE Carl Cox New Year’s Eve celebration at the Sheraton Walker Hill Hotel (scenes of such depravity as me and Sam giggling in the casino with some dutch DJ that Sam had told a little white lie to earlier in the evening, many moons before). Stopped on the way for Mexican food and to pick up a few friends and off we went.

The promises of a free bar until 1.30am were, thankfully, totally with foundation though it wasn’t so much a free bar as a table covered in Heineken and Smirnoff which you just went up to and helped yourself off- all you could carry! And good for me because it allowed me to pretend that I was a student again and ‘babysitting’ unminded drinks. In fact, the event had been sponsored by so many purveyors of sin that it was almost a hassle to get through people throwing free cigarettes and lighters and drinks at us in order to get to the main arena. But we fought the brave battle and took a night of dancing as our reward. And what an amazing night it was- starting with a kicking bass line as we approached the door shortly after 10pm. About ten minutes before midnight the big screens beside the stage echoed the smaller pictures scattered across tv monitors all over the stage as they all proudly displayed the countdown to midnight.

All too soon it was midnight and amid the screaming and shrieking and general hugging (got my first kiss of the new year from our lovely gay friend, pleasant but hopefully not setting a precedent for the year!) the sound of drums began to become more forceful. Unnoticed before midnight it was difficult to miss the huge traditional Korean drums now being pounded within an inch of their lives by women in traditional Korea dress- the refrain being picked up by men on smaller but no less impressive drums on a walkway suspended over the dance floor. It was a totally awesome way to start the year. And things only got better about ten minutes later when Carl Cox finally hit the stage. A predictably euphoric period of dancing followed. Our joy knew no bounds as Mr Cox lived out my Christmas wish and put ‘Born Slippy’ on as fake snow was sprayed into the air and me and Sam jumped up and down in childish delight. Of course, I lost my friends part way through the night but what would New year be without a small moment of panic?

We finally burnt out around 6ish and got into a cab about half an hour after that- after freely distributing my phone number to a surprising amount of men (ok, I admit it, two but it sounded good, right?). Limbs so tired that we couldn’t feel them anymore got us from the cab to Sam’s house and that was the end of that. I went home to Gangneung the next day, via Itaewon again for a subway sandwich and a couple of cans of tomato soup from the dodgy little western food store there (I never thought that I could be so happy to be lugging tins of food around but it is amazing what you crave when it is not easily accessible. Though I should mention at this point that I had Cadburys chocolate for breakfast everyday over the New year thanks to Caitriona!). I collapsed into my bed and didn’t move again until the next day when it was time to start the winter schedule at work.

And that is roughly where this email started so a very neat place to finish it, I believe! Thank you to everyone who sent me cards (strangely not the same people who received them from me!) and emails telling me what you have been up to. Everyone seems to have made their new year’s resolution that they will write more emails. I am making mine to take up less space in all your inboxes- or not, you let me know!

Love to everyone and personal emailing will resume soon- promise.
Helen
xxxx

Mr Cadbury, I love you!

2003-12-21T10:50:00.000+09:00

First I feel that I must start with a slight amendment to the last email. When I wrote about the Christians of a ‘moron’ persuasion I hope that you all saw my real intention was to say ‘Mormon’. What can I say? It had been a long weekend and I was still tired when I wrote that email. On top of that there has been a lot of work going on in the apartments here which has shown the drilling getting closer and closer to my house until the day when I wrote that email when it felt like the drilling was just above my bathroom ceiling. Twas a little distracting trying to type while the computer and all other things in the house are bouncing along in pneumatic time with the workmen next door. Then finally the day of reckoning came and the drilling came to my house and I was exiled to an apartment in the floor below- close enough that I could hear the reassuring pounding coming from my house but far enough away that I did not have to smell the soju on the breath of the workmen. So I have been Helen in exile for the last few days. I did come up to the flat on the first night to collect some stuff and was more than a little perturbed to find my toilet just inside the front door and the kitchen sink next to my bed. I have never lived anywhere with work going on in in before and it was a very upsetting sight so I vowed not to come back until I knew for sure that they had gone. In typical Korean style that first night I found a half empty bottle of soju on the kitchen cabinet- obviously an essential part of everyone’s lunch box.

Anyway, I am back in my house now- and back on line more importantly. And today I was able to have my first really hot shower in nearly a week and for the first time in three weeks I woke up in my own house and not to the sound of drilling. Things are really looking up! The only signs that there was any work done at all is that I have new floor tiles in the bathroom and the plug for the sink has been sealed behind the sink now, thereby rendering it useless but funny!
It has been a funny old week though. Last weekend things got a little out of hand. Now, I realise that I say this nearly every weekend but this one was particularly bad. I knew this the moment that I found myself requesting and dancing to Robbie William’s Angel for the fifth time in a row. On leaving the bar all the people that I was with took it in turns to throw up. Helen needed a little sit down and I was steered over to a ledge for that purpose. And it was the comfiest ledge ever so how could I resist a little lie down? Apparently it took the boys quite some time to get me up and then I had to add my own contribution to pavement art. One of the lads took me back to my house and the next day I remained in bed all day, surfacing only to retrieve the pizza from the hands of the delivery man. It was certainly not a weekend to be proud of but at least Rory finally achieved his aim of seeing me more drunk than him so all was not lost. I managed to get BBC News 24 on my computer and watch all the live coverage of the Saddam Hussein stuff too.

Monday was back to work to the news that my employer has lost my original degree certificate and actually denies having it in the first place. I guess that it is my own fault for giving it to her but she needed to take it to immigration to register me and then just decided that she would keep it in case I decided to do a runner- which given how unhappy she was making me at that time must have looked like a distinct possibility- if only she had been able to see the contents of my bank account! So not only is she refusing to admit to losing it she also refused to pay for the replacement. Needless to say, this has led to a lot of tension at work this week. All communication has been through the Korean teachers who start each report back with the words ‘I’m sorry, Helen, I hate to tell you this but..’ And then on Friday I arrived at work to find that one of the little brats had broken into and eaten my 19th December calendar chocolate. I made up for it by immediately eating Saturday and Sunday’s. Things started to look up when my mate Sam rang to tell me that a wonderful Irish girl by the name of Caitriona had made good her promise and that there was currently a parcel in Seoul for me containing a Cadburys’ selection box. I would like to say at this point that I LOVE YOU CAITRIONA! Quite frankly the news could not have come at a better time! Knowing that I had chocolate to look forward to just made all the badness go away.

But it has not been an entirely bad week either. Sam booked our trip to Hong Kong the other weekend so it seemed only fair that I book our trip to Japan this week. So I phoned the ferry company and booked us onto the Pusan to Fukuoka ferry next weekend!! Hee hee! Very exciting. On Friday morning I had to get on a bus to Donghae (about 45 minutes away) to get my multi re-entry visa stamped into my passport. And then something wonderful happened- my passport is officially half full! The new visa is the first one past the seam in the middle. I know that this makes me a shameless anorak but I am pretty excited. And when we go to Japan and then Hong Kong we are just talking more stamps in the old passport then- hooray!
Friday night was all you could drink for 25,000 won at Bumpin.

There was a sign on the beer fridge saying ‘Fay First’ and after a while I realised that we weren’t going to be treating to some dodgy cabaret but in fact that we should Pay First. The disappointment didn’t last for too long! Any of you that know anything about my Bumpin habits know that I keep a tab at the bar and rarely pay for my drinks the night that I drink them. Therefore it was a novel concept to pay for the drinks before we drank them! Weird! But at least no scary tab to be hit with on Christmas Eve. Mr Lee had put all the spirits and mixers on the bar and we did indeed drink all we could. Was a drunk old affair. But I had learnt my lesson and played it cool. Which was all for the good when people needed help later. I held one guy up while he threw up outside and then carried him to a cab and popped him into it. Seemed like the least I could do after last weekend.

Yesterday we went to the beach for coffee and dinner and last night I had a quiet night in. Really. And truly. I just stayed in. Refused all invites and just plain got into my bed (for the first time in a few days) and just plum stayed in. Wonderful!

So the timetable for the next few weeks is this- Christmas (venue as yet undecided but I am sure that it will end in Bumpin at least a couple of times), the weekend after bus to Pusan and ferry to Japan. Then New Year in Seoul, Carl Cox is playing at the place we saw that Dutch DJ all those months ago. Should be a great night. Bus back to Gangneung on 1st January ready to work on the 2nd. And three weeks after that HONG KONG! I would imagine that February will be a pretty quiet month for me as I mourn the loss of my savings and try to decide what to do when my contract ends on March 16th. How time flies!

So I am going to leave you all with a hearty HAPPY CHRISTMAS and where are my Christmas cards? To date I have received one (cheers, Cheryl!) which makes me look like the most unpopular teacher in school!

Nuff whinging- the Christmas emails you guys have been sending me have been a lot of fun. It is
so great to know that I have so many friends who take time out to write and tell me what they are up to in their corner of the world. I love knowing so many people in so many countries! Made me feel a bit special in the post office the other week too- sending stuff everywhere!
I will write again the new year I guess!

Love a Helen who will be thinking about all of you this Christmas and missing her family desperately even through the inevitable tequila, soju and besiege fog!
Xxx

Nearly Christmas

2003-12-16T11:12:00.000+09:00

And so this is Christmas- or is it? Doesn’t feel much like Christmas. Tried to get into the spirit of it but I think that maybe I peaked too early when I hung up my Christmas lights when I arrived in March. My mother came through with a sterling effort when my Cadbury’s advent calendar came in the post on the 1st December exactly- did she plan it that way? Hard to say but high drama to the end regardless. So Christmas for me this year has been mainly trying to get to the calendar before the kids each day for my daily chocolate- why don’t I keep the calendar at home in that case?? Well, we don’t get good chocolate here and all it would take was one PMT gorge and all the fun would be over. I made a calendar for the kids but they don’t seem to get it as every day I walk in and glue shut the 24 door again.

Ah well, keeps my interest anyway.

In case you haven’t guessed, or received a grumpy email from me to this effect, I will be celebrating Christmas in Korea this year. Hagwon (private language institutes) are not renowned for their generous vacation allocation. I have managed to get the week leading up to New Year off and maybe I will go to Japan if the money holds out, I have to admit that Seoul is pretty Christmassy overall. I went there a couple of weeks ago to the large Shinsegae department store and for a moment or two I was in a surreal world that transported me back to Selfridges in London but where all the staff and customers were Korean. They even have proper shop windows complete with incomprehensible Christmas scenes. There is a large tree outside where I spent a happy couple of hours before it got too cold drinking beer and filling in the time until I could get a bus home to Gangneung.

It is worth remembering that Korea isn’t a Christian country and the Christians that are here tend to be of the moron persuasion so any Christmas celebrations tend to be a triumph of marketing over tradition. We have a small Christmas tree in the school and many of my students have been caught recently singing ‘Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer’ though in Korean to be honest. A lot of the stores have Christmas lights and carols blaring out but I miss the street lights and the carol singers at Trafalgar Square. I miss looking forward to the Eastenders and Coronation Street specials and even just looking at the Radio Times Christmas edition. All those annoying Christmas jingles that most of you are fed up with on TV are sadly missing from Korea.
Still, holding it together. I have a solo Christmas card on my desk from home (though more have been promised) I have a Christmas present in my drawer at work- though the customs declaration does take a touch of the excitement off it since I know what it is and how much it is worth! I keep promising myself that I will decorate my classroom but always end up being distracted into a pub rather than the decoration shop. I had my most unsuccessful day Christmas shopping ever when I went to Seoul two weeks ago and ended up buying my whole family pints of beer which I drank myself. In my defence, it was very Christmassy in the pub (Murphys!), much more so that the streets outside. It was a good day for me but a bad day for Christmas shopping!

Not sure what we are doing next week. This is only my second Christmas away from England so I still firmly have my training wheels on how to handle it. The last one was five years ago and in the Southern hemisphere where everything was so different as to make one forget that it even was Christmas as we slapped on the sunscreen and danced on the beach. I do have hopes of a white Christmas and we have been forecast snow over the weekend so fingers crossed.
I am sure that whatever transpires next Thursday it will be a memorable day. I will be leaving a glass of soju and a piece of kimbap out for Santa anyway.

Not sure when I will be back in the UK as I am thinking of staying here for another year. I always feel such a fraud when I get emails from anyone telling me how brave I am to be here. The truth is, and don’t tell anyone and ruin my secret, my life here is so easy! I have a nice apartment which the school pays for, I consider it a hard day when I have to start work at 1.30 rather than 3.30- either way I am out before 9pm. I get taxis everywhere- day or night. I eat out more nights a week than is sensible. I have a wider social circle than I was used to in London because I can walk up to pretty much any foreigner I see here and ask them to join me for a pint. I know most of the foreigners in town- and certainly all those in the bar. If I need the bright lights and big city, Seoul and my mate, Sam, are just over three hours away by bus - which is actually not a bad place to sleep off a hangover, I have found. I get paid a lot and taxed a little. I enjoy the kids and even if I have a bad class the little sods are only there for 45 minutes.

There are problems, of course, and frustrations- sometimes I just don’t want to be stared at or welcomed to Korea by high school kids but I can’t really complain about it either. I don’t get much vacation, it is true, but I still get more than my bruvver in the States. The only problem with staying on next year is that most of the national holidays fall on a Saturday which is a normal working day for Korea so they don’t get moved onto a Friday or Monday. I have great mates here and a lot of great mates back home and in other countries to email me and make future plans with. All in I have to admit to feeling pretty lucky in life most of the time.
Anyway, it is only just after 9am and not usual for me to be up this early. I have put on the floor heating and am waiting for it to heat up so I can lie on the floor for a while and chase away those chills. Then I am meeting a mate for lunch before work. Let me know what your plans for Christmas and New Year.
Love
Helen
xxx

Wrong Islands in Fall

2003-11-12T10:46:00.000+09:00

The first day of November saw me sitting on the beach with my mate, Nanette, wearing sandals and a t-shirt. Strangely balmy weather for the time of year but very much appreciated. By the evening it was admittedly a tad colder and the following Tuesday saw me don a warm jacket for the first time. Then the cold receded again and it was back to a small fleece jacket. And just generally traipsing around enjoying the autumn here in Korea. It is one of my favourite seasons- in the top four definitely- as it becomes a more manageable heat and the leaves change colour and then fall from the trees in droves. Not being in England during autumn does have the advantage that I never hear anything about leaves on the lines. I have watched the rice being harvested from the fields near my local supermarket and then I have seen the rain hit in the last week. And it is time to admit defeat and permanently take the duffel coat out of moth balls for almost daily outings.

Winter is here- just two weeks after autumn really struck. It has been raining for the last week and it is not often that I am seen walking down the street without clutching my coat, pulling it tightly around myself, usually complete with hood up for maximum ear warmth. The rain seems to have put a large amount of people firmly in their homes and I was taken aback on Friday night to enter my local nd find only three people in it- two of them were working! It seemed a long time since the Halloween excesses of two weeks ago.

So I went to Seoul on Saturday night in search of people and life. And through the rain splattered streets I went until I found myself in the comfort of US66 in Hongdae and safe in the arms of a Long Island Ice Tea. I won’t go into details about the messiness of it all suffice to say that I was pretty impressed to be able to negotiate a discount when I had to check into a motel later in the night, having ‘lost’ the friend that I was supposed to be staying with that night.
In an effort to stave off the winter blues last week I went to the public bath house with my friend, Nanette, as nothing warms the cockles of my heart like getting naked with strangers- and it does seem to be the only place I see Koreans who are fatter than me, guess that they have some magic clothing which hides their bulk better than my jeans. The bath house is great- two saunas, four spa pools and various steam rooms- all for the same price as a bottle and a half of beer. And for a little extra you can be scrubbed within an inch of your life by someone’s mum who works there. Once you get over the initial discomfort of being interfered with by a grandma in just her knickers and can take your mind off the revolting amount of dead skin that seems to be coming off your body like the leaves off the trees outsides, the scrub is a great experience. And my skin feels so fantastic afterwards that I spent the whole taxi drive home stroking my forearms admiringly.

This weekend I am hoping to escape the winter blues by popping over to Japan with some friends for the night. We are going to a sumo tournament which should be interesting. I am heading to Seoul on Friday night and we are flying out on Saturday morning. Back to Seoul on Sunday. Yes, it is a shockingly indulgent thing to do but I think that I deserve it. This week shows me being back in Korea for eight months already and marks the five year anniversary of me dropping out and hitting the road. Things haven’t always been easy with the school but the friends that I have made this year have been incredible. I just hope that we all make it through the winter- such is the problem with having mates from the Southern Hemisphere who complain that Christmas should be a day of beach and barbecues, while hanging up plastic snowflakes and sending out cards with robins and other creatures that don’t exist in their life on them.

So I am sitting in my house, almost afraid to open the curtains in case it is still raining. Yesterday was peppero day which is essentially a marketing ploy by the people who sell long biscuits covered in chocolate. At some point in the past someone noticed that the sticks looked a little like the number one. And therefore two of them would resemble the number eleven. Following this logic four of them must look like two elevens or, in fact, the date 11/11. So while much of the world marked Armistice Day, we here in Korea had the usual teacher popularity contest of who would manage to get the most chocolate covered sticks from the students. I think that I won! And the joke is on me this morning as I woke up in a house with no food in it and have been reduced to eating said sticks to keep me going until I have the courage to get dressed and go outside for some bread and milk. Needless to say, these four inch long sticks are not very filling so I will have to leave you now to go out for food.

Lots of love
H
xx

The struggles in getting to the airport in time

2003-09-22T10:54:00.000+09:00

Ok Little Ones,

It has been a couple of weeks since I last wrote. And an eventful couple of weeks it has been too. Now I am going to share them with you. My sister arrived two weeks ago and I had to go to Seoul to meet her, having also pencilled in a lunch date with my Seoul-based mate, Sam, for the same day. Therefore it was pretty much inevitable that I would be in the bar the night before and only succeed in dragging myself out of it around 5.30am. Things had got pretty messy pretty early on- on the way to the first bar we had bumped into Russell and his girlfriend- when the barman allowed one of our number behind the bar to mix up her own cocktails (given the amount of empty bottles generated by our visit it was no real surprise that the bar went bust just two weeks later). Once the stocks in the first bar had been depleted it was time to move to our usual haunt, Bumpin. Despite my protests (voiced so quietly that even I seemed blissfully unaware of them) things progressed quickly and before I knew what was going on, I was in a cab going home hours before sunrise.

Things were still very blurry when I peeled my head off the pillow at 11 the next morning to answer the phone- only to discover that I was still quite drunk- I asked Rory (for t’was himself who had woken me) if he had any Tylenol. He laughed, said no, and told me that he had some eggs though and was somehow still surprised when I promptly invited myself over for breakfast. This was the first good idea of the day and not that last- though the hardest to carry out.
I can only imagine that I looked as pathetic as I felt when I arrived at Rory’s as he made no objection to me taking a quick nap while he cooked me an egg sandwich. It took me a while to get off the bed but soon enough I was asleep on the bus on the way to Seoul. It took me nearly an hour to get from the bus terminal to Insadong when I arrived in Seoul by which time I only had half anhour to spend with Sam- conveniently the exact amount of time that it takes to leg it to Ben and Jerry’s and scoff a bowl of Phish Food. Sam and her mates put me on the bus to the airport and gave me such a good send off that even I began to believe that I was going somewhere more exciting than terminal one.

An hour and a half later I was at the airport where I had my second and last reat idea of the day- which was to stay somewhere near the airport for the night. Given that we had an 8.30 flight the next morning I guess that I should have thought of this earlier. But my mind has always been more creative than logical. Ah well. A couple of hours later both self and sis were safely ensconced in a ‘comportable’ room as promised by the brochure. The motel man not only picked us up from the airport but also took us back there the next morning.

Warning- this is a no alcohol story aka Group Email Light

2003-08-08T11:06:00.000+09:00

Life has been pretty disjointed over the last couple of weeks. Not in a bad way, more in an exceedingly hectic way. The threatened 9am start to my working day has not materialised so far (praise be to Saints Cass and Hite, patron saints of hagwon teachers). The threat of the axe seems to have disappeared for the time being as well. Next week I hit the five month mark and after the six month mark they can’t fire me anymore so fingers crossed for finishing this race.
But let me take you back to the end of July (all those week ago). I got press ganged into taking part in the Brainy English Camp. It was a day and a half on an exceeding hot and summery ski resort somewhere near Seoul. The most frightening aspect of the venture was the 7.30am start from the school- lots of proud mums waving their kids off and pressing packed lunches into their excited offsprings’ hands. I sat at the back of the bus and chatted to the kids most of the way (every time my head started to drop I remembered that they were all armed with magic markers- not a comfortable nod-inducing thought).

We arrived to a chaotic scene- kids everywhere and no sign of the organisers. To be fair, there were lots of things to keep the kids busy- hoops, balls, rings, bouncy castles and a pool of fish which had been set up specifically to make it easy for the kids to catch, torture, drop on the ground or throw fish at their mates. I asked a student if they were eating fish but I was told that they were just toys- the scared look in the eyes of the fish was more than justified as, once again, the Korean kids were being actively encouraged by responsible adults to be cruel to animals.

My duties were unclear, beyond getting horribly sunburnt, I didn’t know what to do so I just played with the kids and tried to get to know the other foreigners with several kids hanging off my back. The kids always assume that I know any foreigner they might see so I make it my business not to disappoint them for too long. At lunch the kids laughed at my sandwiches while they all tucked into their sushi rolls and kimchi- while palming off any food they didn’t want on me. After lunch I was shut in room with a balloon half filled with water while kids were pushed into the room to be ‘entertained’- this was pretty much the most painful part of the day and more than a little confusing. One group couldn’t get over the idea that the balloon was a water bomb and so freaked out every time I threw it at them. All in all the day involved a lot of waiting around to do stuff before being told that we no longer had time to do the activities because we had waited around for too long. Another triumph of Korean organisation. All the speeches and songs were in Korean and the only thing that seemed to be in English were the ‘I Love Brainy’ t-shirts that we were all lumbered with (Brainy is the name of the franchise rather than the t-shirts being some kind of Mensa pick up device)

Later I had to stand on the stage with my bright red sunburnt face and lovely new t-shirt and read out riddles in an elimination contest which went on forever since the organisers had emailed all of the riddles to each school and the kids had spent the last two weeks memorising all of the answers- they guessed the answers just by looking at the page that I was reading off! When I tried to leave the hall after the ‘gig’ I was stopped and had to sign autographs and have my photo taken with loads of kids- I wasn’t looking my best but hated to disappoint my fans! A small taste of celebrity which might well have turned my head!

Later there was a campfire and each school sent some kids onto the stage to do their piece. I was very proud when our kids (the sixth act on) became the first and only school to speak English on the stage. I was choked up like a mother at the school nativity play- well, nearly. I was less proud of the rapid crush that most of my students developed on one of the other foreign teachers- I never want to hear ‘Scott handsome teacher’ again! They giggled, tittered and begged me to take photos of them with him. It was embarrassing but funny. After the camp fire all of the other foreign teachers went out for beer but I was so knackered that I just went home.

The next morning was another early start as I staggered round bleary eyed looking for my kids, declining the offer of spicy soup for breakfast and generally sweated in the sweltering sun. Finally we rounded all of the little horrors up and onto the bus. They sang and chatted all the way home while I couldn’t help sleeping. My friends had rung to give me a lot of moral support during the 36 or so hours that I was away which was great. But I have to admit that as I got off the bus outside my house that I missed the little tykes!

And on that scary note, I will leave you this time. Brace yourselves for the email about summer vacation- get the Tylenol ready as you might find that you get drunk just by reading it! You have been warned!
Love
H
xx

Summer Schedule blues

2003-07-21T10:52:00.000+09:00

The end of July is getting dangerously close and with it the school summer vacation season here in Korea. Proper schools that is, not the dodgy private institutes such as the one that employs me. Rather than time off, all summer vacation means for the hapless hagwon teacher is an earlier start in the morning. Not good news at all. From this Wednesday I will have a 9am start three days a week. Now, I know what you are thinking ‘.. nine o’clock… doesn’t know she’s born… give anything to have that kind of a lie in… here in the real world, etc’ but remember that I have been starting work at 3pm for the last nineteen weeks that I have been in Korea. Which means that, literally overnight, my working day will be brought forward six hours. For you 9-5ers that would be the same as you having to start work at 3am tomorrow. Sucks!

The hours kept here by most English teachers are slightly unconventional to say the least. The other week I worked out that as long as I got to bed at 8am I would still be able to get six hours sleep in before work. The latest that I have gone to bed on a school night was 7.30am. It is not unusual to find groups of us having dinner in a late night barbecue restaurant at around 3am. It is certainly a night out of the ordinary if we make it to the bar before midnight.

While all that is fun and exciting it has not been all sunshine and roses for me in the hermit kingdom since I got back. Korean working life is very different from what I remember being the norm back in my dim and distant past when I last worked in a Western country. Sucking up to the boss can be one of the most important skills that an employee can cultivate. Unfortunately I missed all the classes on brown-nosing while I was at university (I was probably sitting in the square making daisy chains at the time) which has led to a four month feud with my director as she stands there with her arse stuck right out and I refuse to kiss it. Add to this unpleasant picture a Korean teacher who considers the best way to make herself look good is to slag off her foreign colleague and you have a job that can be hard to get out of bed in the morning for- even when I don’t have to do so until 2pm. Whether or not things are resolved, I have been pretty down for the last 2 weeks.

Fear not, my friends, I have snapped out of it and grown quite philosophical about whether my sojourn here will be cut short in a month or so or will last all the way to the end. My friends here have been very supportive- offering advice, money, a place to sleep if it all goes wrong and a couple of very good shoulders to cry on. I guess that it is friendships like these that have kept me out of England for nearly five years now. The relationships created on the road are so different from those we have at home in ways that I can’t really describe. The ease of meeting people and the social life that I enjoy are part of the seductive nature of travelling for me- along with the old ‘seeing new places and having new experiences’ thing, of course. I do wonder if I will ever be able to readjust to ‘normal’ life again.

One thing that I do know that if I ever do move back to London I am going to need a lot of help and patient friends around me! Like I have now!

Sorry that I don’t really have anything to say about life in Korea right now- I am socialising a lot, needless to say, but figure that you don’t need to know all about that. I had a reminder of my days in Mokpo last week when I came home from work to find that the water had been cut off for reasons unknown. It came back on 12 hours later so that wasn’t too bad. The beach just gets better and better the hotter that it gets. It is monsoon season here at the moment so alternatively very wet and very humid- what a great combination! Think that I am going to have my first experience of an English Camp this weekend-going away on the Friday and back on the Saturday. I am sure that it will be a complete nightmare- 40 of our kids but around 600 altogether - but I am getting paid for it and there will be other foreigners there. Wish me luck! Then I have the whole week off after that though I am not going anywhere because of all the trouble that I have been having with the school. Probably down to Mokpo and then over to Seoul for a massive clubbing couple of nights!

If anyone has made it to the end of the mail do send me all your news as my inbox has been pretty quiet recently- poor me!
Love
H
xx

The best day's hiking ever

2003-06-30T11:02:00.000+09:00

Well, poppets, I guess that the first thing to do is apologise for my recent silence. Fear not, I am not sitting alone in a corner of Korean rocking slowly backwards and forwards. Nor have the North Koreans penetrated the border and crossed into the south to see what this lemon soju thing is all about. No, no, I’m afraid that my social life has got quite in the way of my creativity- alcohol will do that to a girl. I thought that having the internet in my house would mean that I would email more but in fact it just means that I spend more time downloading Ali G clips. I have been so busy recently but I haven’t felt that I have had any stories to tell. I have been having a great time but thought that you didn’t really want a beer by beer account of every night that I go out or hear how many times I have been up to see the dawn sun in the last month or so. Now, the following story does, I admit, contain some alcohol but I like to think that the spirit of the story goes beyond that and that it is a story worth telling anyway.
So here goes….

I got a phone call on Friday night from Sam in Seoul letting me know that she hadn’t managed to get on a bus to Gangneung that night but she would be with me the next morning- ready for a long overdue weekend of hiking and general outdoor ness. Fair enough, I decided that I should really get to bed a bit early that night so as to not let her down. And that was my intention as I set off to get my arse-whooped playing Scrabble at Nanette’s house. It was still my intention as I opened my first beer. And it remained my intention until I left the bar around 5am- muttering something about a friend who was due to arrive in a couple of hours. The guilt that I felt through the tequila haze was tempered slightly by seeing the third member of our fearless hiking party go spinning off and crashing into a chair containing a guitar during a particularly hectic bout of drunken dancing. If I was bad at least I wasn’t as bad as her, I thought as she was carried out of the bar.

I guess the next time that the guilt hit in any real sense of the word was the phone call at 9.30am from Sam at the bus terminal in Gangneung, wondering where I was. But she seemed to clue in pretty quickly and got in a cab to my place rather than wait for me. Where I welcomed her clad in only my PJ’s and a duvet. I took some solace from the fact that I had even managed to be awake when she called and Sam seemed happy enough to make her own coffee while I crawled back into bed. Nanette’s phone was still switched off so there was no real rush to get ready.

Sam made herself at home and connected to the Radio One website so we could listen to the latest news from Glastonbury (large music festival back home in England). The festival was in full force and the dance music blared out of the speakers and filled the room- finally giving me enough energy to get out of bed and pack my bag for the weekend’s hike. But a sneaky thought had already crept into my head before I even hit the shower- I was feeling the urge to dance- an urge not easily satisfied in Gangneung. Fighting the urge I came out of the shower and then something had happened- Sam had had a similar idea. I can’t say exactly who suggested it but we appeared to be in one mind as I repacked my bag for a weekend’s clubbing. And so, two hours after arriving in Gangneung Sam found herself on a bus on the way back to Seoul. I love the spur of the moment and have long considered it an ideal time to make decisions- the signs were there and there seemed to be little point in ignoring them.

Shopping was, of course, our main priority before hitting the club for the night. Imagine my absolute joy and delight as we found the first ever hippy shop that I have seen in Korea- hooray, hooray! It was all I could do to stop myself dancing around the shop but I showed some restraint and just tried on two tops and bought one. Sam bought some new flip flops and it was time to head to her house to get seriously girlie- doing hair and make up (and the not so girlie swilling of beer, of course) before starting the long trek to the venue- carried along on the spontaneous decision and excellent shopping high. We took the subway as far as we could go before it stopped for the night (my mates in Gangneung rang and sang down the phone at me) and then we got into a taxi (my mates in Gangneung shrieked down the phone at me) and finally we pulled up outside the Sheraton Walker Hill Hotel- very posh and worryingly quiet. Were things about to finally start going wrong??

Apparently not, we located the party in the lower ground floor and were ready to rock and roll. The reason that we had chosen this particular event to bestow our dancing talents on was that a Dutch DJ that Sam had seen several times was playing- Johan Gielin (Sam, correct my spelling!) so we were a little disconcerted, on entering the venue, to be greeted by a magic show- on ice no less! It lasted less time than it took us to locate the bar and drink the first round of 2 shots and a beer each- about five minutes then! (I was sent to the bar for each of the subsequent rounds due to my complete inability to really grasp the concept of ‘Rock, scissors, paper’ no matter how long I live in Korea where it is the basis for most decisions up to and possibly including who the next president will be) As ‘Born Slippy’ burst into life through the speakers, 1500 people knew that they were in for a good night. We would be dancing for a long time to come, some of us with cell phones in our hands to get our revenge for all the shrieking earlier.

Two beers and less than an hour later something disturbing happened to me as a burp turned out to be more solid than usual and I was left holding the results in my hands- oops! Fortunately we hadn’t eaten much that day and so it was only a little mistake (the African-Mexican restaurant that we had gone to for dinner had failed to really excite our appetites) though I guess that this, combined with all the excitement and general jumping up and down might have been the cause of the problem in the first place. Seeing my distress and not having any tissues, Sam gallantly wiped my hand on her trousers. And the dancing continued. The Koreans were definitely in the majority in the crowd that night and they were larging it with the best of them. They even loved the cheesy DJ speak (‘Come on, Seoul, let’s make some noise!!!!’) but towards the end they had largely dispersed leaving the hard-core foreigner crowd behind- all ten of us. The Korean contingent had been throwing themselves at the DJ every time he approached the edge of the stage all night (though the less said about Sam’s attempted stage invasion the better. Suffice to say that I think security came off worse in the deal) so it was really no great surprise that as he left the stage, Johan found himself escorted out by the remaining Koreans in the crowd.

By the time the Korean DJ came on we were feeling a little worse for wear and decided to leave too. We had to stop just outside the door though as people were getting autographs from the man himself. Shaking off my English reserve I threw myself into the crowd and got one too- well, everyone else was doing it! Then Sam leaned in and told a little teensy- weensy white lie- that she has flown over from Japan for this evening (being the informed young lady that she is she knew that he had had a two year residency in Japan) and he told us to wait while he got rid of the crowd.

What did he have in mind? Two more unlikely groupies it would be difficult to find but we waited. And he came back and took us to the hotel casino! I have never been in a casino before so immediately felt all James Bond and was looking around for people waiting for me to kiss their dice to bring them lucky. But it wasn’t really like that- pretty quiet and full of Japanese businessmen- there being no Korean punters allowed in the bar. We sat down at a roulette table and Johan took around a thousand euros out of his pocket and started to play. We giggled, drank beer and dared each other to touch the chips- not the coolest behaviour, I will admit.

When the euros in his pocket ran out, Johan disappeared and came back with a mixture of euros and dollars. Despite our lucky number losing time and again he still trusted us with a stack of chips each- which we promptly lost in less time than it took to read that sentence. In fact, we just lost and lost while all the Japanese businessmen around won again and again. One guy placed a million won bet and a short spin of the table later he walked away with two million. Johan ran off again and came back with traveller’s cheques as we tried, unsuccessfully, to get some more beer out of a passing hostess.

Fortunately Sam’s lie was never really in any danger of being discovered though the Dutch man was impressed with Sam’s Korean when she ordered the beer! When he disappeared the next time to get some more money (I can only assume that he had gone to his room to feel down the back of the couch for any spare change at this stage) we decided that we were too hungry to wait and pegged it outside to the nearest taxi- where the driver was less than impressed with our cries of ‘poke-um bab, juseyo’ (‘Fried rice, please!’) and just took us to the bottom of the hill before dumping us outside of the nearest convenience store. I got a pizza pocket (drunk food that I can’t believe I lived without last year in Mokpo) and we got into a cab. 50,000 won later and we were back at Sam’s house. Disconcertingly enough her flatmate was in exactly the same position that we had left him in nine hours before. Only my inability to string as much as two syllables together left me in no doubt that we had had quite a night. I collapsed onto the bed and refused to move until the next day- poor Sam slept on the floor!

The next day we had lunch at Bennigans and shopped at Walmart then I got on a bus and went home- sleeping most of the way. In the spirit of Glastonbury we had decided not to shower on the Sunday so I was glad that I was seated a long way from my student who was on the same bus. When I arrived at my house I was rather unsurprised to find that I had left the fan on when leaving the day before in my haste to get to Seoul and get dancing.

And that, I hope, is a story worth telling! As ever, send me all your news as some of you have been far more slack than me!
Lots of love
H
xxx

Bad eyes and small feet

2003-05-06T10:41:00.000+09:00

In my day we used to make our own entertainment- well, we didn’t actually which is probably why I am having such a big problem lasting without a TV. I am sure that I told you that I didn’t have a shower when I first got here and was promised that I would be moving house, no less, in a month to one where the water did actually possess enough pressure to enable me to shower. It being a Korean month it lasted six weeks and I moved. And that was something of a palaver itself. I was told to have everything in the flat downstairs (yes, I was literally moving down from the fifth floor to the second) early so they could clean for the new people. The apartment workmen came at 9.30 to move in my four pieces of furniture and they had achieved this Herculean task a mere 5 hours later. Pretty good going. It only took another two hours to put the curtain rail up. This was a long and tedious job so I had a little lie down on my bed- having been up and moving early as requested- and the cleaning lady was obviously also feeling the pressure too as she lay down next to me and we both had a little nap.

By the time that they finally left- at 4 o’clock- I just wanted to unpack. So I did that without giving too much thought to the whole TV situation. My director had told me that the TV wouldn’t be connected until the afternoon which seemed reasonable enough. Of course, it wasn’t. The next afternoon was Sunday so no chance of anything being done then. So I was promised Monday, then Tuesday and finally they came clean and said that they were too busy to do it and so they couldn’t give me a day. And here I am ten days later no closer what so ever to being able to flick through the channels complaining that nothing is on. And no idea when I will be. By now I am just so angry that I have covered my TV up in an effort to try and forget that such a thing even exists. It is not working though.

But the shower works which is a relief- especially after the weekend that I have just had.
I met my mate at 10 on Friday night and warned him that I had pencilled in ‘getting drunk’ for that evening. But even I hadn’t anticipated that four bars, two restaurants and one nori bang later we would be sitting outside a convenience store supping on a beer and watching the kids go to school. I made it home at around 8.30. It was a good night though it took me a very long time to get my head off the pillow the next day. When I did finally make it out of bed I went downtown to meet up with two mates- one of whom was my hapless companion from the night before looking as blurry eyed as me. We went to the cinema to soothe our battered souls and then went to the pub- for a coke! After the third drink where each one elicited the comment ‘one more and we will go’ we stopped lying to ourselves and started relaxing.

The most popular foreigner bar in Gangneung is Bumpin and the owner, Mr Lee, is the first genuine hippy that I have met here in Korea. And he was kicking it up a notch or two all night- starting with giving everyone in the bar a free shot of whiskey, following this up with a free shot of tequila. Yes, things got silly. There was dancing, there was singing, there was tops being taken off (only the boys though and Mr Lee started it) there was sentimental talk and the only thing that stopped us dancing on the bar is the fact that the ceiling is too low in Bumpin. Mr Lee was having himself a grand old party and so kept the bar open two hours longer than usual. We left shortly after 5 and went to a mate’s house where we all crashed for the night.

The next day was spent sleeping and watching TV- terrible movies! One was so bad that it made me GLAD that I don’t have a TV. This weekend being a long weekend (Monday was a National holiday for Children’s Day) we didn’t want to waste it and so had made plans to go to the hot springs in a nearby National Park. When Eric came round to get Alex he was surprised to find all three of us there though it did become obvious to him straightaway that none of us would be going anywhere. We politely declined his offer of some beer and waved him off.

Monday we went to the beach. I was pleased to discover that I can get a direct bus from here to Gwangju near Mokpo- the things you find out at the beach. It was a quiet Monday and Tuesday will be exactly quiet, I am sure. But Wednesday is our usual drinking night and Thursday is another holiday for Buddha’s Birthday (I am still laughing at Barry’s suggestion last year that we throw a surprise party for Buddha!) so I am not ruling out the possibility of getting drunk then.

This has been my first weekend on the batter in Gangneung (not the first one since I got back to Korea, mind, but the others have been in Seoul) so I really feel that this is home now. Which is good since I am at the start of my eighth weekend already- 44 more to go!

Last week I bought some goldfish so I would have something to watch while waiting for the man to fix my TV. And I did indeed spend quite some time watching them last week. But when I came home on Saturday after my Friday night out one was floating. I scooped him out of the tank and then something just took over me and I threw him out of the window into the flowerbed below. I think that I had some drunken thought of recycling him into cat food or something. And Monday the other one was flagging and by the end of the day he was a goner too. They certainly didn’t have the staying power of my ones down south last year which were still going strong last thing that I heard. I also went to the optician on Saturday which wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be as most of it is done by machine and the only bit that I had to read off the wall were numbers. But I was a little concerned at the optician’s lack of thought- I told him how bad my eyes were before the test and he got me to take out my contact lenses and then asked me to fill in a form which I couldn’t even see! My right eye had got worse (though it could have been the hangover I guess). Then I went and bought some shoes only to discover that my feet have gone down two sizes since last year. All very odd! And a little disturbing- let that be a warning to all of you out there that if you drink too much lemon soju on a Friday night you might well wake up on Saturday with crappy eyes and small feet!

And that ends the lesson today.
Take care
Love
H

Eh?

2003-04-25T10:57:00.000+09:00

I had forgotten how wet spring in Korea can be. As I lay in bed this morning listening to the cars splash through the huge puddles forming on the road outside and the water coming off the roof in sheets I found myself regretting two thing- first that when I had thought to buy an umbrella the other day I plumped for the photo frame instead and second, that I didn’t buy the milk I need for my breakfast last night when it was sinfully dry. I don’t want to spend too long talking about the weather (well, I do but I am afraid that you will stop reading if I do) but it seems that we have a week of spring weather- where we all dust off our shorts and start making plans to go sandal shopping- followed by a week of winter weather- which I seem to be the only person to admit to since everyone else has dry cleaned their winter jackets and put them away for next year and I only have the one jacket so seem to spend half of my week too hot and the other too cold.

Mind you, I did try and buy a jacket the other day but the shop assistants up in Gangneung just seem to ignore foreigners that walk into their shops. Which does make a change from the Mokpo attitude of a great crowd of them swarming over to you in alarm in case you should try and fit your oversized body into any of their delicate clothes. They used to go as far as snatching the clothes out of my hands if they saw me even hold them up against myself for a size comparison. Mind you there was one lady who was very helpful and used to round up everything in the shop in my size whenever I went there- I started going there a lot but if she wasn’t there I got the usual service. The shop that she worked in is a chain so I went into the branch up here but she obviously hadn’t phoned ahead to warn them about me and I got a blank ‘no sizee’ refusal instead. Shame. When I finally saw a jacket that I liked in a window I went into the shop and found that they had one in my size. I held it up and mimed trying it on to the vast amusement of the shop girls who then took it out of my hand and put it back on the rack. When I seemed more insistent they went through the rack looking for my size ignoring me pointing at the original jacket and saying my size in Korean. They seemed about to deny me my trying on rights so I just snatched it off the rack and took my other jacket off. It fitted and to their amazement (and mine) I bought it- I think rather to avoid having to go through this again in another shop. So I am now the proud owner of a white eighties style jacket which I am a little too embarrassed to wear. But I am sure that it will come out of the wardrobe when it stops raining.

Miscommunication and total failure at communication are part of everyday life here for us foreigners. It can work to our advantage when we get to sit in bars without ordering side dishes because they don’t know enough English to tell us that we have to for example. And on the midnight train to Seoul last year when the guard came to tell us to be quiet and we all proudly showed him our train tickets- an innocent mistake actually. Or when the guy came to read the electricity meter at Barry’s house and told us to turn the TV off and was totally taken aback when we turned it up instead. But at times it can be totally mystifying and life takes on a slightly surreal aspect. The imagination often fills in the gaps left by lack of understanding. But nothing has had me as flummoxed as the commercial that I saw last night for a pair of short for men. Please bear in mind that I am by no means an expert on the male undercarriage and maybe there is an obvious need for the product shown.

The ad started with several Korean men involved in various activities while wearing the shorts- one was lifting weights, another was casually reclined reading a magazine. Then the camera zoomed in on the crotch of one of the fellas (this being Korea he was wearing a pair of pink shorts with no slur on his sexuality whatsoever). I think that this was an honest mistake and that the cameraman just hadn’t realised quite what he was seeing through the lens. But then the graphics hit in and showed a 3D model of the shorts revealing the secret inside- a kind of ball bra which went from the back of the shorts to the front. And there was more- a reinforced area at the front was covered in little rubber massage nobbles. In the middle of this crotch cushion was a strip of elastic going from left to right- I assumed that something gets tucked in there nice and safe to minimise the risk of ‘slippage’ while either lifting weights or reading a magazine. So far so good, though rather uncomfortable looking. But then for the final detail- on a piece of string that dangled on the inside of the front of the shorts was a thick rubber band and some beads. The presenter-geezer kept putting it over his first two fingers and stretching it between the two. In fact, in the end I realised that this was the main selling feature of the item. My mind was well and truly boggled. If you are as confused as I am there then the product is called ‘Worldian’ and they even come with a handy cell phone pocket on the left leg.

Mind you, even when I do understand stuff it doesn’t stop being funny. I think that most of you know of my love of Conglish- the strange mixture of English and Korean that seems to end up on greetings cards, pencils cases and signposts over here. Many of you have seen my Christmas card collection which gave me so much joy last year- if you didn’t and you want to let me know because I have then scanned in and on the web somewhere. Some of the problems can be a simple mistake like using a Korean- American English dictionary to translate writing about the rest of the world- hence me discovering when reading the Korea Air magazine on the way to Japan last week that The Houses of Parliament back in London actually contain a Senate and House of Representatives- news to me and I am sure to most of the politicians in the UK. My favourite will always be the sign inviting us to ‘try our mouse-watering burgers and take a lot of benefit along with it’, made all the more delightful because it was in a branch of Burger King. There is a sign on a wall near me here which talks of ‘the lovely police’ and I not sure if this means that they are cuddly little plods or if they are cracking down hard on crimes of loveliness.

Needless to say this part of what makes my time over here so fun. Anyway, I have to go now, there are some raindrops running down the window which look particularly interesting.

Foreigner spotting with Bean Curd Bels

2003-03-30T11:17:00.000+09:00

Two weeks down and fifty to go until the end of this contract. And what have I done since last I wrote to you. Well, my mission for the end of my second week was to find and befriend foreigners in this city. The first problem was knowing where to look. Based on previous knowledge of where foreigners gathered while I was in Mokpo I began to seek them out in their natural environments- starting with Emart. Emart is a chain store in Korea, well known to foreigners for its splendid stock of one variety of cheddar which puts it firmly at the top of the cheddar retailers in Korea, if not in the whole of Asia.

On the way to my new place two weeks previously I had seen the bright yellow lights of Emart nestled behind a sea of darkness. On closer inspection (that is to say in daylight) the sea of darkness proved to be fields that stood between me and my cheese. I questioned the Korean teachers at my school about Emart and they told me such tales of how difficult it would be to get there and back that I didn’t even dare attempt the journey for a few days. They stopped just short of actually telling me about the vultures that would be picking my bones clean if I should even attempt such a foolhardy mission, but only just. Then I got brave- or fed up with being stuck cheeseless in my little corner of the city- and got in a taxi and went there. And back with no foreigners in sight. Or mortal dangers.

My next ploy was to go to the beach which I did at the end of my first week here. And sure enough I saw one. But as I bounded over full of enthusiasm at the prospect of a conversation, where I could use actual words instead of much hand gesturing, I must have frightened him as he just said hi and then bolted for the woods.

Hum, not going well so far. And onto downtown. I went straight to the usual reliable haunt of McDonalds but a glance through the window revealed no-one but Kims and Lees. Refusing to be down hearted so early in the search I carried onto the English bookshop but nothing. As I plodded back to the main road to get a taxi home I saw one in the distance- a blonde girl. Learning from my previous mistakes I decided to play this one a touch more casually. So casually in fact that as I reached the girl, she walked straight past without any acknowledgment that she had even seen me. Maybe I had become so nonchalant as to actually render myself invisible to the naked eye- but I hoped not as this would make teaching a little tricky.

So bitter at this encounter I stuck to my own corner of town until the weekend. Well, that is not strictly true. I went to the beach nearly every morning last week because it was so nice and such a great way to start the day. I met an Indian guy who took the inevitable photo of me and his son and left, we barely exchanged greetings before it was all over, and this was still my longest conversation with a foreigner face to face in nearly two weeks. And then one morning, on the way to the beach, I saw an older guy waiting for a taxi but he had successfully hailed one and driven away before I reached him. Though I did manage to convince myself that he had got in a taxi simply because he had seen me but that it had been his plan all along.

Filled with determination I decided not to worry about it until the weekend. Saturday morning saw me walking into town which took about an hour (although, admittedly a substantial portion of this hour was spent sticking my visa card into every ATM I saw on the way in hope that one would take pity and actually give me money rather than a slip of paper covered in Korea but, alas, it was not to be that day). On arrival downtown I thought that I would explore the shops but instead I made it as far as McDonalds before spotting some foreigners. I must have played this one just right because they spoke to me and even engaged me in conversation. Within minutes they were drawing me a map so that I could meet the ‘gang’ later that night. Moments after that they decided that I didn’t seem so bad and I was invited to the movies. So, instead of ‘eye-shopping’ downtown I went for ice-cream, onto the movies, back to one of the guys’ houses, onto dinner, back to the house and then onto the first bar where I met the others. Then the second bar.

Things were getting decidedly messy for those around me but since my miscommunication with the ATMs I had more slips of indecipherable paper in my pocket than actual money so I was forced to tighten the reins a little on my drinking. I must have turned into something of a good luck charm for those that had found me first because when they left the bar they took me with them. And finally, 14 hours after arriving in downtown, I caught a cab home.

But the fun didn’t end there because I had exchanged phone numbers with a couple of people from the night before and so greeted my first visitor on Sunday. And she had very kindly brought me ‘food aid’ and also toilet paper (yes, had a memory of talking about toilet paper for quite some time the night before. All about how it is the ideal Korean housewarming gift, how I had won 24 last year in an arm wrestling competition and the fact that you have to buy 2 dozen at a time but then have nowhere to store them). We went for coffee at the beach and discovered that the coffee shop that I had had my eye on since I first saw it is universally agreed to have the best coffee in town- or so the foreigners sitting in there drinking it told us when we arrived.

So everything seems to be falling into place a bit for me now which is good. I have only been here just over a fortnight and I have made friends already which is great. I like the area that I am living in too- at first I was worried that it was a little isolated but since I now have contact with the rest of the city I enjoy it. But I was slightly perturbed when I found my little piece of Korea on the map to discover that its official tourist map title is ‘Chodang Bean Curd Village’. And the bus stop up the road from my house gave me even more detail when it announced itself to be in Chodang UNCURDLED Bean Curd Village. I am not sure whether it is a good or bad thing to be living in a bean curd village as it is not something that I have experienced before. But it seems to warrant a mention on the tourist map but I was still surprised to discover that none of the other foreigners in town had realised their proximity to a bean curd village. They must have just been overawed by the gramophone museum down the road.

So I have beaches, mountains, lakes and now friends, I am seriously considering getting a bike with my next pay cheque. Though it has been a very long time since I last rode one, I have a plan. They hire them out down by the lake and I figure that if I hire one and manage to ride it all the way around the lake without falling in then I will buy one! And I have found out that the cycle shop sells adult bike size training wheels just in case.

Over all, everything is working out nicely at the moment. I will be sure to keep you posted though.
Take care,
Love
Helen
xxx

2003-03-25T11:14:00.000+09:00

Hello each and all,

Well, what is she up to this time? I am back in Korea and in a new city called Kangnung or Gangnung or Gangneung or Kangneung depending on how you feel that day and which street sign you are looking at. The confusing spelling is an indication that the Korean spelling contains a few letters which are difficult to translate and also difficult for the average young(ish) British lass to say- hence me having to scribble the name down in Korean every time I want to buy a bus ticket there and a complete inability to tell Korean people where I live- believe me, I tried several times today with no luck whatsoever! Not that I have been going around telling people where I live, of course, but I popped my head out of the safety of my apartment today and put myself on show for people to talk to and sigh about how handsome Beckham is with (I did kind of think that this would have worn off a bit after so long but nine times out of ten people still associate England with Beckham which I guess is better than us always associating Korea with canine cuisine. As a point of interest, the tenth person refers to the war in Iraq when hearing where I am from so there you go, there have been some changes since last year after all.).

But back to the beginning. I arrived back in Korea last weekend with only a short delay in Frankfurt due to the US military taking over half of the airport. The fact that this only led to an hour long delay altogether across both of my flights says something about German efficiency compared with the new safety procedure at Stansted (of taking your jacket off to have it x-rayed) leading to three hour long queues to get through to the departure lounge a month ago, I am sure. The flight was OK- it felt kind of comforting to be surrounded by so many Korean people after three months away- that is until the guy in the seat across the aisle from me (I took my usual position next to the window for the most amazing views across London on the way out of Heathrow) got out a Game boy. A game boy keying in fact, good for him to bring something to occupy himself I guess. That is until I realised that he had no intention whatsoever of turning off the music ever at all! Knowing that this could lead to almost permanent damage where I would find myself humming the Tetris tune for the next twelve months at least, I was very un-English and asked him to be quiet. He did. Right up until the point where I put my headphones on then he put the music back on. Determined not to listen to the music I turned up the volume and was left untouched by his evil music.

Until the lights had been turned off after the second movie and people were settling down to sleep and across the sound of fifty people snoring I could once more hear the electronic horror. This time I think that he realised I was serious and not just making polite conversation when I spoke to him- eight hours on a long haul flight with little leg room will certainly give me that mad lady you don’t want to mess with look!

Arriving at Incheon only one hour late would normally be classed as something of a triumph except that this day I had arranged to meet friends who would be leaving the meeting point about half an hour after I had arrived at the airport. But a few phone calls later and everything was sorted. I felt a sense of mild irritation at trying to get the correct bus to the bus terminal and knew that I was back in Korea- oh joy! A businessman helped me with my cases and off we went into Seoul. Weirdly enough, as I looked out of the window of the bus onto the landscape which had been so fascinating and foreign for me only fifteen months before when I had seen it for the first time, I felt a feeling of normality return which I had not felt since leaving Korea before Christmas. Maybe I have become institutionalised but I felt that I understood how Korea worked more than I did London. But this probably much more to do with the fact that I only understand, and expect to understand, about a hundredth of what goes on in Korea and feel that I should know what is going on in my home country. But somebody had changed all the Tube lines and added new stations and built loads of new buildings in London just to confuse me and it worked so well that I came back to Korea.

But back to the bus into Seoul. I made it to the terminal and my friends were there- one who was waiting for me, and had been as excited at the prospect of seeing me as I had been about being reunited with her, and one who had no idea that I was coming back that weekend. Yes, I felt like a princess again to be back with the people who had come to Seoul to see me off only three months before. We caught a taxi to Itaewon (where we had all spent my last weekend too) and found a motel for the night and went out for a walk (after a MUCH needed shower- I managed to have nearly the whole shower without breaking into the Tetris tune too- result!). Walking around Itaewon was weird and really gave me a feeling of never having been away at all- except that I was wearing different shoes, the only proof that I had to have left the country as girls here have feet roughly half the size of mine so there is no chance of getting shoes here.

Things got even weirder as we started bumping into people that I knew- inevitable really as they were all up for Paddy’s weekend which was also the reason that I chose to come back the weekend that I did but still strange.

A trip back to the motel and a short (ha ha!) nap and three bottles of lemon soju later (which my friends had kindly brought with them from Naju, all of us still bearing the scars of the fruitless search for the lemon stuff in Seoul back in December) and I was ready to face the world. We seemed to know people in every bar and it was great to meet up with the people from Mokpo again- some of whom I had never met in the first place such as my replacement (and I managed to resist the urge to spend the entire night asking how my little ones were- I contented myself with asking about a key few instead. And I was so proud to hear that one of our ‘babies’ from last year has now progressed to looking up rude words in the dictionary- the sweet feeling of success as a teacher!) We danced and drank and drank and danced until the wee small hours- around 7- and off to the food stalls that I have so missed for an egg toastie, truly nothing soaks up the soju as well as an egg toastie. And finally sleep. And sleep. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

And woke up in a panic the next day at roughly the time that I should have been on the bus to Kangung (or however it was spelt that day) but not so much of a panic that I wanted to lift my head off the pillow too fast. We missed the Paddy’s parade which is probably no bad thing as I was feeling the love so much from the night before that I probably would have thought that it had been organised in my honour anyway. But I was gratified to see many notices announcing the ‘St Patric’s (sic) Day Parade’ and with that Konglish my return to Korea was complete. The only thing left to do now was make it to my new home and meet the new little monsters.

The bus ride was OK- I slept a lot. The highway between Seoul and Gangnung basically seemed to just be a series of tunnels through mountain after mountain, somewhat robbing the passengers of the view but speeding up the journey by about eight hours. What little I did see of the countryside seemed to still be covered in snow. We reached the rest stop about half an hour before the conclusion of our journey- probably the first place flat enough to build one- and thirty minutes after that we cruised into the city where I was greeted and taken to my apartment and left. I only really took in the fact that I had a DOUBLE bed before I did the thing that I had been dying to do for the last three months- oh bliss, oh joy- I UNPACKED MY BAG!

The jetlag very kindly kept me awake between 3am and 7am and I was still fairly wrecked when I got up the next day. I had been warned that there was a problem with the water pressure up here on the heady heights of the fifth floor which is eventually going to lead to me moving down a few floors. But I had no idea that this problem was such that there isn’t enough pressure to get the water from the taps and all the way up the two feet of shower hose and back down onto my head. I gave in, filled the sink and washed out of that instead- as I will have to do every day for the next month. Fortunately, Korean bathrooms are designed to ensure that you don’t have to be careful about splashing water and if you could see the room after one of these bush baths you would believe that not only had the water been coming out of the showerhead but that I also taken time out to wash the walls and floor and ceiling while in there. It is not a big deal in a house where I have a DOUBLE BED! And I had even been clever enough to bring bed clothes with me this time (if you remember, Korean beds have duvets and mattresses but no covers which is just not comfortable or practical for us poor foreigners) and it was a great joy to get into bed the night before and snuggle down into the clean bed clothes and just roll over and over and sleep diagonally and other such things which I had been unable to do either in a single bed, on various settees or even air beds which had been my home for the last three months.

The week at school was also odd mostly because I kept expecting my students from last year to walk in at any point. I didn’t recognise or know these kids and I wanted MY little monsters back! But I have got a bit more used to them now and resist the urge to push them out of the classroom and wait for Cathy or Katy from Mokpo to show up. I am sure that they will grow on me like the mould in my old house last year. The school is pretty small with only three English teachers and only one foreigner (guess who!) but that does mean that it is quieter than my last place. I have now been here for a whole week and I only saw another foreigner for the first time today at the beach (more on that later) and we just exchanged hellos and left it at that.

And since today is a Saturday I went out to explore the area a bit and find the beach. Which I did pretty easily since it is less that 3km away and lovely and long and sandy. Somebody took my photo with his mobile phone which is a first for me and he showed it to me and I couldn’t help but notice that everything on his phone was in English whereas mine is all in Korean- doesn’t make sense to me! The beach is at Gyeongpo, a small town seemingly populated almost entirely by squid drying on washing lines and people selling film so that people can spend the day taking photos of their friends in front of various bits of the ocean. Just about 200 metres away from the beach is a lake which is also very nice. I had Korean food and a guy selling oranges out of the back of a truck gave me an orange and reminded me of what I love about living in Korea. That said, things are different here, people don’t stare at me and I miss it. I have done everything that I can do to show them that I am foreign, general poncing around being blonde for starters, coupled with wearing high heels so that I tower over most of the apartment blocks let alone people but it just doesn’t seem to work. What is their problem? Don’t they realise that I am different and therefore to be stared at continually? Like back home in Mokpo? In fact, the only person that wanted to ‘speak Englishee’ with me all day was from Seoul. It will take a bit of getting used to.

It is also strange to be in the same country as so many of my friends but still so far away from them. I think that it will take over seven hours to get down to Mokpo from here. But it has been nice to speak to them nearly every night on the phone. And I do love my new computer! Even though it isn’t connected to the internet yet. I went to a PC shop downtown to buy a Korean adaptor for it as the battery was fast running out. At first the guy took one look at my adaptor and said no. Then I asked him where and he made a few phone calls, went to anther shop down the street and eventually came back and took one out of a box by the door and sold it to me for about one pound fifty. And I was reminded at the lengths that some people will go to even if they don’t understand you and left the shop with a lovely warm glow.

I might as well come out and warn you now that you will be getting long emails for the next year now. Once my house is on-line there really will be no stopping me- plus the fact that I haven’t met any other foreigners really yet will just add to my need to communicate. But I will leave you now- assuming that you have made it this far. I hope that you appreciate the fact that I have spell checked this mail- having looked at some of the ones from last year I was shocked that I would send out that amount of curiously spelt words while having the gall to laugh at Korean spellings! But I will admit to turning off the grammar checker as it drives me nuts- what do I know about grammar? I am only an English teacher.

!
Take care and more news as and when it happens,
Love your faraway friend
Helen
Xxx

The End... or is it? (post from England)

2003-01-02T17:30:00.000+09:00

I am officially old--I bought a pair of jeans from Marks and Spencer yesterday and just caught myself admiring them. I have stolen my sister's boots to go into London for the day as it snowed last night and the evidence is still on the ground. Just a couple of weeks late for a white Christmas. I have been home for two weeks now and at times it still feels weird--mainly when I have to pay for something and have to choke back a "HOW MUCH???!!!??? ARE YOU HAVING ME ON???" The other thing is that I keep wanting to speak Korean to people which is really odd as I don't even know that much Korean. I only really learned how to order beer, food, ask the price of something, and ask the way to the toilet. Therefore whenever I am in any of those situations I want to revert to my Korean. Which means that whenever I find myself on the verge of a "maekju juseyo," I have to do a quick swerve to "two pints of Stella please, mate" instead. But I have now managed to stop bowing to shop assistants which is a relief.

It is weird to think that it is only two weeks ago that I was violently ripped from the bosom of my Korea family or, rather, willingly walked through the departure gates on my way to Christmas with my family in England. I had had a fantastic weekend in Seoul with around 12 people coming all the way from South West Korea to party up the last weekend before Christmas. Rebecca even stayed with me until I went through the automatic doors through to the departure gates and waved to me every time they opened until I made it through to immigration. So I have to admit that I felt the love that weekend--despite severe sleep deprivation and hangovers all round. In fact, I think that I was drunk every weekend for my last nine weeks or so in Korea--including two goodbye weekends in Seoul and several nights in Naju.

My last day at work was a little harrowing though as I had to say goodbye to my little ones. It was really tough to say goodbye as I was holding back the tears time and again over the course of the day as the kids threw me parties and handed me goodbye notes:

"Hi Teacher, It is Judy. I am sad because Helen go England. One's adieu to Helen. love Judy."
"Dear Teacher. I love you. Love Juliet."
"Hi Teacher, it is Julia. Good Bay. Love Julie."

One girl gave me four photos of herself in a frame and a lovely card with her email address, homepage address, and phone number with strict instructions to ring her when I got back to England. I think that I will email her instead. By the time that the teachers all gathered in the teacher's room to say goodbye, I had had enough of pretending and let the tears roll down my face freely which I think unnerved most of the teachers as many of them have never even spoken to me. My final class was held in the chicken shop below the hagwon with beer and soju with my adult class then onto a Korean barbecue for Rebecca's birthday. I have to admit that pretty much the most stressful part of the whole weekend was the 3am jaunt with Margo to bring my goldfish and bags to Rebecca's house--the goldfish to stay, and the bags so that the boys could carry them to the bus station for me--it made sense at 3am let me tell you! I stayed up until the wee small hours on Friday night and after 90 minutes sleep it was time to leave my little one room and head to Seoul.

Sleep deprivation made us very talkative and we only shut up when asked to do so by a Buddhist monk a couple of hours into the journey. Bleary-eyed we arrived in Seoul and caught cabs to Insadong where I had stayed the week before and where there is excellent markets full of stuff which I had earmarked as potential purchases after receiving my final pay check. We ate at the Outback Steakhouse, true to form, and then went back to the motel so that poor little Helen could have a sleep before hitting the bars. It was when we were trying to catch a cab to Itaewon that we discovered that Seoul has three rush hours--one in the morning, one in the evening and one between 1-4am! I was almost in tears when I thought that I was going to spend my last Saturday night in Seoul standing by the roadside watching empty cabs rush by. Fortunately, a friendly policeman hailed two cabs for us and we got to the pub with 20 minutes to kill before closing. Needless to say we managed to fit around three pitchers in during that time. Then it was off to Hollywood Night Club (opposite the UN disco) which was great fun and we danced like people who had never heard Western music before. Time for a quick toastie before heading back to the motel and chatting until 9am. The wonderful people at the motel didn't throw us out in the morning so we had a lovely late start.

Throughout the day people started to drift off home in dribs and drabs until it was just me and Rebecca left, which was when I discovered the reason that I don't live in Seoul. Now, I had been warned that there was no soju to speak of at the airport so I thought that I would be clever and stock up before that. And then it happened. We realised that THERE IS NO LEMON SOJU IN SEOUL outside of the kettle bars. After spending much of the last six months working out how many bottles I could bring back with me, I got onto the plane the next day totally unaccompanied by the reassuring chink of soju bottles. Had I not cried all the tears that I had when saying my goodbyes then I would have been bawling like a baby on the plane because of this!

Needless to say, this has some effect on my decision of what to do next so you might well see me in a nori-bang somewhere near you soon!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Two weeks left- the panic sets in....

2002-12-14T17:29:00.000+09:00

I have seen other people go through this and I am certainly not a stranger to it myself. However I was waiting to see how it would affect me in Korea. I am of course talking about the panic that you get just before leaving a country that you have spent a great deal of time in. The panic generally consists of the belief that you haven't seen enough of the country and that everyone else has seen the best bit- the bit that you didn't even know existed until you got home and people asked you how you liked it. A symptom of the panic is the feeling that you must go out and see EVERYTHING and the rush to try and see it all in one day.

When I was in Oz it was easy to spot the English and the Irish who were about to leave the country. They were the ones that had spent an entire year in the bar and were now trying to get a year's worth of suntan in one day. Qantas must think that everyone from Europe is just allergic to the plane home. I had laughed at these lobster people many times myself until I fell victim to it. My last day in Sydney (back in December 1999) and I had the choice of going to the movies and going to the beach, my last chance to get sand into all those places that I didn't know it was possible to get sand into. Inevitably the beach won the day and I set off to catch the ferry to Manly. But there was a further complication in that my stocks of suntan lotion had dried up a week previously and I had precious little money left to buy any. And, really, what was the point when I was heading back to the UK where factor 35 was still living in the realms of unicorns- some people had said that they had seen it but most of the population refused to believe them(!)

Despite slinking along the walls to get to the ferry terminal, only shopping on the shady side of the street and sitting under palm trees on the beach, I managed to attain the shade of red which would have guaranteed me pride of place in a salad had I been a tomato. you know, the kind of suntan that makes complete strangers wince in sympathy when they see you. Fortunately it had calmed down considerably after my 35 hour journey home but the stopover in Bali was a dicey time!

Well, the last thing that I am going to get in Korea in December is sunburn (I last did that in September so it is firmly ticked off my To Do list) but what should I do in my last week and a half? I have given into the temptation to start packing and have two boxes waiting to go to the post office (yes, Trish, only two!!) So far I have resisted the urge to put things in my bag though it is a struggle that daily nearly sends me into a backpack stuffing frenzy. I have seen a lot of the country but most of my travels seemed to lead me to a bar via the nearest World Cup stadium over the summer. And after intensive investigation I am lead to conclude that most Korean temples look the same and it is nearly impossible for an amateur to tell a new one from an old one.

But I still worry that I am missing out!

And it is this fear of missing out that is the main cause of the panic. The bit that has me scouring the pages of my Lonely Planet looking for cultural gems which I might have missed in the last 11 and a half months. When I went to South Africa last year I had an amazing time and wouldn't change a single moment of it... but.... I can still sense the sympathy when I tell people that no, I didn't make it to Cape Town. They then adopt a 'you may well have seen lions devouring antelope amid the sand dunes of the Kalahari Desert but what is that compared to a city with a hoofing great mountain in it' look which so inflames my curiosity that I nearly run to the airport to jump on the first plane heading to Africa just to see it for myself.

So I was determined not to spend this weekend the same way that I have spent countless others since I got here- that is to say anticipating being drunk, being drunk and recovering from being drunk- or Friday, Saturday and Sunday to the lay person! I had vaguely murmured something about going to the beach or the National Park nearby even if it meant heading into the wilderness on my own.

Then I realised, at the risk of appearing soppy that the one thing that I didn’t want to miss out on in my last few weeks was the company of my friends. So I am going out drinking this weekend proud that there is still soju that I have never seen. Now that is a real sense of adventure!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Internet and other ramblings..

2002-12-05T17:28:00.000+09:00

Guess that I should make the most of the PC bangs while I am still in Korea. It is ridiculously cheap here- around 50p an hour. There was an item on the Internet in South Korea on BBC world the other day. It said that over 50% of the South Korean population has access to the internet making it one of the most computer literate countries about. But it does have its downside. There are internet addiction support groups out there for those that can't tear themselves away from Starcraft or Crazy Arcade in their free time. There are also many professional game players.

Recently a man collapsed and died after playing computer games nearly non-stop for 86 hours in Gwangju (a city near Mokpo). Gaming addiction also has a knock-on effect on real life with more than one expert claiming that the digital violence is increasingly finding its way into every day life. All I know is that the PC bang that I am in is alive with the sound of people shooting the crap out of each other with laser guns and the only sound of typing is coming from my keyboard.
I guess that I am an internet addict in a different way. I check my hotmail account five days out of seven and sometimes several times a day. I am the kind of girl that likes the sound of her own typing almost as much as she enjoys the sound of her own voice. I am a communications addict really and this is much cheaper than the telephone with a much wider audience. After all the years of laughing at yuppies with mobile phones I have now owned four in the last three years (one got stolen, I gave one away because it was so ugly, one if sitting in my mother's kitchen drawer at home and the last one is the cute little white one in my pocket right now). And I still run home to check the answer machine and I don't even have one anymore! And I run to work in the mornings to see if I have any real mail. I am sure that I couldn't have done this travelling lark in the dark ages of five years ago when internet connection was still a rare thing in a city and the cafes where invariably still filled with anoraks.

The internet has made it much easier to stay in touch with passing acquaintances and friends and family alike. Which is great and I love the fact that I have friends in so many different countries.

But enough of this waffling, a little Starcraft won't hurt surely.............
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Four Mondays to go...

2002-11-28T17:27:00.000+09:00

Well i guess that the first thing that I should do is apologise for being such a slackarse at writing recently. I just haven't got into the habit of going to the PC bang in my new neighbourhood yet. I did try yesterday with the full intentions of fulfilling all of my emailing obligations but the connection was so mind meltingly slow that by the time I had logged into my hotmail account my mind was a soggy mess. The PC at work is totally buggered too. Anyway, excuses over and onto the news.

Can you believe that I only have four Mondays left in Korea? I find it hard to get my head around that one myself. So hard in fact that I have chosen to hide my head in the soju vat rather than face it. To that end I have been very busy at weekends of late. This weekend just gone is a prime example of what has become increasingly typical behaviour (though some would argue that I have always been like this).

Friday night was spent sitting in my house (house, room- it is all the same to me here) counting down the hours until Saturday morning when my weekend would really begin. Saturday saw me up early and standing at Mokpo Bus Terminal at 11am- very early by English teacher standards let me tell you! Once my friend, Rebecca, had arrived we got on the bus to Gwangju (the big city about a 90 minute bus journey from the 'po) for (another) shopping trip. Four hours later we were on our way to Naju with the addition of two duffel coats, two friends and two bellies stuffed full of Burger King Whoppers. When I arrived in Korea last winter I was very taken with the duffel coats here and their myriad colours in particular and I determined that, come the next winter, I was buying me one of them coats. And I have been putting off the purchase and debating the expenditure ever since it got cold enough to wear mittens in the classroom. though I don't have a lot of money this month what with all the birthdays, saving and SOJU I managed to chase in all my loose change the other day to the tune of around 40 quid (and nearly pulled my arm out of the socket carrying it to the bank- think about 70,000 won in 100 won coins- that's a lot of coins).

I still wasn't convinced that I would be buying a jacket on this particular weekend but an hour after Rebecca had bought a fine red duffel coat it was possible to find me in Gwangju sporting a lovely green number and demanding to know if I looked like Paddington Bear. I think that I was swayed when the shop assistant did the toggles up for me and I was reminded of parental influences and so felt safe and warm. It is a lovely jacket and ever since I bought it, around 72 hours ago now, I have left the house an unusual amount of times just so that I can wear it. Given that I can't get my under floor heating to work I guess that I could have just worn it around the house but then complete stranger wouldn't get the chance to admire my Paddingtoness!

Anyway, back to the bus to Naju (where it was too hot to wear my new coat and so I had to console myself with just stroking it and asking my friends to tell me how beautiful it was- what is it about duffel coats that bring out the kid in us? Not helped byt the fact that I was also wearing mittens) on the way to a friend's birthday party. Rebecca had thoughtfully brought along a bag of tangerines for the journey. Tangerines have become one of my favourite things about winter in Korea. They come from the subtropical island of Jeju- about a five hour ferry ride from Mokpo on a good day and a six and a half hour ride from hell on a bad one. their abundance is rivalled only by their cost as one of their chief virtues. No wonder they hold a tangerine festival on Jeju each year (according to tourist literature that it is and entirely unwitnessed by me).

On arrival in Naju we went straight to the Birthday Girl's house and then onto the party. Things went fairly fast and soon me and Rebecca were donning our new coats and heading back out to buy more alcohol. Strangely enough I seem to remember that we came back with 12 bottles of soju, 4 of beer, 2 of lemonade, five plastic smiley candy-filled poos and one large broom a la Harry Potter. Things were starting to get dilly and so the arrival of two large creamy birthday cakes was bound to cause a stir. But it didn't take long to wash the cream off all of our faces and out of our hair and off the floor and walls and then the cream cake mayhem became another thing to file under 'Things to do with food after 20 bottles of soju and some tequila'. Sparks' 'Austin Powers speaking Korean' impressions were something that could only really be appreciated by people who have lived here but will nonetheless remain engraved on my heart as one of the funniest things I have ever seen.

after the en-masse de-creaming and me writing my name on the boys' fridge with their Korean fridge magnets for about the fiftieth time that night it was time to head onto the nori-bang. We had already sung more than one rousing chorus of 'Can't take my eyes offa you' before we realised that the chorus was pretty much all we knew. On consideration what we really needed was a TV screen with the words bouncing across it to help us out. And if some of those words could be in Konglish then mores the better.

We weren't disappointed and only finished up long after everyone's throats had given way and my suggestion of singing 'The Lonely Goatherd' had been vetoed for the sixth time. But the chaos was far from over as I realised that I had left my bag on the opposite side of town from where I was to be sleeping that night. New duffel coat or not this was serious business and a mistake that I had plenty of time to regret as everyone traipsed around town with me. By the time we got everything under one roof it was getting dangerously close to sunrise and therefore sleeping was no problem at all.

Sunday was one of my favourite kinds of days were I laze around feeling mildly guilty as other people cook my breakfast. The whole Naju crowd saw us off at the bus station and kept telling me that I should really just come back to Korea in the New Year. And given what a great weekend I had just had I have to admit that I am sorely tempted!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Countdown- Nine weeks to go..

2002-10-24T17:26:00.000+09:00

It is cold today. Really quite cold indeed. The last week that my mum was here a couple of weeks ago it was getting colder in the evenings but it heated up again the following week. Last week was really tricky weather- that it to say that it was lovely and warm when I was heading to work and cold on the way out- a bugger to dress for all in all. But I was still wearing my sandals. But on Monday I had to dig out a pair of runners- 'proper shoes' - and socks just to stop my feet getting cold on the way to work let alone on the way home. Guess that Autumn is well and truly here and that Winter is just a hop, skip and a jump away.

I should have known it would be getting cold soon as there has been two very obvious signs of the decline of summer:

1. Tim has started wearing his suit for work again and
2. the kids have started wearing their jackets in class.

Now, while the first one is funny enough for those that didn't know Tim last winter the second one is really odd. Once winter starts fully the Koreans will be wearing their coats all of the time- classrooms full of jacket wearing kids, restaurants full of adults clad in their winter finest. And just me with the heater on trying to stay warm in a cardigan or fleece top. Once that heater is on you would think that the kids would get hot enough to take those jackets off but no- they just sit and get hot. Not that the heaters are out yet. But I am looking forward to one of my favourite Korean winter things- the under floor heating. I am not sure if I sung the praises of that loud enough last winter. It is great and the reason that Korea homes have no carpets. The entire floor is heated like a huge radiator which means that clothes can be hung on an airer anywhere in the room and they will get the benefit of the heat without blocking it from me. Most people will completely forsake what little use they do make of their furniture and move onto the floor full time. I, for one, will be popping a thin cushion next to the sofa and enjoying a warm bottom. All I have to remember is the valuable lesson that I learnt last year- don't leave chocolate in your bag if you intend to leave your bag on your heated floor for any length of time at all!

Korea feels very different in the cold. It even smells really different. The hagwon smells like it did when I first got here back in December in ways that I can't really describe but which can trick me occasionally into believing that I am newly arrived. Which is why it is weird when everything seems so familiar.

In fact it is odd altogether really that Mokpo looks so normal to me now. The traditional houses complete with kimchi pots on the roof or top of the gate look as familiar to me as the estate where my mother lives in England. I can read the signs much quicker than I used to (remember that they are all in Korean or bad English) though I still don't know what most of them mean. I even find myself wondering why people are staring at me sometime then I see my reflection in a shop window and remember that I look really different from the average inhabitant of this city.

It will be very odd to get back to Western society and not be the centre of attention though it will be nice not to have shop staff laugh hysterically just because I am speaking English. I am not looking forward to teenagers back home though- they scare me whereas here I am usually just asked where I am from by a bunch of giggling boys rather than worried that one of them might make off with my handbag (well, small backpack as I have never really seen the fun in a handbag- purse to all you North American types reading this). Will life still be fun when the very act of ordering beer isn't fraught with danger? I was in a local bar with my friends over here once when it took FIVE bar staff to take our order- despite the vocab to order beer being the first thing that I learnt in Korean (I am not daft and certainly know where my priorities lie!).
I can only guess what it will be like to go home and all the things which I grew up with seeming so odd to me. My friends and family had better brace themselves for an onslaught of questions about how things work in the UK (and what has been happening in Eastenders for the last year). I want to go straight to the Fish and Chip shop and get me a large portion of proper chips- with salt and vinegar and ketchup and garlic mayo- which should keep me going until I make it to the Chinese for some sweet and sour chicken balls and chicken chow mein! I am looking forward to it but if anyone knows of a Korean restaurant in London please let me know since I am sure that it is only a matter of time until I start craving Sam Gyup Sal again!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

the start of the countdown!- 11 weeks to go!

2002-10-01T17:25:00.000+09:00

So, after all these months of counting how may weeks I have been away it is time to change tactics and start counting how many weeks I have got left until the end of my contract.

Therefore, this is Week 11, next week will be Week 10, etc etc until Christmas Week which will be Week 1- the last week of my contract (remember back to all the hellish worrying and all round panicking that became so much part of Christmas for me and close friends and family last year? I do remember worrying a lot but sitting here in Korea 10 months on and I confused as to what I was so worried about!) I'll let you know what my future plans are as soon as there are few enough of them in my head for me to be able to see them clearly! That is to say that I have a new thought pretty much every time I breathe in and another one by the time I breathe out again. Yes, I really am that confused and excited about what to do next. Let's face it, in eighteen months time I will be joining my brother in the land of 30 year olds and while I know that that is a long way from being any where near past it it is a landmark of sorts and bound to lead to all that introverted 'what have I done with my life?', 'what am I doing with my life?', 'will I EVER get a boyfriend??????' etc etc. Don't worry though, I am not about to inflict that kind of thinking on you right now. Instead I thought that I would share some more immediate worries about my short term future with you- that is leaving Korea and returning to a Western society.

Changes that have happened to my thinking since I got here became more obvious when my mother was here. I had to question things that I had started to take for granted.

Mother: Why are those dogs' ears blue?
Me: Because they dye them, of course, doesn't everyone????

I am so used to taking my shoes off when I enter that house and only putting them back on again as I get to the doorstep to leave (yes, mum, points awarded for taking your shoes off at the doorstep are definitely deducted when you later pick the shoes up, carry them through the house so you can sit on the bed to put them back on again and then walk all the way back through the house with your shoes on!) that when I watch 'Friends' it is all I can do to stop myself yelling out at the TV- 'Ross, Rachel, who cares whose baby it is- just take your bloody shoes off for goodness sake!' as they casually stroll in as if unaware of their shod status- or as if it doesn't matter! Which leads onto my problem- back home IT DOESN'T!

So are my friends and family going to get really mad at me as they all stand backed up on the doorstep as I stand just inside the door taking my shoes off before they can enter the house too? Will people think that I am a little crazy when I can't stop myself giving little bows when entering and leaving somewhere? What will my local pub bar staff make of me when I sit at my table with my hand in the air yelling 'yogi-yo!!!' and waiting for them to come running to take my order? Or, once I have realised that I must go to the bar to get served (as if they are doing US a favour!) will they giggle as I hand over the money two-handed? Will I die of thirst as I sit with an empty glass in front of me because I am waiting for someone to do the polite thing and fill it for me? And, on the off chance that someone takes pity on me and does pour me a drink, will they get perturbed when I then try and wrestle the bottle out of their hands in order to return the favour? How long will it take me to stop staring at 'foreigners' who will not even be considered foreign back home? Or to stop talking about people in loud voices on the assumption that they can't understand me?

When I was in Australia a few years ago, my friend Sarah came to visit after a year teaching in Thailand. All she kept saying was 'they are soooo tall!!' and 'they can all speak English!' before running to the nearest Thai restaurant for a taste of 'home'. Sarah, I think that I am beginning to understand how you felt!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mum's the word...

2002-10-01T17:23:00.000+09:00

At the end of last week, I found myself catching the midnight bus on a Friday to get to Seoul in time to pick my mum up from the airport. Easy enough - or is it really?

I was just getting ready to go to the pub for a few jars before getting the 5:30am bus to Seoul (well, maybe a little more than a few jars then...) when I thought that I should check what time the old dear was landing...TWO HOURS BEFORE I HAD THOUGHT IT WAS!
The last bus leaves Mokpo at 11:40(ish) and they start to run around 5am. AND I had to meet her at 10am - not enough time to fit in five and a half hours of quality bus time if I caught the first bus and way too much time at various bus terminals and other places for the desperately lonely if I got the last one the night before. Picturing the look on the old dear's face if she walked through the gates to see a load of Koreans and no daughter I decided that I had to bite the bullet and get the first one.

So off I went. I didn't drink anything on the way after the last time when I had to get together all of my Korean phrases and ask urgently when we would be stopping for the toilet break! So we arrived at 4:40am thoroughly in need of some liquid. All was shut in the bus terminal but Korea is always ready with a can vending machine when you need one - I love this country! The airport buses don't start running between the centre of Seoul and Incheon airport (a 50 minute trip) until after five so I put my head down for a while on a bench. Just a short nap as I was woken up by a policeman at 5am as it is apparently OK to look like a homeless tramp before 5am but completely unacceptable after. Sat there groggily for a bit before seeing a driver get on the bus I needed so I ran after him and off we went to the airport.

After my experience at the bus terminal I thought it was safest not to try catching some zzz's at the airport, so I strolled around for about four hours, had pizza for breakfast when the restaurants opened, checked the World Cup store (yes, they are still open all over the country) to see if there was anything at all that I hadn't bought yet, and resisted the temptation to finish the collection. Finally managed to sleep about twenty minutes before the old lady was due to land but was woken up five minutes later by an ajumma. And again five minutes after that and by the third time I just gave up. I can only imagine that I kept falling onto her shoulder as I drifted into sleep as she didn't look too happy at all.

Mum's flight came in early and the one before it came in late so I guess that we caught the best deal - much better than the poor folk coming from Uzbekistan (sic) who all looked a little confused as they finally arrived in the arrivals lounge. Mum had hold ups getting through to me and we had a joyful reunion with the pair of us looking like we hadn't slept for about a week. It worked out that I have left Mokpo for Seoul around the same time that the old dear had left Amsterdam after her stop off there so felt that I had an equal right to flaunt the bags under my eyes. We caught a bus to Itaewon and the Hamilton Hotel - relative luxury after the motels that I usually have bunked down in for the night - six to a room - in Itaewon. The old dear was a little vague and in need of sleep and who was I to argue with that? We both climbed gratefully into bed (though I was the only one who was overexcited that the beds had REAL sheets on them!) and slept until the evening.

The evening was also pretty quiet- just staying in Itaewon and wandering around finding out some tourist info for the next day's adventure. We had had plans to do the evening bus tour of the city on the first night but decided to save it until the next day. I took mum for dinner and quickly realised something- I was pretty much going to be in charge of the menu for the duration of her trip for several reasons- she doesn't know Korean food so she doesn't know what she would like and the main one being that she can't read Korean so the menu was completely incomprehensible to her. Makes sense and it did mean that I managed to fit in more than the usual amount of pizzas while she was there(!)

Sunday was a day of sightseeing. We got on the Seoul City Bus Tour that leaves from Itaewon and goes all around Seoul, stopping at all the major sights. There was a guide on the bus and also headsets that gave information about each of the stops. All in all we considered it to be a good way to get around Seoul. We saw a couple of palaces including the Gyeongbokgung one that I had been to a few weeks before with my mates from Ireland. It was beautiful all over again but a lot more crowded at weekends. Which was a shame as they have hanboks (traditional style dresses) that you can rent and take photos of yourselves poncing around the palace grounds looking like royalty (or something like that) which I had quite fancied doing but there were a few too many other people there to indulge in such silliness. It is a strange thing that I really don't mind being stared at (and in fact lap up the attention like there is no tomorrow) but every so often I get a bit shy, I don't know why that is. We met a girl from Denmark who thought that we were both Scandinavian and later we met an American family in the Seoul Tower who thought that we were Australian- is it any wonder that I get confused??? Of course, all the Koreans we met just assumed that we were American so some of the first words that mum learnt in Korean were those used to correct such assertions.

By the evening we were exhausted and headed to the train station to get the next train back to Mokpo which it turned out would be a two hour wait and standing room only. Very tempting but we decided to try the bus station instead. Another two hour wait but at least at the end of it we were able to relax into the comfort of a Kumho Express bus with its foot rest and reclining almost to horizontal seats. And we were on our way home- well, my home anyway!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

greetings from the new house!

2002-09-20T17:22:00.000+09:00

Well, last week the mould really hit the fan so to speak. I got home from the Ty-poon party to find a dead cockroach on the floor next to the toaster. This was not usual in itself- happens a lot in my gaff. The difference was that this little fella was over an inch long. Tim made me take it to work with me on Monday to show Mr Kim. It was time to take the kid gloves off and get down to serious battles about moving. So I tried not to think too hard about what I had in the bag in my hand and went in to see Mr Kim. When the dead bug seemed not to register on his radar I pulled out the final trick in my bag of female ammunition and promptly burst into tears. Seemed to work as five days later I was moving house.

The new place is mercifully mould free (so far) and the only living creatures that I have seen (apart from my reflection in the mirror) so far are the goldfish that I brought with me. So everything seems a lot better right now. The new place is tricky to find though. The old place was near the MBC TV studio so a great landmark for taxi drivers and well wishers. This new place seems to be near nowhere of any consequence. I walked downtown on Saturday- having very carefully written the address down off an envelope I borrowed out of one of the mailboxes- which was easy enough (there is a mountain just behind the downtown area is pretty tricky to ignore really) but getting back was where all the fun lay. Fortunately for me it turned out that the taxi driver who picked me up had been the guy to shuttle us between bars the night before and he had enjoyed our repetitive but sincere rendition of all the Korean soccer chants we could remember. And he was determined to find my house and get me home. He stopped people all over the place and CBed control to find it and even turned the meter off. When I finally saw it in the distance we were both very excited and when I got out he refused to take any money! What a nice man. He also wrote down how to get there for me to show to other taxi drivers and so far it seems to have worked!

There was another party last weekend to mark the birthday of our favourite Kiwi bloke in town- he of the famous bug in his ear story from the World Cup days. We moved down to the soju tent after the building caretaker had come up to complain for the third time (one up on the week before when the girls took care of the police by offering them birthday cake which they were only too pleased to accept!). Though we then got thrown out of the tent for singing too loudly in the rain. Which was a shame as I really wanted to drink in that soju tent as it is called Hiddink after the new Korean folk hero of the World Cup.

And that is all I have to say I think. Ceramic festival the other week has left me with more soju cups and kimchi pots than I know what to do with but apart from that I was gratified to find that I could fit most of my stuff into the two bags that I had brought with me- weight off my mind for the return journey at some stage.
farewell for now,
yours a mould-free Hels
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Typhoons, humidity and mould....

2002-09-18T17:19:00.000+09:00

No, I haven't died or disappeared into the depths of a Korean rice paddy never to be seen again. I am still alive and well in Mokpo- just a little on the lazy side which is why I haven't mailed sooner. Fungus update is this- it is now various shades of red, blue, green and yellow with big patches of black dotted about. The mould on the wall next to my bed is now level with the head board, closely followed by the mould on the wall that has my bed against it where it is just popping over the top of my mattress. The ceiling is where the action really is- a small spot when the boss came to see it three weeks ago is now a circle 18 inches across with a perfectly round patch of black mould in the centre of it. I am almost obsessively photographing it because I want to see how much it grows (and my camera has a date function now so I know exactly when the photos were taken as it is displayed in red in the corner of the photo) and I can't think of another way to show the boss how bad it is. Unfortunately, after two weeks of reassuring me that he is 'researching' a new house yesterday I was greeted with laughter when I asked him about it. I am trying my best to develop some kind of a cough as I think that will help me case but I can't seem to get sick. Any ideas on how to escape the house of mould would be greatly appreciated(!)
Obviously my clothes and everything in the place are still regularly covered in the stuff but I have been told that other people are suffering from the same problem (though not the creeping wall adornments- that is just me- lucky me!). This is not too much of a problem, just need to make sure that anything I want to wear has been washed sometime in the last week. When I first discovered the new patterns on my clothes I washed EVERYTHING but it has since grown back so I am letting it fester and trying to stop such thoughts as 'oh, I haven't worn my black t-shirt for a while I think that I will wear it today' as it inevitably leads to 'oh no, it is covered in mould, what a surprise'.

The main culprit in this new fashion design has to be the humidity which is incredible at the moment. You can see it hanging cloudy in the air, blurring views of the moon or sun and generally soaking everything in sight. I was in a phone box the yesterday (to phone the English speaking tourist info line to be told that the one person who speaks English wasn’t there for the day- handy, the number is 1330 if you care to take your chance. But I found a better free phone number 080 757 2000 which was very helpful) and the sweat was just streaming off my body. And bear in mind that this is a phone box without a door- just a few kids saying 'hi miguk' over and over but I don't think that they contributed to the heat at all.

Thank goodness for the air con at work. Though this often gets switched off between classes which I can understand since there is a whole FIVE minute break then and I can see why they wouldn't want to waste ALL that money keeping the rooms cold for FIVE minutes. So often the first couple of minutes of the class is spent running to the counter to find the remote to turn the air con on, getting back to the room to discover that it has been turned off at the switch, running back to the counter to switch the switch, coming back to the room only to find that I have turned the fan on by accident instead (all labelled in Korean you understand) and back to the counter to hit the right switch, back to the counter again to return the remote. All fun and games and shaves valuable minutes off the teaching time. I like the kids that do it for me! But last week something new was added to the air con routine when I spotted something fall out of the unit on the wall behind the kids' heads. I set the kids a task and went over to investigate- figuring that it was probably a candy wrapper or something. And imagine my shock when it turned out that the 'candy wrapper' had legs and wings and fur- it was a small but perfectly formed bat! I thought that I could handle a dead bat until it twitched its wings thereby indicating that it was in no way a dead bat. The girls came over and saw it and went crazy. They ran out of the room looking for help and told the woman at the counter the problem and she looked horrified at the thought that she might have to deal with it. But we found a passing man who picked it up by the wing and took I know not where. So I got to teach the girls lots of new English 'bat', 'the bat is IN the air conditioning', 'the bat is ON the floor', 'the bat is UNDER the table' etc.

But we were afforded some respite from the humidity at the weekend when we were hit with a typhoon (or typoon as it comes out with a Korean accent, there is no F sound in Korean so they make do with the next best thing. But it confuses them when I go to the copy machine and don’t bring any coffee with me- think about it!). I think that it was called Typhoon Rusa- love getting hit with weather conditions so bad that they name them! We were lucky in Mokpo really, it was VERY windy and VERY wet but it only lasted about 24 hours and then was gone and we returned to the humidity. Other parts of the country were not so lucky as I heard that around 200 people died that weekend. BBC World was predicting 12 inches of rainfall each over the weekend. I saw the photos- the tradition houses were hit worst as they are only one floor high and the water came up to the roofs. And there was a lot of photos of cars sitting up to the roof in water too. Really put into perspective me complaining that I couldn't wear the dress I had planned to wear that weekend. Or whinging about having to climb 12 storeys to get to my mate's apartment as the lift was out.

And I had planned to wear a dress as it was one of the teacher's 60th birthdays and so a surprise dinner had been planned at the Santa Maria restaurant near the water. The Santa Maria is a building in the shape of a large sailing ship (we have two of them here) and I got a bit of a shock when I went in to find that the floor was made of a glass and about six feet below the floor was a koi carp pool. Quite unnerving on arrival and throughout the meal I had to keep looking down. They turned the fountains on and the large fish seemed to love it. Though we all had the same thought- what if the floor collapses? I thought that the koi could nudge us to safety in the manner of dolphins but my mate reckoned that they might well be highly trained attack koi in which case we were doomed! Fun night though and interesting experience.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Seoul and stuff...

2002-09-05T17:21:00.000+09:00

And I have forgotten to say that last week I went to Seoul to meet up with a friend on his way back from New Zealand after a one year drinking (I mean Working) holiday. I just had the one day off work but we managed to see more than I have seen on any of my other trips to Seoul. We went to Gyeongbokgung Palace which was really pretty (and only about 700 won to get into- about 50p) and even had an air conditioned museum to hide in for a while to cool down. We stayed at the Exciting Korea hostel (www.excitingkorea.co.kr) which was near the palace and nice and clean. Usually I have been to Seoul before to drink and we have always stayed in Itaewon- the foreigners part of Seoul- so it was nice to be somewhere else. We also went up the Seoul Tower (after a seeming endless hunt for a taxi followed by a ten minute cab ride in the opposite direction- sneaking up from behind to catch the tower unaware or something like that) which was cool and you get to see a great view of Seoul from there. The tower is located on a hill and you can get a cab most of the way up or go by cable car- which we did to get back down again. We also went to a bookshop that had a large English language book collection which was great for me though I was short of cash so I just bought a Korea phrasebook (the Lonely Planet one. I had another one but it wasn't as interesting. The LP one has such useful phrases as 'Can I join in?', 'I have watched but never participated before' and 'I smoke marijuana occasionally') and an Amy Tan novel. Enough to keep me busy on the midnight bus home anyway.
And so it is now Thursday September 5th, mother arrives in around three weeks and then it is only another three months until I am free to explore new countries. Better make the most of this one first!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Raining and Dancing...

2002-08-17T17:17:00.000+09:00

It is raining. Not sure how much of this has been reported on international news, but the rain has been very bad here. Several people have drowned in different parts of the country, though we seem to be pretty safe here in Mokpo. It has been raining for about a week now and is not set to stop until the weekend according to BBC News (my sanity in a world of Korean TV). The weather is good and bad for me - good because the cockroaches seem to have found somewhere else to go for a change, but bad because the mould on my walls (and therefore anything that touches my walls such as my bed and clothes) is getting worse. On the bright side - it has turned red so adds a touch of the Christmas spirit to an otherwise very dull summer month. (The boss is coming to look at it later so I will keep you posted on that one).

Last week was very tiring. My co-teacher was on vacation for a week and so me and the Korean teacher had to cover his classes. Turned out not too bad as there weren't many clashes of timetable (there were only two classes on at the same time so I spent a lot of that 45 minutes running between two classrooms) but it did mean that I had to work the full 30 hours that I am contracted to do for the first time since I got here. Now I used to work much more than 30 hours a week in various previous incarnations but nothing is as exhausting as spending that amount of time locked in rooms with kids - some of whom were new to me, and we had to go through the whole thing about me not being able to speak Korean all over again - the babies just can't understand that concept - and why should they? - so they are particularly difficult. I am forever impressed at how little the kids take advantage of my not being able to understand them. But last week there was a new boy who I suspected of saying bad stuff (simply by the reaction of his classmates) and I wasn't really able to handle the situation as well as I wanted to.

It was the end of the week and I was far too tired to think of anything inventive to occupy the boys. Have decided that the teenage girls are my strength and the boys are my weakness. I was pretty upset by this kid's attitude and will have to work on it this week. Fortunately my adult students took me out on Friday night and gave me a night of compliments so that was great!
I am still trying to adjust to getting up three hours earlier than usual and teaching for two hours longer. Obviously one of the best ways to do this is to go drinking all night on Saturday night and not get to bed until 10.30 the next day - so that is what I did. It was a South African friend of mine's birthday so I was out with a group of South Africans in Gwangju. It was a really cool night and great to meet some new faces from other parts of the world. And a great moment in my life when an African man told me that I had a great sense of rhythm. I think that he was taking the piss but I will take the compliment at face value for today. After drinking and dancing we went for food until the restaurant pointed out that they were shutting at 8am. Then it was a cab to the bus station and a bus back to Mokpo - me and Rebecca looking a state in the face of so many other people getting on with their days as we headed to bed. Went out for Korean barbecue last night - something that I must write more about one day for you and then home and bed.

Tim is back this week so I have free time again!
Love, a very damp Helen
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

flags

2002-08-14T17:18:00.000+09:00

It is a National Holiday in Korea tomorrow. My students tell me that it is Independence Day- to mark Korea's independence from Japanese rule in 1945. As for every holiday since I arrived here back in December 2001. the National flag is flying in bounteous quantities on all the main streets in town. The big difference this time is that I am not eyeing them up as potential adornments for my humble abode. This is purely because I bought one during the World Cup and not because my morals have got the better of me in any way! Having lived through 3 years at university in London, living in various flats and houses which were almost exclusively decorated in stolen street signs and flashing workman’s lights (how do you turn those damn things off anyway?) and drinking out of pint glasses that had made their way into the house from the local pub down the road, Korea is a real test on my non-pilfering willpower.

I have to admit to possessing one Korean bar glass at this present time but the rest of the contents of my place were properly paid for (or taken out of the trash late at night) There is so much stuff on the streets of your average Korean town that would have 'walked' long ago back home- tables, chairs, brooms, flowerpots and, of course, the Korean flags sitting unfettered in their holders placed at a height where the average Korean municipal worker (not famous for their height) can reach without too much strain. But that is certainly one of the things that I love about Korea- the safety on the streets- whether it be for a six foot yucca plant or a lone female at night. And if my nerve should go there are always plenty of taxis to take me home after dark- a far cry from the hour long queue (line) in Dublin city centre.

Asking my Korean students about Independence Day here led onto other things such as comparisons between celebrations here and in the US. In common with pretty much every other Korean celebration Independence Day is a very subdued affair- especially compared to the firework frenzy in America. Usually a day is marked by a visit to the grandparents- either in their homes or in the grave plots in the mountains. The World Cup was the first time that I had seen mass National celebrations here. And then my student asked me a tricky question- 'Do you have Independence Day in England?' and 'why not?' I explained that it had been a very long time since England was ever part of any Empire but the British. Then we moved onto easier questions about whether or not I had ever met the Royal Family and how handsome Prince William is (makes a change from discussing the aesthetic qualities of English football stars- 'Beckham very handsome!' and 'Owen very handsome' somehow the conversation never got boring!)

While England and Korea are very different in many ways there is one way in which they are the same- the kids are full of questions. The big difference here is that they have to learn a foreign language to get some of the answers. But more on that another time!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Whatever happened to Helen!

2002-08-05T17:14:00.000+09:00

hello all,

I haven't forgotten you all I promise. Just that I haven't found myself with more than a few minutes to spare on the Internet recently. That is not to say that I have been exceptionally busy or anything - just that it is soooo hot when I get back to my house that I tend to get out of my sweaty clothes and into clean PJs asap and that is me in the house from there on in really. But I have been a-visiting again. I have been to Suncheon twice - the first weekend was a fantastic beer filled frolic (I would tell you more but all of the stories are very much of a 'you had to be there' nature and I wouldn't want to waste my time sitting here sniggering over the PC while reliving memories that wouldn't even bring a smile to your collective face), and the second time I was just breaking a six hour journey to Pusan by getting drunk with some friends on the way.

My summer vacation has been and gone now: all three days of it. And I had to fight for the third one of those. That is a little unfair as I did have the two weekend days as well. So a group of us got together and decided to go to Pusan for the long weekend. Didn't realise that another group had had the same idea - a group of around 40 million other people. PUSAN WAS CROWDED. I can't put it any plainer than that. I was aware of rumours of the beach being standing room only during the summer but I had never seen anything like this. Let's start with the accommodation.

The prices were up from the usual 30,000 won a night to a vastly overflated 150,000 won for the night and there was scant little of that available. If I had known then I would have packed according to what others were doing - that is sleeping on the beach mainly. There must have been more people there than in the motels. Because the first lot of our group got there on Thursday night we were able to get two rooms for the duration - though the woman wanted to give one of them away for the Saturday night! We managed to hang onto them both though.
The first night that we arrived was spent walking around all kinds of places trying to find us an ajumma with rooms for us and avoiding Bangladeshi men offering us money for sex and trying to take photos of us - more on that later. Once we had somewhere it was time to eat and onto one of the true delights of Pusan - large American chain restaurants! Well, you are supposed to eat different food when on holiday so we forwent the usual Bi Bim Bab (rice with assorted veggies and one of my fav dishes here) to indulge in totally chopstickless food in the likes of TGI Fridays, Outback Steakhouse and Bennigans with a sneaky Maccas when pissed. The food was amazing and I would heartily recommend Bennigans for the best service on Haeundae Beach (which was where we were staying).

Other than food there was a lot of fighting our way into the water only to be hit with a large amount of large inflatable driven recklessly by small unaccompanied kids and again avoiding the Bangladeshi paparazzi on the shore. I began to get really quick at spotting men sidling over like crabs while their mate stood in the background fumbling with his camera. What they want these photos for I have no idea - ('And this is another one of some girls I never spoke to and who told me to sod off shortly after this shot was taken when she noticed the camera!') Also a lot of beer drunk on the beach into the wee small hours and much sneaking into posh hotels on the beachfront to use their toilets. We all bought cool hippy clothes (for about ten times the price we would have paid in Thailand but cheap when you take into account the fact that we didn't have to fly anywhere!) and I got totally carried away and got a toe ring and henna tattoo as well. Ah well, you only get one summer vacation - or you do in Korea anyway!

I have to teach now so will continue this another time!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fun, games and a little bad news...

2002-07-16T17:13:00.000+09:00

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

2002-07-10T17:12:00.000+09:00

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

2002-07-04T17:11:00.000+09:00

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
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Four matches and a World Cup

2002-06-30T17:09:00.000+09:00

So I left you all just after the first weekend of the World Cup. Then an unbelievable transformation occurred- I TURNED INTO A FOOTIE?SOCCER FAN!!!

Yes, this is true and not a single hint of sarcasm in that. So June 2nd I went to Gwangju and watched the Slovenia vs. Spain match and bugger me if I didn't find myself on board a bus the following weekend on my way to Daegu to go and see South Africa vs. Slovenia. Again the stadium was shiny new but it was very different to be there for an afternoon match. I had gone up with a group of people and none of us had tickets- we managed to get these off a Slovenian tour guide outside of the stadium. Because we went straight from the bus station to the stadium we all had our overnight bags with us. These were searched of course and then a lady came and ran the magic beam over me personally. And the alarm went off near my pocket. She asked me to empty the pocket (using hand signals as she hadn't a drop of English) I was reluctant but put the contents into her hand. She picked up the small item I had given her and examined it. I was a bit embarrassed and was desperately trying to think of the Korean word for what she had in her hand. The final straw was when she held it up to show her colleague several feet away- I covered her hands with my hands and muttered 'tampon' at her at which point she understood and hastily gave it back and waved me through. And we were in another stadium.

Choosing to completely ignore the seating arrangements we headed straight for the Slovenian fans and a few reunions with some that we had met the week before. Slovenia lost but we had a lot of fun standing on the seats and yelling Slovenian chants ('If you are not jumping you are not Slovenian' and 'I am Slovenian'). The fans around us were so sweet and kept asking us why we were supporting their little country. They were so flattered and told us that they were really happy and touched by our support. It didn't help however and South Africa left as the victors. We had seen the team on the way to the stadium when we were on the shuttle bus. Not realizing who they were we waved our Slovenian flags at them and only sussed their identities when they stopped waving back and started scowling- oops!

That night we partied large and hard with the Slovenians before all disappearing in opposite directions with various people that we had met. We, eventually, found each other the next day and went back to Mokpo and the usual working week. But not that usual as something really odd was happening- Korea were doing well. It seemed to be taking the World by surprise and the Koreans more than most I think. It worked in the teachers' favour as we didn't have to work during any of the Korea games. And lessons became an exchange of soccer chants and World Cup word searches. The foreign teachers all bought 'Be the Reds' t-shirts to wear on match days and the kids seem to be getting into too. But more was to come.

Ireland had also made it out of the first round and would be playing in Suwon the weekend after Daegu. We had gathered in our Irish friends' house to watch the match and the moment that the final whistle blew they were at the PC bang buying tickets. Being English and a new fan to the game I didn't want to pay the price so didn't buy a ticket myself. But on Saturday morning I found myself once more upon a bus on the way to one of the host cities. We spent Saturday in Seoul and I was reunited with the guy that I had met in Daegu the weekend before. Saturday was all about drinking and shopping and watching the excellent England match (by the way, don't ever believe someone who tells you that 40 minutes into a game is a good time to go to the toilet! I missed our third goal). Sunday we went to Suwon and found a quiet bar to watch the 3.30 match in. By now all of us girls were big into the footie and able to intelligently join in conversations about the tournament. I had even written all the games up on my calendar(!) So we watched the match and painted our faces and headed to the stadium for the game. Those of us without tickets were lucky enough to buy some outside at a reduced price (I love Korean ticket touts and their refusal to sell tickets at anything other than the face value!).

Those of you that watched the game will know what happened and I am not trying to bring back bad memories for you but I must tell the others. Me and Jon (guy from Daegu) were sitting with the Korean fans but not too far from some Irish fans. The game was nail-bitingly tense and I couldn't believe it when it went to extra time. Then to rub salt into the wound it went to penalties- something that I find unbearable at the best of times- which are just excruciating to watch live. Ireland lost. The toilets were full of girls weeping so much that the green and gold was streaming down their faces. And one of our teams were out of the Cup.

But not all of them- as an English girl living in Korea I still two more chances at victory for my teams. And an English victory was beginning to look believable. But it was Korea's turn to play next and I got up on Tuesday morning and went to Daejon with Jon to watch Korea vs. Italy. The stadium was a sea of red and it was the first time that I had been glad to be amongst the Koreans in the stadium. Mind you it would have been difficult to be with any other kind of fan- I saw a lone Italian flag here and there fluttering forlornly in the breeze generated by 38,000 Korean fans yelling 'Daehan Minguk' (The Republic of Korea') and 'Pilsung Korea' ('Victory Korea') and other assorted flag waving and drum beating activities.

And Korea romped home with the victory again. Again the game went to extra time and I just shut my eyes and whispered 'Please no penalties' over and over. I can't even begin to tell you about the atmosphere that night. We left the stadium after the game and watched it again at the train station. Arriving back at my flat at 5.30am we watched the game again. And again when I got up the next day to go to work. I was the coolest teacher in the whole hagwon once the kids found out and I showed them my ticket and photos. Cue another day of talking about soccer with the kids. Korea were now through to the quarter finals along with England.

England played on Friday afternoon and I had to teach during the game but Tim was very good and kept me up to date with text messages throughout what would turn out to be our last game in the 2002 World Cup. I had a running score on the corner of my board. After England had failed to score beyond the first Owen goal that had sent my hopes soaring (we had beaten Argentina after all, it was not impossible that we could beat Brazil) I went back to the teachers' room. Three of my kids came with me, one stroked my hair, another patted my shoulder and the third held my hand as they tried to make me feel better. The little sweeties had been following England's progress to share with their teacher and they were almost as upset as I was at their defeat. Even renaming my hermit crabs Beckham and Owen during half time hadn't managed to bring on an England victory.

The end was getting close now. That weekend took us to Gwangju where the first of the quarter finals were held. We went to the stadium and some of us had tickets and went in. The rest of us watched them go in and then went to try and find somewhere to watch the game. Sam had heard that there was a big screen beside a church so we headed that way- our back up plan was to join the people up on the roof of a nearby apartment block and see as much as we could of the stadium from there. Turns out that it wasn't beside the church but INSIDE it. So we watched the game with a very large crowd inside the church. I am sure that more prayers were said during that game than in the rest of that church's history. During half time we were given water and football shaped candy. And KOREA WON!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We walked back to the city to celebrate. It took about forty minutes and just as we were getting close a pickup truck pulled up with merrymakers on board and we climbed on and were driven all over Gwangju yelling 'Daehan Minguk' and 'Korea FIGHTING!!' to everyone. It was a lot of fun but slightly disappointing when we were finally dropped off nearly an hour later BACK AT THE STADIUM!! A taxi ride later we were back in town and on the batter. We were filmed by a local TV crew and just ran around the streets yelling 'FIGHTING' everywhere to everyone. It was a fantastic night and Gwangju was still hard at it when we left at 6am to go back to Mokpo.
We watched Korea's match in a local bar. We were all wearing our 'Be the Reds' t-shirts and various Korean flag paraphernalia- in my case I had a bandana with the flag on it and a large flag tied around my waist to complement my t-shirt but some of the girls had temporary tattoos and everything. But it wasn't enough and Korea were knocked out by Germany. They played again at the weekend for third place but conceded to Turkey. Brazil won on Sunday and finally the World Cup was over.

Now we don’t know what to do with our time!
I will get back to you soon with less soccer related news but to be honest for the last month it has been only soccer!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

More World Cup stuff- sorry!

2002-06-16T17:08:00.000+09:00

Dear All,

Maybe I was a little hasty to declare the weekend over at the end of my last mail. It in fact still hasn't finished and is due to go down in History books as the longest weekend ever (now totally nearly three weeks- you do understand that I don't mean this literally- the weekend in Korea is the standard Saturday/Sunday combo that is the norm the world over- rather the spirit of the weekend lives on). Monday was early to bed for all of us that had stayed late in Gwangju but we made up for in on Tuesday by going Slovenian hunting that night and arriving home in the wee early hours accompanied by another Slovenian t-shirt and a hat. Not bad. Wednesday night was party night as today (Thursday) is a National Holiday (something to do with soldiers dying as far as I can make out from what my students tell me).

But before the Slovenian hunting we also watched the fantastic Korea v Poland game. The local department store had laid on a big screen outside and, bless their little cotton socks, free beer!!! (time to note a big difference between the Koreans and back home- everyone left before the free beer ran out! Now imagine that back home) It was a good match and if you try and imagine the euphoria as Korea won then multiply it by ten you are just about there. One of our Canadian friends got interview by the local TV network as he was wearing a Korea shirt. The Koreans are such a fantastic bunch of people that we were more than happy to share this moment with them. More so because I should have been in class I guess. Not that I was skiving- I had actually been about to walk into the classroom when Tim told me that there was a big TV in the end room to watch the match on. My students really didn't believe me when I told them that there was no class and they could watch the match instead!! The little darlings' faces just lit up and off they scampered. I went down to the room with them to make sure that they were all settled (what a little mother hen I am!) and one of them turned to me:

'Teacher, where are you going?' 'I'm to the bar, of course, Kevin!' mumbled under my breath
and off I went to watch the footie with my mates. So it was a great time from start to finish really.

But I have to write a bit about watching a World Cup match now as I didn't really get much beyond my mate and the bug in his ear in the last mail. It was really really exciting to be walking into the stadium and they let off balloons and stuff which was cool. I think that there was dancing too but I was in the toilet at the time (story of my life!). The stadium was shiny shiny new and everything was sparkly and clean. All of us were completely taken with the whole thing. We joined in rousing choruses of 'ola ola ola etc' and energetically participated in many Mexican Waves (I DID THE MEXICAN WAVE IN A WORLD CUP STADIUM DURING A WORLD CUP MATCH- I THINK THAT MIGHT JUST BE THE COOLEST THING EVER!!!). Then the game started and it all seemed just like a bunch of boys running around on a pitch (which I guess it is when you think about it!) but it seemed so different from watching it on the TV. Then I worked out why it felt so odd- there was no commentary. Even though we only get the Korean commentary over here there is always a stream of talking over the top of the game- not when it was live. Once I realised what was wrong I was able to settle back and enjoy the game. It was the business!

So much so that I am off to Daegu at the weekend to watch another one- this time Slovenia v South Africa. And not because we were completely taken with the Slovenian fans- they were lovely and told us to come to Slovenia and gave us t-shirts, flags, hats, beer etc. No, not because of that, as if I would go to all that trouble just because the Slovenian fans are a little on the hot side and there are only 5 eligible bachelors in Mokpo, no not at all..... I hear that the South African fans are a bit cute too!!!!

Love Footie mad Helen
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

World Cup and Mokpo Madness

2002-06-03T17:06:00.000+09:00

Where to start this episode? That is the problem. I am going to try and do it chronologically in the hope that I won't lose you on the way. It is now 4 o'clock on Monday afternoon- those of you in the UK will be enjoying the first of two days off for the Golden Jubilee celebrations- let me know what you get up to! However, things are quite different over here in Asia. Of course England has been very much on my mind since their match against Sweden only took place yesterday. Yes, Korea and its many English teachers are firmly in the grip of World Cup fever. And damn proud of it!

Thursday night was the usual bowling night. I had had a good day at school (the kids were very funny and we had a really good final lesson and even the one that usually only speaks to me in Korean had actually responded for the day) so I decided not to take a chance of ruining it by actually taking part in the bowling (two weeks ago I scored an underwhelmingly massive 25!!) so my role in the sport was purely ocular. But I was more than willing to head to the late night chicken shop for some beers later. We stayed until the owner woke up and threw us out around 3.30am. Then bed and school the next day where the kids remained in disturbingly good humour. I went straight from school to the pizza shop (sometimes a girl just has to have pizza) and from the pizza shop to the pub. No soju this night as we just sneakily bought soju from the late night shop (I lurve being able to buy alcohol 24 hours a day- heaven!) and sat outside the pub to drink it. After we had finished at the first pub it was onto the cocktail bar and many June Bugs (not sure what is in them but they are green!) and the food van with the best toasties in Mokpo. Finally made it home around 6. Another night of seeing the sun come up before my head went down on the pillow.

Saturday saw the resumption of Korean lessons. We have a new teacher now and the lessons are conducted at a friend's house in Hadang. The new teacher was very good and coped well with the usual combination of hangovers and bad Korean. Rebecca shone as the star pupil. She is a whizz with languages and, jealous though I am, this was to prove to be very handy later in the day. The weather is glorious here in Mokpo at the moment. The sun is out and we haven't yet entered the period of unbearable humidity that everyone has promised me. It was time to go out into the sun.

Mokpo this week has welcomed the tall ships from New Zealand, Holland, Russia, Japan and its very own Korean ones. They are docked at the Maritime Museum and were certainly worth checking out. They were beautiful- all tall masts and rigging. We walked down to where they were docked only to discover some kind of security stopping us getting within smelling distance of all those lovely sailors. The Russian ship was enormous and we were gazing at it admiringly when Rebecca remembered that she is fluent in Russian. She called out to a man on board for an invite. But no luck. Then we noticed a guy coming over to see us from the other side of the security rope. He introduced himself as Vladimir and invited us over- through Rebecca of course since he was speaking Russian. We went up to the security checkpoint where the Korean guards stopped us. Rebecca told them that we had been invited over by the sailors and through we went. Vladimir took us on board and showed us all over the ship- control room, big wooden steering wheel thing in true pirate style. We saw the TV room ( where a bunch of Russian sailors were watching 'Who wants to be a Millionaire' in Russian!), the table tennis room, the dining area and the cabins. Rebecca was chatting away very happily in Russian, only confusing Vladimir a few times by answering in Korean- the woes of the multi-lingual are many! Me and Nerissa followed behind giggling like a couple of school girls and occasionally asking 'what is he saying? What are you saying?'

The tour of the ship was very cool. But eventually we had to leave all those blue eyed, dark haired, female company deprived Russian boys behind. Shame. Little did we know that there was a festival going on outside Mokpo station and we arrived just in time to watch a Taekwondo display and scab a free 'Be the Reds' t-shirt (Korean football team t-shirt. Not sure what it means exactly- I think that it should say 'Go the Reds' but if 40 million Koreans say otherwise then who I am to argue?) It was a very cool display as they leapt all over the stage occasionally stopping to break things with their heads. Then onto a birthday party which lasted well into daylight hours and home.

And sleep. But not for long as we had to get out of bed and haul our lazy arses to Gwangju as we were all proud owners of tickets to the Spain Slovenia match. We bought these tickets ages ago and though I was a little excited I didn't really think that I would care. I don't usually get interested in sport at all. But the buzz in Gwangju was fantastic (once we got used to seeing so many other foreigners) and before I knew what was going on I was standing in the Adidas shop clutching my newly purchased England t-shirt. I think that I have told you before that I am the only English person that I see in Mokpo so I was very taken aback to meet so many in Gwangju. They were pretty easy to spot with their faces painted red and white (the blue in the Union Jack comes from the St Andrews Cross of bonny Scotland) and sporting rather fetching England shirts. We based ourselves in a bar only sometimes venturing out to try and lure boys back. I found that the Irish girls plus a handful of candy seemed to bring the most boys back to the bar and soon we had all nations there. The England game started but only 15 minutes in we had to leave to go to the stadium to watch a live match. I was sitting with Nerissa and Rebecca so we parted company with the others at the gate and wandered in saying repeatedly 'this is soooooo cool!!' In fact it was so exciting that I had to ring my little sister from the stadium to share it with her- unfortunately I picked the time that they were letting all the balloons off so all she really heard was delighted yells.

We were sitting near the Slovenian fans and I was proud that I wasn't wearing a Spain t-shirt- unlike my three friends (we had now been joined by Tom) who all made various excuses to changes shirts ('it is a bit cold here isn't it?' etc) within ten minutes. For the girls this was partly motivated by the cuteness of the Slovenian fans we kept bumping into though I am not sure what Tom was thinking (he claims that he was genuinely cold) though if he had known what was going to happen next then perhaps he wouldn't have bothered. And I don't mean Spain beating Slovenia 3-1.

Having got over the initial rush of it being the coolest thing ever to be doing the Mexican wave during a World Cup match, Nerissa and Tom got slightly distracted from the game by a wasp on the back of the man in front of them. They were peering at it when all of a sudden Tom leapt back yelling something about his head. He tipped his head on one side and starting hitting his right ear. The crowds were staring at him. Something had flown into his ear. We looked by could see nothing. But he said that he could hear its wings flapping. Nerissa calmly took charge and they disappeared off to the First Aid point together. A bit taken aback we still managed to stand up and boo the Spanish when they scored their first goal- spurred on by the Slovenian faces who had taken it upon themselves to direct the crowd with chants of 'SLO-VEN-NE-YA, SLO-VEN-NE-YA, SLO-VEN-NE-YA, etc'. We did start to worry when the others didn't come back for about quarter of an hour. Then Nerissa appeared and started grabbing her stuff saying that they were taking Tom to hospital in an ambulance to get the bug out of his ear and it was OK, she didn't mind going as she was going to other matches. Slightly bewildered we watched them go and promised to see them shortly.

By the end of the game they still hadn't come back. Then I got a phone call from Nerissa (god bless mobile phones) telling me that they were in the hospital, the bug was out of the ear and in a bottle and that Tom was Ok now. Great. One problem, the bill had come to W260,000 (about 140 quid) and they only had W60,000 between them and they weren't allowed to leave the hospital until the bill was paid. We were unable to help as we only had about W40,000 between us too. Eventually Nerissa managed to get hold of the others and Barry was duly dispatched to the hospital with his credit card in his hand!

So all that was left for me and Rebecca to do was get back to the pub to meet the others. Easy. Well, not so easy really. The free shuttle bus was a complete mystery, we saw buses pull up and then leave again empty, another bus turned up but no-one in the crowd of people eager to get away had any idea where it was going. We joined the queue for the taxi rank and waited and waited. Eventually we decided to walk. But we didn't know the way. We set off in the direction that we thought it should be but were stumped when we got to the first crossroad. So we asked a policeman. And he asked his mate. His mate enlisted the help of a few others and before we knew what was going on we had 7 policeman hailing us a cab! They proved to be more effective than we were and soon we were safely on our way to the pub. Where we met Tom and he showed us the moth that had been in his ear. They had had to call a specialist who had to get out a camera to see it before it could be removed. Tom said that it had been deafening when it was still alive and it had been very far into his ear. Nasty!

We celebrated the removal of the bug by drinking Korean beer with Slovenians in an Australian pub which is why I am sitting here wearing my new 'Slovenija- the green piece of Europe' t-shirt! We got the 5.30 am bus back to Mokpo this morning and I now declare the weekend officially over!

Can't wait for the next one!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bizarre Birthday....

2002-05-27T17:05:00.000+09:00

Hello All,

I am sorry that I have not made much contact recently. I have no excuse so will not insult you by trying to justify myself now.

It was my birthday yesterday though the celebrations really started almost two weeks ago with the arrival of a box from home courtesy of my mother. It contained 25 packets of crisps and chocolate and a CD. I agreed to share the crisps with my friends here and did well in not eating them until the pub on Saturday night where it was great to have beer and crisps rather than the dried squid and fish that we usually get offered here. One of my classes decided that we should have a party on Thursday for the event and they brought presents and biscuits. I was handed a small gift wrapped box by one girl who looked very pleased with her. After much careful opening by self (after being shouted at for turning it upside down to undo the tape) I discovered that I was now the proud owner of two hermit crabs! This was very odd and I spent much of the rest of the day trying to stop all of my other students (and many of the teachers) shaking the box to try and get the crabs to come out of their shells. Needless to say it had the opposite effect. I have bought them a new home and they are happily keeping me awake at nights scraping in the sand.

On Friday it was the Hagwon's birthday and I had been told by the director that we would be spending the day 'playing soccer and running about'. Great... two of my least favourite things especially on such a warm day. This was combined with a nine o'clock start (remember that I don't usually start until 3 and therefore often go to bed around 5am) to ensure that I didn't think that I was going to have any fun at all on the day. I was right to begin with- the other teachers are nervous to talk to me and Tim and so generally don't bother. I managed to get out of the soccer (by hiding in the toilets as they selected the teams!) and the volleyball was a man only event. Just when I thought that I was now able to relax and lounge about in the sun all day drinking the lemon soju that I had brought with me my name was called. Boo!! And they insisted that I take part in the ladies' arm wrestling. Which to my great surprise I won! Now all of a sudden all of the teachers were talking to me! I have to admit that I only won the first match as one of the Korean teachers told me that if I won I would get three days off work- she lied but it worked! And imagine my delight as I walked away from the tournament area leaving behind many Korean women all rubbing their biceps in pain when I discovered that I was now the proud owner of 20kg rice! Which I couldn't lift as my arm hurt from all the wrestling (and in fact for the next two days but it was worth it because my victory ensured my team's overall win and we are going out to dinner to celebrate!) so I gave the stuff away to someone who actually cooks rice at home! I do eat a lot of rice here (no surprise really!) but I usually go out to eat it as I don't really know how to recreate Korean dishes at home. My joy at winning was only made greater when later I won 24 toilet rolls later in the raffle! Hooray! I was ready to settle down for a weekend of eating rice and going to the toilet before I remembered that it was my birthday weekend and I had better get to the pub!

Which I duly did on Friday night and Saturday night and yesterday (Sunday) we went on a cruise around Mokpo harbour. Saturday night was a good one- one bar then the soju tent and then the nori bang (where I was allowed to sing 'Take on me' twice in a row because I got so sulky when they tried to put on another song... quote 'It is my bloody birthday when do I get to sing my bloody song??' accompanied with truly sullen face and much sticking out of my bottom lip!) Two of my adult students came along and they brought me a cake, which I ate, in traditional Korean style- with chopsticks!! I got many presents including an ashtray in the shape of some poo with a smiling maggot inside (no I haven't taken up smoking rather I am fascinated with the Korean fascination with poo), a t-shirt with a cute photo of a puppy in the front (which came in handy as I ordered some pizza to be delivered to the pub and then spilt it all my front!), soju cups, some knives (from a friend who was disgusted when she found out that I have been buttering my bread with the back of a spoon for the last five months) and hundred and one cute Korean character things!

All in all a very good birthday and the gifts from home have caused much excitement at school (and made me look pretty popular as I got five parcels at the school last week and one the week before!). This morning I have been catching up on some much needed sleep, spending some quality time with the hermit crabs and generally doing bugger all!

I will try and write again later this week with more Korean news!
Love H xxx
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wordsworth- Korean Style!

2002-05-01T17:04:00.000+09:00

Now I have mentioned before the bad English on things (some of my favourites include greetings cards that contain little gems such as 'You fill me full of emotlons', 'I so happy with you are with me', 'I wise your birthday to you' and 'Happy Congrutulation') but the t-shirts are some of the best. Yesterday someone uncovered this little literary gem on a t-shirt downtown. All the spelling is their own. There was a little character covering up some of the words at the bottom so I will put -- where the words were covered. Enjoy!!

'I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on bigh over vales and bills when all at one I saw a crowd, A bost of golden daffodils after. Beside the lade, beneath the frees, fluttering and dancing in the breeze continuous as the stars that shing and twinkle on the milky way. They stretebed in never ending. Along the margin of the bay. The thousand saw I tossing their beads in the spiritbay of waves beside them danced sparkling waves in a glee a poo gay-- i gazed in such a -- what wealth the show to m-- when on my couch I lie in vacant-- they flash upon that ward eye which--'
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jejudo (Jeju Island, Cheju Island)

2002-04-30T17:03:00.000+09:00

Friday night was the usual drinking orgy - tough luck that we have found a cocktail bar that stays open until 7! I stayed over at Rebecca's house as we were catching the 9 am ferry to Jeju Island the next morning (or roughly two hours after we had gone to bed- whichever way you want to look at it).

There are two ferry services to Jeju from Mokpo - the fast one and the slow one. We caught the slow one as the time was better for us. We arrived at the ferry terminal (after going to the wrong one first - much to the tutting of our taxi driver who knew where we should have gone in the first place but didn't have the communication skills necessary to tell us this - or to be too smug about being right all along) and it was full of middle school students. It seems to be a bit of a thing in Mokpo for the schools to take their kids over to Jeju for a few days in the Spring.

Heads pounding we elected to pay extra for beds in a shared cabin (there are four options on the ferry 1. First Class - your own cabin, twin beds and TV, 2. Upper Second class - a bed in a shared cabin with a blanket, pillow and curtain to pull over your bunk for privacy, 3. Lower Second class - a room about 20' by 20' where everyone sits on the floor and a TV in the corner flicks in and out of different TV stations as you progress across the sea and 4. Third Class - a much bigger room with many more people in it where you still sit on the floor but now run the risk of being stepped on by the now very familiar soju-swilling dancing ajummas.) The prices vary from W45,000 to W16,500.

We were directed to our cabin (the different classes are well segregated on the boat to stop the ajummas harassing those in first class) and I hauled myself into my top bunk (what else!), pulled the blanket over me and settled my head into the pillow (traditional Korean style thingy that seems to be stuffed with inch long pieces of drinking straws) for some hard earned hung over kip- thereby missing all the beautiful islands that Rebecca assured me we passed on the way.
We were met at the other side by a friend who had gone over on the fast ferry the day before and he took us into Jeju-Si (Jeju city) where we started our subtropical adventure with a burger at Burger King. Then we went onto the World Cup Football store and bought socks (remind me to talk more about socks one day) where one of the girls disappeared into a giggling fit when I said that I was from England and she wouldn't tell me why! Undaunted by this hysteria we made our purchases and went to the very friendly tourist information hut nearby.

Then it was onto a bus and away out of town for us. The buses are cheap and regular and the island is small- an ideal combination really. We only had one night on the island and so we discussed the popular option of hiring a taxi for the weekend but decided on the buses in the end. Our first stop was Songs an Sunrise Peak- an extinct volcano that is supposed to be a very cool place to watch sunrise (the name is no coincidence). We opted to break with tradition and went up just before sunset- struggling through the ajummas who wanted us to stay in their houses for the night. There is horse riding at the bottom of the peak and a stunning views over the island and the ocean at the top. It was exceedingly hot and we all had purr packs with us- I kept wanting to stop but was compelled to go on when all these little Korean kids just ran past on their way up- if they can do it so can I!!

It was a cool view but we had to get on. We climbed the thing (using the concrete steps admittedly), took photos, came back down and got on another bus- after another period of ajummas trying to get us to stay and then laughing at us anytime we attempted to speak Korean. Our next stop was Sawpit on the other side of the island from Jeju-Si. We went there to see a waterfall that flows into the sea but it was dark and shut by the time we got there. Waterfalls are not that great in the dark and we only really knew that we were looking the right way as it seemed to be where the noise was coming from. The guy in our motel was very cool- not one word of English but a book full of phrases which he kept pointing at- such as 'I hope that you enjoy your stay' and 'If you need help dial 0'- though how that would help as we could hardly mime over the phone, I couldn't really see. We went out to eat and ended up in on the top floor of a restaurant whose roof was so low that my head grazed it even when I was sitting down.

Then it was early to bed ready for the next day.

Sunday morning we went to anther waterfall in a beautiful park and took photos of each other with the Harubangs (traditional Jeju grandfather figures) which are all over the island but some old ones were here. We bought souvenir clothes and hats and really began to feel the part! Also we made plenty of Korean tourists laugh by imitating them by counting to three in Korean before taking a photo (hana, dul, set..KIMCHI!). The park the waterfall was in was splendid and in common with most other places in Jeju it just smelt gorgeous to us city folks.

Then it was onto the next bus and Hallim Park to see the caves and bonsai trees. By the time it was raining so we were pleased that we were now going 'inside'- though I guess that we should have checked the guide book that warned us that it 'rains' in the caves all the time! But we had umbrellas so that was OK though we were a bit unsure on whether the old 'don't open umbrellas indoors' bad luck would apply to troglodytes! The park was again wonderful and we had our photos taken many times by various Korean tourists- one particular lady insisted that we take a photo of her and her baby with us ON MY CAMERA! We obliged and she was really happy and kept thanking us over and over. It was getting embarrassing and we had to get the bus so we made our excuses and ran out through the bonsai 'forest'. The bus took us back to Jeju-si and it was onto the terminal, onto the ferry and staking our claim on the floor in the Lower Second Class room and home.

And sleep........
Lots of fun though!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ajummas, dancing and miracles...

2002-04-25T17:02:00.000+09:00

It has been another interesting week here in Mokpo. New timetable, new books, new students and the Moses Miracle of Jindo. Yes that last one does sound a little odd I have to admit. I will tell you all about it but first let me fill you in on the background.

Spring has firmly taken root in Korea and in no place more so than the minds of its resident ESL teachers. We have got a bit of a collective travel bug. And it is not just the Mokpoians amongst us I hasten to add- we had visitors over last weekend from Chungju. These were people we had met in Seoul and met up with again in Pusan. It was strange having all these foreign faces in our fair city. And they wanted to do stuff and in giving them ideas we realised how little we had done ourselves. So a friend and me started on sorting this out on Saturday when we went on a boat cruise around the edge of Mokpo. I thought that it would be a nice relaxing thing to do and it was a lovely day. Should have known that it was going to be an odd affair when the police were on the jetty collecting our tickets- and not in the slightest bit impressed that we both wrote our names in Korean script. We got onto the boat and settled down with a good view. Then the ajummas started piling on. I am not sure what I have told you about this breed of folk but ajummas are basically older or married women and it is a term of respect for ones that own their own business. In my day to day life the ajummas that I usually see are the ones that work the food stalls scattered all over the streets of Mokpo- they would generally be pensioners back home (I guess). I must get some photos for you all- they are a quite incredible race, with their perms and baggy trousers and they would beat anyone in the world at a 'pushing in front of you in the supermarket queue' competition. They are pretty scary at the best of times. But now we know what they do for fun. They come to Mokpo, pile onto a boat, get absolutely shitfaced on soju, sing, dance and generally harass the foreigners on board for an hour and a half before going home again! It was crazy! We got up for a polite dance but were held captive for nearly the whole trip. If either of us tried to get away we were grabbed by the nearest dancer and pulled back into the fold. And they were not fussy about where they grabbed either- I got pulled back at one stage by a hand clamped onto my right boob! They took my camera off me and took loads of photos of them with us. They taught us the proper dance (waving hips from side to side and pointing hands in the air- very easy and a universal call to ajummas to dance but more on that later) and forced soju down our throats. And pulled us and fought over who was going to dance with us- at one point I had an ajumma on each arm and they were pulling in opposite directions!

We felt like we had been kidnapped and had the sneaky suspicion that one of them was creeping out to issue ransom demands to our families! But in the end a drunken old man came over and gave us both a can of lemonade and we seized our chance and legged it! It was actually a lot of fun- and we did appreciate seeing, in the last five minutes of the cruise, passed out ajummas all over the deck.

We finally made it back onto dry land and went to the restaurant on the beach and watched the sunset. And then went to the pub and I got home around 7 the following morning- so I saw the sun come up again too. But it was in the pub that we found out about the Moses thing. Turned out that there was another group of foreigners in Mokpo for the weekend- enroute to Jindo for the Moses Miracle- they had bumped into some of our friends earlier who had invited them to the bar that night. But I didn't know this when they walked into the bar and I just couldn't stop staring at all these new foreign faces. Over all there must have been around 40 of us and we were all thrilled to have new people to meet. And they told us about Jindo and we decided to go the next day too.

Got up around midday and went and hired a car for the day with five other people (yes, six of us in a small car- very comfy) and off we went to Jindo. Jindo is an island which is connected to the mainland with a bridge. At a certain time of the year the sea between Jindo and another island about 2.5km away parts and you are able to walk between the two on a strip of land uncovered by the water. It has been doing this for years but only really came to International notice when a French Ambassador saw it in 1975 and compared it to Moses and the parting of the Red Sea.

Now there is a festival there every year and lot of people walk between the two islands, though most people seem to be taking the opportunity to gather shellfish. We bought some yellow waders there- they came to above my knees and were thin enough for me to feel every shell and stone that I trod on. But it was really cool. We had left it a little late so didn't make it all the way to the other island before being turned back by the police as the tide was changing- those police really do get everywhere! We got a lift back to the shore in a fishing boat which was really cool! We got back to the shore and joined the festival. There was some music being played through the loudspeakers and I decided to have a quick ajumma dance by myself but by the time I had raised my fingers a swarm of them had come over for a dance- you would have thought that I had learnt! I just legged it as quick as I could!

After all that exercise it was time for a feed and, predictably enough, sea food was pretty prominent on the menu in all the food tents. Now, it was be technically incorrect to describe what Tim ate as 'live' octopus because surely it was dead after being cut up. But it wasn't cooked. It was killed just moments before it was delivered to the table. It continued wiggling and squirming on his plate for much longer than I could bear to look at it anyway! But he seemed satisfied and that is the main thing I guess. Inevitably, as it was dark and we had no map, we got lost on the way home but had much fun getting back to Mokpo - the four of us in the back had had to promise not to complain about the cramped conditions as we were too mingy to hire another car for the day- going down every dark alley and driveway and through tunnels until we saw the bright lights of our big city and came home. We went up Yudal San (the local 'mountain') watched some pissed locals have a fight then went home. All in all it was a great weekend.

And this weekend I am going to the subtropical island of Jeju- the wettest place in Korea so that should be cool. Next weekend we are planning to go back on the cruise boat and get our revenge on the ajummas by taking some friends and our own soju!! But I will leave you there as people are waiting for me in the pub!
Take care H

Sirens, stories and Miguks...

2002-04-22T17:00:00.000+09:00

Hello there all,

Yes I am still alive and well in Mokpo. I was going to write at the weekend but if I am honest about the whole thing I was far too drunk and hung over for most of the time. Which in this crazy world I live in seems to be a reasonable excuse to me- don't you agree??

So what has been going on in Mokpo that I can tell you about? I am fully recovered from the Traveller's Disease which is a good thing. I had to take a multitude of tablets several times a day and have only now stopped rattling when I walk. But it is a relief to be better and have energy again. And to be able to go out drinking too of course. So I have spent quite some time in the soju tents and nori-bangs these last couple of weeks. And Korean classes have resumed which is a good thing though my poor brain begged to differ after a two hour work out last Saturday.

Just when I think that I am getting an idea on how this country works strange things happen which prove to me over and over that I will never figure this country out. Example, I was down town last week with a friend having coffee. We could hear a siren go off but chose to ignore it. As we stood to leave the shop the woman spoke to us but we didn't understand what she was saying and so smiled, nodded and walked out. Wandering down the street my friend suddenly noticed that all the cars were standing still and that there was no noise- odd. Then a guy in the middle of the road, looking all kind of official, motioned for us to stop. And we saw him do the same to other people. He also explained to us, in Korean, exactly why we should stop so we were none the wiser really. It was a bit eerie really as streets in Korea, in my experience, are ALWAYS filled with the noise of car horns being used to punctuate driving. After about five minutes another siren went off and everyone started moving again. We never did find out why!

This kind of thing happens to us all the time over here. There was a group of us in the nori bang the other night and another group rang to find out where we were and I had to give the phone to the Korean guy working there so he could explain to the Korean in the other group where we were. I wish that they would use street names here sometimes!

Last Saturday we saw an anti-Miguk (America) demonstration down town. they seemed to be a fairly friendly smiley bunch so we pushed our miguk into their midst and took a photo of them. Once they realised what was going on they obligingly handed her a banner to hold and insisted that we take another photo. As we left they asked where we were from- America we yelled and walked away laughing. There is a lot of anti-American feeling here at times while at the same time there is a great love of American culture. Witness the fact that they only really want North Americans as teachers here and those of us without the desired accent are advised to try putting one on. They know more about baseball than soccer here- though the World Cup is slowly changing that I am sure that it won't last. They don't really seem to know their soccer teams (see how American am I- I mean footie teams of course!) and most of my students insist that Korea will be winning the World Cup. Yes, of course they are.....! They seem to love and hate America all at the same time. The only time when feelings were clear cut was during the recent Winter Olympics when they all hated the US for winning the medal for speed skating that should have been Korea's. Some of my students have told me that they think that the US deserved September 11th but most just seem to hate Bush (or Busy as they call him!) personally rather than the country as a whole. I just explain what a tragedy that day was and talk about the people involved.

But even though I don't have the 'correct' accent I still get quite a bit of attention- mostly by kids asking me if I am a miguk. But the other week Tim and I were asked to judge a story telling competition in Mokpo. It was a lot of fun. There was 14 groups of kids who had all been practising and memorizing their lines ready for the day. I was judging them on Intonation and Pronunciation and Tim had two other categories that I can't remember right now. They were very sweet even if their little chipmunk voices rather pounded my poor hung over head (the boss had taken us out for soju the night before and it had been a long one). Some of them were very good and some of them weren't. But the funniest thing was some of the groups had obviously rehearsed without microphones and the leads on these ones were very short- hence a hare and tortoise race being prematurely won by the tortoise as the hare was yanked back the way she had come by the mike lead. But this didn't just happen once- it happened over and over again. It was hard to keep a straight face as one kid was yelling at another one to 'come here' while the other one was firmly reined in by the mike lead. Or the kid who got tied up in a knot as his fellow group members ran round and round him twisting the lead, unknowingly, round his legs. It was so hard to keep a straight face that at times I turned round to see Tim shamelessly laughing and I had to join in. Poor kids and after they had given us a real Hollywood star welcome too- applause and welcoming yells before we were even introduced. but it was a good afternoon and the best group won- the one that did their piece on England!!

I don't have anything to tell you right now that I can think of so I will try and write again soon when I think of what it is I have to say!
Take care Helen
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Poo, Pusan and Pronunciation...

2002-04-20T15:59:00.000+09:00

Hello All

I spent 2 hours this morning hooked up to a drip in the Doctor's office. It is official, I have 'Traveller's Disease' which the doctor claimed that he could cure me of. I imagined that he would be bringing out some powder to cure my 'itchy feet' or a large map of England with a big arrow marked HOME pointing firmly towards Felixstowe. But it was more straightforward than that. I just have the same stomach cramps, runs, vomiting and loss of appetite that most travellers get at some stage - usually around the point at which the body realises that it is not on holiday so it should sit down and have a good long hard think about the situation and adjust itself accordingly. I have always joked about wanting to get a tropical disease which would help me shift some of this weight without the actual effort of dieting and exercise but this last week has been no fun at all on the health front, let me tell you!

It all started on Wednesday, around lunchtime, fortunately it was just after my water supply had returned from its 36 hour sojourn to god knows where. On Wednesday I only have three classes so that was easy enough to make it through. But I went over to some friends' houses after school and made short work of making their bathrooms as uninhabitable as mine was before leaving early and claiming sickness as my excuse. Thursday was more of a trial but I have at least found the pedestal toilets at work, which made my life slightly more comfortable. Though I did end up finishing two of my classes five minutes early and the kids noticed and asked why. I hadn't got time to explain and just shooed them out of the classroom and pelted it down the corridor to the jacks. Thursday evening was a fun-filled evening of soju, beer and nori bang- interspersed with trips to the bathroom. Friday I caught a train to Pusan with three friends. Seven and a half hours later we arrived, pale and shaky. What kind of sadist comes up with the idea of putting squat toilets on moving vehicles anyway??? As if using the loo on the train isn't already fraught with enough dangers you also risk weeing all down your leg at the merest judder on the tracks. Anyway, I digress, our hotel couldn't have been more perfect- fifth floor room with balcony overlooking the beach, the sound of the ocean coming in through the window, beautiful bathroom complete with shampoo, soap and towels, clean bed and soft porn on the TV - bliss!

The plan had been to arrive on Friday and then go out to a temple of the Saturday and go shopping on Sunday before catching the train back at 9.40 that night. But rain stopped play and so we just shopped the whole time. Top 3 purchases were: 1. an umbrella! 2. books for school - including the book that I remember as the first one that I learnt to read (The Gingerbread Man - run run as fast as you can!!) and 3. some Korean alphabet fridge magnets so that I can spell out rude words on my fridge in Korean (just as soon as I learn some!). Had a great time all in with no alcohol. And I finally got a photo of a dog with pink ears and tail and if it turns out OK I will get it scanned in and send it to you all! Also saw a collar and lead for a HAMSTER, 3 women selling puppies out of cardboard boxes on the street and beggars who lie on trolleys and push themselves along the street with one hand held out and a stereo blasting out, the fish market again and we went to the cinema- and we could see through the window so maybe it just is Mokpo where the witness protection scheme shields them!

I returned to Mokpo still sick and heavily laden down with new purchases and two new sentences in Korean- 'I am not a doctor' and 'This is not Pusan'. Both of which will just lend themselves to the air of mystery that I try to surround myself with:

Noisy stranger: 'So what do you do?'
Bilingual Helen: 'I am NOT a doctor!'
NS: 'Erm, I see. So do you live here?"
BH: 'This is not Pusan!'
NS:

The opportunities for using my new Korean knowledge are endless I am sure that you will agree! And I learnt a new word - the Korean for rain is Pee! Should be easy to remember. We did experience a bit of a language barrier in Pusan- and not because of our slightly obtuse sentences- but because we are learning to speak with Mokpo accents. Interestingly enough one of my students told me the other night that all people on Korean TV have Seoul accents. I asked if this bothered him (as it would and has in the past in the UK where regional accents are under represented on TV) and he said no as it was the accent that everyone could understand! But he did say that he got annoyed when the only Mokpo accent he hears on TV is that of gangsters - Mokpo is famous for its gangsters but more on that another time!

Back in Mokpo the weather has been shocking too. it has gotten cold again and the yellow dust from China is back. I was told this morning (by my Korean friend who took me to the doctor) that it comes from near Beijing and it is because they have cut down the trees over there creating a desert which flies over to Korean in the springtime and stays for two months in the spring. Apparently it only appeared around five years ago and have been haunting the Koreans and making them sick every Spring ever since. And the other big climate change here that again has only happened recently is the humidity in the summer. It used to just get hot but in the last two years and it has started to getting incredibly humid. Hum, something to look forward. That is Spring out because of the toxic dust from China, Summer for the humidity which leaves Autumn and Winter - have already had Winter so just have Autumn to look forward to I guess!

Have I told you about 'service' over here? I don't think that I have. It happens to me and a lot of my friends a lot. It is when the person in the shop slips a little something extra into your bag and says 'service'. It can be anything. My local shop gives me candy and rather dubious sausage things. The photo shop gives me coupons off reprints and World Cup photo frames. The pizza place has given us nasty looking angels and a kit aeroplane. A camping store in Pusan gave me a free bag because I made them laugh (thereby making it my first professional comedy engagement!). So we have kind of got used to service and it certainly seems the opposite of the stereotype of a local happily ripping off the clueless foreigners. And I got service in the doctor's today, which has to be my biggest score to date! And he gave me a discount. I think that this was because he kept coming in to talk English to me while I was on the drip. I heard the door open a few times when I was lying with my eyes shut but when they were open he came in and fiddled with the drip for a bit and chatted. He was very sweet and bought me some National Geographics to read - which my Korean friend ended up reading as I went to sleep! I think that maybe the doctor suggested the drip to keep me there for longer so he could practice his English. And now he wants to come drinking with us on Friday! Korea really is a funny old place at times but I do love it here!! Oh, the other thing about the doctors over here is the big packets of tablets that they prescribe you - I have two packets of five tablets to be taken a day and one lot with four pills in it. I don't know why there are so many but they always give you a combination apparently and I am trusting this guy (I have no choice but I do feel heaps better too!)

So rather than entertain you all with the comings and goings of my bowels during the last week (or singing you the rather 'clever' song I made up for my friends on the way home from the nori bang the other night- to the tune of 'These are a few of my favourite things') I shall leave you all there until next week!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Knives, Trees and Dust..

2002-04-14T15:58:00.000+09:00

Now I am solidly into my fourth month here in Mokpo and of course it came as no real surprise to me yesterday morning to discover that we were once more bereft of water. It did come back on today - just after I had finished washing with bottled water in a bucket again- timing! And in all the panic about the water I forgot to tell you about the irony of it raining heavily outside while the taps inside ran dry. Or that we were engulfed in dust for 3 days- the first day it hung like a fog in the air. My students told me that it came over from China and that it hits Mokpo at this time every year. Pretty determined dust it has to be said. All of the cars were covered in dust and in fact a lot of them still are. Pretty worrying when you think that we were breathing that air in. Best not to think about it I reckon.

So I have been thinking about some of the differences between Korean students and those back home in England. I have already covered the amount of time that the kids spend in various school and after school classes. I see a lot of kids running around in their Taekwondo outfits and they are very sweet- bearing in mind that most of the kids I see are fairly little and not at all threatening. Just very sweet and smiley and pleased to see what they think is an American- they chase me down the street yelling 'miguk' which is American. I soon put them straight with a very firm 'yonguk', which is England. Not surprisingly the kids are big into their pens and pencils and have some of the best pencil cases I have seen- with some of the funniest English on them. But the really surprising thing, from my point of view, is what lurks inside the pencil cases- they all seem to carry knives. Not hoofing great machetes or anything like that- just little craft knives to sharpen their pencils with. Not pencil sharpeners here. Or very few at least. Can you imagine if the kids back home routinely carried little knives?? I told my adult class what a shock it was to see kids as young as six carrying knives and it was really a concept that they couldn't get their heads around. I don't think that we even started to sharpen our own pencils until after the age of seven and I wouldn't trust myself with a knife to do it even now.

And there seems to be no big stigma for the boys to carry pencil cases covered in hearts and all pink and words like 'My love for you is endless just as there is no end to the universe' written on them. In fact one of my middle school students pulled out a cloth to wipe his glasses on and it was absolutely covered in big pink flowers. Imagine the reaction that would get from his classmates back home. I am not saying that it is right to laugh at boys for having pencil cases covered in cute rabbits, I am just saying that a boy doing that back home would be lucky to make it through puberty.

This Friday is Arbor Day- a National Holiday. On this day, thousands of Koreans plant trees to help the reforestation program. Some of my students have told me that they will be going to the mountains on Friday to plant trees near the graves of their grandparents. They told me most of this by drawing me a picture on the board of a grave mound- complete with dead grandparent in a coffin- you just have to love the kids sometimes! Of course the plans for the Mokpo crew on this day have little to do with trees and more to do with soju. We are off to Pusan and I will tell you all about it next week!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(part 2) - water update, hangovers and irons...

2002-04-12T15:57:00.000+09:00

..........Getting home was no problem - Mokpo cab drivers seem to have few qualms about taking drunk people in their cabs - either that or they don't know enough English to tell us that if we throw up we pay for it. Cab home then and I sat up and watched 'Married with Children' before laying down and getting some shut-eye. But I woke up a little while later and was distressed to see that I had left the bathroom light on and it was shining through the glass door and not letting me go back to sleep. I tried to sleep for a few minutes and then got up, wrapped myself in my blanket and staggered across the floor to turn the light off. But when I hit the switch the light came on. The light that had woken me up was the sun! Resigned to the light I went back to bed, pulled the blanket over my head and went back to sleep. When I eventually did wake up I turned on the TV to the SAME episode of 'Married with Children', which set the day up with a surreal start.

Surprisingly I didn't feel too bad yesterday - I went shopping with a friend and we bought all kinds of cute stuff again and a couple of CDs each. I just watched videos last night. Today I went to E-mart (part of my usual Sunday routine) and I bought an iron for the first time ever in my life. I borrowed Tim's when I first got here but three months with crumpled shirts is enough for any man so I said that I would give it back and buy my own. Which I did. I have never bought an iron before though I have owned an old one of my mum's, which I lost at some point in the last ten years. So you can imagine just how excited I was about this purchase - should I get steam? Easy glide? Cordless? Or just the cheapest one in the store? Guess. But I am sure that it will do the job OK - it is not as if it will lead a taxing life with me - I am not the World's least crumpled person after all. And I went a bit girlie for a minute and bought cleanser and toner and foaming face wash - can't wait to shower now!!

Oh yes, I should probably tell you what happened with the water in the end too. It went off on the Wednesday, was back on Thursday morning long enough for me to wash up and flush the toilet. It had gone by the time I got to school. And remained off this time until Saturday morning. On the Friday night we were flushing the toilet in the bar using water out of huge barrels put in there for that purpose. My own facility was not that well equipped and I have never been as pleased with flush technology as I was when the water came back on on Saturday morning, let me tell you! So we have water now, I am not sure for how long this time but hopefully it will be a while and at least next time I will know what to do - PANIC!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(part 1)- Easter, trash and soju...

2002-04-12T15:56:00.000+09:00

Just when you thought that I had forgotten all about you all on the cusp of week 13 I hit you with week 12's bit of news. Yes, week 12 which means that I have now been here just over three months so I am a quarter of the way through my contract here in Mokpo-Si. And a good time it has been so far.

Today is Easter Sunday though we were all completely unaware of this fact until someone rang home and was told by their parents. There is a complete lack of anything made of chocolate in the shape of an egg in Mokpo and in fact the kids are horrified at the mere thought of such a confectionary item (I chickened out of telling them about the Easter Bunny for fear of being committed to the nearest lunatic asylum- 'yes, dear, of course a rabbit brings you chocolate in the shape of an egg once a year, now stand still while we put this lovely white jacket on you, nice and snug'). I thought that I was grown up enough to survive Easter without an Easter Egg but it turns out that I was WRONG! I have been in a bit of a sulk all day - after all, what is Easter without that slight nausea caused by the consumption of too much chocolate? Dismal, that is what it is! So if anyone sees any cheap Easter Eggs left over after today back in their home country then feel free to purchase them and post them over to the grateful teachers in Korea!!!!

Let me get off the path of bitterness for a while and think what has happened in the last week. Well, I found a great table in the trash last Sunday so I brought that home and showered it down a bit. It is a low one - i.e. you have to sit on the floor to use it - and the legs fold up so I can store it down the side of my washing machine - handy in a pad the size of mine. Have I ever sung the praises of the trash over here? I think that I might have mentioned how great it is once or twice. Already I have rescued two chairs, a coffee table, an ironing board, bookcase and dining table and a very large and ugly pink piggy bank without a stopper that sits by my toilet and tries to scare away any burglars that make it in through the window. I have also trash picked for my friend, Eric, who is the proud owner of an ex-rash sofa, chair and small table. I am a bit worried now because my home is full and I can't really fit any more furniture in it and I don't know how I will survive the next nine months without anymore trash picking. Guess that I can always 'upgrade' my furniture whenever I get the opportunity. I love the trash here and am always a little disappointed when all it contains is real trash!

Having got a table I, of course, organised a dinner party straight away. It was planned for Wednesday night - all the RSVPs were in and all were attending. Then I got to school and got invited out by the hagwon. I really had to go to that as the whole school was going out for a meal at MIDNIGHT!! Not so odd when you think that the latest some of the teachers finish is around that time so it is the only available time slot for all. So I had a beer with friends first then went and met Tim for another beer and went on to meet the rest of the teachers in a traditional restaurant. We had a barbecue thing and the director was most impressed when he saw me using chopsticks - the last time we ate together was when he picked me up from the airport after 24 hours of travelling and took me out for a meal and I looked at the chopsticks with horror and despair. He was very proud of himself for buying two forks when he furnished my flat - so proud in fact that I didn't dare ask him for knives as well! So at home I am the proud owner of three spoons, three pairs of metal chopsticks, six pairs of wooden chopsticks and two forks. (Before you ask, I butter my bread with the back of a spoon). He congratulated me on my mastering of the eating utensils and then kindly turned a blind eye as I dropped food all over the table and myself - bless! A lot of the dinner conversation was in Korean so Tim and I did our best to wipe the table clear of soju. And succeeded in the most part. We left around three-around about the time I heard Mr Kim mention Nori bang. It is certainly not something often seen in the UK- when a boss takes his entire staff out on the piss until the wee early hours of a school morning. The next day he handed out hangover cures and vitamin pills, which was quite funny. School was not exactly my favourite on Thursday and there was a lot of game playing had by all. Some of my students asked me if they could play games again the next day but didn't seem to understand when I muttered 'only if I am as hung over as this again' under my breath.

I can't think that I have a lot else to tell you really. Friday night turned into a bit of a pub crawl - we started in the Harry Potter bar (yes, that really is the name of the bar and there is even a bolt of lightning on the door but no sign of Hedwig inside) which proved to be too small to take the ever increasing crowd that arrived in dribs and drabs throughout the night. A couple of folks went out on a fearless reccie and reported back saying that they had found a bar big enough and empty enough to take us all. We followed them to the new bar but several of us ended up spending most of the night at the soju tent across the road - just popping back to the bar to say hi and use the toilet. Drinking soju in a tent - albeit a large one - really gave the evening a bit of a festival atmosphere and I felt like I should be hurrying off to see who was playing on the Pyramid Stage - but I stayed put until all the soju was drunk or we were all drunk - one or the other I forget which.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Easter, trash and soju...

2002-04-04T00:11:00.000+09:00

Just when you thought that I had forgotten all about you all on the cusp of week 13 I hit you with week 12's bit of news. Yes, week 12 which means that I have now been here just over three months so I am a quarter of the way through my contract here in Mokpo-Si. And a good time it has been so far.

Today is Easter Sunday though we were all completely unaware of this fact until someone rang home and was told by their parents. There is a complete lack of anything made of chocolate in the shape of an egg in Mokpo and in fact the kids are horrified at the mere thought of such a confectionary item (I chickened out of telling them about the Easter Bunny for fear of being committed to the nearest lunatic asylum- 'yes, dear, of course a rabbit brings you chocolate in the shape of an egg once a year, now stand still while we put this lovely white jacket on you, nice and snug'). I thought that I was grown up enough to survive Easter without an Easter Egg but it turns out that I was WRONG! I have been in a bit of a sulk all day - after all, what is Easter without that slight nausea caused by the consumption of too much chocolate? Dismal, that is what it is! So if anyone sees any cheap Easter Eggs left over after today back in their home country then feel free to purchase them and post them over to the grateful teachers in Korea!!!!
Let me get off the path of bitterness for a while and think what has happened in the last week. Well, I found a great table in the trash last Sunday so I brought that home and showered it down a bit. It is a low one - i.e. you have to sit on the floor to use it - and the legs fold up so I can store it down the side of my washing machine - handy in a pad the size of mine. Have I ever sung the praises of the trash over here? I think that I might have mentioned how great it is once or twice. Already I have rescued two chairs, a coffee table, an ironing board, bookcase and dining table and a very large and ugly pink piggy bank without a stopper that sits by my toilet and tries to scare away any burglars that make it in through the window. I have also trash picked for my friend, Eric, who is the proud owner of an ex-rash sofa, chair and small table. I am a bit worried now because my home is full and I can't really fit any more furniture in it and I don't know how I will survive the next nine months without anymore trash picking. Guess that I can always 'upgrade' my furniture whenever I get the opportunity. I love the trash here and am always a little disappointed when all it contains is real trash!

Having got a table I, of course, organised a dinner party straight away. It was planned for Wednesday night - all the RSVPs were in and all were attending. Then I got to school and got invited out by the hagwon. I really had to go to that as the whole school was going out for a meal at MIDNIGHT!! Not so odd when you think that the latest some of the teachers finish is around that time so it is the only available time slot for all. So I had a beer with friends first then went and met Tim for another beer and went on to meet the rest of the teachers in a traditional restaurant. We had a barbecue thing and the director was most impressed when he saw me using chopsticks - the last time we ate together was when he picked me up from the airport after 24 hours of travelling and took me out for a meal and I looked at the chopsticks with horror and despair. He was very proud of himself for buying two forks when he furnished my flat - so proud in fact that I didn't dare ask him for knives as well! So at home I am the proud owner of three spoons, three pairs of metal chopsticks, six pairs of wooden chopsticks and two forks. (Before you ask, I butter my bread with the back of a spoon). He congratulated me on my mastering of the eating utensils and then kindly turned a blind eye as I dropped food all over the table and myself - bless! A lot of the dinner conversation was in Korean so Tim and I did our best to wipe the table clear of soju. And succeeded in the most part. We left around three-around about the time I heard Mr Kim mention Nori bang. It is certainly not something often seen in the UK- when a boss takes his entire staff out on the piss until the wee early hours of a school morning. The next day he handed out hangover cures and vitamin pills, which was quite funny. School was not exactly my favourite on Thursday and there was a lot of game playing had by all. Some of my students asked me if they could play games again the next day but didn't seem to understand when I muttered 'only if I am as hung over as this again' under my breath.
I can't think that I have a lot else to tell you really. Friday night turned into a bit of a pub crawl - we started in the Harry Potter bar (yes, that really is the name of the bar and there is even a bolt of lightning on the door but no sign of Hedwig inside) which proved to be too small to take the ever increasing crowd that arrived in dribs and drabs throughout the night. A couple of folks went out on a fearless reccie and reported back saying that they had found a bar big enough and empty enough to take us all. We followed them to the new bar but several of us ended up spending most of the night at the soju tent across the road - just popping back to the bar to say hi and use the toilet. Drinking soju in a tent - albeit a large one - really gave the evening a bit of a festival atmosphere and I felt like I should be hurrying off to see who was playing on the Pyramid Stage - but I stayed put until all the soju was drunk or we were all drunk - one or the other I forget which.

Water disaster, White Day and teaching.

2002-03-22T00:12:00.000+09:00

Woke up this morning to find that there was no water coming out of my tap- not that there usually is when I wake up but it certainly hurries along whenever I turn the tap on. This time there was none to be coaxed out at all. Of course, I didn't find this out the moment that I woke up as I had to conquer my fear of the huge spider that had moved into my sink overnight first. I couldn't help wondering if the spider had been employed by the Mokpo City Council to stop me finding out about the water shortage straight away. I wonder if everyone else had one too!

Turns out that the water is out in the whole of Mokpo for the next two days at least. Also turns out that most of the people at work knew about this- being able to read the notices up that had been put up in Korean. Obviously my bragging about my Korean classes and the advances I was making there (counting up to 11 now!) led them to believe that they don't need to tell me stuff anymore and that I will find it out the hard way instead. This seems to happen on a regular basis according to some of my friends here- the water shortage that is rather than the lack of communication between the Korean and foreign members of staff at the hagwon. Therefore a lot of the buildings have water tanks on the roof for just such an eventuality- not mine of course- but some do. Which at least means that there is still bottled water in the shops and tonight I intend to wash in only the cheapest mineral water that my won can buy. How I am going to flush my toilet is a matter I don't even want to think about right now!!!

********************************************

To change the subject for just a moment. I was speaking to a friend of mine earlier on today- she is still home in London- and it occurred to me that I haven't told you much about the actual teaching here. So, as a brief aside from tales of drunken debauchery (well, drunken tales if not debaucherous) I will tell you about my hagwon.

I am employed to teach 30 hours a week though I am falling far short of that at the moment. Classes are forty minutes long with a five minute break between classes- just long enough to run back to the teachers' room and grab the books I need for the next lesson- and go back and get the CORRECT books whenever my mind has malfunctioned and I have picked up the wrong books. I don't wear a watch so I keep a little alarm clock on my desk to make it easier to pace myself. But I don't need to check the time for the beginning and the end of the lesson as this is marked by a sudden blast of loud music- sometimes Korean and sometimes Westlife. Now, which do I prefer, let me think.....

Anyway, my longest day at the moment starts 2.50 and finishes at 8.45. I have one break for 50 minutes while I have no class but the rest of the time I just have the regular five minutes between classes. I teach kids and adults and none of my classes are bigger than six students presently. The kids' hagwon education is in addition to the time that they spent at their regular elementary or middle school. My shortest day is only two classes- one at 7.20 and one at 8.45. it is quite humbling to know that by the time I am starting classes the kids have already spent around 12 hours in various classrooms or at music or martial arts lessons(nearly wrote marital which would have have you wondering about what kind of a country Korea really is!).
I alternate classes with a Korean teacher so the kids have me one day and Sandra the next. So I see my students either 3 or 2 times a week and one class (lucky little devils) have me every day. I only work Monday to Friday though there are lessons on a Saturday- as the kids will tell you as they go to school and the hagwon on a Saturday most of the time. Some of them even have private lessons at home so their education never stops. Very different from back home.

*******************************************

I also forgot to tell you about White Day last week I believe. As you are aware, Valentine's Day is on the 14th Feb and over here it is not celebrated by receiving cards from nameless admirers- rather it is a day where girls give boys chocolate. March 14th is where the boys get a chance to give a little back as they buy the girls candy. And, as it should be, on both days it is traditional to give your teacher something- so we were inundated with candy last week from the kids- hooray!! There is Black Day on April 14th- where all us sad singletons get together, dress in black and eat black Chinese food (though the kids were unable to be more specific with me than that), we also have Teachers Day, Children's Day, Parents' Day, Rose DAy, Wine Day and Ring Day to look forward to- to name but a few that I can think of right now. Must admit to looking forward to Wine Day! And why don't they have a Soju Day???? Because every day is a soju day!!

HOORAY TO THAT!

Nori bang, trousers and Paddy's Day....

2002-03-22T00:09:00.000+09:00

Well it has been another hectic week here in Korea. Full of triumphs rather than downfalls so that is pretty cool. First achievement had to be the purchasing of trousers last week - hooray! Just when I thought that I wouldn't be able to buy any clothes over here EVER I discovered that they do make clothes for the odd freakishly fat Korean. Most chicks have a waist about the same as my upper arm - my thighs are bigger! But I found two pairs of trousers last week and so am made up and was more than ready to wear out my new nastily checked trousers for Paddy's Day at the weekend.

But first I had to make it through Friday night. There was a right old gathering at the pub with a much higher percentage than usual of Koreans in the group - which made it even easier to order beer which was nice. Then we moved onto the soju and things started to go a little hazy for me. Just how confused I had gotten was immediately obvious the moment nori bang (singing room) was mentioned and I smiled and said that I would love to go. There was a pretty even distribution of foreigners and Koreans at the nori bang so we had a bit of a bi-lingual session. And I made my nori bang debut with no other than the first record I ever bought - 'Take On Me' Aha. Another proud moment in my life. We finished on a rousing chorus of 'My Way' and tumbled into the street. This seemed like a good opportunity to make it home before things got even more hectic so off I went - leaving the others to go off to the night club unchaperoned.
I got home OK and checked the window was still shut before entering and in I went. Time for a bacon sandwich and a quick chat to the goldfish before bed (have a strange memory of trying to stroke one of them at one point and wishing for a more interactive pet!).

Saturday morning I went down town for my traditional 'can't do anything more hectic than this' Saturday McDonalds. Then it was time to go home and pack my bag ready for the trip to Seoul in the evening.

A group of us met at the bus station. The guys all got completely eyed up by some bloke in the toilets who made a point of leaning into the urinals to get a better view. the girls fared much better, and off we went to Seoul. The journey was pretty quiet with only the odd worry about accommodation being voiced. Well, I guess that we had all relied on someone else sorting it all out and none of us did. Ho hum.

Still we made it to Seoul OK and met up with the rest of our mates in the pub (The 3 Alleys in Itaewon). We bought our official Paddy's Day pub crawl t-shirts and started on the green beer a day early. Once again it was weird to be in Seoul and so surrounded by other foreigners after all this time in Mokpo. I managed not to stare too much and because this was Paddy's Day weekend it was OK to say hi to everyone because there was a little festival atmosphere going on.
The night finished for me around 5 in the morning when I ran back to the motel to nab a space in the only room that we had managed to book between us. There was a condom machine on the wall in the bedroom and a communal brush hanging by a piece of string off the mirror in the hallway - lovely gaff.

The next morning it was Irish breakfast in the pub - which meant, of course, plenty of Guinness was being ordered. The poor Korean barman really had my sympathy and I had money on him having some kind of a nervous break down by lunchtime. He was taking orders for pints of Guinness and other bar staff were just giving them away. He even asked us if we would order something else! On 17th March - I don't think so buddy!

After breakfast we had to go to the main street in Itaewon for one of the weirdest Paddy's Day parades I have ever seen. And I marched in it!!! Surrounded by Koreans in their traditional dress and even a bunch of beautifully made up ladies decked out in full highland outfits playing Scottish bagpipes. It was surreal to say the least. I had a shamrock on one cheek and a green star on the other. We got separated and when my little group met up with the others again they had procured a huge banner from somewhere and were marching in the middle of the parade proudly bearing it aloft. All of a sudden my little white flag didn't look as cool - though I was pleased when I read the Korean (I have been practising my alphabet) to discover that it said 'Saint Patrick’

But it was very weird to see all these Koreans with green hair and even a little baby with green smudges on his face. Definitely one of my most interesting Paddy's Days even if I was knackered yesterday after having gotten back to Mokpo around 5.30am!

And on that note I am sure that you will excuse me if I leave you here.

Take care.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Shopping, noses and numbers...

2002-03-02T00:08:00.000+09:00

Well, hello there one and all,

So here I am in Mokpo and it is lovely and warm today. Which is great but worries me a bit since I have no summer clothes here. But it is good to see the sun. Though it is still a bit chilly at nights.

No sign of anyone trying to break in again so that is a relief. I have also relaxed enough to be able to sleep with my back to the window- though it has taken nearly a week to do so. So what has been happening in the exciting world of Mokpo that I have to tell you about?

Friday night started off fairly quietly. Then someone suggested going to a club- oo-oh! We stopped at the convenience store on the way and bought a few bottles of soju to swill on the way to the club. It is rude to walk along the street eating and drinking here in Korea but this was of little consideration when we had soju and a thirst. So we went to the club. The guy put us up in the balcony as far away from the dance floor as it was possible to get while still being in the building. They brought over the usual beer, fresh fruit platter and dried fish which we then abandoned to head downstairs to the dance floor. Now I take back all I said last time about the Koreans not getting into the whole dancing thing. In this club they were animals! It was great. First off there was a singer and dancers on the stage. These were then replaced by three gorgeous young bits of totty in suits- but they seemed to have forgotten to put their shirts on- shame on them! Just as we were all getting into it the DJ took it down a few notched and everyone left the floor. We did temporarily ourselves and then decided to just put on a show for everyone so we leapt back downstairs again and put on the wayguk (foreigner) floor show of their lives! Well, we enjoyed ourselves even when the bouncer came and got the bar towels off us.

Still it was fun and only one of us didn't make it to the Korean class the next day. Progress on Korean class is as follows- I can now count to ten - which theoretically means I am sorted as all other numbers are combinations of that. That is apart from the other numbering system they use. Yes, nothing is easy over here. There is one lot of numbers for hours and one lot for minutes. One lot for counting things and another for asking for a number of things. Just the kind of thing that is really easy to learn when your lesson is on the Saturday morning after the Friday night before! I now have the alphabet sorted- mostly- and now just need to learn what the words mean. It is like learning some secret code. It is funny when you decipher a word only to discover that it is the same word in english- such as bus, lighter and lemon juice. I even found out that my roach spray is that old favourite Raid! Quite fun. I still can't talk to cab drivers though and generally just smile a lot and say fungus (english) in answer to all questions. Seems to frighten them off.

But I think that my crowning achievement in Korean class is finally mastering 'Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes' in Korean! A skill worthy of much celebration I am sure that you will agree! A vital life skill- it has stood me in good stead for all these years in English speaking countries after all. And I am learning enough Korean to freak the kids out when I understand them (or just pretend that I do- hee hee!)

After Korean class we went shopping and took with us a Korean guy that I met in the PC bang a few weeks ago. He was amazed to see just how much western adults are like teenage Korean girls! We bought danglies for the phones and key ring for each other. We all have our favourite cartoon character- mine is a little character called Gamzadori (potato boy) whose catchphrase is 'I love potato'. I have attached a photo of him to this mail. I have writing paper and notebooks with him on. Some of the others like a character called Dalki- she even has her own shop here. Gamzadori is often drawn sitting on the toilet- weird. But not as weird as what I saw in the window of the Dalki shop- a cuddly toy poo- complete with grinning fly! And inside was a toilet paper cover that is a man squatting over the squat pot doing the business- complete with little felt 'business'. It is a strange obsession over here and I have been told of flash cards that just show different coloured poo for the kids to learn their colours from!

So now I have three things hanging from my phone- the very cool turtle that I have had for a while, a power puff girl and a key ring with a photo of me and my mates from Saturday in it. I feel so Korean. But none more so than when I went into town this morning and bought a pair of check trousers- very popular here. Now, as a foreigner in Korean I am more than used to getting stared at- my life is a constant round of saying hello and getting embarrassed giggles back from the young girls that have plucked up courage to say hi first. Fine. This has led to a rather dangerous philosophy of 'they are going to stare at you anyway so you might as well do what you want'! So on the way home from town (i was walking as it is such a beautiful day) a lady stopped me to ask if I was living here. I said yes. Then she asked if I was working here to which I had to admit that I was. Then she said that she hadn't seen many.. I was patiently waiting for the word foreigners at this stage... BIG NOSES around! Well, that is a first for me. I quite like being a foreigner and I certainly give the locals enough cause to dismiss us all as a crazy breed- but BIG NOSES! Well, my hand flew to cover my nose (which is actually fairly big it has to be said!) and then she said that her husband is the only big nose that she knows. I know the Korean for nose and now I will listen out for Big Nose comments!

Still, I managed to buy clothes so now I am going to go home and try them on. Oh yeah, for those of you worried about how I was going to get on with the ATM- fear not- the first thing that I found was that two of the three ATMs near me have a button clearly marked 'English' and the rest is plain sailing!

Up to Seoul for a very Korean Paddy's Day this weekend!

Taxis, Glasses and Socks...

2002-03-02T00:05:00.000+09:00

Hello All Over the World type folk,

Here's Hels in Mokpo again to share my last week (or so) with you all. This might be a quickie but then I always promise that and then it turns into a long one and I have to go back to the beginning again and delete the bit saying that it was going to be a short message. And in taking the trouble to explain that this has now become longer than a lot of the messages I have sent over the years!

No Korean class this last Saturday which all involved were eternally grateful for. I, for one, was way too hung over to even wake up enough to put my contact lenses in for quite some time. We had a bit of a soju party on Thursday night at Tim's and then led onto to the other side of town to continue until the wee small hours (I love not starting work until 3.35!!). Feeling a little fragile the next day, I hauled myself out of bed and to work where Tim had already been for an hour. Had to laugh when I walked in and saw an empty Red Bull bottle on his desk- hee hee! And you can't even get it here, he brought it back from his recent trip from the Philippines for whenever he is too hung over to make coffee so the other teachers couldn't appreciate the joke as much as me. Friday night was party night over at Trish's and despite promising myself a soju-free weekend (after much discussion with various folk about whether or not Thursday REALLY counts as the weekend) I was back on the lemon stuff almost as soon as entering the room. Highlights include falling over and breaking beer bottles. Well, you have to question the logic of a country where you aren't allowed to wear your shoes in the house(through tradition rather than strict law enforcement before you get the wrong idea) having really shiny floors in all of the residences! People, in this case drunk people, sliding around shiny lino covered floors in their socks- well, it is a disaster waiting to happen really, isn't it! But at least it is easy to clear up the beer, i guess, which wouldn't have been spilt if people had slid on the shiny floors, which are easy to clear beer off etc etc. I ended the night phoning Trish from the car park to let her know that I couldn't find my way out and that I was having a go on the swings and hoping not to throw up. Got home just in time to hear the cockerel on my neighbour's roof crow in the dawn.

So I was thrilled to bits (in an almost unconscious sort of a way) when Reb rang to cancel the Korean lesson. The reason?? The Korean teacher was too hung over to take the class. So it is a contagious affliction. At least this gives me more time to study for the test. I have learnt the vowels now and some of the consonants (I'll have 2 vowels and four consonants please, Carol!) and can count to the astronomical heights of 7 (10 if my kids help me!). Problem is that the learning over here is done by rote rather than understanding which explains why I understood nothing the first time. Tim told me two things today that will make learning the Hangeul script really easy- apparently it is written in the form that your mouth and tongue take when saying the sound. I will have to explore this idea further. But if we were told that from the start or that two lines make a 'y' at the beginning of the sound then we would probably be further on now. I guess that it is just different ways of learning. Me and Tim get very frustrated here that the kids aren't taught to sound out new words when they see them (C-A-T etc) which means that they don’t' know where to start when they see new words. Most of the time they won't even get the first letter right- they are just guessing. they can say 'bed' and 'room' but don’t' recognise the word 'bedroom'. It's enough to make you spit (and swear sometimes which you can get away with if you use words that don't appear in Hollywood movies as no-one can understand even if the kids repeat it later!!!) but we will see what we can do with that one.

I am now a legal alien- I picked up the product of my finger-painting, sorry printing, session today- my shiny new alien registration card- and there isn't one from Venus for the women and Mars for the men, much to my disappointment. And now I have my address written down in Korean which I assume is right after they read it off the form that I had to fill in! So maybe now I can get a taxi all the way back to my house sometimes instead of to the nearest landmark.
The Immigration Office is near a huge apartment complex that most of the other teachers here live in. The block in called Boo Young (which I read in Korean off the side of the building though I guess it is cheating a bit if you already know the name!). Did i tell you about the car park at Boo Young (yes, the one where I got lost) which gets so overcrowded at night that people leave their handbrakes off so you can push the car in case it is in your way. Failing that they have little embroidered cushions in the window with their phone numbers on so you can just phone them and tell them to come down and move the car! Near Boo Young there are a lot of my favourite machine in Korean- the Telephone, Can and Coffee machine! It looks like a normal can dispensing machine but half way down the front of it is a public phone. All it needs now is a seat and there are usually plenty of those abandoned on the streets (where else do you regularly see bus stops with three piece suites in them?) Fantastic idea- i can see the benefits of that even though I don’t' drink coffee. So i thought that was one of my favourite things but it has been superseded even since this morning when I went into the bank. I don’t understand the bank at all and while i was trying to work out where to stand and who was queuing and who was just starting at me I noticed the pens on chains- perfectly normal almost universal bank furniture. But imagine your irritation when you get to the bank and realise that you have forgotten your glasses and you have to go home and get them so you can read the forms you have to fill in- well, Korea has catered for that by attaching handy pairs of spectacles to the chain for customers use! Fantastic!

I just want to add a little something about taxis here too. They are plentiful and very cheap and have far less people on board to stare at you than buses. So I use taxis all of the time unless I am walking somewhere. I do walk to work though it can be quite hazardous since there are no pavements (and many pigs heads) on the way (imagine how you feel when you see an ajumma chopping up a piece of meat on an old fashioned wooden block when you realise that the bit she is holding onto to make sure that the meat won't just slip out into the road is an EAR!) and the drivers here are very fond of using their car horns. Now I thought that they were using them instead of brakes but I have sussed what it is all about now. Taxis want to use them and can't understand why you don't. If you stand still for more than thirty seconds, for instance if you are trying to cross the road, they will stop and try to entice you in- unless you are in a hurry and then it will be 'National Korean Catch a Taxi Day' and there will be none spare. But they are far more cunning than I previously suspected. They can't understand why you would choose to walk down streets that have no pavements and you are quite exposed. So they beep to draw your attention to your own stupidity and also to upset your nerves so much ('ohmigod all this beeping is scaring me half to death') that you decide to get a taxi for the rest of the way! If they can't entice you in they will scare you in- cunning so and sos!

Well I had better go now and delete that bit at the beginning of the message about this being a short one!

Movies, Parties and Thieves...

2002-02-23T00:06:00.000+09:00

Hello All,

Well, I have made it past the two month mark with relative ease- and many soju headaches! The 1st March is (another) holiday over here so I celebrated by spending most of the day in bed with a hangover. And Friday night was party night at Barry's.

Saturday was, therefore, a bit of an effort for me. I went to the opening of a new hagwon downtown. It is a beautiful academy- though mostly because there wasn't any kids there yet- nice peaceful classrooms etc. Very nice but an effort to be sociable. Then I got a phone call from my Korean counterpart asking me out for dinner. So I went. She drove me out of town (with the reassuring words 'you had better put your seatbelt on as I am not a very good driver!') to a lovely little traditional place where we had one of the only Korean meals that I know of where I can use a spoon and not have to cope with chopsticks- relief!

We also went to the movies on Friday afternoon, which was great. When we were standing outside we heard a little moped come buzzing up and a man leapt off it and opened up a steel container in the footrest and ran in with the reel of film so that the punters could watch the second half of the movie- while he buzzed the first half across town to the other movie theatre! Mad.

Other than that it had been a very uneventful week until this morning when I woke up and went into my bathroom to find the window wide open. I had heard a noise in the middle of the night but reassured myself and went back to sleep. But someone HAD tried to get in- Tim's place has been invaded three times already. So this money I rushed to the bank and opened an account. All I have to do now is work out how to use the ATM as it is all in Korean!
So you will have to forgive me for writing a genuinely short mail today (for the first time ever!)

dumb foreigners(us), post offices and back to toilets!

2002-02-22T00:04:00.000+09:00

OK,

I gave you the low-down on the toilets over here and I may have hinted at the toilet paper situation but I don't think that you know the extent of it. Our school provides no toilet paper or hand towels. So we supply our own paper and have to walk between the dumpster and the staff room with paper proudly in hand as if we were staying on a camp site or something. And the kids all have rolls of toilet paper in their school bags to keep them going as they go from school to academy to school- none of which can supply them the basics they need for this everyday venture. There are emergency supplies at the counter but it is a little embarrassing asking for paper as they tend to hand you every other bit of paper on the desk before getting the right one- as if the little dance that I was doing at the time didn't give it away!

So I have got used to the toilet paper situation and my Korean counterpart thought that it was odd that I hadn't anticipated this problem on my first day (when I turned up completely TPless!). Then it got confused all over again when we went to Seoul. The toilets at the first subway station we used had no paper but as we (and this is not the royal 'we' I had friends too- a girl who needs to go to the toilet is rarely without friends to accompany her) left the facility someone pointed out the machine just outside which was a paper dispenser. You have to pay for the privilege naturally but inserting the correct coinage will produce an individually wrapped bundle for you to use at your leisure. Fine. The next toilet (by the way, if you are of any kind of a North American persuasion and all this talk of toilets is offending you in any way then I suggest pasting this mail into Word and using the 'Replace All' function to change ever instance of the word toilet to bathroom or restroom or some other more palatable- if somewhat misleading- phrase) I had sussed- I went to the machine outside the door and inserted my 100 won piece. Very pleased with myself I ventured into the main 'landing' area with paper in hand and met the queue (line for the Americans again- see I am learning!). Well, having been a woman for most, if not all, of my adult life I am more than used to the queuing system in public lavatories. Except this one. Rather than any kind of a single orderly queue where it was obvious who had been there the longest and therefore deserved the next go on the throne (or squat pot as it turned out to be) women were lining up outside individual cubicle doors. They all turned to look at me. I looked back and joined a line. In all my experience of queuing I had never seen anything like this. Shortly after a flush was heard a door opened and rather than the lady queuing in front of it going in she gestured to some other female to enter. Which she did. So what was the story now? Was there some first come first served basis after all? Or is there some way of telling just by looking at people who long they have been waiting (maybe by the franticness of the foot shuffling?) Or was this woman a professional queuer who held the line for folk? I didn't know and probably never will. Finally the door in front of me opened and I went in- fingers tearing into my newly acquired plastic wrapped bundle of paper- and assumed the correct position. And what should I notice, mid-flow, but a gleaming great stainless steel toilet paper holder stuffed to overflowing with virgin tissue! I will never win on this one I think!

I read in the Lonely Planet that Korean companies were looking for ways to save money in times past and decided that too much of the company resources were being squandered on such trifles and fripperies as bog roll. So they stopped buying it. Must have been a bit of a shock on the first day but the Korean obligingly adjusted and started carrying their own. No-one thought fit to suggest that possibly more money could be saved if they just turned off a square kilometre or two of the neon tubes covering each and every non-resident building in the land??? Madness I say!

To get off the subject of public facilities for one minute (I am sure that I will find something else to say about them in the future so don't you worry!) I wanted to tell you about the train on the way to Seoul. Just one little instance of misunderstandings that are a daily occurrence for me over here. There were eight of us on the train on the way there (the rest of the group went off slumming it to the Philippines for the holidays- poor souls- while the rest of us lived it up in Seoul) and we were being rather sociable and generally having a great time. Shortly after we got onto the train an official came round and looked at us and said something. We all looked blankly back. He tried again- slightly slower and slightly louder (yes, the affliction is universal I fear). With a spark of understanding we all got our tickets out of the various pockets they had been stuffed in and held them proudly aloft. the guy looked at us as a group- obviously in awe of our speed of understanding- then he looked at each of individually. We all continued to sit and looked pleased with ourselves for our mastering the situation so quickly, Then he held a finger up to his lips and 'sshhed' us. So not the tickets then! We looked slightly abashed and less pleased with ourselves. The cute bit was the next time we were getting a little rowdy he walked straight past us and came back five minutes later and asked us to be quiet- obviously had an English teacher stuffed away in the guards van in case of such emergencies!

Everyday has its victories and defeats of understanding. This morning I was flicking through my newly purchased Korean phrasebook and saw that it had a phrase that translated to 'I would like to buy 5 aerogramme (those all in one airmail letters- not in the translation obviously but for the benefit of you guys!) please!' I hadn't known at that stage whether they sold them or not over here but this seemed as good as confirmation to me (I had forgotten about the fact that they sell cheese graters and not cheese and was opting for the purely logical here.) I went to the post office and held the book up to the woman behind the counter and pointed out the phrase. It worked. I bought aerogrammes. Of course, I had to buy five because that is what it said in the book after all, but I did buy some! It is so great when things work! next time I shall startle the lady with actually attempting to pronounce the words and that should give them something to chuckle over for the rest of the day.

I think that I shall leave you there then.

Seoul, Mardi Gras and Pancake Day...

2002-02-11T00:03:00.000+09:00

Hello again!

Last night something pretty exciting happened- we bought tickets to go to a World Cup game. We are going to see the brutal game of Spain versus Slovenia. Having researched both teams on the internet last night we are still not sure who to support- the Slovenian team had the best website but the Spanish players were honeys! So we are going for both by sporting t-shirts with big S's on the front and covering both sides at the same time, Good thinking. It is costing 66,000 won (1,900 won to the sterling pound roughly currently) and the game is in Gwangju on the 2nd June. I know that I said that I wouldn't be going to any matches but I think that I got carried away after England's defeat (slaughter?) of Ireland in the 6 Nations on Saturday night. We may have been having a Mardi Gras party but it stopped for the duration of the match. Despite there only being three Europeans in the room I was still outnumbered 20 -1 by the Ireland supporters!

Now, what did I need to tell you all about? I have been having problems getting into my hotmail account in the PC bangs and the problem is not helped when all of the error messages come up in Korean- leaving me more clueless than ever to the cause! So I am in a different one today and apologise for the lack of response for the last couple of weeks.

Last week was Korean New Year and we all had three days off school to celebrate. The traditional thing to do over the NY holiday is to go to your grandparents’ house here. Obviously our director had decided that Tim and me weren't going for the traditional feel when he gave every member of staff a NY present except us! But then again, their presents were 2 litres of cooking oil so I am not too sure that I have really missed out. Six of us headed to Seoul for the long weekend and we stayed in Itaewon. It was weird to be in Seoul- it is much bigger than Mokpo(!). to begin with we were still saying hi to all the foreigners, as we do at home in Mokpo, then we realised that there were more of them than Koreans- at least in Itaewon. And I saw African and Indian people for the first time since leaving the UK- and I found myself staring at them like some yokel/culchie until I realised what I was doing and pulled myself together. We ate in Burger king and drank in Irish pubs so it was really like a trip away from Korea for a few days. And I have to share with you my most favourite ever misspelling on a Korean poster- and it appeared in BURGERKING of all big US corporations to make such a mistake- here I quote word for word and the spelling is all BK’s not mine!----

'Try our mouse-watering chicken sandwich and take a lot of benefits along with it!'
We laughed for a long time at that and I have a photo of it on my wall. And funnily enough we were all duped into buying chicken burgers by this poster so maybe it was all deliberate! I can't really tell you much else about Seoul- it was mainly a drinking and shopping weekend rather than a cultural exploration of the city. I did manage to get a block of cheese though which is pretty exciting- cheese on toast here we come! I found yesterday that you can buy a cheese grater here in Mokpo but not the cheese to grate- interesting. We did visit the old royal palace though which was pretty cool if also freezing cold for most of our 90 minutes guided tour of the grounds. Our guide had the maddest accent too and seemed to slow down every time she said any dates and waved her hand in the air.

So we got back to Mokpo at midnight on Tuesday night- the journey was fun since they sell beer on the train and we made the absolute most of that facility. We then went to Nerrissa's house for another eight hours or so on the soju- having discovered lemon soju I have become a bit of a fan it has to be said. The normal stuff is like straight vodka and even thinking about it makes me cringe but the lemon stuff is more like an Alco pop but you still take it in shots. I mostly slept on Wednesday and made up to the fish for the neglect- though they still seem to be sulking and after a whole weekend of worrying about them not having enough to eat they haven't eaten a thing since i got back- the little sods!

Thursday was back to school and neither myself or the students really wanted to be there so it was a very painful day. We had our postponed Pancake Day on Thursday and we went for it Newfoundland style and hid things in the pancakes. I got a safety pin and a coin so I am having a baby and money- any chance of reversing the order on that??

Friday was a quiet night at the pub and Saturday we had a Greek style Mardi Gras- that is Mardi Gras with Souvlaki, which was fantastic!

As usual, I had in mind a lot of amusing little anecdotes that fled my mind the moment I sat down- sorry! So I will stop here and get back to you when my head feels less fuzzy. I had my second Korean lesson on Saturday and it is beginning to make more sense and I now have a Korean name- Ee Hee-yun. Ee is the family name that most of the class took on- mostly because it was the easiest to write- just a circle with a straight vertical line down the right of it. And Hee-yun sounds a bit like Helen really!

More another time,

Korean classes, Fingerprinting and Billy Elliot...

2002-01-29T23:57:00.000+09:00

Dear All,

So another week in the world of ESL teaching in Mokpo bids me to return to the keyboard and tell you all about it.

Last week was a fairly uneventful one for the most part. Wednesday night I went out for dinner and Thursday I went bowling. I didn't want to go bowling and reveal my complete lack of prowess at the alley and everyone told me that they weren't good to bowling either-, which is normally a sure sign that they are all experts. But no, turns out that everyone was every bit as crap as I was! In fact, some were worse- hooray! So I had a great time. And as the bowling alley is right next to my hagwon I was able to give people directions for the first time since getting here. No beer at the alley though which was a bit of a shame. We split into two teams- without the old school embarrassment of two non-elected captains calling out the names they want until only I am left standing- and away we went. I managed to get A strike at some point in the game and two spares. Cool enough but I also managed to be the only person to throw the ball the wrong way- i.e., back towards my waiting friends- and go bright bright red. And the alley must have liked me because after one of my goes it spat a pin up into the gutter. The next go it did the same thing with my ball which then proceeded to roll up and down in the gutter for the next five minutes until the rather angry looking attendant came and freed it- it's not like it was my fault- was it?

Not a bad night all in and onto Friday and a heavy old beer sesh in TV Park with the other teachers. Some of who didn't make it to the Korean class the next day. But I had saved myself and went to my first Korean class. Not really sure about the whole thing. I want to be able to communicate with people (and order pizza deliveries) but the rest of the class have all been there for a couple of weeks now and I am way behind. But I can now say 'teacher' in Korean and count to the dizzying heights of 2! Yes, 2!! Amazing stuff. So I have been entertaining my classes this week with my amazing display of knowledge of their language- well, it has made them laugh a lot anyway!

Saturday night a group of us went round to a friend's house to watch the Billy Elliot DVD and can you believe that the Canadians in the room requested that we put the English subtitles on, as they didn't understand what was being said!! And I still had to explain what a 'poof was and the difference between the US and UK use of the word 'fanny' (ask your mother!). The fact that they didn't understand made me laugh almost as much as the film had.

Sunday was a fairly quiet one. Yesterday we started a new timetable which has been a bit of nightmare- new times and rooms so I spent a lot of yesterday wandering around trying to find which room my classes were hiding in.

This weekend a group of us are heading to Seoul for a few days, which should be cool. We had talked about heading up to the DMZ but two of us are missing our passports. Mine is at the immigration office as I am waiting on my alien registration card. You have to register if you intend to stay in the country for longer than 90 days. The first time me and Tim went we were told to come back as they were changing the system. So we went back on Friday. I have to say that the guy was certainly having his fun with us. To start with we only have our address in Korean and he made us write it on the form- I only hoped that I wasn't writing anything too offensive, as it was my first attempt at writing the Hangeul script. He seemed to enjoy that a lot. Then he thought it was funny that neither of us knew our blood group or how tall we were in centimetres. Having had a good old laugh at us with his mates about that he then proceeded to fingerprint us!!!! This is part of the new system so no one had warned us about this. He wasn’t impressed with Tim's fingerprints and kept complaining that they were no good! Now he has my passport and is all a little vague as to when I am going to get it back. Might go over this week and ask him really nicely. Crappy as you have to be nice no matter how big a tosser the guy is- and he really is!

My new timetable means that I don't start until 3.35 and finish at 8.50 though two days a week I only have two classes which is pretty cruisey. Kind of hope that more people sign up though but I guess that they will carry on paying me. I got paid for the first time last week- I was handed a brick of cash- imagine getting paid 1.85 million and the country not having any larger note than a 10,000- it took me ages just to get it into my pocket- never mind counting it all to check it was all there!!

I walked past the dog dying shop today and saw a beautifully dyed specimen with pink ears and a yellow tail and green feet- strange colours for a little boy dog. And how do I know that it is a boy dog?? Because it was busy mounting some non-dyed little brown mutt while the lady in the shop wasn't looking- that will teach them to out the dogs in the window!

That is all for now and thanks for taking the time to read this drivel. More next week after Seoul

Cinemas, beds and Aussie Day...

2002-01-27T23:56:00.000+09:00

Just a short one today I think. This weekend was Aussie Day and also the birthday of Tim- our resident Aussie. So I think I told you all about the nightclub on Friday night. Saturday night was the night of the international-sliding-down-the-hall competition- an event which we are hoping will turn into an annual gathering in the near future. Have I told you about shoes in Korea? In as much as you don't wear them in the house- why not? Because the heating comes through the floor- very nice, no cold feet in the morning- which also means that there are no carpets. And since everyone is walking around in stockinged feet there is quite a lot of sliding. And Rebecca's house has a very long hallway- use your imagination as to what happened next. The Tipperary lad put up a brave fight from the Irish corner when he just fell flat on his face and the evening has abandoned all together as tim crashed into the cat's food bowl sending Kitekat flying everywhere for about the fiftieth time. We are planning a rematch for Paddy's Day though.
The next day was a day of many soju heads (local deadly beverage which I no longer indulge in after my first night out here- coward that I am!) and I went fish shopping with a couple of other teachers. That is goldfish shopping- yep, everyone wants a bit of goldfish action now that they have seen the joy that Fluff and Nip bring to my place. We settled Eric's new fish into their new tank and new Zen-style tree house (underwater though obviously, like the lost tree house of Atlantis) and then went off to the cinema. Now this is the third time that I have been to the movie theatre here and the third one that I have been to. And I am still intrigued about something- namely why the person stands behind a screen so that all you can see is their hand poking out of a small mouse hole at the bottom to collect the money. Maybe it is all part of the witness protection plan over here in Korea. So I asked my classes about this on Monday and they told me that it is only like that in Mokpo. I advanced my next theory which they agreed with- that only ugly people work at cinemas at Mokpo and it would put the average punter off the movie to see them! Could be the reason I guess. Anyway, we all enjoyed Monsters Inc and celebrated by Eric buying another fish on the way home.

I can't write much today because I am tired. And I will share with you why this is- I was reading a good book last night that i just couldn’t put down. Finally I finished it and got up to switch the light off and the bed collapsed underneath me! I heard a BANG and then the mattress disappeared into the base of the bed. I couldn't leave it like that (though would have done had the drawers under it not made the whole thing a little lopsided) so heaved the heavy mattress up and out of the bed and propped it up against the table trying my best not to knock the fish tank over. Now I could see what had happened- several (not just one) of the screws had come out and the frame was on the verge of collapsing. So I dashed over to the drawer and got out my wonderful sanity keeping Swiss army knife and screwed the whole thing back together again. it took about another five minutes to balance the mattress back where it was supposed to be and ten I climbed gingerly in and didn't move again for the rest of the night. Traditional Korean beds are heaps of blankets on the floor but a lot of people now sleep in western style beds. But they don't have any sheets, pillowcases or duvets covers anywhere- which makes every night feel like a wash night where I can't be bothered to put the sheets on- very odd!

So, short by my standards and I bid you farewell as I have to get back to class soon!

Discos, Graves and Goldfish...

2002-01-22T23:53:00.000+09:00

Hello there.

It is very noisy in the PC bang today- the computer games are woofing out of the speakers and there are three people playing guitar by the counter. Nevertheless I will try my best to concentrate as the guy next to me blasts his opponents into the next galaxy.

So it is Saturday and end of my fourth week here- only another 48 weeks to go. Not bad. Certainly having a good time so far. the kids are still fine- there are a couple of classes that I still have to sort out properly but we are getting there I think. Had a good lesson this week using some stuff that my friend, Heather, sent about London Zoo and the Tower of London so if anyone else has any flyers to send this way the kids of Hanlim Academy will be most grateful. It makes a change from using the books all the time too which is no bad thing. The books aren't bad mind. I use one called New Parade with the smaller kids which has lots of songs and colouring in , Let's Go is for the slightly bigger kids- deeper songs and no colouring in, and Fifty fifty for the teens and adults. Fifty fifty lessons follow a structure of talking tasks, lessoning tasks and reading tasks. Not a bad book but the kids really don't get the full benefit of how weird some of the tapes can be. There was one with a kid talking to his dad about how much better his mom was at doing everything, another had a woman in a car showroom looking at the cars and then stealing one and yesterday there was one about a man and a women comparing cars and how the woman has two so there is one for outings with the dogs. Some of them make me laugh and the kids don't know why at all!

So I went to Pusan last weekend as I probably mentioned but I forgot to say about the mounds on the hills. Everywhere I looked there were little mounds up on any available hill. I asked Tim about this and he said that they were graves, Most people already know where they are going to be buried. I find that odd. I don't know where I am going to be next week, let alone for all eternity. And if people don't stop dying soon they are going to run out of hills!

But at least there are plenty of people here to look after our immortal souls. Take for example a guy we met last week. He is a Seventh Day Adventist and over here teaching English. We took him onto the party we were having. He is a bit of a rebel as he had sneaked out of his host parents' home earlier to watch 'Lord of the Rings'- something the Seven Day Dentists are against. He politely refused all alcohol and but joined in the games- I really don't think that he realised that when you play cards and use money at the same time it is gambling! And he told us outrageous stories of wild parties that he had been to back home where there was both girls AND dancing! Bless his innocence! No-one appeared to have warned him about the lack of deodorant over here either judging on his aura. Not sure that he will ever ring again!
But I cracked the other day and bought two goldfish on the way home- Fluff and Nip. they are very sweet and I have put them next to the TV as they seem to speak marginally more English that it does. The tank is a little bare right now- I put in a coffee cup but you try miming 'gravel' and 'No Fishing sign- it was not likely to happen really. And now the other teachers have started asking where they came from and I sense a bit of a trend starting! And I have already found a brave volunteer for the flushing in case of disaster.

I am now truly Korean too. My cell phone has an ornament on it! Hooray- its nakedness was getting a touch embarrassing- so at least now it looks pretty even if it rarely rings. And when it does ring it causes chaos across the hall as the walls in our place are very thin and Tim's phone has the same ring. Cue him diving across the room this morning when Eric rang me to take me to the Buddha shop. Hee hee! And I went to the Buddha shop and bought a lovely wooden turtle key ring to give to Trish who gave me the turtle that now hangs from my phone. The woman in the shop liked us all so much that she gave us all little Buddhas on springs to put on the dashboard of our cars- I think that mine will live by the fish tank for a while- at least until I learn to drive and get a car! Though the fish will be long gone before that happens I am sure! people often give me stuff when I go into shops- I bought some notebooks the other day and she threw in a pen and before that I was doing my grocery shopping and woman at the checkout threw in an extra sausage. It is raining hard today and some guy walked me down the street under his umbrella. It is all very nice!

It is a good job that I now have the turtle though as yesterday was Tim's birthday and did he ever rake in the pressies- he must have about 10 things hanging from his phone- did I tell you that the phones have special hooks just so you can hang cute items from them? After school the director took us out for Tim's birthday. He invited me to his country home for the Solar holiday at the beginning of Feb which was very sweet but I think I am going to Seoul. he asked me if I liked drinking and how much I could drink. I tried to be all coy about it but Tim dobbed me right in and Mr Kim insisted that it was Korean tradition to scull your welcome to Korea drinks- it was the start of a very long night! There was a big party in the bar that brings us dried squid as a bar snack. And afterwards I got my first experience of Korean nightclubs.

But first I have to tell you about Korean ladies' foot wear. The shoes have big heels and they are so pointy that I can't even begin to tell you properly. Thin heels and big pointy toes which must go on for several inches after the foot has stopped. So the girls in the club were sporting their pointy finest which made it impossible for them to dance at all. When they did venture onto the floor it was to just stand and sway slightly. I am sure that our Western style moshing frightened the bejesus out of them. But the boys are something else. First off the DJ was in middle of the stage like some kind of a god in his suit and gold earrings. But the floor was where the real action was at. The guy giving it most was dressed in a not untypical outfit. He had on a crisp white shirt. this was covered by a baby blue v-neck cardigan which he had done the buttons up on. And the jeans had the most outrageous turn-ups you ever did see. And he was wearing the man's version of the pointy shoe which is a long slip on affair. we got quite a bit of attention ourselves- imagine being in your local backwater disco and a bunch of Koreans coming in and totally taking over the dance floor- that is us over here!

And I have finally worked out the toilet etiquette (though not the control panel). Every time I went into a cubicle someone would come and knock on the door and I would shout hello- last night I learnt that you are just supposed to knock back. I was too intrigued at the notice in the jacks proclaiming a sexy dancing festival to notice at first but I soon got clued in and was knocking away like the best of them.

TV, Dogs and other takeaway food...

2002-01-09T23:46:00.000+09:00

G'day folks!

It is snowing in Mokpo today so pretty cold. It was snowing yesterday too but it didn't settle for more than a brief snowball fight on the way home. It was sunny on the way to work but very cold. And that is the weather report from the south west of Korea today!

Well, what have I got to tell you about today? Not sure so let's see how it goes. I have been thinking a lot about the whole being in Korea thing. It seems unreal most of the time- I could easily be in Chinatown in Sydney (except that they are Korean NOT Chinese- but all the languages sound the same until you get used to them I guess). My TV is one of the biggest reminders of where I am as for hours at a time there is nothing on there in English and I end up watching hours of Korean chess or the advert for the mattress that self inflates in 45 seconds. Maybe I should watch less TV. I have started writing letters but have yet to find the post office- next important step I think! So the TV is on, I am watching stuff I can't understand. Good job that my social commitments take me out of the house so often and that the PC bangs (internet cafes) are soooo cheap!

I do find myself avidly watching anything that is on in English though and have turned into a bit of an Ally McBeal addict- oh no! And my worries couldn't be much more different. Babies??? too worried about ordering food that might turn out to be too spicy for me to eat or trying to get a taxi to somewhere I don't know the name of! Men?? Well, maybe a little but I am too busy enjoying my space at the moment- I mean physical space- this apartment isn't big enough for two of us! So no more Ally Mc for me- well, maybe just five nights a week!

Korean TV- at least the cable connection that I have got seems to be mostly adverts for a lot of the time- the titles of a film come on and then the movie stops for a quarter of an hour while some woman comes on and tries to sell you shirts that don't need ironing EVER! But the short ads are even more annoying- not because of the content but because they show the ad- for instance for kotex- the ad finishes and then they show it again in case you weren't paying attention the first time! Double the irritation factor in one easy step!

And on to another subject lest you should think that all I do now is watch TV. I have found a very strange thing going on with the dogs in Korea- not that they are slowly disappearing and being replaced by well fed looking people. No, they only eat one type of dog and only at certain times of the month and it is all very hush hush as the international community is a bit upset about the whole thing and FIFA keep threatening to take the World Cup away unless they take Fido burgers off the half time menu. I am not taking about the edible dogs. I am talking about the little lap dogs that people have stuffed in their jackets or on the end of a lead. These are a little white breed- just smaller than the rats. Well, I say they are white but I discovered a special shop the other day that spends its day dying bits of the dogs. There are cages in there with white dogs with green ears, yellow tails and orange feet- since seeing the shop the other day I have been more aware of the canine inhabitants of Mokpo and found that this is not an unusual thing. I guess that buying a white dog gives you a good base to start colouring! Madness.

But at least there isn't dog mess all over the pavements here- only because there aren't any pavements to speak of and those that do exist allow people to ride motorbikes down them- making them only marginally safer than walking in the street. And the drivers are a little mad. There only seems to be about two different types of car- Hyundai and Kia- makes my life easier and now I am something of a car expert- not!

The only other thing that makes as much use of the pavements as the motorbikes are the little food tents everywhere. When it is raining the front is pulled down and you perch yourself on a little plastic stools and eat mainly food off sticks- fish on a stick, unknown battered item on a stick etc etc. Usually these places are quite small and we can only fit about five drunken foreign teachers dying for an egg and ham toastie in them. But when I went to Pusan at the weekend (big city on the other side of the country) these tents were creeping off the pavements and taking up the first lane of traffic too- well, I guess that the cars can always use the pavements!
Pusan was an interesting city though- so much bigger than Mokpo. And weird because it had all these lorries leaving the port there (no Eddie Stobarts though) and it reminded me of home as a lot of the trucks were loaded with the same kind of containers that we see in Felixstowe- K Line, Hyundai, OOCL etc. Then it occurred to me that they had probably come from my home town to get to Pusan and I got a bit homesick. But only a bit because then I hit the beach. It is considered the finest beach in Korea- it is a bit like Bondi would be if it ever got that cold in NSW- not likely with all those fires I would say. People are still drawn to the beach though and it was covered in people wearing duffle coats standing at the water's edge watching the waves. So we went to the aquarium there which was pretty cool- even though me and Tim seemed to be almost as popular an attraction as the fish. But we didn't care because we were too full of pizza- there was a pizza hut near the bus station and it didn't take much to persuade us to go in.
After the aquarium we went to the cooperative fish market- which sounds like a great idea to me- fish that actually want to get caught! Maybe they jump into the boats of their own volition only too pleased to be able to cooperate in the fish trade of Pusan. Maybe not. The place was massive though and filled with fish both dead and alive. There was more interesting fish there than at the aquarium- squirming around in their plastic bowls waiting to be eaten. The interest kind of wore off a little for me when a man pulled a squid writhing out of the tank and started to cut it up in front of me- its legs moved for a long time after the knife went in. Also popular were tubs with skinned eels in them- still moving- yucky!

Anyway, I think that is enough for now- just thinking of those fish makes me want to run to the squat pot!

Toilets, Pig's heads and Beer...

2002-01-02T21:12:00.000+09:00

Ok folks,

Here is another slice of Korean life for you straight off the Mokpo Hot Press ( and that is not the cupboard where you keep the towels for all those Irish out there). I am afraid that I have to address a slightly unsavoury topic today so I hope that you will forgive me if I start this mail with a bit about the hygiene facilities here- that is to say the toilet, the bathroom, the restroom, the ladies, the smallest room, the bog, to put no finer point on it- the dumpster!

In my house (well, room but this sounds so much more grand don't you think!) I have a fine upstanding western-style pedestal toilet. With just the one drawback. It has a padded seat. Not a drawback in itself I have to admit but the shower head is right over the toilet (think of the time saving advantages of that in the morning) and so the whole contraption gets soaked when I shower. Again, not really a problem as it is water proof after all! But there is a split in the plastic cover of the toilet seat and some of the foam is exposed so when I shower it gets wet and every time I sit in my throne for the rest of the day it squirts water on the back of my legs- a clear case of toilet's revenge.

But there is more to this story. Moving from my house (there she goes again with the delusions of grandeur- just indulge me) to the school I encounter a completely different kind of beast. A squatter. Well, an experienced traveller like myself is more than used to this kind of thing but this is a little different. The rest of the squats that I have used in many different countries are more like toilets for idiots as they have feet plates so you know where to stand and 'aim', in Korea I guess they figure that if you can't work out where to stand then you don't really need to go. Hence a bit of shuffling up and down on my haunches and the occasional glance to make sure that it is all going where it should be. And of course the paper is deposited in an open bin (trash can) next to the slit pit itself. The smell is something very nasty too- try day two Glastonbury festival if you need some kind of benchmark. All in all not a place to linger.

Which takes me to toilet type three which I came across for the first time last night. This one has its own cockpit and I am sure that there should be some kind of an exam to undertake before you are let lose alone with one. the first thing of note was the not entirely comfortable feeling when I realised that the seat was heated- unnerving! Having 'done the deed' I looked at the control panel next to the bowl and it contained no less than eight buttons- out of which at least seven did the same thing- squirted water straight up in the air so high that the ceiling in the cubicle was soaked by the time I left. I fought my way through the water and put the lid down- hit the off button (the only thing labelled in English) and ran away. Later someone took me back and showed me something that I had missed as I tried to dodge the Niagara that I had unleashed- behind the seat is a small and perfectly formed flush handle. I was more than happy to find that our next location had my old friend the squatter waiting there for me!

And now I have to tell you about that next place. I did the most Korean of all things that I have done since I got here and I went to a nori-bang- that is a singing room. Not Karaoke for any old tom, dick or Harry but a place filled with different size rooms depending on the size of your party, a menu of songs, two mikes and then my favourite bit- tambourines! I have to admit to thoroughly enjoying the experience, banging the tambourine hard on my knee (I had a beer in the other hand of course) even as I dodged the mike every time that it was thrust under my nose. Proudest moment had to be joining in a rousing chorus of Take on Me- I am sure that Morten himself would have been proud of my effort. Some of the Korean translations of song lyrics that came up on the video screens were pretty funny too and I shall try and note some of them down next time to pass onto you all.

So far I am having a lot of fun. I am a bit freaked out because all my kids are great and everyone gives me a funny look when I say that here and they tell me all their horror stories. I am sure that things will change and they will give me new classes with monsters in them. I have mainly girls in my classes and most of them are adorable. I went into the classroom on Thursday and the girls leapt out from behind the door and plied me with candy- so much for losing weight (though I am sure that my beer habit has more than a little to do with that problem)! Biggest successes this week were 1. working out how to use my washing machine- all the buttons are, of course, labelled in Korean, I spent ten minutes pressing all of them in different combinations before realising that I just need to turn on the water at the wall! 2. getting my phone- it is a little white foldy-in-half thing and it is a Hyundai and it says Neomi on the front for all your mobile phone geeks out there. the school bought it for me so I didn't have to cope with all that. 3. buying some speakers for my CD walkman so I now have tunes in the house. 4. working out the way to walk home from work so that I pass through a traditional Korean food market and 5. knowing to avert my eyes from the stalls so that I miss the three pigs head hanging upside down from hook by a flap of skin on their necks and 6. passing my first solid in a squatter!

Travelling and Arriving in Mokpo

2001-12-29T21:03:00.000+09:00

Bore Da! Well, I know that is Welsh but I haven't learnt the Korean for hello yet- simply haven't had time.

This is my first time in a PC bang. It has been non-stop since I arrived really. Let me tell you all about how I got here.

The 28th started early in the Eames household with a dawn departure to Heathrow. All dues to little sister, Penny, for bringing us in ahead of schedule- it was the best part of the journey in the end! Well, brekkie in the airport- fond farewells to family then through the departure gates to the other side and, indeed, the first bit of bad news... the flight to Amsterdam was delayed by an hour coming into Heathrow so would be delayed leaving again. No matter- that would just cut down on the waiting time in an airport that I hadn't got the currency for. Grand so off I went to Amsterdam an hour late. Reason for the delay- strong winds between Amsterdam and London- not a good sign and I felt every bump as we forced our way through the worst turbulence I have experienced ever!! Not helped by the two young American lads next to me muttering- crash it, crash it- we are going to crash- all the way. Survived though and Amsterdam airport was all I could have hoped for with its meditation room and massage room- god bless the Dutch!
And onto Seoul and the smoothest flight I have ever had the pleasure to be on. Drawback this time was the passenger next to me- train bore?? No! Anorak of the highest degree? NO! Personal odour problems?? NO!! Under the age of THREE?? YES YES YES!!! Awake most of the night screaming- oh yes! Not me, you fools, the baby! Helen's legendary power of sleep?? AWOL. Was knackered by the time I got off the flight and even the hostesses were giving me sympathetic looks- bless!

And so my arrival at Seoul to the distinct lack of person waiting for me with my name on a card at the arrivals gate. Panic? Me! Oh yes indeed! We got in early and he arrived late- not a great combination at all I spent a very edgy hour and a half trying to decide what to do if he didn't turn up at all. Shortly before I had the chance to book a hotel for the night he did turn up after all- panic over. we had food and went to the domestic airport. then he saw me through the departure gates and left. I had two hours to wait so settled down near my gate and got out my book once more. Gimpo airport used to be the International airport so the signs are bilingual but that is about it. I was the only westerner that I saw- fine. The snow falling outside was pretty but a tad unsettling in the way that it settled. And sure enough- about three quarters of an hour before my flight was due to leave I heard an announcement in Korean which seemed to be mentioning Mokpo rather more than the others had done. Then I heard 'Sorry for the inconvenience' and when my eyes whipped up to the departure board my flight had disappeared! Racing over to the gate I saw that there was a notice which very clearly explained what the problem was. My only problem then was that I COULDNT READ KOREAN! Stopping a passer by and pointing wildly at the sign and madly waving my boarding pass around lead me to discover that my flight had apparently been cancelled! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! I ran over to the airport info desk who confirmed that the flight had been cancelled, that it was the last flight that day to Mokpo and that I would have to go back to the check in desk, retrieve my bags and bugger off to somewhere else. Explaining that I had to get to Mokpo that day and that there were people meeting me there seemed to do no good so I went for the old female fall back of bursting into tears (well, it seemed the right thing to do under the circumstances and I didn't seem to have a lot of choice in the matter really if truth be told!). This worked wonders and within two minutes of the first salty tear snaking its way down my cheek they told me that the flight wasn't really cancelled- that it was a mistake and furthermore, that it would be leaving on time.

TRUE!

So I got my flight to Mokpo and was met and taken for dinner, then to the school, then to the motel I would be staying in for my first three nights.

GRAND!

Tim, the other western teacher at the school, woke me up that night and took me out for a night with some of the other ex-pats he knows in the area. SOJU! Oh dear! I spent most of the next day in bed trying to convince myself that it was jetlag behind my sloth but in my heart I knew that jetlag doesn't give you that kind of headache. Tim woke me again that night for dinner with the others once more. They were all very kind and didn't tell me too many Korean teaching horror stories- bless! Monday I was at the school for the first time and Tim intervened to make sure that I wouldn't be teaching on my first day so I spent the day observing just how much Korean a Korean English teacher can use in the classroom. My Korean counterpart is a girl called Esther (Alan- message for you- she was on the kibbutz with Kim- small world!) nice enough girl but admits that she hates teaching so she doesn't really seem to bother with it most of the time from what I saw!

Monday night Tim took my to the ex-pats NYE bash at a Greek American guy called Dimtri's gaff. Excellent night- especially when Barry (a Tipperary lad) turned up with two stitches in his forehead from walking into a lamppost a couple of hours before) and Tim setting fire to a nearby tree with a firework- I have yet to ask him if he was been in the NSW vicinity recently but I spy a suspect!

Of course, New Year's Day was sleeping until I moved into my apartment (more like bed sit but I have only killed two cockroaches so far and they were only little ones- about the size of the hero of my roach in whiskey story). Bought some food yesterday too and even managed to find a loaf of wholemeal bread- result. But it looked strangely blue at 4 this morning (don’t you just lurve jetlag!!) when I had my early morning munchie sesh.

I taught today for the first time which was grand actually. A lot less nerve racking than I thought it was going to be. I just made it up most of the time from the textbook and spent a lot of time getting to know the kid and introduce myself. The kids all take on English names so it is not too difficult though too many of the girls seem overly fond of the name 'Judy' to make it plain sailing. I know that I will look back in the future over the innocence of my first day but tonight I intend to bask in the glory of hearing an entire class recite my name.