Happy Valentine's Day!

Hope y'all were showered with the gifts I'm sure you all richly deserve today. We had a special Valentine's event in the canteen this lunchtime - everyone got a bar of chocolate, AND! a slice of cold garlic bread. Oh, they treat us well. I found another bar hanging from my door-handle after lunch from Mary, and Christa claims she left a rose on my doorstop (since I told her I'd never received flowers from anybody...) but no evidence of this has been found. I'm afraid they may have ulterior motives though, for in Korea, while on Valentines day it is the girls that give to the boys, the girls get paid back a month later. March 14th, or White Day, is when men traditionally give gifts to the ladies (I say it's traditional, but it actually dates back to circa 1965). This is a good deal for the men, because as well as getting a reminder a month in advance, they can gauge from the value of the gift that they received how much to spend in return! Anyhow, this is not all. In a triumph of marketing, Korea has a third holiday on April 14th. This one is truly depressing. It's called Black Day, and it's an opportunity for all those lonely souls who haven't yet received anything on Valentine's Day or White Day to meet up and eat noodles with black bean sauce together. I'm so happy I got the chocolate.

Shannon's Flight

Shannon Soesbe left us today. She's heading back home for a few weeks before setting off on her next adventure to go teach English in Turkey. Korea I think just wasn't her cup of tea, but she gave it six months, which is a fair shot. Though I never got to know her half as well as I'd have liked, she will be missed. Her absence will leave this place a shade less colourful than it was, and I wish her all the best. One final story before we say goodbye, though. Because I've been to the airport and back a couple of times (for Katie's visit and Emma's own departure) Shannon asked me if I'd mind nipping into Suyu with her on Sunday to point out where she needed to catch the airport bus. Of course I was happy to oblige, but since I'd spent most of the day shopping, I suggested that it would be easier if I just went with her (and Daniel) this morning instead, which would mean I got to wave her off, too. Woken up by my alarm at the unholy hour of 8:45am, with a streaming nose and the beginnings of another sore throat, I kinda wished I'd just shown her yesterday, but dragged myself up nonetheless. After a final lap around the building a teary goodbye or two, we set off to grab a taxi. It's still not entirely clear what happened, but I believe it was the security guards kindly ordering a taxi for us that kicked off the ensuing madness. It quickly became apparent that we were not on the way to Suyu (though maybe not as quickly as it might've been, as Daniel and I were wedged on the back seat under Shannon's suitcases and couldn't really see a thing). When quizzed, the driver said that he was taking us to Gireum Station, rather that Suyu Station as we assumed had been sorted out when security had spoken to him. Despite us protesting many many times - Aniyo! Suyu! - the cabbie was unrelenting. Indeed, he seemed to rather enjoy the power he had over us. He kept muttering in Korean, and all we could really make out was Gireum, about 15 minutes out of our way. I found it all ridiculously funny, but Shannon was getting seriously riled. 'Suyu, motherf***ing retard!' I believe she was beseeching him at one point (to be fair she had a plane to catch in a couple of hours, and we were in effect being hijacked), but to no avail, the cabbie just laughed and carried on. After a few attempts, Daniel managed to get a Korean member of our school's staff on the phone to talk to our kidnapper and clarify the situation. It seems that between them, the cabbie and security guards had decided that the traffic would be too busy around Suyu so had opted on an ulterior plan. Never mind that nobody had asked or even informed us of this, or the fact the Shannon had been wanting to go to the bank in Suyu first, we're just dumb foreigners after all. To his credit, he did eventually deposit us at a appropriate bus stop, and after a twenty minute wait in the freezing cold, we said our final goodbyes, and she was gone. Bye, Shannon.

Recap

Right, so I've written squat since Thursday, and nothing of significance since the Monday before that, so I think we're due an update. I turned 25 years old on Wednesday. It doesn't feel much different. My Korean age will remain the same until January, when I'll be 27, bluhhh. It was a pretty low key day as I was working in the evening and most of my friends were working the next morning. Nevertheless, it was nice; I was showered with some expertly-chosen gifts (mostly art materials, very cool), and had the Happy Birthday Song (or sometimes the Korean version, Sengil Chukahmnida) sung to me about seven or eight times throughout the day. After work I went round for a little celebration at Shannon's with cake and beer and friends. Thursday was a little stressful. We're having lots of Government-sponsored students this month, which inevitably seems to mean very low English skills. Trying to conduct a class with such low comprehension can be draining at the best of times, but this month I'm teaching theatre class, the lesson plan for which focuses on having the kids act out a short theatre piece. When only one of them can read the title of the play, getting them through their individual lines is total fantasy, which leaves me a little adrift at times. Friday was more of the same, but at least it was Friday. After graduation, a troop of SEV staff made their way over to Itaewan, to the final of the battle-of-the-bands-esque showdown that our friend Kane Sole was competing in. He was robbed of victory by a dodgy mike that meant the vocals could barely be heard (the sound guy adjusted the acoustics right after Kane's set) but was awarded with an 'honourable mention' at least. We had planned to meet up with Shannon's going away crowd afterwards, but the competition and MC dragged on for so long that all we wanted to do after the result was head home to bed. Saturday was a typically lazy weekend day - I could've done with doing some shopping and laundry, but the only productive activity I managed was a little Korean study. Me and Christa went out for sushi later in the day, which was both disappointing and expensive. The salmon was frozen solid (and it's not like it's easy to complain here) and the majority of the sashimi that we ordered was too chewy to enjoy. The highlight of the meal was Christa gamely taking up my challenge to eat the whole dollop of wasabi in one go. It had been making my eyes water even in small doses, so I was a little concerned as to what it might do to her, and there was indeed a moment she looked certain the throw up, but thankfully she managed to stifle the reflex before it got that far. At some point in the near future I want to write a post on some of my favourite Korean dishes; it seems that usually when I talk about food here it's because I'm drawing attention to some weird or wacky thing I've seen or tasted (and often I've only mentioned our cafeteria food, and we all know what school dinners are like!). There are some real tasty foods out around though, so I feel it only fair to redress the balance. For now, all I'll say on the matter is that on Sunday, me and Christa had a great lunch at a local restaurant before heading out for an exhausting day of Christmas shopping in Insadong, of which no more can be revealed at this time.

Important Corduroy Update

Just a quick update on my (vain and arbitrary) mission to ensnare any waylaid cordoroy affectionados* searching for the term 'cordoroy appreciation' out there: I have now made it up to page three. This is good news, as according to a study done by Jupiter Research and marketing firm iProspect, people will go through at most three pages of results before giving up and starting again with new keywords. However, 62% of people will click on a link on the first page, which doesn't give me much of a shot. *have I made this word up? It gets 14,000 ghits (google hits) but isn't in any dictionary that I can find...

I'm all about the corduroy

Being a bit of geek, I use a site called ritetracker to monitor various statistics for my blog. I was just having a browse through some of the more obsure factoids and came across a list of google.com keywords used by people who have (apparently inadvertently) landed themselves at my site in the past. Here are my favourites: 5 'ARGOS' - I have never mention Argos. Not once. I have no idea how a google search for Argos could have lead anyone here, but apparently it is so. 4 'gunter's place seoul boot' - What this guy was actually looking for I have no idea. My Gunter was my creepy German room-mate in Osaka. 3 'milk in korean cuisine' - I am the fourth hit on google for this query! If the were looking for culinary tips, they must've been pretty disappointed to end up here since I was talking about a foul pineapple milk drink they gave us in the cafeteria one day. 2 'how far do zebra travl' - Hey, thanks to the mutual misspelling, I'm the top hit for this one! 1 'corduroy appreciation club' - I love that this search points to me, but I only show up on page 7. Maybe now that I've mentioned it twice my ranking with improve. Hmm. Corduroy. Corduroy Appreciation. Corduroy Corduroy Corduroy. See how many more hapless souls I can capture now.

Emma

Emma's going home tomorrow! She's making the, um, final touches, to her packing right now. That's all for now.

My hectic schedule

We only have nine teams of kids here this week (contrast with the usual twenty-plus) so all our schedules are pretty barren this week. I do have night duty too, but it's hardly work - tonight all I had to do to earn my money was sit in the back of the room and watch The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for two hours!

Due

Well. I can't log in hotmail to access the eight messages it claims I have waiting for me because of unusually high server activity. Lost season three is on an outrageous thirteen week hiatus, so my evening's downloading plans are scuppered. And finally, there's nobody in at my parent's house (I was trying to ring to disprove rumours of me being on my deathbed that were beginning to circulate as a result of my not posting anything since the weekend, when I said I was a bit ill). Hence, I thought I may as well write something. I may have to rush as there is to be a blogger outage at 12:30PM (PST), but I don't know when that is relative to me. Aah, I just checked, it's okay, I have 5 hours still... It's been a busy week, we've had many kids here so am looking especially forward to seeing them off tomorrow. Emma's leaving do is on Saturday night, we're going to the salsa bar we went to a few months ago, then maybe to a nore bang (Korean Karaoke) afterwards. Should be fun. Anyway, in eight more days, she's gone. We were without heating for much of this week, was not at all pleasant. Now it's been 'fixed', except that part of the 'solution' involves never being able to turn the heating off again. It's all or nothing apparently. I'm in the process of changing over my email to gmail, so please email at ryjones114@gmail.com from now on. I guess I'll be checking both for a while anyway just to make sure. Korean class was heated tonight. There's only me and Christa there, so our teacher likes to pit us off against each other by awarding stars for getting questions right and winning at the games she devises. Tonight I was just about ready to flip the table over when Christa started edging ahead of me during a quiz we were doing on the bank vocab. She'd not studied OR done her homework, but she was still managing to get the right answers by sheer guesswork, it was so unfair. Yeah, that's right, Welsh: guesswork. Anyway, her prize was a packet of octupus crisps, so it's unclear who really came out the winner.

Happy Pepero Day!

I do realise that for much of the world today is Remembrance day, a time of solemn reflection n'all, but we in Korea choose to celebrate the much more upbeat Pepero day instead - quite possibly the most commercial national holiday I've ever come across. Pepero is the name of a long chocolate-covered biscuity confection. Somehow, their manufacturer, Lotte, masters of Korea (they're behind everything) have managed to successfully push forth a national (albeit unofficial) day into the public consciousness. It seems to be much like valentine's day, but really just for kids, and instead of cards, all the shops have been selling special packs of Peperos with hearts and flowers blazened across the packaging. Really bizarre. Oh, and it's November 11th as the date (11/11) looks like four Pepero sticks. Likewise, the Corduroy Appreciation Club celebrate Corduroy Appreciation Day because it's the date that most resembles corduroy. You can't make this stuff up. In other news (if you're still reading) the SEV exodus officially began today, with Shawn and Melody of Canada being transferred down to Suwon (three hours away) to finally start the jobs they came here to do two months ago. Their apartment was the official gaming headquarters around here. On at least six nights out of seven, it'd be a fare bet that there'd be a card or dice game of some sort going on over at their place, so they'll certainly be missed. Emma leaves in exactly a fortnight, and Shannon will be leaving just after my birthday, so it's all gonna feel very strange around these parts come Christmas. Also, I have a sore throat. This would've been more newsworthy yesterday when I was actually off work because of it (and related symptoms) but there you go.

Bath House

One of the "most do" things in Korea must be a visit to a bath house. I've never got around to it before now, for various reasons, but tonight I finally did. Since we only have a shower in our apartments, I was really looking forward to a nice soak in a bath for a change. The last time I did was when I went to the water park with Katie, and nice as that was, it wasn't very relaxing as there were so many people around. I think most of Korea's bath houses are variations on a theme: this one had four hot jacuzzis and spas (since I still don't know much Korea I couldn't really tell you the difference), two cold baths (which I was strangely drawn to, although the colder of the two was near-ice and actually not too pleasant) and two saunas, one wet and one dry (the latter being hotter, and my favourite of the two). I think there were other things on different floors of the building too, but we didn't have time. "We" is me and Christa, but I didn't actually see that much of her in the baths. Because of course the men and women are segregated as soon as you enter. Why? Because you have to do all this naked, did I not mention? I had been a little nervous beforehand (and yes, this may well be one of the 'various reasons' I hadn't been before), but honestly, once you're naked, the only weird thing is just how quickly you get used to it. I'm naked, you're naked, so what? There was one slightly awkward moment when another guy came and joined me in the sauna - are you supposed to acknowledge each other? Make small talk? I stared at the ceiling. Anyhow, it was all very relaxing and I shall certainly be back...

Can I really be getting hayfever in November?

I wouldn't've thought so either, but it does feel that way...

Snow!

For probably the first time since we got here, the temperature here was lower than that back home - only by a couple of degrees I think, but it was enough for it to snow! Although, not for a long, and it was pretty pathetic. The weather's pretty inconsistent here - this weekend we had some of the heaviest rain we've ever had here, but tomorrow's supposed to be sunny again, and by Wednesday we should be back up to a very pleasant 19 degrees (10 more than it is now). P.S. I'm so tired of always having an empty fridge! Getting my two main meals for free everyday means I hardly ever bother going shopping. In my fridge right now I have...two bottles of water, and...that's it. In a good week I sometimes have orange juice and milk. This is not a good week. Which is why I'm sat here eating peanut butter out of the jar. Off a knife. How depressing.

Korean Lessons

I've had my first few Korean lessons now, and am being a complete geek about it. The lessons are really fun, and so I'm always doing extra study in my own time. I'm doing it along with Christa, who must be one of the most competitive people here: she doesn't like that I'm always reading ahead at all! We keep quizzing each other whenever we're out and about, and trying out little phrases on the kids (though we're not supposed to - rule number 1 on site is supposed to be 'NO KOREAN!' but it's good practice). So far our conversational repertoire is pretty much limited to 'what is your name?', 'what country are you from?', 'what do you do?', 'and what is this?'* but it's a start. *'이름 이 뭐예요?', '어느 나라 사람이에요?', '무슨 일 해요?', '그에 뭐예요?' It took me like 10 minutes to type that out in Hangul (the much-celebrated Korean writing system (they even get a national holiday out of it!)), and it now occurs to me that you may well not be able to read it anyway because of the Windows encoding that you may need. Dang. And then, of course, you not gonna be able to read it anyway...

Random photos

I've finally started learning Korean properly this week, and although I still only really know a handful of words, I do get a buzz when I manage to work out what something means, even though the kids laugh at us for having first grade textbooks. However, it's kinda tricky to represent the learning of Korean pictorially, so here's a picture of a horse, since I'm also trying to teach myself to draw better, using a book I borrowed off Rob a while ago, 'Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain': Next, a couple of photo's courtesy of Mary, from this last Friday night and another night a few weeks ago when we went out with some of the Korean staff: This last Friday when we went out we ended up at one of Seoul's infinitude of Singing Rooms for a couple of hours: basically it's karaoke but you get your own room, thus vastly limiting the pool of humiliation, which is nice. Great fun actually. And finally, to complete the randomity, some prettily dressed Kimono-clad Japanese ladies in Kyoto: And now I really must get to bed, even though it's Friday night and not yet half past ten - we're going to the DMZ tomorrow and we have to leave here at 5:45am...

Work in Progress

Kane Sole

A friend of mine a fellow teacher at SEV, Kane Sole, has just missed out on having one of his songs included on a promotional CD that is to be made by the website Sellaband. The website's premise is that members of the public buy 'shares' in artists that they like, and if/when that artist has $50,000 investment, the company will make and promote their CD. Kane's on $2240, but that's just after a month. The promotional CD was a one-time bonus I think - the top 10 acts on the site were to be included, and Kane was number 9 until the eleventh hour when he was bumped to 11. In sympathy with him, I thought I'd use today's post to give him a plug. So, please go here and at least have a listen to his music. If you like, read the FAQ and consider investing a few dollars. He really is pretty good - I find myself humming his tunes all the time anyway. Thank you.

40 days and 40 nights

It's official: Emma is leaving. She's had enough. Enough of this job, enough of the food, enough missing her family, enough of this country. She's handed her notice in, her flight home is booked for November 25th, and as she has been doing pretty much ever since we arrived, she's counting down the days, if not yet the hours. However, as of yesterday Rob is here (Emma's old friend, and if you remember, the catalyst for our coming here in the first place) so at least I shall not be the only Brit.

Japan and the threat of Nuclear War

On Sunday evening we arrived in Hiroshima, having spent most of the day travelling back from the wilds of Mount Fuji. We had just enough time to visit the Atomic Bomb Museum in the hour before it shut. In fact, we really didn't have enough time, so we went back on Monday morning to check out some of the temporary exhibits that we had missed the first time round. I found it a little disconnecting trying to tie the destruction on show everywhere inside the museum's walls with the modern, flourishing city that was on the outside. One of the temporary exhibits housed a selection of items sent in my Hiroshima survivors and their families: scraps of clothes, half-melted toys, a rusted old tri-cycle, lumps of fused glass, watches that had stopped at precisely 8:15 am when the bomb went off. I still feel that I'm ill-informed to making any educated judgements on the use of the bombs. I should know more. In the airport again at Fukuoka, waiting to check-in, we met a guy, a Texan, who was kinda like our Japanese counterpart. He was teaching English in Japan and was coming over to Korea for the week. He asked us if we'd been following the news for the past for the days. We hadn't, so were of course very shocked to hear that North Korea might be planning to test a nuclear bomb as early as the very next weekend. After all we had seen at the museum over the past two days, it was especially disconcerting to hear of this so close to home. Little did we know that they'd probably already gone ahead with the test. The shuttle bus we took back from the airport was luxurious enough to have a TV playing at the front, and though everything was in Korean, we could work out what had happened easily enough. Though I have registered my location with the British Embassy over here just in case the world should come to an end and I require evacuation, most of us are not immediately concerned. Last time the North attacked, their ranks were swelled immensely by the Chinese and Soviet forces. If they were crazy enough to try again, they would be alone (while we would certainly not be) at a time when they can't even feed themselves or light their homes. I am not afraid.

On Leave

Good day. I'm gonna be in Japan until Monday and am unlikely to update again before then. Have a good week. Bye bye.

Updates, miscillaneous

OK, so the Lost Season Finale officially sucked according to the poll last week, but to be honest the sample size was really far too small for us to draw any statistically significant conclusions. I'll still be tuning into season three as soon as humanly possible anyway. I'm also throwing my weight behind a new show, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, which is just out in the US (won't be on in UK til 2007, I'm downloading it myself) - fans of The West Wing (possibly I'm just talking to my brother here) should check it out immediately, as it shares the same writer and producer (Aaron Sorkin and Thomas Schlamme), as well as half the cast, and from what I've seen so far it certainly matches the WW in the quality stakes. I'm going to try and sign up for Korean classes in the morning with Mary and Daniel! Ooh yay. I've learnt a very little already from books, CDs and the Rosetta Stone PC program, but lessons will be better. It's an intensive course, 5 mornings a week for the month, so bang go my lie-ins, but at least I'll be doing something productive. Japan travel itinerary has changed. In fact, did I ever even say where we were going? I forget. Fukuoka, Osaka, Kyoto, Mount Fuji, and Hiroshima. In five days. Tokyo didn't make the final cut as it's just slightly too far out, and it would be too much of a rush given the time we have, and we spend enough time in our own sprawling city as it is. We're very excited.