May

Ok. Sorry. I've been...uh...busy. Here's a little of what I've been up to over the last month... As a token of appreciation for our giving some of the national volleyball team a refresher's class in English, the school received a bunch of tickets to a series of international games against Japan held one weekend at the Olympic stadium (Seoul hosted the summer games in '88). We kicked ass, though I didn't understand what was going on much of the time. Christa didn't go as she reckons it's a girlie sport, but there were plenty of my fellow teachers there who tried their best to hammer the rules into my head. Christa, Mary, Vanessa and I went to Chuncheon (known as the city of lakes) in the last week of April as we were all blessed with a long weekend. This is the place we found to stay on the first night. We had two TVs, though only one worked, while the fan and AC did not. We had no window, and the bathroom smelled of hotdogs. And there were spider's webs you could get lost in. Oh, and the bath was brown with mould, but that didn't matter as there was no hot water to have a bath with anyway. We got tandems again, and me and Christa spent quite a while racing two young kids on their own bikes along a footpath by one of the lakes while Vanessa and Mary went swanning around in a paddle-boat. The rental dude charged us for a second hour as we were five minutes late back, and we were sorely tempted to see how far we could get the bike during our second hour and just dump it. Of course we didn't. Chuncheon is famous for a dish called dakgalbi, which I shall be attempting to make when I have access to a decent kitchen again (I have the recipe books now) - it's a fiery mix of chicken (dak), sweet potato, veggies and spice and rice. We ate it twice while we were there, so poor vegetarian Vanessa was forced to forage for food on her own on a few occasions. This shot's taken during a walk near the Soyang River Dam - the largest sand gravel dam in East Asia - on a real scorcher of a day. And I'd left my sunglasses in a cab the day before... Some friendly Koreans shared their makkoli with us. I don't like makkoli. It's a sweet-sour milky rice wine that old Korean men drink a lot of. This guy gave a 'reluctant' Mary three shots of the stuff before she conceded that it was indeed mucho mashissoyo (delicious). This waterfall was our reward for hiking up the trail. Actually there was plenty more to see than this, including a series of temples, and at least one other pond, but this was the most photogenic. We saw a lizard. On our first evening - I'm totally out of chronological order here - we took a pleasant stroll around Nami island, where apparently some famous Korea soap opera and/or movie was filmed. The highlight has to be the flock of apparently wild ostriches we came across. If these beasts aren't the at least second cousins to Spielberg's velociraptor's I'll be damned. Though admittedly they seemed harmless enough, they freaked me out nonetheless - unlike Christa who was running straight at them to see what kind of reaction she could get. May 5th is celebrated, principally in the USA, as Cinco de Mayo (literally, "the fifth of May" in Spanish) in honour of Mexican heritage and pride. Not wanting to be left out, American Heidi invited us all out to a join in the festivities at a Mexican restaurant (natch) in Itaewan. Hopefully the sound will be in sync with the video. The last few I've tried importing from youtube have been out by a few seconds, not sure why. Summer is officially here now. This was a few weeks ago when we were playing badminton, frisbee and bongos up by the pool - which alas, I'm probably unlikely to see 'filled' again while I'm still here. This is the formerly-stray cat, now kindly adopted by a friend of our head-teacher Beth, which caused a rather dramatic and semi-public spat between several residents of the campus (long story, not for today...) Last weekend we went into the mountains and ate this pig for Kane's birthday. We did not cook it on this fire, but we did roast marshmallows. See? Oh yeah, and they had a bunch of cats, either in cages, or tied up like this one. They seemed in decent enough condition, but we still very tempted to free them. Frances, who has been to this spot before, told us that there used to be a monkey too, but there was no trace of it anymore. Last week was Buddha's 2545th birthday, and each year in Seoul there is a huge festival to celebrate. I haven't seen so many foreigner's (by which I mean people that look like me) in a long time (not counting the pig thing above (at which I met the first Welshman I've seen in Korea)). Neither have I seen, or indeed imagined that I would ever see, quite so many lotus lanterns in one day. Pretty... Here's my contribution. There's a special lantern-making competition for the foreigners, which a bunch of us took part in. Somehow, my beauty was overlooked, while our own Tony and Christa both took home prizes for their efforts. To be fair, my effort is a disgrace when seen up close, though it is now hanging proudly inside my doorway for visitors to bash their head against in admiration. And lastly, not the highlight of a day, but certainly a memorable point: we finally tried these... Korean silkworm larvae. They were chewy, but largely unremarkable. I did need a drink afterwards to wash the bits out of my teeth, but they were certainly no worse in taste than the grasshoppers we ate at the Christmas party. We also scored a free sample of the...well, I actually don't know what they are, but there's something that looks not unlike a winkle that you're supposed to eat with a toothpick. I didn't get a picture but it's a very common snack so I'm sure I'll get the chance sometime. They tasted like sand. The culmination of the festival is a grand parade down the streets near one of the largest temples. Here's a short peek at the fun...