Enormous update!

Hello! I've been trying to bring us up-to-date for a while, but keep forgetting. In fact I keep writing posts and forgetting about them, so here are 2 posts squeezed into one not-entirely-coherent one. Lucky you!

Skipping over the multitude of things we've done but haven't written anything about, I'm going to move straight to the present exciting times. We are now semi-settled into our new home of Buyeo, a small town further north than Gwangju. It is very small, but seems really nice so far. We haven't had much time to explore yet, but it's a very old, traditional town and has a lot of historical sites. We're now working in separate schools, which is a little odd after having spent the last year together at all times! I'm in Buyeo Elementary and Becky is in 3 different schools, Buyeo, Gyuam and Baekje Elementary. It's a lot more work for her and a lot more hassle, but hopefully that'll be ok and she'll enjoy it. Thursday was our first day. I spent it observing my co-teacher in his 4 classes of the day, then sitting around on the internet, opening a new bank account and being force fed soju by the principal. A good start I feel! I also had to attend a teacher's meeting and stand up on stage in front of all the teachers in the school and introduce myself, which was a little nerve wracking. Becky was plunged straight into teaching, despite not having anything planned. Luckily she's a professional and didn't screw it up. Probably. That night we went out for dinner with some other foreign teachers that live here (once I'd had a lie down and recovered from my soju bender). Friday was even more entertaining. We were both at my school for the day, but neither of us had any classes, so we sat on the computers all morning, did a little lesson planning, had lunch then left to get our new car registered! Oh, by the way, we have a car now. Pretty exciting huh? Yes. I'll come back to that. We then finished early, so finished unpacking our stuff into our ace new apartment, then went out for dinner and drinking with even more local teachers. There's a really nice foreign community here, only about 20 teachers from various places and everyone seems pretty positive.

So. Our new apartment. It's older than the last one, but it's much bigger. We have our bedroom, a living room, a study, a kitchen and two balconies. Plus the bathroom obviously, which is a little old but it'll do. All the rooms except the bathroom have windows so it's nice and light inside. The rooms are pretty spacious, although we don't have much in the way of furniture which makes a bit of a difference.

My next class of the day have just come into the class and started screaming and shouting at each other, generally making it a bit hard to concentrate on what I'm writing. I'll have to do something else for a little while until they go away!

This space is to allow for an interlude of about a month or two.



Well, we've now been in Buyeo for close on 3 months. It's an interesting experience to say the least, very different to our previous year. There's quite a lot to get through here, so I suppose I should start somewhere near the beginning.
So, we finished in Gwangju a day after our visas expired, thanks to our wonderful, helpful and ever accommodating former employers. Ahem. The previous weekend we spent with the wonderful Robb and Yue Yeon helping us locate a car to buy in order to actually move all our belongings out of our old place. We ended up buying the first car we went to see, a Hyundai Elantra. It's about 15 years old but runs fine so far, and it was nice and cheap. It also fitted almost everything we own in the back. The young Korean guy that we bought the car off was very funny, he seemed unsure whether he should sell us the car because he was worried it would be too small for us, seeing as we're huge foreigners. While we went for a quick test drive (and almost crashed it into a parked car), Yue Yeon convinced him to drop the price by 100,000 as the fuel tank was empty! She also helped us out getting insurance and all the paperwork sorted. Thank god for saintly friends!

The next two days were spent frantically packing all our belongings up and squeezing everything we could into the car. We had to leave Becky's bike and a few other things behind to pick up later, but go most of our things in. It is kind of worrying how much stuff we've acquired over the last year. Once we were all loaded up and had said our goodbyes to MaeGok Dong, we headed to Daejeon to sort out our new visas, then drove to Buyeo to meet Sophie, the girl at the Chungnam Province education board. We weren't really prepared for this meeting, as it turned out we were actually going to meet almost the entire board of education, plus go to our schools and meet the principals! We were hoping to just pick up the key for our apartment and go move in, but sadly, this was not to be. After a couple of hours of being told how handsome and beautiful we are by countless nameless people we've not seen since, we were finally released and started carrying our things up to our new home. The apartment is great! It's much bigger than the old place and much lighter too. The building itself is a bit rundown and nasty looking, but the actual apartment is fine. We've since bought a sofa, but otherwise it came fully furnished. It also seems to stay quite warm, which is handy, because we can't figure out how to get the underfloor heating working. The snow started in earnest this week, so we should probably get to work on finding out what to do!

Buyeo itself is a huge change from Gwangju. It's very small and sleepy, but it is a nice place to live. We'd got used to a big variety in restaurants and things in Gwangju, and that is certainly not the case here. Seeing as our lives basically rotate around food, this has taken some getting used to, but isn't too big an issue most of the time. We are cooking more often now, particularly as we finish work earlier and also are provided with lunch at school. But this blog isn't supposed to be about food! It's about Buyeo. So. We live on the edge of town, about a 20 minute walk from the 'downtown' area where most of the shops and restaurants are. There isn't really a supermarket here, just a few small marts, so we have to go to nearby Nonsan HomePlus to get a lot of the shopping we want. It's only a 20 minute drive, so actually not too different to going to HomePlus in Gwangju! The foreigner community is a little different here too. There are about 20 foreigners around, mostly working in the public school system. There's the usual array of Americans, Canadians, South Africans and a couple of other Brits who live in the building next to us. There actually seems to be more South Africans than anything else, which is a bit of a change from wall to wall Canadians (not that there's anything wrong with either set, I'm just saying...). There's also quite a few older teachers here (again, just mentioning it...). Nightlife is a little different here too, mostly as it's basically non-existent. There are a couple of Hofs (pubs) and the usual noraebangs, but everything closes a lot earlier here. Going out for dinner after 9pm would probably be a mistake. Also, as it's such a small place, there's a high chance that someone working anywhere we want to go is the parent of one of our students, or the partner of a teacher at one of our schools, so we don't want to get caught doing something embarrassing. We are now far more discreet with our foolishness.

Back in Korea with mum and dad

We arrived back at Incheon about 5 minutes before mum and dad, and successfully met up at arrivals. After a bit of lunch, we got on the coach and headed to Gwangju. The usually pleasant bus trip was somewhat ruined by a man in front of us constantly snorting and hocking up phlegm. We arrived in Gwangju and sat outside eating ice cream while Alan picked up our good-as-new laptop and then went back to the apartment and out for the local Galbi. Not quite as fancy as the restaurants we had become accustomed to in Beijing but very delicious!

The next day was my birthday, so I did something really fun and went to work! Mum and dad entertained themselves and met us at 9 when we finished. We got into taxis and went to Sangmu for some Vietnamese food. I'm sorry dad but I have to tell this story...We were walking into the building and I may have distracted dad with something interesting when I suddenly heard a huge bang. I turned around to see that dad had walked straight into the glass wall. For a split second everything seemed OK and then we saw the blood! A bit of panic and a confusing phone call later, we were in an ambulance and hurtling around the corner to Sangmu hospital. Where slightly differently from England, dad was x-rayed, stitched up, bandaged, drugged and jabbed in about an hour. So quickly that we still had time to grab some take-away and have a bit of a birthday meal at home. Mum and I got through the whole ordeal without getting a spot of blood on our fancy clothes (dad thinks this shows how much we cared). Unfortunately dad couldn't wear his glasses over the big bandage which had us all a bit worried that he might walk into something else.

The next couple of days were spent with us at work while mum and dad explored. At the weekend we decided to hire a car which wasn't as scary as we thought it might be (and has now inspired another decision), despite anyone not driving doing a lot of backseat driving. We drove to Wando, an island off the South coast (where Alan and I went when we first arrived in Korea) and stayed again in the big, strange hotel on the hill. The pebble beach was still lovely and almost deserted apart from the park ranger who recognised us from last time and was so excited that we'd visited twice, that he had brought a cameraman along so that he could give us a painful interview in very broken English. Me and mum were desperate for a swim so we drove to the other side of the island to a huge sandy beach which had also been deserted on our previous trip. Unfortunately August is beach month in Korea and this time it was packed with Koreans covered from head to toe and sitting under parasols to protect themselves from the sun. The water was very nice though so we had a swim and made a quick escape. Downtown we managed to find a fish restaurant with outdoor seating and ate a very nice fish soup.

On Sunday we made our way slowly back to Gwangju, stopping at Wolchulsan for a Kimbap picnic and a walk around a lovely lake, and then at a beautiful Buddhist temple where we walked along a little nature trail and I bought some pottery for Katy.

On Monday I had a day off work and so me, mum and dad went to Damyang to see the bamboo forest. The bamboo forest was OK and we also somehow ended up on an old film set which was quite interesting. Next we drove to the nearby national park and stopped for an outdoor lunch of Bibimbap at a lovely little restaurant. Unfortunately we arrived at the national park to discover that it was closed due to a landslide, from what we could understand. However we drove around for a little while and found the entrance to another park and mountain. We walked along the river and saw some really impressive waterfalls. Me and mum also managed to swim in a lovely clear pool, so everything turned out well in the end.

We did a few other things, including a visit to the market where mum and dad got the ultimate Korean experience of seeing dog meat. We also managed to go back to the Vietnamese restaurant and actually have a meal (after studying the glass wall we decided that it really is difficult to see). We've just found out that mum and dad will be back in April to do it all again at a slightly more relaxed pace with hopefully a few less injuries.

Beijing

At the end of July we were given 4 days holiday which including the weekend gave us a total of 6 whole days of freedom… wow! The holiday began rather stressfully with a broken laptop and our flights seeming to have vanished from anywhere official (leading us to believe that we had perhaps bought fake tickets). However with phone calls all over the world, the problems were eventually sorted and we were up at 4am the next day to head to Incheon and board our flight to China.

We were both feeling a little bit snuffly but tried desperately to conceal this as we passed through the swine flu inspections and thankfully we must have kept cool enough not to alert the men at the body heat monitors, as they stamped our forms and waved us through. We waited to meet mum and dad and tried to convince ourselves that we could tell the difference between Korean and Chinese people. We met up with mum, dad and Craig in Craig’s car and were whisked away to Beijing. After a quick welcome drink at Craig and Julia’s Alan and I went to meet the wonderful driver Jacky who was to taxi us around for our entire visit. He took us to our hostel in the hutongs which was amazing. A traditional courtyard building with cats everywhere. We slept in the biggest bed I have ever seen and were even given muesli for breakfast, which after a year without was very exciting.

That night we met up with the others and went to an amazing Peking duck restaurant, again in a traditional courtyard building, though this one was somewhat grander than our hostel. I could quite easily spend this whole blog listing the spectacular food that we had in Beijing but that might be rather boring so I’ll just say that Craig and Julia made sure that we were constantly well-fed at the best of Beijing’s restaurant and it was very nice to have hosts who plan their days as much around food as we do.

The following morning Jacky picked us up and took us to meet the others at the silk market for a bit of shopping Chinese style. Initially we were a bit overwhelmed by all the sales pitches and the prospect of having to bargain. It was no problem though as we were lucky enough to have Julia doing the bargaining and therefore paid far less for everything. By the end of the trip we weren’t doing a bad job ourselves and came away with jewelery, carvings and paintings. After another delicious meal Craig took us on a boat trip along the river to the summer palace. All along the river there were people bravely fishing and swimming. The Beijing river couldn't even tempt mum in for a swim on a hot August day, which is really saying something. The summer palace was a beautiful sight. The lake was crammed full of lotuses and people were selling the seed pods as a refreshing snack. We walked around for a long time looking at all the extravagant buildings and then tried to find our way to the back gate. This was a little more complicated than expected and we got a bit lost, which wasn't altogether a bad thing as it led us to some really beautifully neglected areas of the palace that we would otherwise not have seen.

The following day was the great wall! Jacky picked us up and took us first to the ming tombs. We then made our way along the winding road to the Great Wall and almost immediately started catching little glimpses of it. I would probably have appreciated this more if I hadn't started feeling extremely sick, and by the time we arrived at the wall I had to run out of the car and throw up... not quite on the actual wall but still one of the more impressive places that I've been sick. We tried to explain to Jacky that we wanted some lunch and after a bit of confusion he disappeared for a while and returned with KFC. It wasn't exactly what we had in mind for our meal at The Great Wall of China, but we ate it politely and it gave us the needed fuel for our hike up the wall. When we got up on the wall we decided to go in the opposite direction from the crowd which proved to be a wise choice as after about half an hour of walking we had the wall almost completely to ourselves. Just us and an extremely posey couple (they must have been Korean).

The next morning we headed for Tianaman square and the Forbidden City. The crowds were out in force and as we queued to get in we wondered whether it would really be worth battling with the throng of umbrella wielding Chinese tourists, however once we pushed our way through the first gate and turned away from the main path we actually found some quite peaceful courtyards and some really beautiful buildings. That evening we went back to a hostel and had a nice beer in the courtyard, surrounded by the hostel cats and then went for a Chinese Shabu Shabu. A pot of boiling water to which we added lamb, beef and all kinds of vegetables. After dinner Alan and I went for a walk around the area with a vague and fruitless aim of finding H&M.

Our last day in Beijing was spent first at the temple of heaven and then in the Hutong district, eating more delicious food, looking at the lovely little shops and cycling around this lovely area on tandems. I am a huge fan of tandems now. Sitting on the back I was able to look around and take pictures without having to worry about steering and neither of us had to work as hard to keep the bike moving. We ended with a beer on the roof of a hutong before heading to an incredible old courtyard house which had been converted into a restaurant. The food was wonderful and we were also entertained by dancers and singers while we ate. A very very busy 5 days!

Not Entirely Topical Anymore...

This is possibly my favourite bit of homework I've seen since I got here...

We're Still Here

Oh god, we are so bad at this blogging thing. We're so far behind it's ridiculous. In partial defense, my sister had promised to write a blog about her trip out here, but has failed to deliver thus far. Obviously the blogging skills run in the family. And we've been trying to deal with a somewhat more important issue of late - what is going to happen in 2 weeks when our contract finishes? This has been a source of a great deal of stress and no small amount of depression for both of us over the last 2 or 3 months. We've had numerous jobs lined up only to fall through, been lied to by recruiters and schools, had to accept that we'll be leaving Gwangju and we're now having issues with our visas. At the moment our boss is insisting on extending our visas by one day to ensure we work a full year (because we arrived on a public holiday we missed one day at the start), despite the fact that this will mean we have to go to Japan for a couple of days to arrange our new visas, instead of just visiting the nearest immigration office to our new school. In short this shouldn't have been a surprise given his normal conduct, but is infuriating nonetheless. And much more expensive than we would like. But on the plus side, our new jobs look pretty good and we'll get to tick Japan off our visited countries list.

Talking of which, since we last updated, we've been visited by Ann-Marie and Dave (my sister and her boyfriend), eaten a lot of food, had a flying visit from Becky's dad, followed quickly by a trip to China for a week with both of Becky's parents before spending another week with them in Korea, seen Oasis, Patti Smith and Bassment Jaxx play a ski resort near Seoul, panicked by the total breakdown of the laptop, been camping on another beach, worked stupidly hard on our pointless summer program at school, visited more national parks, had many birthday celebrations/goodbye parties for various friends (and Becky!), spent time in a Gwangju hospital (not me for once. This is a story for Becky to tell), I made us couple set Drifter Riff Raff clothing and we've witnessed some of the heaviest rain ever. Also, just before Ann-Marie and Dave got here we visited a green tea plantation which I forgot to write about before.

I'll let Becky write about her parents' visit and hopefully Ann-Marie will eventually deliver her write up of their visit. I'll just say this - as always, it was amazing to have the visitors, but heartbreaking to see them go. If everyone wants to book second trips for the next 12 months that'd be just perfect. Oh, also, while Ann-Marie and Dave were here we all visited the bathhouse in Busan, and I managed to get past my fear of being naked in front of other people. It was fun! Not being naked, that was just ok (and mostly only because I took out my contact lenses and convinced myself if I could barely see anyone then surely they couldn't really see me either. Except for the little kid in a snorkel mask who swam right up to me and hovered over my lap while Dave and I were sitting in the pool. These kids are odd sometimes), but the actual baths were great. And now I've been naked in front of my sister's boyfriend, so that's some kind of landmark event I suppose. Not one I'd ever planned to achieve, but hey. It's all experience. Right?

So, as mentioned above, we went to a green tea plantation in nearby Boseong. It was a nice bus ride through Korean countryside for an hour or so, followed by another bus ride into the middle of nowhere - we couldn't see any signs or anything, but all the young Korean couples with fancy cameras got off the bus so we thought we were probably in the right place. We followed the slightly confused looking couples into what appeared to be the plantation, but were unable to find any green tea. This was a little confusing, until we went a little way up a hill and caught a glimpse of green tea on the far side. It seemed we just went out of the wrong exit from the car park, so we soon arrived in the plantation proper. It was easy to tell, as there there shops selling green tea in bags, green tea in bottles, green tea in cups, green tea ice cream, green tea related clothing, green tea bibimbap and green tea crockery. Joking aside, it was really a beautiful place, even on a slightly overcast day. It was very... green. Ha. Just look at the pictures. The visit was followed by the ever more common bus home panic - we're sitting in the middle of nowhere with no bus timetable and not a vehicle on the horizon... Luckily a bus eventually arrived and took us back home again.

I'm reasonably certain I'm missing something exciting and fun out here, but the next thing to really talk about is the Jisan Valley Rock Festival.

We heard somewhere there were actual rock festivals in Korea, which was initially a bit of a shock, as it's pretty much impossible to hear any rock music anywhere outside of foreigner bars. Following some detailed searching (hooray Wikipedia!) we discovered in previous years Korea has had visits from Muse, Rage Against the Machine, Placebo, Franz Ferdinand, The Strokes and loads more, thanks to sharing the weekend and therefore much of the line up with Japan's Fuji Rock festival. A quick glance at the Fuji line up for this year got us somewhat excited and we started checking the festival website everyday. Long story short... due to complex reasons, there were 2 festivals the same weekend in Korea and the usually great line up was thus spread over 2 different locations. We went for the slightly better line up, although as we had to work on Friday we missed the 3 bands I most wanted to see. Ah well. We went with four friends and between us booked accomodation in what we expected to be a little room we could all squeeze into. We were originally going to camp, but we were worried about waking up in puddles of water (our tent isn't exactly waterproof). The room turned out to be huge and in an enormous, swanky looking hotel, so that was pleasing. We saw loads of Korean rock bands, some good, some dubious at best. One band, Windy City, turned out to be a reggae band - the Korean singer even spoke in Jamaican patois. Which was odd. But they were great, there was a really dancey happy feeling in the whole tent. Bassment Jaxx were ludicrously good fun. Patti Smith was really good and seemed as though she possibly hasn't changed at all in 40 years, ranting about nuclear weapons and peace for everyone etc. Jet turned out to only really have one song, which they played early on, then followed it with variations on the theme for an hour. Bit boring. Oasis, however, were truly excellent. We decided not to try to get in close, and sat up on the edge of the valley where we had a clear view of the stage and perfect sound. No need for too much detail but they played all the songs we really wanted to hear. Which is lucky really if they've really split up for good. The Korean rock fans were ace too. So many were really dressed up in outfits which wouldn't seem that eird at home, but here really stand out. Huge amounts of tattoos (very unusual), mean in full face make up, piercings, mohican haircuts... And it was a very happy, friendly crowd too. They went absolutely mad for every single band, jumping up and down and cheering widely for every word uttered through a microphone. The only downside of the whole weekend was having to run to get a bus home, which took about 5 hours, getting to bed at 5.30ish, only to have to get up for the start of the school summer program 5 hours later. Worth it though.

If only the summer program had been worth it. For anyone. Now, we have attempted to keep any complaints about our school and boss etc from our peaceful little blog over our year here. But We're almost finished, and I feel one little rant is acceptable. The summer program consists of an extra hour of teaching a day, a lot of extra work for the students and a lot of extra preparation and marking work for us. This is the same as the winter program we did in January, except then we were being paid extra for it. This time we weren't given any extra money. In fact, our boss didn't charge the parents any extra either. It's the most pointless exercise in the world, as the students don't learn anything new - it was in fact the exact same material we used in the winter program, which was the same as had been used the previous summer... and it was clearly originally put together with little thought for the abilities of the children it was going to be given to. It also meant we had to rush through our normal work even quicker as well, meaning we didn't really have time to make sure any of the children understood any of the material at all. We've now stopped using those books altogether as our boss has launched new books (that's another issue I won't go into now). So, basically, we didn't make any money out of it, our boss didn't make any money out of it and the students didn't learn anything at all. We're just more tired and bitter than we were before. Excellent.

Ahem. I apologise for that. Just be thankful we've held that kind of thing back all this time! Anyway, I'm going to add pictures to this post and finish there. More updates to follow sometime in the next 12 months. Probably. I'll leave you with some startling news from our new school books.

Camping It Up

Only a day left until my sister and Dave arrive and I'm still some way short of meeting my deadline for updating. Ooops. It's all because we keep doing stuff! Like having fun! Damn us and our evil wanting to have fun. Ah well. For this reason, I'm going to just skim throught the details. Let the pictures do the talking!

My best friends from home, Vicky and Dom, came out to visit us here in May. They explored Seoul and Busan while we were working, and came to stay with us for the middle weekend. We took them to our favourite galbi restaurant near the apartments on the first night, then to a small bar called Free Hug, where we introduced them to soju cocktails and made a random Korean friend. He tells me I'm better looking than David Beckham and he wishes he had a nose like mine, so he is one of my new favourite people.

The next day we showed them around downtown, did a little shopping and visited the pet cafe. As the name suggests, this is a cafe (not that we saw any drinks for sale really) filled with cats and dogs. We'd been meaning to go there for a while and thought this'd be the ideal opportunity. Despite having seen the way many Koreans like to dress up their dogs in comical outfits or dye small tufts of fur bright colours, we were a little unprepared for the terror in store. The animals were all dyed funny colours, shampooed to the point that their fur was all puffy and looking a little overfed and lazy. There was even an Old English sheepdog with it's floppy fringe tied into bunches. Not an attractive look. We lasted about 20 minutes before it all got a bit too much and we had to leave.



That night we had a few work friends over and went out for a few drinks at Speakeasy. Sunday we attempted to show off Yangdong market, but it all seemed to be closed for some reason. We relocated to a DVD room instead, then went for shabu shabu. They left the next day before we went to work. It was all too brief a visit really, I wish they could've just stayed out here with us! Hopefully they can arrange another trip during our second year and come see us some more, maybe when we've got some holiday and can actually see them properly!

The main source of fun in recent weeks has been camping trips. We've been to a beautiful island called Biguemdo and camped on the beach, and we've been to a beautiful national park called Gamagol and camped on the side of the road. The first trip required a taxi ride, a bus, another taxi, a ferry and then another taxi ride to get us to our destination. It still cost less than a train to the coast at home though. There were 4 couples, a small dog and one poor single guy who had to sleep on his own (but actually knew us from reading our blog! We're internet celebrities! Wow. Hi Mark!).

We brought bags of beer, music and fishing rods to keep us busy, as well as attempting to swim in the sea. It was very very cold so the swimming was very brief, but we were definitely in the water. I have pictures to prove it. We had some tasty food (and some ramen noodles) on the barbeque, a big fire and a lot of fun. In the morning we sat around sunbathing for a while, then went to a spicy chicken noodle restaurant, took some walks, dug a big hole in the sand and buried me up to my shoulders in it. Also got semi devoured by little bugs. Eventually we had to leave and take the ferry home. On board we had more beer and were force fed enormous shots of soju by friendly Korean men.

The following weekend was the birthday of one of the guys we went camping with, Anthony. We went out to a park just outside Gwangju called Sangson Youwonji (if I remember correctly). We had another barbeque and a few drinks in the sun, watched people throw themselves off a nearby mountain strapped to flimsy strips of material, hired duck shaped pedal boats and generally had good times.

Anthony's girlfriend then snuck off downtown to prepare a secret party for him, while we kept him busy with beer and failing to get off the bus when we should. Eventually we made it to a soju room - essentially a karaoke room, but instead of paying by the hour for singing, you pay for food and drink, stay as long as you want and sing for free - where Lokhee and her friends had decorated with balloons, banners and food. We drank and sang for a few hours before heading to Speakeasy for a few more drinks and some dancing. Another good night!



The weekend following was the second camping trip. We took a couple of buses carrying all our tents, sleeping bags and barbeque equipment, only to arrive and discover that camping was no longer allowed in the national park, despite the website saying it'd fine. Undeterred, we left all our stuff by the entrance to the park and set up the barbeque next to a small pool next to a little waterfall. People paddled in the water, ate some tasty food, drank beers, used the waterfall as a makeshift waterslide and caught tiny crayfish to cook on the barbeque.

Sadly, my camera battery died before most of the excitement happened, but I assure you it was amazing. We then made our way back to pick up our stuff and debated whether to just go home or find somewhere else to camp. After about 10 minutes walk, we found a small strip of grass on the side of the road and, rather than spending anymore time walking with all the bags, set up the tents. It was a pretty quiet road, so we weren't too bothered by cars. We wandered about in the dark trying to find firewood so we could make a campfire and somehow stumbled upon a huge stash of dry wood behind a tree, so dragged it back to camp and got started. After more barbeque, music and beer, we staggered to our tents and got a little sleep. The next day Lokhee took us to an amazing galbi restaurant in Damyang, a nearby town. Instead of the usual grill on each table, a line of Korean women were sat grilling huge buckets of meat and sending them out to the waiting tables. The meat was excellent and finished off a heavily meat orientated weekend nicely.

The only problem with having so much fun on all these excellent weekends is it makes going back to work a little harder. Could be worse though, eh?

Sleeping In Shop Doorways, Pita Bread and an Island

Shortly after the departure of my parents, we found out Dan Henrickson was going to be here in Gwangju for a little while. Dan is a recruiter who gave us loads of excellent help and advice, even though we ended up getting our job on our steam. So we felt we owed him a drink and loosely arranged to meet him at Speakeasy on a Thursday night Open Mic night, thinking he'd be really busy (he has something like 70 teachers in Gwangju, 300 across Korea) so we'd just have a quick chat and a drink and then go home. As all the best nights go, one drink swiftly becomes 10 and soon we were dancing away to some sweet soul music like total fools, having all manner of giggles and making new friends. It turns out Dan is even nicer in person, so when he mentioned he was having a big gathering in Seoul that weekend we thought we might as well go along too - if only to deliver the cd I'd promised to make him! It coincided with a four day weekend, so we planned to spend a night in Seoul, then head to Gunsan and take a ferry to Seonyudo (reportedly South Korea's Polynesia...).

Being the frugal types that we are, we spent ages wandering around Sincheon looking for a cheap motel. We should've learnt from last time we came, and booked in advance! This time we were repeatedly told that it was 'Showtime' (i.e. when they get a large amount of 1 hour bookings...) and they were very busy so either full or really expensive. Eventually we found a really cheap little place above a chinese restaurant and got settled, before heading to the bar designated at foreigner hot spot of the night. En route we bumped into none other than Dan, his lovely wife Aggie and two of their Korean connections. This was handy as we didn't really have any clue where we were going. We were lead to a bar staffed by Aussies and Scots, given name badges and sent into the gradually expanding throng of teachers. Somehow, we ended up spending the whole night with one girl from Seoul and a huge group of Gwangju teachers that turned up seperately to us. We all went for galbi, chatted a lot, staggered to another bar and drank rather a lot of soju cocktails, staggered back to the first bar and drank more, hung out on the rooftop terrace and had a whole lot of fun. At some point, I decided it was time to leave and, without telling Becky (or so she claims. I think she was just so drunk she didn't understand me), went outside to wait for her. By the time she came out to find me, I'd fallen asleep in a shop doorway. But she managed to get me home to bed safely, so I began trying to sleep the whole mess off.

It didn't work all that well frankly. I woke up to realise I was very drunk still, and had to sober up while we went to find coffee and some food. We decided to head to Itaewon where one of our friends had told us there was a pita bread shop (or peter bread as we have learnt to say to avoid cross-Atlantic confusion). Regular readers of our blog (hi Mum and Dad! and Becky's Mum and Dad!) may remember our first trip to Seoul, where we thoroughly hated Itaewon. This hatred is gradually receding, if only for the number of amazing little restaurants selling all manner of exciting food. And the book shop. The pita place proved to be truly excellent and well worth the 45 confused minutes we spent walking up and down the street trying to find it.

Eventually we made it to the bus station and went to Gunsan to catch a ferry. We'd picked up somewhere that there weren't any evening ferries, but thought we'd head straight to the ferry terminal and stay in the closest motel we could find so we could get a nice early start. Saturday and Sunday had been blazing hot so we were really excited about the island trip. One very lengthy taxi ride later revealed the ferry terminal to be in the middle of nowehere on an industrial estate. Cue taxi ride straight back the way we came to a motel.

We awoke in the morning bright and early to catch the earliest ferry and really make the most of our time. We opened the shutters on the windows to discover the foggiest morning we have ever seen in Korea. Possibly anywhere.

Undaunted, we made our way to the ferry terminal and jumped on the first boat available. The fog seemed to lift a little on the way over, but was still lingering around blocking anything further than 15 metres away. So not much could be seen from the boat really. Having deposited our bags in a minbak, we took a walk around the island. Fortunately, the fog continued to clear as we walked, and we discovered we were on a very beautiful island. The only connection I could make to Polynesia was that it was a group of a lot of small islands, but it was very beautiful nonetheless. There was a distinct lack of places to eat things that weren't fish, so we settled on big pots of ramen (as far as I can tell, glorified pot noodles) for lunch, then decided to head to the beach. It wasn't quite hot enough to warrant a swim but we sat on the beach for a while relaxing and reading. After some time, Becky had dozed off and I was fully immersed in my book. I glanced up to discover that the fog had rolled back in, and I could no longer see the island across the water from us. As I watched, it continued to move in until I could barely see the sea at all anymore. 'Twas somewhat eerie. We swiftly retreated back to the minbak, having exhausted all the possibilities for walking we could handle for the day, until it was time to locate some dinner. We knew that we were going to have to have fish, we just didn't want it to be raw, so we peered in through restaurant windows until we found one with burners on the table. We managed to order a large bowl of stew with pieces of what appeared to be assorted fish which was pretty tasty. Sadly, there was no sign of a bar or aywhere to go post meal, so we bought a couple of beers from the small shop next door and went back to our room.

In the morning the weather was a little brighter, but we didn't want to end up getting back to Gwangju too late, so we went over to the ferry to go home. We met a couple of other foreigners who'd spent the night on the island and shared a cab with them from the ferry terminal back to Gunsan bus station and made our way home to Gwangju. All in all, although we didn't have the most amazing time there, it seemed like it'd be an amazing place to go in better weather, with a bigger group, especially if we prepared and took some food with us!