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.