Our escape to somewhere with heat

After Becky left for Shanghai, I was left to mope around Buyeo and puzzle about how people can stand to move to a foreign country and live in a tiny place on their own. I found the 4 nights alone to be mind numbingly dull. There's only so much TV you can watch after all, and I've already read all the books we have (apart from the ones I was saving for the holiday...). Anyway, somehow I survived and got myself up to the airport about 5 hours too early. Ho hum. Numerous cups of coffee and a considerable amount of time watching people arrive home (which was way less entertaining and heart warming than Love Actually suggests it should be. Either Tony Curtis is a liar, or Korean people don't care much about their family going away on holiday. Or possibly I'm missing some kind of middle ground.) later, I boarded the 4 hour-ish flight to Manila. The flight is now in my top 3 worst flight experiences ever, thanks to the non-existent leg room, the exuberant baby-bouncing on the knee of the woman in front of me and the wailing of said baby after said bouncing (the other 2 would be the air-con breaking down on a flight to Australia and not being able to get a drink for 7 hours flying back from Chile.). Finally, I arrived in Manila just after midnight and got a couple of hours sleep before going back to the airport to meet Becky.

The next day we were picked up and taken on a 2 hour drive to get our boat to Puerto Galera, where we would be staying for the next 5 nights. A noisy, somewhat bouncy, but not uncomfortable ride across to the next island delivered us within a minute's walk of our hotel. It was right on the edge of a small bay, while our room was on the top floor, giving us a nice balcony with a view over the whole bay. Puerto Galera is descried by the Lonely Planet as 'a haven for foreign, alcoholic retirees' which is possibly not far off the mark - there were a terrifying array of leather skinned westerners with bellies down to their knees, all with very small, delicate looking young local ladies. It was a bit... wrong. But even their enormous bellies and dubious sexual preferences failed to get in the way of how beautiful the surroundings were. Palm trees, clear skies, beautiful seas and coral strewn across the beach... Ace.

Over the course of the week, we went swimming from the beach, took boat rides to nearby beaches, went snorkeling to look at coral and giant clams, got stung by jellyfish, swam in inland natural pools, drank fruit smoothies, ate steak for the first time in 18 months (hoooooooray!), got stung by jellyfish, visited a waterfall, took a ride in a jeepney with some slightly irritating Chinese tourists, got stung by jellyfish, avoided buying loads of crap souvenirs crossed a worryingly wobbly and buckly (that's not a real word is it? Buckly? It buckled a lot) suspension bridge, walked through the jungle and avoided getting killed by falling coconuts, visited a somewhat depressing tribal village, and ate a lot of excellent meals the like of which have not been seen in Korea since... well, ever. And got stung by jellyfish. Possibly other things happened too. It was really, really great. Except for the jellyfish. There were hundreds of them evilly floating around while we snorkeled, viciously drifting around stinging us all over the place and making me swallow huge gulps of sea water through my snorkel whilst trying to avoid them. Horrible little things.

The tribal village was also less than enjoyable. The tribe were the indigenous people of the island, who had been 'civilised' - by which I mean made to live all in one place in run down shacks, given shabby clothes and no way of making money other than farming. And forced to put up with hordes of gawking tourists parading around the village. In an obviously sincere, if misguided gesture, our guide bought a huge bag of snacks for us to hand out to the children as we walked around taking pictures. The wrappers from snacks given out by previous groups were strewn all over the floor and the children didn't really seem that excited about the snacks, aside from the fact that they were being given something extra to eat. Basically, it just seemed a bit wrong to treat the people as a tourist attraction instead of getting us to actually help them in some way.

Little niggles aside, we had a great time in Puerto Galera, and were very sad to be leaving. Especially knowing we'd be coming back to cold, cold Korea. But before that, we still had to get back to Manila and spend one night there. After another boat trip and drive, we went out to explore Manila a little. Being hot and tired, we decided the best place to explore would be an enormous shopping mall. Once we'd made it past the armed guards on the doors, we spent a while wandering about and eating, then went for a short walk out in the street. The sudden change in the crowds was really quite surprising. Clearly the guards were keeping anyone out who looked like they might not be able to afford to buy much, and the people who could afford to buy things were all getting there by car. We were quickly amongst throngs of people trying to sell us watches, DVDs, clothes and various other things, as well as beggars sending their tiny children after us. 200 metres away from the enormous swanky mall we passed some of the smelliest slums ever. At the end of the street we reached a pedestrian area by the sea, where we sat until we decided it'd probably be best not to be by the slums after dark, so headed back to the mall for dinner, then back to the hotel.In the morning we went out for a last walk before our flight home. We got a little lost, but had a pretty good walk around the area and a local park, which was basically an old cemetery but was really nice and peaceful and a pretty good end to the trip. Shortly after, we headed back to airport and endured another horrible flight with Cebu Pacific. For some reason the air stewardesses asked us to watch over some unaccompanied children on the flight, despite the fact that they were clearly Korean children and we had as much hope of communicating with the children as they did. Also, there were a fair amount of Korean adults on the plane who would've been far more suitable for the job. But not to worry, we didn't actually have to do anything for them in the end, so it didn't really matter. All in all, a pretty good holiday! Sadly, on arrival back to Korea, I seem to have hit by a vicious stomach bug which has left me in bed for 4 days. The doctor tried to get me to stay overnight in hospital on an IV, but that didn't sound too appealing, so I decided to skip it. Seems to be getting a little better now though, so hopefully all will be will in time for the forthcoming long weekend, so we can go do fun stuff again!

Shanghai with my little bro

well we've settled into life in Buyeo quite nicely, although I'm not sure how we would survive without our frequent trips back to Gwangju (thanks to Lokhee and Anthony for their floor). It also helps that we have our new pal Ralphy; a blue Hyundai Elentra who starts even in the snow! Although not without a fair bit of whining. Buyeo is a little more "peaceful" than Gwangju.

So we've been slogging our guts out in the public schools of Buyeo (not quite the walk in the park that we'd anticipated) and after starting the year with a few weeks of winter camp, we were in need of a good holiday. Unfortunately due to our very stubborn (to put it nicely) schools our holidays only overlapped by a week, so I decided to jet of to Shanghai leaving poor Alan at work for a few more days.

Although I went to China in August, I knew that this trip would be a little different. Without the hospitality of Craig and Julia, it was back to some serious budget backpacking with Teej and his friends, Emily and Josh. However budget backpacking in China is not that hard. In fact we had an amazing hostel which for just over 5 quid a night included a buffet breakfast. We also managed to find some seriously cheap and delicious food.

The weather in Shanghai was not wonderful but coming from the Korean winter it felt pretty warm. on the first day it was raining so we decided to go and see the Shanghai museum which was very nice, followed by a lunch of soup and noodles. That evening we went to a small market near the hostel with all kinds of fresh (and breathing) food and lots of smiling people happy to pose for the camera. Teej and Josh bought a tasty chicken, squid and veg stir fry that was cooked up in the street on a little burner. Then we all went back to the hostel bar for some cheap Chinese beer.

The next day we took a trip to the water town of Zhujiajiao. Like a Chinese version of Venice, there are no roads in the town, just waterways with boats and footpaths. It took us almost 2 hours to get there on a bumpy bus and Shanghai stretched out for the entire way. The town has been preserved and is obviously a big tourist attraction but at this time of year it made a peaceful change from frantic Shanghai. There are still people living and working there, presumably most of them making money from tourism. The streets were narrow and jumbled, with small shops selling all sorts from embroidery to food, and washing hanging out of the upstairs windows. We walked along the little canals and over bridges. Our entrance ticket also allowed us to visit a beautiful Chinese garden and temple within the town. We even took a short boat ride with our own private boatman... awesome.

On Friday we did some exploring of central Shanghai. We walked around the french concession, admiring some of the grand and dilapidated old houses. Then we headed for the old town. A lovely area with busy streets full of markets stalls where all the buildings were covered in bamboo scaffolding and drying clothes. From here we found one of the big markets, selling art, antiques and lots of other souvenirs in some very impressive and traditional looking buildings (apart from the McDonald's). We perfected our bargaining skills and even had people running down the street to drop their prices. As the sun was setting we walked to the famous Bund, so that we could see the Shanghai skyline lit up in all it's glory. Unfortunately there seemed to be a huge amount of construction going on so although there were some pretty impressive buildings we didn't hang around for too long. We were getting hungry and dinner on the Bund would have blown a week's budget. We got a taxi to Nangjin Road and found a fancy looking hotpot restaurant in one of the malls as this meal was my treat as an early birthday present for Teej. The restaurant seemed to be full of Shanghai's young and hip, so we thought we would fit in nicely. The hotpots were truly delicious. We had 4 different flavours of broth over flames in the middle of the table, into these we dipped lamb and beef and noodles.

On Saturday we spent the morning fantasizing about fried breakfast, until sometime later Emily mentioned that she had seen it on the hostel menu, so we finally got up and ate it. After a late start to the day we had to go and get train tickets for Teej and co's onward journey. Getting train tickets in China is not an easy business, and unless you want to end up spending 24 hours in a cramped carriage with no guarantee of a seat, it requires knowledge, patience, timing and luck. Luckily they have at least 2 of the 4 so things haven't worked out too badly so far. After a final drink in the bar, I had to say a regretful farewell and go to catch the Maglev (fastest train in the world) to the airport. When I got to the Maglev station the last train of the day had already departed so I was left to get a rather expensive taxi to the airport. Can't complain though... off to meet Alan in Manila!

Thanks Teej, Josh and Emily. Was really great fun with you guys and I didn't even feel old. Wish it could've been for a bit longer.

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.