As Summer ends

OK, so the humidity is calming down and all of the signs of Autumn are coming, the Autumn flowers are out and the leaves are getting tired, I'm looking forward to trekking in the red and golden leaved hills before my time here comes to an end and the cold of Winter hits.

So just to let you know what has been happening here in recent weeks. I have been finding myself becoming increasingly comfortable, this means that I am being a little over indulgent at times and am conducting myself in ways different to usual, but a little discipline and thought will get me back on track for my adventures. I have less that three months left and this means that it's time to consider what it is that I will do after my Korean experience. Recently I have spent a lot of time in Hongdae park listening to live amateur music, which I have to say at times is some of the most interesting, entertaining music I have ever heard. Drinking seems central to Korean social culture, just as it is in Europe. I find the more I get used to speaking and understanding Korean the better my time is here, I have less of the inconveniences I had at first and I can actually make friends with people not relying entirely on their English ability.

Recently many of my days are spent just relaxing and talking with my friends, it is good to be in a place with many (fairly) like minded people, though as with every experience, especially when working on fixed one year contracts, people leave. An recently most of my first friends here are leaving, this makes sense seeing as they had been here for around three months when I arrived. It's an interesting time, but reflects my usual experiences as I am now getting very used to these emotions and I have to admit I am less affected than others. There seems to be a goodbye party every weekend, and it's making me very jealous, as this feeling of comfort which I am experiencing here inspires me to new adventures.

This weekend there was the weekend of a large Dance Music festival in Seoul (Gatecrasher) this festival would probably be the best option for a party, but the desire to save money for my future travels, and the desire to have more varied relaxed times, meant that I chose instead to go camping, so the dissenters from the usual crowd made our way to the beach near to Seoul. Immi, Simon, Eunyoung and I spent Saturday might on Muido (Mui Island). It was beautiful, the sand was perfect, the scenery amazing and the camping conditions perfect. We cooked food on the fire, listened to music and chatted about everything and anything. Simon and Immi have amazing plans for when they leave, involving living outside in New Zealand, I love hearing about future adventures, seeing the excitement in people's eyes and their idiosyncratic thoughts, it's amazing and possibly my favourite topic of conversation. I can safely say I will truly miss the people I have met here in Korea, and at the moment my thoughts are that as my life progresses, it is indeed heading in the right direction, that of me becoming increasingly more comfortable, educated and increasingly enjoying my existence.

I'll check in again soon no doubt, and hopefully I'll have more of an idea of what it is that I am going to do with myself, but I am firmly aware that plans always change, nothing should be set in stone and that any experience can be enjoyable in it's own individual way.

The new housemate

OK, so I have a new housemate, it is a kind of long term rabbit sitting task for my friend Immi.

Mr Noodles is a cool guy, he appreciates beer, cucumber and good music, I also have found that he is quite partial to watching Alan Partridge and Have I got News for you. We spend our time chilling out, he has a bit of confusion over language, I have found he understands English, Korean, as well as a few words in French and Dutch. Though where his knowledge of the latter two comes from I am not sure. Today we have been chilling out listening to music and studying, but he is a bit 날라리 (a lazy bad student) and can't focus on the books for long. Here are a few pictures so you can make your introductions, though I don't think he is very interested in travel, as I have found with many Korean inhabitants he is afraid of the outside world, of it's dangers, diseases, and cultural differences.

Daily life; procrastinating and enjoying my free time

OK, so since I arrived back from Thailand I have been attempting to spend my time in slightly different ways. I have been broadening my horizons and visiting some great places, as well as filling in some of the gaps in my experience here.

The weekend after arriving we spent a weekend messing about, through a combination of night times in the Park, Jim Chil Bangs and Baseball. The weekend was awesome and really chilled, though the going out on Sundays leaves Mondays very tiring indeed.

The weeks seem to follow the usual form, I mix my time doing marginal amounts of language study, writing and seeing friends, I have a good time with this, I have met many open minded, free thinking intelligent people here and that suits me down to the ground, not only do people intrigue me with their own stories and ideas but they are also great platforms for bouncing my own ideas off of, this might be a selfish motivation for social interaction, but it suits me fine. I find writing to be a strange kind of hobby, and I certainly understand the idea of writers block, it seems when I have ideas I can in no way write them down fast enough, and at other times I literally can't write my name. Korea is a truly energetic place, I find I can do many things without having to give myself the kick up the arse for enthusiasm which I do in other places, though my thoughts and behaviour are all over the place, so I think this is a time for pure experience, and on reflection I will be able to better articulate what and how I feel.

On Saturday I spent my morning at one of the Palace here, Gyeongbokung, it was beautiful and for the first time in a couple of months the humidity took a short break, making the tour a little less sweaty. I managed to take some cool pictures, and more importantly sit back and take a rest for reflection. The main issue with having a good social life and a job teaching language is that you get very little time to be silent and to spend time with your own thoughts. The palace is a great complex of small palace buildings which were home to the Joeson Kings of Korea, despite their relative grandeur to the rest of Korea, if considering these buildings by European standards, for a Royal complex this place is relatively humble, yet beautifully serene. I would say that they are a must see place when visiting the region, simply to relax and enjoy, before hitting the madness of modern Korean culture.

After the palace I went to the horse races, not really my thing, but it was amusing to see how gambling has these ridiculous Ora of seriousness all over the world.

Saturday night was again spent in the Park in Hongdae. It was chilled out and I spent most of my time with new people, namely a French guy named Olivier and a Korean Girl named Jo. It was good to spend time with randoms, and the place certainly had a chilled out bohemian vibe, the range of music and nationalities of people helps. With a mixture of random events, odd conversations and interesting people it was a successful night. It was also great to hear the adventures and thoughts of many new people. The night ended with a bit of time spent by the Han river which produces excellent views in the lights of dawn. I'm really not looking forward to the freezing temperatures of Winter.

And so it is back to work again after another weekend of adventures and debauchery. Keep it foolish...

Thailand

OK, so here's how it went. I finished work at 9.30 on the 28th of July, I flew at 8am on the 29th, arrived in Bangkok at 6pm, took the bus to the railway station, jumped on a night train, jumped on a morning bus, jumped on a morning boat, and finally arrived in Koh Pangan at 2pm. No sleep, aeroplane food, and many odd conversations after a day at work and I was on one of the world's premier party island, and I was knackered.

I contacted Eunyoung and James only to find that I had overtaken them, they were in Koh Tao. We met 5 hours later, I spent the time in between talking to some guys who have lived on the Island for years, they were married and seemed to live off of the backs of their Thai-wives hard work.

James and Eunyoung's arrival was great, was cool to see them and great to meet their new friend Louis from Belgium, he is a top guy.

The first day we went to the 'Half-moon' party, it was an experience but really not my thing, and to be honest the 40 hours without sleep did not help. Still it was a great night and involved much moving around the Island, I was pleasantly surprised by the Island's beauty and the abundance of space, the Party areas really were restricted to a few places, so you could get away.

The next day was fun filled and sorrow filled, we borrowed mopeds and headed around the island, this involved a lot of dodgy off road driving and lots of stops in great places. Not long after our stops we came into trouble, firstly with Louis and Eunyoung coming off in the sand, and shortly behind them James and I did the same, just hitting potholes and falling off, and few scratches on us, but more on the bike, safe to say this was an expensive day on motorbikes, still it was fun. Though I will never borrow a bike from uptight tossers again, it's India all the way for motorbike riding.

The rest of my holiday was great, it was very chilled and I did very litte, the Islands were beautiful, the weather hot, and the ocean warm, it was a vacation to remember, and luckily for me not too much of an adventure, because if it had been there is no way I would have come back, despite my affection for Korea.

The times were good, the people great and the weather fantastic.

Every day life

As much as I am a dedicated ESL Teacher, I do spend most of my time thinking about other things, I enjoy my times attempting to explain the idiosyncrasies of the English language, though this is harder than you think as I myself have to decipher them from my own limited linguistic knowledge. Most of time is spent thinking about the future, attempting to be creative and considering my plans for the weekend, I am still a little lost on why I spend time considering these because no matter what myself and my friends do, it always ends up being fun, and more often than not ends with a few quiet beers on a Sunday afternoon mulling over life and semi-coherent ideas on what is the best way to go about things.

I feel I am settling rather well into Korean life, I'm picking up language and making friends, though it seems impossible to lose the 'weird foreigner' label, maybe I am actually weird? I still have a few reservations with certain aspects of the culture, but this is no different when I stay in the UK, I have never understood the 'respect your elders' doctrine of behaviour, surely to respect everyone equally and infinitely (until they give you reason to disrespect them of course) is infinitely better for all parties. In Korea, this well practiced and institutionalised Confucian idea seems to be subject to much misrepresentation, it seems that some individuals use this cultural principle to simply treat others like dirt (those younger than them of course) and simply put it down to their right, founded on cultural principles. This confuses and infuriates me, it seems that there is no room for debate in a Confucian society, and that, in my opinion, can not be a beneficial thing. Maybe this is the cause of the odd fallacies which I have previously mention, of which, by the way, I have many more of, and I will indulge you with at a later date.

I am finding as I am growing happier, my creativity and ability for abstract thought is diminishing, maybe this is why all genius' are fairly insane, the sole cause of great thought is unhappiness and contempt for conventional happiness. I will investigate further and let you know what I think. My times here in Korea have undergone something of a re-invention, I'm trying to be more enthusiastic about life and it's small pleasures, so far it seems to be working, though I'm still waiting for the Epiphany or crash landing one usually endures when one lies to them self. Again I will fill you in at a later date.

At the moment I'm beginning to miss my family and friends from home, the time difference here is about as awkward as it can be, due to my working hours and home-people's routines. I'm not so much homesick as family-and-friend sick. I do often wonder what damaging thing I did to my own mind to contempt my home country so much, maybe it is Karmic guilt from past lives' bad actions.

Anyways for your viewing pleasure here are two pictures, one of me (and some friends in the sea), the other of me in a swim cap trying to seduce a male celebrity, yes I am aware I have mentioned this before, but this shot is from behind, adding more detail and perspective to the event.

Mud festival

So this weekend was based around the the 3 D's; dirt, drinking and monsoon rain.

I had a weekend to remember, quite wisely and in tune with my usual sound judgement I decided to go out drinking the night before my morning train to the mud festival, this involved beers and soju with two of my students Hyang Jin and Jacob, along with my co-teacher Maya. It was a funny evening but too drunken to be had before a full weekend of partying.

The Saturday kicked off with a train journey dominated my bad jokes and card games, it flew past and before we knew it we were at the festival a little drunk and very excited.

First we found a place to put up the tents, this was easier than I had first thought and the sunny weather made me think that maybe we were the smartest people in the world to simply turn up with tents. The festival consisted of mud wresting, around a million photos, dodgy music and fun times. We spent the majority of our time messing around and mud wrestling, until Hyewon got hurt, inevitable I guess when you have 100 drunken people jumping on each other is a 10 metre paddling pool. This warranted going to hospital whilst covered in mud. This was great as I got to go in an ambulance. Hyewon seemed OK though a little sore, and after a couple of hours waiting, dodgy looks and even stranger conversations, we were out of the hospital, with the all clear from x-ray results and in a taxi on our way back to the festival. By this point the rain and depleted interest in mud meant that things were winding down a little getting ready for the nights antics. We made our way to James' room for a shower and to hook up with the group. By this point we were all starving hungry and in need of a bit of a chill out.

We made our way out for some food, on the way we got wet from the rain, and I won a frog teddy from a stall where you have to knock down blocks with a baseball, I am too cool. I had a pizza, well some pizza, and then we made out way to the fair ground, after spinney rides, sick feelings, and about a tonne of rain we decided to go looking for a bar to shelter (and drink) in. We found one and literally took over, also seeing Dylan the Welsh guy, he seems to crop up everywhere. It was a funny night with Gareth doing his usual hilarious leading of the banter, he is a funny bugger I have to say. I had a cool time and a funny conversation with a group of Korean girls and some young American soldiers who had taken a shine to them but needed a translator. I did my best and it was very funny, it was nice to meet some soldiers who I actually liked, a very rare occasion.

Around 4:30 am as the bar shut we decided it a good idea to forget camping (good idea as Eunyoung's tent had 3 inches of water inside, mine was dry), we made our way to the Jjim chil bang, which was surprisingly quiet and not a jjim chil bang at all, just a shower room and a sleeping area, still it was good to get a couple of hours sleep.

The morning consisted of goodbyes and packing away tents in Gail force winds, but it was an adventure and Kurt was a champion for helping me out. We took the train home, felling blue, (and for Hyewon, sore).. In all good times.

We arrived back around 4 and had some food and coffee, this helped though I was almost too tired to talk or eat.

In all I had a great weekend.

At the moment I'm felling pretty positive about Korea, I'm having fun, I have great friends and all is going well. But we will see which way the wind blows.

Peace out..

Sh**s and giggles

It's Saturday, and as with most weekends, the Friday evening euphoria led me to go out and drink straight from work, after invites from students for food and drink, which I regretfully declined, I made my way to my pre-arranged drinks meeting with Eunyoung and Hyewon. I met them in Rainbow bar in Gangnam. Gangnam is an uptown district of Seoul, it is the classier and more expensive option when compared to Hongdae, despite this it is nearer to my home, has fewer honkies in, and is more chilled out. James joined later in the night and the night was a buzz, funny odd conversations, strange Korean drinking games, which seem to have little or nothing to do with drinking, more beating the shit out of each other at random opportunities, though the oddest thing about the game, as with the games my students show me, there seems to be little or no objective in the game, simply to mess around and hit each other. We spent a lot of time drinking and talking and playing food throwing games, everywhere in Korea provides tasteless rice based crisps, these are very good for playing catching- in- your- mouth games.

On the way home, we had the usual yet endlessly amusing times chatting Korean to the taxi driver, we explained to him how we were going home to watch porn, in Korean this is pronounced "ya dong bo go ship o", Eunyoung explained that this is a very rude thing to say, so I repeated my sentence adding the honorific "yo", "ya dong bo go ship o yo". I'm still unsure if this was a resolution to Eunyoung's protests.

On Saturday we went to the park for fun and games, apparently the 4th of July holds some value in some insignificant country just west of Ireland, so this warranted drinking, fireworks and games in the park. This escapade continued until around 5am.

On Sunday I met Hyewon and James, this was an event dominated by the recurring confusion, inexplicable meaningless guilt, and fatigue caused by a weekend of drinking and very little sleep. Despite this it was a fun day, just relaxing in the sun, wandering around Insadong, Seoul is a great place that always seems to have some kind of festival or event going on. On this occasion we went to City hall and sat in the park listening to an orchestra band playing renditions of a variety of songs ranging from good to R-Kelly.

Other than that work has not been bad, very relaxed with the Middle school kids on Exam leave, the adult classes are fun, the classes are getting too big if anything, and it's a real compliment when people bring family, friends and co-workers to join my class.

Not much else is happening so I'm going to check out, enjoy.

Just so you can see, here is a picture with Jo Gwun from a very camp boy band named 2am, you might not be aware of it but he is kind of a big deal here, he is a superstar, and I am his friend, that either makes me a groupie or a stalker, I'm not sure.

The weekends

This weekend has been fun, again typical of my stay here in Korea, the weekends involve a lot of drinking, talking, sitting in the sun, and most notably, zero sleep.

I'm currently sitting in a cafe after my morning class, I am very very tired, I worked out that I did not sleep between 9am Saturday and midnight Sunday. On Saturday morning we, being the usual group of friends, met in Sinsa and made our way to the outdoor swimming pool nearby. Now, anyone would think that going swimming is a fairly simple and fairly relaxed affair, but as with everything in Korea there are odd rules; firstly you must, I repeat must be wearing a hat at all times, whether it be a swimming hat, beanie or baseball cap, you must wear one, the reasoning behind this baffles me, maybe it's to stop unwanted pregnancies from sharing the same water. The next oddity is that what seems to be a routine part of the swimming process is the lifeguard whistling periodically indicating that everyone gets out of the pool, only to then be told that you may re-enter.
Swimming was excellent, though some off thing seems to have happened to my skin, it has gone red and hurts to the touch, I will see medical advice and get back to you with the diagnosis.
One more note, is that I met a famous person, though unknown to me, he is actually s member of one of the most popular boy bands in Korea 2am, he was very cute looking, I guess around 18 years old, and very camp, but he seemed very popular as there was a group of photographers and a film crew surrounding him. I said a few strange things to him in Korean, mostly along the lines of hello and a brief introduction to my 'best friend' who happened to be a greenfly which had been sitting my arm for about 20 minutes.

Around 8 or 9 we made out way home to get ready for the night's leaving parties, Joe, an Australian and one of my best friend here leaves today, which is a sad occasion, but it's all part of the process. The night went well and we saw off our departing friends, Joe and Amanda, Amanda being a member of the wider friendship circle, who I seem to have met a few times but never remember, still she seemed like a nice girl. Around 8am I roused back to semi-consciousness sitting in a hot pool in a Jim Chil Bang (Sauna). I made my way home and had a shower before heading off to meet the guys in a park, for relaxation and what I was hoping to be sleep time, but little of this emerged, and for the first 3 hours it ended up just being Hyewon and I, which was cool, but being in a two-some doesn't allow much opportunity for sleep. Around 4 or 5 we had a pretty good group at the park, so we filled our time with beer, football and the usual wacky conversations, ranging from serious issues to the absurd. Around 8pm we made our way to Itaewon to meet Bora and her mum, it was fun and I had a really tasty Thai green curry.

In all the weekend was fun, though as I say run-of-the-mill, it still baffles me how humanity has managed to evolve at a fantastic rate, creating the arts and sciences, but still feel it necessary to spend more time working than they dedicate to leisure or hobbies, something has obviously gone wrong here seeing as cutting back on work time would render unemployment unnecessary, thus balancing social situations and I can only assume the global economy. Though the thoughts which result from my meandering social inquiries are rarely accurate or well informed.

Thanks for reading my blog guys, and just so you know the veil of malcontent which many of you have noted from the style in which I document my experiences is not a reflection on the way I go about my life, it is merely the result of fatigue, maybe I will make an entry when slightly drunk or rested, maybe then my style of writing will seem more jovial and contented.

Korean fallacies

Before you make the obvious and not funny joke regarding the name of the title of this entry, no it is not about Korean people's penis', fallacies not phallus'.

There are many purely fabricated stories floating around this little off-shoot peninsula of East Asia. Before I enlighten you to the mystery of "Fan-death" and the "Korean tongue syndrome", I will mention a couple of the strangest conversations I have ever had.

One student when we were discussing food, allergies, diets and vegetarianism, was convinced, and trying to inform me that a man is not a 'real man' if he does not eat meat or fish, apparently it is a fairly common belief that men need many forms of ingested aphrodisiacs to enable him to 'perform' in the baby making process. This student of mine, in the common broken English of newly enrolled language students (this is not an insult to language students or Korean people, for I attempt in vain to study Korean), this student tried to tell me that a non-carnivorous human could indeed not sustain an erection, due to the language difficulties I could not tell if this was a question or an attempt to inform me of problems I may endure. Two words, "VERY strange".

Fan death refers to sleeping with a fan on in your bedroom, apparently a "Scientific" study here in Korea found that sleeping in a room with a fan on reduces the levels of oxygen so dramatically that the dormant person will die from suffocation. After informing people that I have indeed slept in rooms with a fan on and consequently not died, therefore this story is balderdash, I was told that I am indeed wrong due to the 'Scientific' study proving the contrary to my anecdotal evidence.

The next is the story about Korean people's tongue's being different, therefore people needing tongue surgery in order to speak English correctly. I am yet to come up with a response to this story, I am literally struck-dumb.

I find stories such as these one of the fantastic parts of living abroad, they are the subtle differences that make life here surreal and interesting, I suppose we have urban myths of our own in the UK, but it's not the same when you have heard them all of your life in your native tongue, they must be heard first time, spoken in broken English from and unlikely source, and then the affect is perfect, the classic 'lost in translation and culture story'.

Fun days out

One thing is pivotal on determining whether you have a good or a bad weekend in Korea and that is the weather, Korea hosts a mixture of indoor and outdoor activities, but due to the inebriation effects of alcohol the indoor events, which are dominated by drinking, are harder to document or recall.

Here is a picture from Ellie's birthday, some people, myself not included, have access to the roofs of their building, creating a great space for relaxing. The day was dominated by good food (which I must mention due to our discovery of an amazing cheese shop) and wine. Good times were had.


If the weather is good we attempt to make trips to one of the many parks in Seoul, just like in the UK they are well known but underused, especially by me. It's a good place to kick back and relax, and certainly beats sitting in my bewilderingly hot apartment. In this picture I'm pretending I know how to play chess, I took my time making moves to pretend that I had a strategy and even feign that I was thinking more than one move ahead.

So far whilst being in Korea I have made it to the beach a meagre three times, the most recent was an overnight camping trip to Donghae, this was a wind and rain filled camp-out, but it was worth it, even if we did spend most of the time in Hoff (beer hall/ snack bar). Still could be worse, I swam in the sea and used my tent.


Check in again at a later date....

Sam and Ayumi

There have been a few highlights of my time in Korea, others being skiing, hiking and swimming in the sea.

The day I returned from visiting Pusan and Namhae I had messages on the Internet from Mule and Ayumi saying that they were in Seoul and wanted to meet up.

We had a cool day in the Park and Youido. Here's a photo to prove it.


I had a great time attempting to pretend that I can speak Korean and possibly less convincingly I pretended that I knew what was in Seoul and where the best places to go are.

Good times, I have really enjoyed the visits from my friends, it's strange how pleasant a bit of home familiarity is when you are living away from home.

First six months in Korea

OK so my first six months in Korea has been a mixed bag. I will systematically summarise the good times, the best times, the occasional bad time and what seems to dominate the agenda here, the repetitive.
Once arriving in Korea I remember thinking about once again being in a place I knew literally nothing about, badly prepared, money issues, and only being vaguely prepared for what was to come, solitude seemed to be the only worry present in my mind.

My first day was interesting: the area where I live, literally 100 yards away from the school is really nice, urban and busy yet with it's own charm, though I'm sure this is just a generic Korean charm. After arriving I met the staff and went for a walk and food with the boss Ms Park and Mr Moon one of the receptionists, it was interesting and on the way they stopped in a shop and bought me a very ugly bed spread, which I think is great. It was odd that the people assigned to showing me around seem to be the only staff members who can not speak English. This was both amusing and exhausting seeing as I hadn't slept in a long time and was still half drunk from the flights medicinal drinking.


My time over the first six months in Korea has been spent; procrastinating, attempting to learn Korean, making new friends, drinking, eating, experimenting with facial hair, cutting my hair off and generally trying to work out what to do next whilst enjoying the present.




To date work has been interesting, though it is very repetitive, I spend most of the week looking forward to the weekend and attempting to do something vaguely productive in the week. My weekends though, have been mostly spent drinking too much, playing the foreigner idiot aimlessly exploring and with little or no culture involved. But life is good, money is being saved, and fun times are being had, it's just odd that the life of work is spent mostly hoping for the times that you will not be working. Despite my vocal malcontent I am enjoying it here, and I do like my job, I'm just once again questioning what the ultimate goal of everything is, dumb hey.

My job consists of 3 parts, the first is teaching children between the ages of 9 and 12. This part of my job consists of attempting to teach English through various methods, though the only one which I can see working is where I can get them to speak English without them noticing, for this I mainly bribe them with candy and game time.
The second part is teaching Middle school children between the ages of 12 and 15, these kids are either the nicest, or are as I like to put it "little shits". But the motives for their awkwardness ranges from them either being painfully shy or just plain insolence. I suppose it's too much to ask for young teenagers to be dedicated students.
The third part of my job involves teaching adults, this is by far my favourite part, not least due to the dedication of the students, but due to the fact that they are more interesting people in general.