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!

Momentary Side Track Blog

I feel I have to take a step out of trying to catch up on everything we've been up to over the last month (I can't believe it's almost a month since Christmas already!). The last couple of days it's started to warm up a little, which was a bit of a relief. Unfortunately, today we stepped out of our apartment block into a vicious, biting cold and discovered it'd started snowing again (see above picture of Becky and I on our way to work. Honest. That's us. We've bought matching trilbys). Now, I couldn't possibly count the number of times I've been in an English winter, praying for rain to stop and snow to start, thinking 'I could handle the cold if there was snow'. I mean, snow is ace, right? It's all white and fluffy and you can build snowmen and have snowball fights and schools close and the world is happy! No! This is not true! I am thoroughly sick of snow. Not that I'd prefer rain, don't get me wrong. But I have now decided I just wasn't built for cold weather at all. Winter is just plain depressing.

Seoul City Walking

After our Christmas day fun, we headed up to Seoul to meet Becky's friends, Amy, Liz and Ellie. Due to their early arrival time this meant leaving Gwangju at silly o'clock in the morning so we arrived at the airport at about 9am. While waiting for them to arrive we saw a man dressed in a Winnie the Pooh outfit, holding a large bunch of flowers, who appeared to be waiting for someone. Possibly Christopher Robin. Sadly he was still waiting when we left so we didn't get to find out. Anyway, it was really good to see the girls get here. As nice as our friends and colleagues are here, it's nice to hear English accents and have English humour around.

We jumped on a bus to Seoul straight away and, 40 minutes later, arrived in Hapjeong and made straight for the hostel. After ditching our bags we hopped on the subway and made our way to Itaewon. Itaewon is an area we had heard much about from our colleagues so we had high hopes. Possibly too high, as we were thoroughly unimpressed and a little concerned that Seoul was going to be a bit of a letdown. It was dirtier than anywhere else we've been since arriving in Korea, quite a depressing looking place and full of foreigners (I should point out, when we say foreigners, we mean people who aren't from Korea). It was disconcerting to be around so many English speaking people! We stayed there for lunch anyway, so I got to have my first fry-up in a very long time. We decided to waste no more time there and jumped back on the subway in an effort to get to Insadong, which we'd read had nice traditional shops and loads of nice restaurants.

First stop was Deoksugong, an impressive palace and park across the square from City Hall. There was an art museum there too - it was quite nice but only really warranted a short visit. From there we tried to get to the shopping area, only to find we'd got off the subway a stop early and it was quite a walk to get there. So back on the subway it was! We then took a bit of stroll up the street but were again a little disappointed, as it seemed to be just a standard high street. As the girls were flagging somewhat due to the jet lag we went into a nice little coffee shop then headed back to the hostel. Reading the Lonely Planet on the subway we realised that actually we'd gone the wrong way from the subway and Insadong was somewhere else entirely! Oops. So our first day in Seoul was a little disorganised and disappointing.

The next day was much better. We went to actual Insadong in the morning, which was really pretty and had nice gift shops etc. We also got to see some traditional Korean dancing - I'm not sure exactly what it's called but it involves a lot of (mostly) men dancing around with various percussion instruments, a couple of horns, and very long ribbons or pom poms attached to their heads. It looks a lot more impressive than it sounds! We then found a little curry restaurant for lunch, which pleased Becky and I immensely.

After lunch we headed over to Seodaemun Prison, where the Japanese had held hundreds of Korean activists in extremely harsh and cruel conditions. On arrival, a young Korean guy who was working there asked me where we were from. He was very excited when I said 'England', and began pointing to the Machester United badge on his jacket and saying the name of some footballer or other. Using possibly the only bit of football knowledge I have, I managed to remember the name of a Korean footballer who plays in the UK - Park Ji Sung. This seemed to make him very happy, so he proceeded to follow us around the main museum, unlocking cell doors so we could pose inside and giving us some nice little pin badges as souveniers. In case we haven't made it clear enough in our previous blogs, Korean people are ace. All in all, it was a pretty depressing place, but well worth a visit, if only to learn more about the way the Koreans were treated by Japan. Next we headed to Dongdaemum Market. Dongdaemum is a total shopper's heaven. We only went into one of the many, many department stores and we spent at least 2, if not 3, hours lightly browsing the 8 floors. Sadly, I was still unable to find a jumper that fits me. Booo! We had our dinner on the top floor before heading back to the hostel again to prepare for a night out by drinking a large amount of soju.

Our night out was pretty ace. We went to the Hongik University area, a ludicrously short taxi ride away from our hostel and started trying to find a few bars mentioned in our guides. First up was Vinyl, a tiny little bar that served remarkably cheap cocktails in what appeared to be IV bags, whilst playing a lot of cool music. It's an ace little place which is an absolute must for any booze hungry tourist. After a couple of rounds of alarmingly coloured drinks we joined a group of Canadians on their bar crawl. I was determined to locate Skunk Hell, a dingy punk club listed in the Lonely Planet, and was overjoyed to discover it was right across the street from Vinyl. Unfortunately, it was also closed. Instead we went to an underground (as in downstairs, not secret or incredibly cool) hip hop bar and danced around poles, whilst trying to fend off the advances of a very drunk Korean man. Although initially he seemed to be offering us money for Becky, he soon switched his attention to whichever one of us was standing within arms reach. Including me. Fun! On the plus side, he did buy us quite an expensive round of drinks. Next up was the amusingly named Ho Bar, where we stayed for the remainder of the night. Good times were had by all. Probably. The photos suggest we had fun anyway!

After sleeping off our hangovers, we went back to the university area. It was really cool, full of cool boutique clothing shops, coffee shops, noraebangs and bars, as well as having all the Western style shops that Itaewon seemed to offer. Not really sure why everyone doesn't go there instead really! As the shopping didn't really have much to offer me, I spent most of my time taking pictures of weird and wonderful graffiti. Having said that, I was able to find some fabric paint at last - I've not found it in any art shops anywhere else, so may be able to turn out some new t-shirts soon. Also, we were all greatly entertained by the subtly named Condomania. That night was an early one, as we had to be early to go find our bus connection for our ski trip!

This post is probably long enough now, so the next section will follow soon. Maybe. Maybe not.

Christmas Time, Kimchi and Mulled Wine

Hello! Once again, it's been quite a while since we last posted anything here and a whole pile of things have happened. I suppose it'd be easier if we just posted shorter blogs more often, instead of mammoth posts every few weeks, but that might mean missing out on some potential fun times by being sat with the laptop. Better to have more in the way of fun times I think.

Anyhoo. Can't think where to start... I suppose the Christmas party at school, which took place on Christmas Eve. It was very similar to the Halloween Party we had, except this time the only person in costume was me as Santa. My job consisted of hide in one of the downstairs classrooms for 30 minutes, then come out, hand out some presents to all the kids in a raffle style, then hand out more presents to each kid as they left the party. Then repeat 3 more times. It was suprisingly hard work, although I'm not sure Becky and the other teachers would agree, as they had to man the thrilling Christmas themed games for the rest of the time. Being Santa was kind of fun, but I can't see me going to Santa college and doing it professionally. Having two beards is just too itchy.

After the party our friends, Mike and Cecilia, invited everyone over for drinks, cake and chatting. Cecilia is an excellent cake-maker and seemed to be constantly whipping new cakes out throughout the night, which was highly pleasing! Much fun was had, and slightly more alcohol than I had planned, but eventually we headed back down to our own apartment for bed.

Christmas day itself was great. Firstly, it snowed, so I had my first ever white Christmas (sort of. Snow was definitely falling for about 2 hours or so, but nothing settled). Secondly, we had so many exciting presents from our families, including 3 stockings each! We got a lot of great presents, so a big thanks to everyone for sending us things and making us feel a bit closer to home. In traditional Christmas style, we decided to go and do some food shopping at the local supermarket after we'd opened all our presents, before going to our favourite local Korean restaurant and having bulgogi and bibimbap for lunch. Despite the fact that Korea is largely a Christian country, they don't seem to make much of a big deal out of Christmas. Most of the shops on our street were open, buses were running and taxis were available all day. This meant we could go out with everyone for dinner to a restaurant, rather than attempting some kind of home cooked meal for all the remaining teachers (the rest had managed to get away to far warmer locations for their Christmas breaks). So, as Korea doesn't seem to go for roast dinners at all, we settled on Italian and had pizza and pasta for Christmas dinner. It was very tasty, but I am feeling a definite craving for some roast potatoes. Thankfully, in one of our Christmas packages, we received some gravy granules so (if we get round to properly using our mini toaster oven) we may be able to fulfill this dream.

Business Meetings, Mountain Walking, Bake Sales and Christmas Trees

All manner of excitement has happened since last we posted a proper update. It's hard to know where to start!

A couple of weeks ago our friends at work, Julie and Nicole, sent us all a message on facebook informing us of an important business meeting coming up. It seems that Korean businessmen tend to have their meetings in bars and get well and truly hammered in the process, so the idea was we'd all dress as businessy as possible and go out and lay waste to Gwangju. We had an agenda and all applied formally for positions with 'The Company', and met for pre meeting cheese, biscuits and wine at Julie's apartment. Copious amounts of soju and fruit juice were consumed - by me mostly. We were informed prior to the event that someone was pretty much expected to be extremely drunk before the meeting began, and I felt it was my duty to step up to the task. I succeeded very well. By the time we got in the taxi I was becoming somewhat slurry and feeling a little ill, although I blame the latter on the heat in the taxi. When we made it to our chosen drinking establishment, we wandered in and found a table for all 9 of us. In the process, I was accosted by a 40 year old Korean man who could speak about as much English as I can Korean, who proceeded to hug me and force me to join him and his friend at their table. They gave me some food and wouldn't let me leave for quite sometime, but I eventually managed to escape and join the others. At our table I found an alarming array of soju and fruit juice smoothies being passed around, along with a suprising amount of free chips and a seafood platter which came free with the drinks. From here on my recollection becomes a little hazy, but I distinctly remember making my interview presentation, being bought another jug of soju smoothie by a friendly table of young Koreans, dropping a large prawn on the floor and then discovering that the bill came to about 3000 won each... £1.50-ish. When we left the cold air thankfully sobered me up somewhat as we made our way over to Speakeasy. There we danced around like fools for a while, until I developed an evil case of hiccups and had to go home. All in all, a pretty fun night! It did lead to a Sunday spent mostly sulking about how bad a soju hangover is though.

The following weekend we heard there was a bake/book sale at the foreigner bar to raise money for an orphanage. We walked downtown as it was quite a nice day and eventually arrived at the bar. It was pretty packed out with foreigners (it seems quite weird to see so many non-Korean faces now, I'm so used to being the odd one out!), all scrabbling for exciting food. We bought some shortbread and peanut butter brownies, and some ludicrously cheap and exceptionally well thumbed second hand books - my favourite find is the Bob Dylan Chronicles volume 1 for a mere 2000 won - about £1! It was really nice to see it so busy, especially as we got to see an English girl, Steph, that we met a while back. It's very nice to hear English accents! After that we went for a tasty Italian meal. We found a nice place with a set menu including two pasta dishes, one pizza, a chicken salad, a plate of squid rings, a soft drink each - with free refills - a single dessert between the 4 of us and a weird hot drink claiming to be coffee but that smelt vaguely of cinnamon and tasted like bitter water. Yummy. All this for just 8000 won each... just £4!

The following day we made our third trip to Mudeungsan for a spot of hiking. When we arrived we bumped into one of Becky's private students, Ron. He is a nice kid, but very cheeky and, since discovering we're together, has taken to calling me Mr Brooke. He was much more polite on this occasion, possibly because he was with his father, and offered us some tasty Korean snacks! We decided to take slightly different route through a building site this time, as on our previous hikes we haven't reached anything that could really be called a peak, or found any truly spectacular views, despite the beauty of what we could see. We'd never really been able to break the cover of trees. The new route started off pretty hardcore, but after about 25 minutes of pretty hard going, we started to see some really nice views over the city. It also pretty quickly became much easier going and relaxed. The views just got better and better as we climbed until we eventually reached the real peak and could see over the whole city. We stopped at the top for a while, sitting on a rock to eat some tangerines, before heading back down. Despite our regular photo stops and a lunch break, the whole hike was over in maybe 2.5 hours and with no aches or pains. It was a really nice hike, but from the top we could see that we'd only really conquered a relatively small mountain, and the real challenge is probably about 3 times as long. Another time I think!

Finally, it has become very Christmassy in our little apartment. Thanks are due to my amazing sister for sending us a small Christmas tree and a whole bunch of decorations, and also to both of our wonderful families for sending us copious amounts of exciting looking presents and food. It wouldn't be Christmas without our stockings!

Oh Korea, we love you. Let us count the ways...

Serbis! Whenever you buy anything, you get something else for free. Medicine (free vitamin drinks), cosmetics (free eye cream), bikes (free pump), Alcohol (free food), food (more food), cereal (free tea towel), hair gel (chocolate), Pyjama bottoms (free couple set hats). In special cases, walk down the street (mirrors, candy floss from a mobile phone shop).

 

Eating out is about as cheap as eating in.

People often give us things just because we're different (chestnuts, chewing gum).

People (especially kids) say hello to us everywhere. Small children love trying to chat to us and shouting out their random English phrases. Teenagers will shout at us when they're in packs or just after we've walked past, and then fall into hysterics when we respond. Adults usually restrain themselves from saying anything, and just watch us curiously.

Heated toilet seats. It really is so nice. Ooh and free mouthwash dispensers in restaurant toilets.

 

Condom machine in the hotel room.

Heated floors. Because feet really should get the most heat.

Service bells on the corner of the table in restaurants. No more trying to catch a waiter's attention. It took a little while to build up the courage to ring it for the first time, but now we love it!

Taking shoes off in restaurants. It makes me feel more relaxed and at home when I can sit on the floor and eat with my shoes off.

The food. Shabu Shabu and Gogi Mandu are amazing, as are many other things. Kimchi may not have become our favourite snack still, but there is a lot of tasty goodness about.

A naughty child is one who talks a little louder than you might like, or forgot their homework, rather than one who tried to stab another student.

Everything is available as couple set. Set menus, pyjamas, underwear, gym membership, duck statues... Just recently we've also started seeing couples sharing mittens on 'idiot strings', one mitten each while they held hands with their other hands. It seems to be incredibly special to be a couple in Korea. Although it would be preferred if we were married. Our students seem completely perplexed by the fact that we live together but aren't married.

But sometimes Korea, we find you a little harder to understand...

Supermarkets often seem to be arranged in a random order. When looking for specific biscuits the other day, we eventually found them nestled among the crisps, rather than on the more biscuity shelf in a completely different aisle.

Motorbikes on the pavement and using pedestrian crossings. We can understand that they'd rather not compete with the cars on the road, but it is slightly distressing when they speed towards you on the pavement.

Pedestrian crossings. When the green man shows (after you've waited 15 minutes), don't always walk, because cars will be trying to get across too.

Fighting when we expect to queue. Buying bus tickets can be particularly difficult and old women will shove you with all their might to get there first. I have become rather good at pushing forward to get on the bus now and saving a seat for Alan, who is finding his Britishness a little harder to shake.

Despite the fact that Korean girls wear the shortest skirts (and shorts) known to man - all year round no less - you'll still get disapproving glances for revealing your shoulders in summer. See also the restaurant that gave me the apron to cover my lower back.

Taxi drivers who watch TV. Don't get us wrong, we don't mean they shouldn't be allowed to watch confusing Korean soaps after a hard days work, but while they're driving? Having a TV screen next to the steering wheel seems somewhat dangerous, even if it doubles as a Sat Nav.

The gym's air con isn't switched on ever, even the height of summer (by all accounts, we weren't actually here then, but it was pretty toasty even by the time we got here). Some Koreans even work out in the sauna! On the other hand, windows are left open during snow in order to allow air to circulate through the building.

Unisex toilets, with the urinal located next to the shared sink.

There are loads of other things that fit into both categories, and we've only been here 3 months so far, so this list is sure to keep on growing. This is just a taster!

It's Been A While

We haven't posted in ages, but I just wanted to say we've added a whole bunch of new photo albums today so go look at them! A new post with actual information and exciting things will follow. Soon. Probably.