Presents!

The school bought us all presents for Chuseok! All the foreign teachers were given a Korean (green) tea set, while the Korean staff received food parcels containing such delicacies as tuna and Spam. I think we probably got the better deal.

Poll of the Day

Right, let us settle this once and for all: was the Lost season 2 finale good as it always is, or, in the words of by brother, 'rubbish'? If you watched it then voting is mandatory. One vote per person.

Was the Lost Finale typically splendid or anti-climatic rubbish? Splendid Rubbish Free polls from Pollhost.com

Tri-monthly review

Three months survived as of today! 25% of the way there already. Seems a lot, and yet kinda not that much too. I'm sure the long cold winter is gonna drag much more, but for now we're in the midst of what I'm told is an unseasonably warm spell. It still feels like midsummer. Homesickness is still absent I'm glad to say. My sources back home told me to expect it to kick in after the third month, but I remain cold-heartedly immune. Not everyone feels the same as me, I know some people are feeling the pull of home pretty strongly right now. Personally I'm quite happy to be here for now. If I'm honest, I did feel a few pangs of 'oh my god what have we done' in the first week here, especially when coming back to my empty room at night, but that soon evaporated. Next week is Chuesok, the Harvest Moon Festival, which is I think something akin to the American Thanksgiving. Everyone goes back home to visit their families, and they pay respect to their ancestors. The more significant factor for us teachers is that we get a week off work - probably the only full week I'm gonna get until next summer when I leave, and I'm especially excited as I'm going to Japan with Amy and Christa. A note of explanation: when I post the photos of the trip, don't be surprised to only see me and Christa in the photos - Amy has forbidden us to publish any of her online; I think she's either in witness protection or she's an international felon. Although I just said I'm quite happy here, I'm not sure that I would pick South Korea as my country of choice if I was to do this over again. I don't know where I would pick, but Seoul is so commercialised, that really it feels that this could be any (densely populated) city in the world sometimes, save for the language differences. Maybe that's unfair though. I've yet to venture beyond the city (as have most of us) so I guess that's like judging the whole of the UK on a few months spent it London. I guess the answer is to get out more. That shall be mission for the next month. Another goal I'm setting for myself is to keep up with the Korean lessons. I haven't had any proper lessons yet - our schedules fluctuate so much it's a little hard to plan - but I've just got a computer program that I'm trying to spend an hour a day on. So far I've not used much more than a hello or a thank you 'in the wild' but I haven't been intensely practicing before this past week so I hope to improve soon. Oh, and Emma's definitely staying. For the time being.

Climbathon photos

Here are the photos from Sunday's climbing exbidition. There are Christa and Anne's photos in there too. Next target is Mout Fuji next week!

Flashback

To answer a comment left my my brother, we never did get to the DMZ. The bus never turned up to pick us up. Maybe I'd left it too late to book, I don't know, but I got an email the day after saying that my reservation had been declined, no reason given. I will go at some point so wasn't that bothered for myself, but it was one of the only things that Katie had really wanted to do while she was here, so she was disappointed. It was Sunday when we tried to go, they don't do the tours on Mondays and Katie was flying home on the Tuesday, so that was that. And I don't have any pictures of the water park as for the most part we didn't have the camera with us (not waterproof, see?) - Katie did take a couple of videos: there's a thrilling one of me on the lazy river here that you can take a peek at; there would've been anthoer one that Katie took of me on the death slide, but it turns out she was holding the camera on it's side the whole time, and you couldn't really see me anyway...

Climbathon

We did not win the hiking competition. We never stood a chance as the crazy Koreans that did win ran all the way up and straight back down again; the six of us made a determined start together and did our best to get at least to the head of the family section that we foreigners began with, but we couldn't maintain the pace for long. Three of the girls dropped back almost straight-away and we didn't see them again for two hours when we were on the way down again. Christa set a frantic pace for me and Anne which we all kept up for a while, but once it became apparent that we were never gonna win, I dropped back and ambled up slowly the rest of the way, so at least I got to enjoy the views. Any remaining hopes I did have were utterly dashed when a bunch of Koreans, leaping from rock to rock like mountain goats, passed me going back down again. Anyway, I caught the others up at the checkpoint where they were munching their sandwiches and kimbap. The Koreans were always gonna win anyway. They take it very seriously, or at least the Seoulites I've seen do. They're always decked out in all the proper gear: proper climbing boots and gloves, visors for the ladies, walking poles, and their clothes are made from the latest futuristic materials to keep them cool. Oh, and it's all colour coordinated of course. But we did get a bunch of free stuff for taking part: new backpack (I bought one only yesterday!), t-shirt, Union Jacks to fly on the ascent, bottle of water, 2kg bag of soil (we never did find out why, we just dumped it as directed), many tissues, and certificate for taking part. Mine reads 'Ryan James', but still. I was 156th (out of how many I don't know), with a time of 3 hours, 45 minutes and 19 seconds for the 12km. And! After chatting for a while with his aide, we got our photos taken with the major or our district! Better photos to come when I get chance to swap mine with Christa and Anne's selection, for once I didn't take that many myself...

Proper Mountaineering

On Sunday there's a special hiking festival going on in town; the school are paying for ten of us to take part so how could I say no? It was initially said to be 8km, which is not so bad as we did about 5km last time anyway. Apparently it's actually 12km, which is a little more daunting but should be okay. And there's a prize for first to the top, which is nice, but with a thousand people taking part I won't get my hopes up too much. The odd thing is that we each have to take up 2kg of soil with us. Altogether that's like 2 tons (if you were struggling with the math). There is no explanation given as to why, so your guess is as good as mine. I'll let you know.

Sports Day

These photos were taken a couple of weeks ago; at the end of the summer programme the Powers That Be threw a sports day/barbeque to thank us for all our hard hard work. I appointed myself Official Photographer of the games, so I may as well share a couple of the photos with you...

No, I don't know why they decided to play in the pool.

If you were wondering, the second 'sport' in dodgeball.

Sadly I missed the drunken karaoke as I had to leave to pick Katie up from the airport, but perhaps that's for the best.

And for the record, 'we' (being the foreign teachers) won every event.

Bye Bye Katie

After a fortnight full of adventures, Katie has left me. Well she actually left me more than 12 hours ago, but she won't touch down for a few more yet, poor girl. And since she'd used up all of the reading matter she brought with her, all she has to entertain on the flight is my mostly unread copy of Wuthering Heights. With the sheer bustle of Katie being here, I never got around to mentioning the mini-drama of Katie's 'eviction'. I haven't gotten around to mentioning a lot of things, but I'll start to rectify that now. We're only allowed to have guests stay with us for a paltry two nights at a time (though they may come back after a gap, as Katie did following her jaunt to Jeju Island last week). This is either because of the shocking amount of electricity that guests are presupposed to use, or 'to protect the children'. Either way stinks, so in protest, I neglected to sign Katie with security for the first couple of days, hoping that if they carried on being so lax, maybe I could spin out her term here a little longer. This was working fine until she went out on her own, and made the mistake of making eye contact with the guards. After a twenty minute interrogation (during which she tried repeatedly to call my mobile phone, which was switched off), I was summoned for an explanation. I had a bit of a hoo-ha with my boss, who was mostly just annoyed as I'd not given her the exact dates of Katie's visit, but it wasn't too big of a deal. Or it wouldn't've been had Katie not then stopped for a further three nights. When I let slip to Erin that Katie was still here on day six, she was mad. Senior teacher Braden came a-knocking at my door first thing next morning, basically saying that she had to leave ASAP. Hence the crappy (but cheap) cockroach-infested hostel she ended up in.

Having Katie living halfway across the city from me served as a blunt reminder as to how we used to have to live before mobile phones were invented. How did we ever get by? How did anyone of previous generations have social lives? Twice me and Katie were an hour late for meeting each other (she because she gt the time wrong, me when I overslept), and with no way to communicate we were left there twiddling our thumbs waiting impatiently for the other. Anyhow, it was great having her here, and I am sad to see her go, though at least I have finally been able to tidy up my bedroom. There's been stuff (hers and mine) lying around stressing me out for days. I've actually had a minor rearrangement of my room today; since I never watch my telly I've put it underneath my desk, which means, oh joy, that I can actually sit on a chair in front of my laptop rather than perching on the end on the end of my bed with a twisted nerve in my neck as usual.

Also don't forget to check out Katie's website for a few more pictures and a few fun videos which I never got around to posting myself.

Annyonghi kaseyo Katie.

Have you had rice?

Being a Tourist

Katie's back from Jeju Island so I've become a tourist agian. Today we went to Caribbean Bay (a water park, and I'm sure I read somewhere the 7th best theme park in the world but maybe not) which was lots of fun. 13 water slides, one of which is almost vertical. And saunas! And hot spas! And salt baths and sulphur baths and acid baths! It's the closest I've been to a bath at all in three months! Delicious. Photos (and videos?) to follow - they were taken on Katie's camera - which she may have broken... Tomorrow we're going North to the DMZ, so expect another history lesson, and if we're allowed to take any at all, losts of photos too.

Food

For nigh on three months I have been craving and resisting a certain chocolate dessert, Chocolate Thunder, in this Outback restaurant in town; tonight I went there finally with the singular intent of consuming said treat. Essentially a chocolate brownie piled high with vanilla ice cream and regular cream, I was most disappointed. Artificially cream, and I don't know what was up with the brownie but texturally it certainly lacked something. Give me frozen yoghurt and fruit any day. Most of the dinner conversation revolved around British/American/Canadian gastronomic differences. Everyone looked pretty aghast at the sight of me eating a piece of bread with a couple of fries on top, so of course we had to explain the whole chip butty concept. Potted beef seemed a bit alien to them too, although one of the Americans offered up the notion of something called a 'Solomon Gundy' (a pureed fish dish) prompting Emma to burst in to the rhyme, which nobody else had every heard of. Interestingly (if you're me), I've just pulled this from Wikipedia:

Solomon Grundy [the rhyme] is believed to have derived from the English food Salmagundi, which was integrated into the English language from the French in the 17th century, and is a salad of cooked meats, lettuce, anchovies and eggs, with other condiments. The name of the salad was corrupted in the 18th century to Solomon Gundy, particularly in the United States

Business as usual

Rightio, thank you for your patience gentle reader, I am now back from my little sabbatical. I was going to be back yesterday, but then I became unexpectedly drunk and could not type. Yesterday a couple of girls in my class called England 'gentleman country'. I asked if that made me a gentleman, but apparently I did not meet their definition. I think my jeans and shoes were the first giveaway, but also I have 'farmer hair', and of course, what respectable English Gentleman would be seen out in society without his trusty umbrella? Tenuously following the England link, I met an 80-year-old Korean man on the bus yesterday, who told me that he studied poetry for a year at Sheffield University in 1960/61; I think it's the first time since I arrived here that I've met anyone at all that had heard of Doncaster so I was very impressed. He could even remember going through our train station! I think I let him down a little though - he kept name-dropping various eminent scholars and poets he had worked with over there, but I'd not heard of any of them...

55 photos of hills

Here's what you've all been waiting for! Or not so much. Go, look.

Normal Service will be resumed imminently

In the meantime, go catch up on Katie's adventures. And leave her a comment, because nobody else ever does. Pity comments are better than no comments are better than no coments. The spider she refers to is a Golden Orb Weaver Nephila clavata (see picture on my previous blog) and check out the goldern-coloured silk. I don't believe it to be venomous.

Bukhansan National Park...

Is full of exciting creatures... Some less scary than others... And some very tame... It was a death-defying climb... But we made it in the end... As far as we reached today... After a five hour round trip, we discovered when we got back down that we still hadn't reached a summit! Guess we'll have to keep trying. Full photoset coming soon!

More Fun in the Park; Tandem Style

Cheating

Once again, may I please refer you to Katie's blog today - we've been doing pretty much the same things, only she has much more time on her hands to be blogging than me, so enjoy...

Falling Behnd

See? Falling behind on my posts already. Here you can read what Katie's been getting up to instead. We also had a bit of drama yesterday when Katie couldn't get passed security when she came back here in the evening. Apparently I'm supposed to meet her at the gate and sign her in, so she was stranded there for 20 minutes (trying to phone Emma (from my phone which she had lent) but Emma had no signal). Eventually I was tracked down and shouted at a little for not letting anyone know she was coming - though I had, just not the exact dates - and I shouted back some, and it was all quite stressful. Anyway, depending on who we ask, she's definitely allowed to stay for no more than 4 days, so we're gonna have to find her somewhere else to stay soon, which is annoying and a shame.

Photos

Katie! has come to visit me for a couple of weeks so if posts become occasionally erratic, it's because she's making me entertain her in some fashion. Here is what we have done today: Katie at the Palace of Shining Happiness. Shiny Happy Guard Practising chopstick skills Kiwi

Mould devouring my 3 month old shoes