Finally Time to Write A Blog!

I have been pretty busy for a person who works for 26 works a week lately. If not teaching, I have been trying to run everyday as I prepare to run (hopefully) a marathon in Seoul in March. As of now, I can run for about 12 km in a little over an hour, but I have much work to do in the next 5 months. Also, my school celebrates halloween by creating a haunted house for the students, which has taken much time and effort from all of the teacher's at my school and is now finally over! With the exception of my school and a few other English schools, halloween does not exist in Korea, so it is nice to bring a holiday to children who have never seen it before.

As for what I have been doing over the past few weeks, it has been the usual for life in Korea. Enjoying riding around on the motorcycle, getting out for some good dinners and drinks with friends and finally playing in a soccer game! This past Saturday some friends and I finally had a chance to play in a game. At first, we played against a Korean team at field down by the University. We just showed up and were lucky enough to find an open field and a team that wanted to play. Most fields in Korea are dirt, and this was no exception. It was quite different from the usual grass surface I was used to, but we quickly learned. Our North American and European skill was no match for the Koreans as we found the net four times for a 4-0 victory. We also played in another game, but this time we had to split the foreigners onto both teams since there were so many Koreans. It was more of an informal game, but it was good just to kick the ball around. We must have played for two and a half hours by the time it was all over.

Now to get to some pictures from back in the beginning of October. this is from Sunchung (I think) Mountain. It is about one hour from my city by car and offers breathtaking scenary and challenging hiking. It is a perfect way to spend a Saturday morning/afternoon.



This is a view from the top of one of the mountains that we climbed. I did not know that we were going to be doing some hardcore hiking, so I was only in sandals. Needless to say, my feet were a little painful after. The buildings you see are for a Buddhist Temple and there are monks that live in the buildings as well as a giant golden Buddha. There are also remants from the Korean War there as there is an old statue that has been damages from bullets.

This is me at the top. I had to take a picture to prove that I was there. Also, I am doing the traditional Korean "V" as it is quite common for Koreans to do while taking pictures.

Another view from the top. It looks like much more than an hour's drive from this direction.

This is at the bottom of the mountain. A very cool waterfall!

More views from the top...

No, I am not talking about how big the fish I caught yesterday was. There are just so many mountains around!

Another waterfall. You have to take pictures of waterfalls, right? No further explanation needed.

This is a suspension bridge, the "Sky bridge" as they call it. It joins two mountains. Walking over it is an awesome experience., It bounces up and down quite drastically as you cross and you would certainly plummet to your death if you fell.

I was trying to feed this nice squirrel... why wouldnt anyone tell me it was fake until after they took a picture?

That's it. Next up: Halloween in Korea.

A picture of "The Beast"

Here is a picture of my new ride around town, a Daelim Magma VS125. Not a bad piece of machinery for about $300. It even comes with a dual exhaust.

I never thought it would happen, but some people don't like Canadians..

The past week took FOREVER to come to a close it seemed. I had payday on Friday as well as only 2 days of work the following week to look forward to. Finally it is all over and done with. I had a very quiet week until Friday since I was trying to stretch my last dollars, so there was no eating out or entertainment expenses.

After work Friday, I went out for Sushi with the Korean teachers at school. I was the only foreigner among them. This was my first serious sushi experience. I can't remember the names of a lot of the sushi, but I can describe what it was like. I sampled some octopus. The tenticles were the prized part of it, but I was surprised as I reached with my chop sticks to pick up a tenticle. Suddenly it squirmed out of the way trying to avoid my chopsticks as if it knew its fate if they were able to grab hold. That's right, this stuff was so fresh, it was still moving. That wasn't the only food that was like that either. Needless to say, I tried everything at least once and I think I impressed the Koreans with my handling of the sushi. Some of them even said, "Even I wouldn't eat that!"

Without doing much drinking Friday, I was able to wake up early Saturday. I had to do so for a purpose: to buy my motorcycle! A foreigner friend was leaving Saturday and he was looking to get rid of his bike so I was able to pick it up for a decent price. For only 275,000 won I purchased a Daelim Magma VS125. Quite a nice machine if I don't mind saying. I have been having fun touring the countryside and through the mountains. Although I hadn't ridden a motorcycle before, it came to me relatively easily. I attribute it to being able to drive a manual car. I was shown the dangers of having a bike today while I was driving around. I came to an intersection and although the light was green there was traffic. I soon discovered it was because something was blocking a lane, a bike and its rider who was face down in the pavement. It had just happened as I approached because people were still on their cell phones and there was no ambulance. I am no doctor, but it didn't look good. By the time I turned around to find out more, the ambulance had arrived and quickly thrown him in the back and was on the way to the hospital. I would not be surprised if I found out later that he had died.

My plan for Saturday afternoon was to head to Osan where a US air force base is situated. It is a favorite place of my co-worker Betsy as it gives a little taste of home without going too far. It was about 2 hours by car. Speaking of which, I drove in Korea! My friend Lindsay was driving when she wanted a break so I drove the rest of the way. It is a little different than back home, but still manageable as long as you know how Koreans drive. At first, Osan seemed to be a very cool place. Many foreigners and talking in English. Our hotel was very nice. In each room a big screen TV, and bathrooms with jacuzzi tubs and of course it was very clean. Much cleaner than my hotel room in Seoul. Things quickly turned negative in Osan however. First, the place was crawling with US air force personnel. I have met some very good people in the armed forces, but generally speaking I think it is fair to say that there is something different about them. For one, they are much more loud, billigerant, rude and swear too much. I don't disagree that there are exceptions, but this was the case in Osan by and large. Next stop in negative town, was when trying to enter a bar in the town. I showed the doorman my alien registration card (which proves that I am allowed to live in Korea and includes my nationality). When it was discovered I was Canadian, I was quickly swept aside with the door man only saying, "No Canadians." After a lengthy argument, the owner of the bar was called to the door. He told me, "No Canadians are allowed inside this bar." I responded by asking, "Why?" He told me "Canadians are bad." After this, the military police came by and encouraged me to move on to another bar. So that was the end of that fight unless I wanted to get involved with US military police, which I didn't. I plan on contacting the Canadian, Korean and American governments to tell them of this practice. I should mention that the owner was a Korean, not American. Although we found another bar, I was deeply disturbed by the discrimination I encountered earlier and my night was not too enjoyable.

There was a good side to Osan that I discovered the next morning, the shopping! I found some very good pirated DVDs (I bought Click and the Gridiron Gang). I also found a Buffalo Bills jersey sporting the name of Mr. Willis McGahee, which i bought for 20,000 won. I was happily surprised to find it, because Buffalo is not one of the big market teams and their jerseys often do not make it all the way to Korea.

As I write this now, it is Thursday and the beginning of Korean thanksgiving. I received some presents from some students yesterday for Chusok (Korean thanksgiving). My gifts include a movie gift certificate, a Korean hankerchief (with Korean writing on it), and ginseng scented socks (not the best scent for socks in my opinion). I have today and tomorrow off as well as the weekend. Although I do not have any big plans, I look forward to the time away from school and being able to recharge a little bit. We also had Tuesday off for some reason (but not Wednesday), so I spent the day touring the mountains with my biker friend Chris. It was good to give the new bike a test in the mountains, it did pretty good! I hadn't studied Korean for a while, so I headed to a coffee shop with my Korean book and tried to study a little bit. I got frustrated after about 30 minutes and decided to give it up. Hopefully I will get back to it again soon. That's all folks.

It's been a while... time to catch up

The end of the month always ends up being a busy time for me work-wise. There are certain things that we must do outside of our regular routines by the end of the month in order to get paid. One of those things includes calling every one of my students to talk English. I think the school does it hoping the parents are listening to their kids on the phone so they will think, "Wow, they know how to talk in English on the phone!". The process is quite time consuming as I have upwards of 80 students in all my classes. But now that is done and I have been paid!

Last weekend was another great weekend. It began by going to the Sori Festival at the performing arts center at my city. It is a musical festival with bands from all over the world. The performance we saw Friday night was a French band that had a reggae feel to it. We arrived slightly late to the show so we were granted admission for free. Bonus! The only bad thing was that they ran out of beer. Do you remember that Heineken commercial where those guys stick their hands in the ice water searching for the last beer? That is what Fraser and I did for about 5 minutes. Once we felt numb, we realized we had probably tapped all of the resources. Early Saturday morning I headed out to Mount Chongchan, which is about a one hour drive from Jeonju. I went with my co-worker Sandra and our Korean friend Sujin. It was a really cool place. We walked across a skybridge, which is a suspension bridge connecting two mountains. Pretty scary to walk across! I just had to jump in the middle to see what would happen. It was safe! I was able to reach the summit of the mountain after a steep, rocky climb. I also did it in sandals... probably not the best idea. It took about 3 hours to get all the way up.

After our mountain adventure we had some Conjahtan. It is a small chicken stuffed with rice with ginseng and other treats in a broth. It is supposed to give you energy and stamina, which was exactly what we needed after our climb. The Jeonbuk Hyundai soccer team had another game at the World Cup Stadium so we had to check that out again. It seems that the homeside loses everytime I am there. I am getting the feeling there are not that good... but it was still a really good game. Drinks were needed after the devastating loss so we headed to the infamous Soju tent. This is basically a bar that consumes a giant area and falls under a tent. The lack of interior makes for cheap drinks so it is worth it. The drink of the night was yogurt soju. It sounds exactly how the name is. It is the soju rice liqour mixed with yogurt. A very tasty combination in my opinion! Too much soju makes you think you can sing better than you can. So we had to go to the norebong (kareoke room) after. We sang our hearts out yet again to a solid crowd of 8 foreigners (plus a Korean that we were talking to on the street and then dragged in with us). It has been a while since I have played soccer, but I am happy to report that after leaving the kareoke room, we had a run in with some Koreans who were quite confident in their skills. There are often these soccer ball kicking machines on the streets that you kick and it registers how hard you kick via a number on the screen. After consuming an overabundance of soju and still wearing the sandals, I am happy to report that I put the Koreans in their place by scoring the higher score. They certainly walked away with their tails between their legs. It was a small victory for foreigners everywhere in the country. Needless to say, Sunday was a day of rest after the crazy busy Friday and Saturday so there is not much to report.

That was a lot of typing.. I will attempt to recap the last week soon. Hope all is well with everyone at home. I will try to post more regularly again.