Other Things We've Been Getting Up To

I just realised I forgot to post this blog despite having written it about 6 weeks ago or something. Oops. No wonder we've had complaints at our failure to update for a while. There's more coming I promise. Anyway. Until very recently, we hadn't really left Gwangju or done much in the way of seeing exciting new things since our trip to Busan, which is probably our longest stretch without travelling since we got here. Instead we have been filling our time with all manner of other thrilling pursuits. A couple of weeks ago we invited two students over for dinner. Becky and I both teach one of the girls, Bora, while our colleague Jocelyn teaches Haeyoung. Becky cooked two big curries and we liberated a big table from an apartment upstairs where our friend Mel used to live - she conveniently left her door unlocked when she returned to Canada. We also bought Jenga, just in case conversation ran a little dry. The girls turned up bringing a nice bottle of wine, a big tub of Baskin Robbins ice cream and chocolates for me (the meal was on Valentines Day, and in Korea it is tradition that girls give chocolate to boys. They then have to wait until White day on March 14th to get a gift back), as well a big dish of Korean noodles and some kimchi. Perfect dinner guests! It was a really fun night in the end and, although our Korean is still non-existent, we had some very funny chats about all kinds of things that I won't attempt to go into here (you never know who might read the blog...). Plus some Jenga fun. It was a good night, definitely to be be repeated, hopefully before Bora moves to New York in a couple of months.

One regular activity has been joining a quiz team with our colleagues Robb and Jimmy, plus one of Jimmy's friends. It takes place at Speakeasy after work every other Thursday, and normally ends up with us staying out to 2 or 3 am drinking more beer than is sensible on a school night. So far we've placed second once, third twice and for one glorious night... first. We've also won a free pitcher of beer for having the best team name 3 out of 4 times and a round of shots for getting 10/10 on a round. Last night was our second third placement, much to our disappointment. We also failed to get the free pitcher of beer. Boo! I blame this entirely on my enforced week of being alcohol free, which brings me nicely to the next of the exciting activities which has been consuming our time lately.

Rather less enjoyable than drinking and socialising, a depressing amount of time has been spent in the company of the dentist a couple of floors below our school. Both of us have had to have an alarming amount of fillings, as well as me needing a wisdom tooth extracted and a somewhat vigorous all round cleaning. This has been made worse by the fact that our wonderful dentist apparently prefers not to use any kind of anaesthetic while doing fillings, and is seemingly able to ignore his patients cries of pain. To be honest, he was such a quick worker that we managed to convince ourselves he was right, as it meant we didn't have to shuffle about post-treatment with our mouths all numb, trying not to drool everywhere. So as soon as he'd finished drilling away, it was all over and we could go on about our normal business. The extraction of the wisdom tooth was mercifully done with some variety of numbing injection and took less than 5 minutes. Sadly I can't say the same of the clean. It was truly excruciating and took a considerable amount of time, although it has left me with a nice Hollywood smile. The best thing about all of this was all the filling and the extraction were covered by our health insurance, so cost about £3 each. Ace!

Hopefully we'll have some more exciting things to be reported soon, as my cousin Mark will be joining us here in less than two weeks for a while. Also we have a rather stressful sounding work event coming up towards the end of March. We're all going out into the country for a weekend, and our bosses announced yesterday they've decided to make it a bit of a competition, based on the reality TV show 'Survivor' (I've only seen the English version, which is little more than an excuse to get loads of young people into swim wear. Apparently there's a little more to the US version), which a large cash prize plus two days of paid holiday for the winner. Hopefully this isn't going to lead to everyone in the office falling out!

Busan

This is a ridiculously overdue blog which will hopefully bring us almost up to date with everything exciting (as we have had a quiet couple of weeks). We'd been back at work for three long weeks of winter program and just as I was beginning to think that I couldn't face another extra phonics session ("I have a zit, a zit, a zit, I have a zit, a zit sits and sits, today my zit sits and sits and grins, today my zit sins, today my zit wins"), the four day weekend arrived and we decided to go to Busan. The nice thing is that the trip was funded almost entirely by Christmas money from our families.

This four day weekend was in aid of Lunar New Year, an important time in the Korean calender and the time when everyone in the country becomes a year older (which now makes me 27 Korean age, and Alan 28). About a week before our planned trip we started to hear horror stories about the New Year traffic, and decided to buy bus tickets to Busan in advance for 7am. When I told one of my private students this she assured me that it wouldn't do any good as people would be setting out at 3am. However the morning came and not only was our bus empty but so were the roads (maybe this has something to do with the fact that people from Busan and Gwangju traditionally hate each other), so we arrived in Busan very quickly although a little cold as the bus driver decided to have the heating off for most of the journey. With the help of a very kind man we managed to get ourselves a subway pass and headed for Hyundai beach where we were pleased to find a gaggle of gaudy love motels. We had read about one called Sugar with huge Jacuzzis and round beds but it turned out to be a little pricey, so after a little bit of exploring we settled for a classy place in the shape of a castle, called Zeus. It was absolutely fine apart from that the abundance of synthetic material meaning that we gave each other electric shocks every time we touched.

We then went down to the beach, and although it seemed wrong not to go paddling, it was just a bit too nippy, so we wandered the streets by the sea front and to our joy stumbled upon a little Vietnamese restaurant where we had lunch and ogled the foreign families like we'd never seen a white child. After lunch we headed to the Jagalchi fish market. It was an amazing place with tank after tank of live crabs, squid and sea cucumbers all tended to by the tireless Korean ajumas (old women). Maybe this particular weekend wasn't the most sensible time to visit, as the market was packed with frantic Korean women all trying to get the best sea food for their family feasts. Korean shoppers are pushy at the best of times but this situation clearly didn't allow for much patience of tourists wielding cameras (fair enough really), so we had to keep up with the pace for fear of being trampled.

That evening we went for dinner at an Indian restaurant which was incredible, despite being by far the most expensive meal of our time in Korea and more than our hotel room. The chef was Indian and there was a group of Indian people eating... a good sign. Not even our table next to the worlds most unignorable American couple could detract from the joy of nan bread.

On Sunday we took the subway to Beomosa to see the famous temple. The Busan subway has given us some of the best opportunities for people watching since we've been in Korea, and this trip was particularly good as a woman struck up a conversation with me. We are always a bit apprehensive when people start talking to us in almost perfect English, as in the past they have more often than not turned out to be Jehovah's witnesses or something similar. This usually ends with one of us being stuck in an awkward conversation while the other looks out of the window and sniggers. However this lady was very friendly. She told me all about her family and showed me pictures and insisted on taking a photo of us. She even restrained herself from getting her bible out until just before she got off, and even then it was just to sing me a verse of a hymn.

Beomosa temple was really incredible and by far the best one we have visited in Korea. There must have been about 50 buildings, some which had been beautifully restored but my favorite were the ones that had been left in their slightly decaying state. After the temple we decided to investigate Texas Street, the Russian area of Busan with rather a bad reputation. It wasn't hugely exciting although it was strange to see all the shop signs in Russian and what were very clearly hostess bars.

That night we had another lavish meal, and one of the best buffets I have ever had. We stayed for a good couple of hours filling and refilling our plates before waddling back for our second night in the Zeus motel.

Our last day in Busan started at the aquarium, which was pretty impressive, especially the sharks.

In the afternoon we planned to take a gondola to the old city walls. It wasn't easy to find and after hitching a lift from a man who thought we were Russian we discovered that it was closed for the public holiday, and because of the cold and the fact that by now we were carrying all our luggage we decided not to attempt the hike, and to instead go and warm up at the bath house. Bathhouses are on practically every street in Korea and seem to be a bit of a national obsession for men and women of all ages. The bathhouse we chose is apparently the biggest in Korea and certainly seemed pretty impressive with it's domed roof. Inside Alan and I were given a locker key each (with this we could mount up a tab for anything we wanted inside) and had to go our separate ways. I was slightly apprehensive about the nudity, particularly as we get stared at even when we have our clothes on but as soon as I got into the locker room, all the women were naked and seemed perfectly comfortable so embarrassment seemed slightly foolish and I very quickly got used to it. The bathhouse itself was enormous, with a huge central tub under the domed roof and maybe 20 more tubs of varying temperatures around the edges, some containing salt or herbal mixtures. There were also shower areas around the edges where women viciously scrubbed themselves and each other with the rough clothes and soap provided. There was even an ice cream stall where people could go and purchase ice creams naked and walk around with them. I spent a while going from one tub to another (avoiding the cold ones), even daring to half submerge myself in the one that claimed to be 47 degrees. After a while I hired some pyjama type clothes and went to meet Alan in the communal area. It turned out that Alan had been unable to shake off his Britishness about nakedness and had eventually decided to give the baths a miss altogether, so had been relaxing in the communal area in his pyjamas and trying out the saunas and cold room. We decided to go and experience Dr. Fish, a 'therapeutic' treatment where you put your feet into a tub of little fish and allow them nibble away at your feet, which is supposed to be good for circulation. I don't really know how much good it did us but it really tickled so I suppose the laughter acts as some kind of therapy.

Feeling relaxed and with a good 4 hours to kill before our 10pm bus (we booked a late return in case of the dreaded traffic) we decided to go and see Changeling at the cinema which was very good. Another wonderful weekend in Korea.

A couple of days later I received this email from the woman that we met on the train:

Hello Becky!
I am Mikyung Jo.
We met in line 2 subway in Busan on 25th January.
I descended at Motgol. You were going to Beomuesa (via Seomyeon)
I send you a phtograph of you and your lover.
I hope your love will ba long.. forever.
Bye bye

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!

My bike was stolen today. It was locked up in the car park outside our apartment, where it's been since we bought our bikes. Becky's bike is still here, which is odd as our bikes were locked together, and my bike had a totally flat tyre. Both of our locks are gone, which is also quite odd. Damn, damn, damn. This is very annoying. It'd almost be better if both bikes were gone, because then we wouldn't have as much of a dilemna over whether I should get a new one. Bike thieves are evil, evil people (see below for an artists impression of the man who is possibly responsible for stealing my bike). Especially galling is the fact that both of us have had conversations in the last week about how safe Korea is. This doesn't change the fact that I never feel unsafe here, but it does kind of take the nice innocent edge off. Booooooooooooo to bike thieves!!!!

Return To Gwangju

Okeydokey. The blog is now a mere month and a half behind, so any week now we might actually catch up with current events. We might stop doing fun things for a little while just to allow this catch up to go a little speedier. Today has so far been spent in ways that couldn't be described as exactly enjoyable, but that is a tale for a later post.

After ditching our bags in our apartment and showing our house pests to their (our) room, we went straight back out and took the girls for shabu shabu, the perfect meal after a tiring day of Communist spotting and sitting on buses. As always, we ate far more than could be considered healthy, drank beers and bokbunja, then left barely able to walk. So we got a taxi.

The next day we managed to rouse the girls from their slumber at about 12pm, got some lunch, forced them to dress and took them to Muduengsan to do the nice easy little climb we did on our last trip. Unfortunately, the amount of snow fall in Gwangju wasn't taken into account while describing how fun and easy the walk was. This, plus the lack of any kind of sensible footwear between us (Converse do not make for great ice climbing shoes), turned what had previously been an hour and 30 minute stroll top to bottom, into a slightly stressful and considerably longer hike, involving a fair amount of sliding backwards and falling over. The change in the length of the hike meant we kind of lost all concept of how far up we'd actually gone, so shortly after every attempt to assure everyone it wasn't far to the top, we'd go round a corner and realise that actually, it was quite a long way to the top. Despite all this, we managed to reach the top at the start of a beautiful sunset and felt rather pleased with ourselves. Aside from the nagging suspicion I was harbouring that if we didn't hurry we were going to be on the mountain in the dark, which was far from appealing, coupled with the worry that the descent was going to be far icier due to the fact it had been hidden from the sun all day. Meaning if we hurried we were likely to spend a lot of time falling over. Fun!

Eventually we reached the bottom safe and sound, just ahead of total darkness. Feeling a little guilty for misleading everyone, we took them back to the warmth of the apartment and forced them to drink copious amounts of soju with a few of our colleagues. More drinking game style debauchery took place, followed by another trip to the Turkish bar and Speakeasy, the details of which shall remain mostly secret.

The following day we nursed our hangovers and went for a huge meal of pasta and pizza at a nice (and well priced) restaurant downtown which has become one of our regular eateries, Mi Piace. This was followed by a well deserved quiet night in, while Becky and I sulked about having to go back to work the next day. Over the next week we were only able to see the girls for a short time, but managed to pack them off on various exciting excursions. They also managed to make us a tasty dinner to come home to one night, which was rather nice. Sadly they had to leave us on Friday morning, so we took them to the bus station and, after a final ludicrous over-eating style lunch and emotional goodbyes, nipped off to work.

It was ace having them here, we had all manner of fun and they proved to be far more house trained than expected. It is very sad to think how long it could be until we see them all again, aside from all the other people at home. Now we can't wait for the rest of our visitors to get here!

DeeEmZee

The next day was an early start as we joined a coachload of tourists headed for the DMZ. We didn't really know exactly what to expect, as we'd heard all kinds of things about dress codes and restrictions on photo taking etc, but the chance to get a sneaky peak over at North Korea was too tempting to pass up. There was a Korean tour guide on board who kept telling us about the area and seemed to be trying to make it all sound rather lovely and nice. She was possibly a bit too jovial for the job, a fact highlighted when we crossed the Imjin River. She told us how the river is often used by North Koreans trying to escape to South Korea, but they rarely survive so it's not uncommon to see bodies floating down the river. All this delivered with a smile and a giggle... Weird. On the way back across the river later in the day, she interrupted herself to exclaim 'Oh look, there's a body now!', only to laugh hysterically when we all leapt up to look and announce she was only kidding. She also insisted on referring to the North Koreans as 'very silly', for building an expensive modern city near to the border to make the country look more advanced than it really is, or for trying to erect a flag pole higher than South Korea's. Very silly isn't quite the term I'd use to describe Kim Jong Il to be honest. Psychotic maybe, but silly suggests he likes to play pranks on people, rather than the kind of person who'd spend millions on importing an entire brewery from Scotland brick-by-brick while millions of his people die of starvation.

Anyway! After having our passports checked by an armed soldier, we eventually arrived at our first stop - the 3rd Infiltration Tunnel. About 30 years or so ago, a North Korean official released the information that North Koreans were digging around 12 tunnels under the DMZ in order to invade the south. So far, 4 of these tunnels have been discovered (it worries me somewhat that they haven't found the others yet). We sadly weren't allowed to take our cameras down the tunnel but if you can imagine a tunnel that Becky couldn't quite stand up straight in with her hard hat on then you're pretty much there. It was a long and uncomfortable walk down to the end, but it was an interesting experience. Much of it had been painted black to look like coal - part of a cunning plot by the North Koreans to disguise the tunnel and make it seem innocent. 'Oops, we accidentally dug a tunnel into South Korea in an area where there's never been any coal! How foolish!'. See, they really are very silly. After an exhausting hike back up the tunnel, we were taken into a small cinema to watch a film about the DMZ. From the opening Top Gun style music and idyllic shots of a young girl chasing a butterfly around a field, it quickly became clear the video wasn't entirely without bias. Bizarre statements about the DMZ being an international symbol of peace and the last place on Earth where nature and man could co-exist in peace were bandied about over shots of Kim Jong Il shaking hands with people and smiling a lot. The closing scene was of the little girl again, with all kinds of animated animals running about and generally making the whole thing seem truly ridiculous.

Next up was the look out point, where you can actually take a peak over at North Korea. On arrival we discovered there was a yellow line about 3 metres from the wall, beyond which you aren't allowed to take photos. One of the first things we saw was a tourist being made to delete photos by a soldier. The next duty for the soldier was to pose for hundreds of photos with tourists, so while he was distracted, Becky took some sneaky pictures anyway. There were also some telescopes like the ones you get at the seaside so you could have a look at some small towns and people working in fields.

After piling back onto the bus, we headed for the train station, where we could get a train to the North Korean capital, Pyeongyang. Supposedly. We had read shortly before our trip that the border was completely closed recently on the North Korean side, due to the South Korean government announcing that they were cutting down the amount of money they gave to Kim Jong Il. When someone asked about this, the tour guide denied the claim completely. Anyway, we had a wander about and got some fake immigration stamps (we were told not to put these stamps in our passports, as apparently the last person who did got stopped at customs for 18 hours or something on his way out of Korea. It was still kind of tempting though). There was a small display with photos of George Bush helping to open the railway. My favourite picture was of him attempting to sign a concrete sleeper whilst holding his marker pen upside down.

Finally, we got back onto the coach and headed back to Seoul. Our tour guide obviously decided that she could relax and started telling us all about her drinking and shopping habits. As we passed the Parliament building in Seoul she said 'This is where the politicians spend all day sitting around telling lies'! She then told us we were going to make two extra stops at an amethyst factory and a green tea store - clearly some kind of deal was set up with the tour company to try to make extra money off us. The amethyst factory was frankly extremely dull and luckily the guide seemed to pick up on our unhappiness at this unexpected stop so skipped the green tea. After grabbing some food, we made our way to the bus station and headed back to Gwangju with the girls.

All in all, the DMZ was one of the weirdest places I've ever been. Although we found it hard to take anything we were told seriously and my description may seem somewhat negative, it really was interesting, quite sad and I'd say a must do for any visitor to Korea.

New Years Jiggery Pokery!

After a couple of hours of sleeping, we headed out of our apartment to find some food and buy as much alcohol as we could carry. We decided to have a few drinks while playing card games and chatting, before heading down to the nearest bar to make sure we could be around other people at the important hour. Our drinking game got us suitably warmed up and lubricated, resulting in all manner of hilarity that probably shouldn't be mentioned here. This is a family blog!

Anyway, we went down to the bar, where luckily we found a barmaid who spoke a little english - just enough to take our orders of fruit juice and soju cocktails. Eventually the midnight hour approached, so we took great pleasure in joining the other two or three occupied tables in the countdown, then launched our own private performance of Auld Lang Syne.

The bar wasn't exactly swinging, so we soon headed off to a noraebang (we seem to have developed a liking for the karaoke here. I think it's because it's private, so you don't have to subject too many people to your drunken manglings of classic songs) where we spent the next 3 hours or so, making utter fools of ourselves. Good times were had by all!

Somehow we managed to leave (actually, we got thrown out. Closing time comes earlier in small town Korea it seems) and head back to our apartment. My memory here becomes a little hazy, but I'm reasonably certain we went quickly and quietly to bed. Despite any claims to the contrary.

Fortunately we didn't have to be up too early the next day, so we made it to our bus in plenty of time and got back to Seoul. We arrived back at the same hostel, only to discover that we'd been double booked, and all that was available was a room sharing with a weird American we'd met earlier on in the trip, plus a small room in the owner's apartment. Becky and I took the small room, which turned out to be her son's old room. It was a little awkward, as our room was effectively in her kitchen and we had to share the family bathroom! All adds to the excitement though. We then rejoined the girls and headed out for food, shopping and a DVD bang - a room that can be hired to watch a DVD in! They have a huge selection of DVDs available, although it seems most of the time the rooms are hired by young Korean couples in search of... privacy. Ahem. This probably caused no end of confusion when I turned up with 4 girls! Anyway, we watched a somewhat confusing Korean horror film (A Tale of Two Sisters - worth a watch if you don't mind subtitles and deliberately hard to follow plots) and made for our beds, eager to get a good night's sleep prior to our DMZ trip the next morning.

Skiing!

Right, it is time to do some serious catching up. The last month has flown by and we've been ridiculously busy mostly with extra work (winter programme at school designed to give the kids a lot more work to do during their school "holidays"). But that is all over now so it's time to start cooking, gyming and blogging again.

So... after a few fabulous days with the girls in Seoul we headed for the slopes of Yongpyong. It started in a rather disorganised manner, with our contact from the travel agency being one ticket short for the coach. He ran off to find another one and we spent a tense ten minutes trying to delay a slightly irate coach driver with melodramatic facial expressions and wild arm gesturing. Anyway we were soon on our way. It took a little longer than expected because of traffic and I think we got off in the wrong place meaning that by the time we got to the resort we should've already been skiing away for half an hour. Luckily we managed to rearrange our passes for the evening ski session instead. We found the Olive hotel and were a little hesitant as it looked a little out of our league, however they didn't laugh us out and it turned out to be the right place, and very nice it was. We then slipped around the icy little ski village in search of food and ended up in a galbi (BBQ) place. We had a delicious lamb meal, and considering the lack of sheep in this country probably shouldn't have been too surprised when the bill came to over 100, 000 Won.
At 5:30 we were picked up from the hotel and taken to the ski shop to get fitted for our fetching ski gear. I think mine definitely won first prize for style; red jacket and camouflage trousers (not all that effective against white snow so it's lucky that no one was trying to shoot me). By the time we'd managed to find enough coins to get all our things into lockers it was already dark and the slopes were all lit up by floodlights. The temperature on the big sign was -12. Brrrrr.

With me, Amy and Liz having a whole week of skiing experience each and Alan and Ellie having none we felt it wise to start small. We walked up a tiny little slope, put on our skis and just tried moving across it horizontally. No one fell over but Alan did seem to be having trouble moving at all. So we got on the lift for the easiest slope and went for it. I was pleased to find out that skiing really is just like riding a bike, although I also found out that doing it and teaching it are two very different things. Alan and Ellie both ended up on the ground a number of times, which is only right on a first attempt. This resulted in Ellie removing her skis, walking the rest of the way down and deciding that skiing wasn't for her. Fair enough, anyone may have made the same decision if they had been able to forget about the money that had been spent. So, we went up and down a few more times and Alan started to see the fun in between the terror. The third time down I lost sight of Alan. I kept looking back over my shoulder but couldn't see him anywhere. I was getting a bit concerned that he may have had a bad fall but when I reached the bottom he was standing there waiting. He'd beaten the rest of us down. He admits that this had less to do with skill and more to do with a complete loss of control, resulting in him plummeting straight down and somehow managing to stay on his feet.

The next day we were all feeling pretty cocky about our new and renewed skiing skills and headed to the slopes with talk of blue runs and trips to the top of the mountain. Our confidence was quickly dashed as we found ourselves for some reason a lot shakier in the cold light of day, but we kept going and by lunchtime had done a few of the smaller blue runs with only a few falls between us (including both me and Amy falling over when nearly stationary on flat ground). The only real casualty of the day was Liz's ski pole, which she dropped from a ski lift (punishment for laughing at all the other unfortunate poles we'd seen).

However she did a great job going down with only one and we managed to soon retrieve the other. In the afternoon we headed up the main gondola to the top of the mountain.

At the top we were hit by incredibly strong winds. It was really beautiful but on closer inspection we found that the top of the ski run had become pure ice, making it a very real possibility that you could accidentally slide onto the black run... eek.

We decided to give it a go but the wind and ice made it nearly impossible to to control the skis. Alan decided that he was perhaps getting in a little too deep for his second day of skiing and took the gondola back down. After the first bit the slope got quite a bit better but there were still some hairy bits. We made it down happy and unscathed in about half an hour.

After all the excitement we went home to sleep in preparation for New Year's eve!