Daedunsan

Although there are still hundreds of posts which should be written to fill in the gaps of the last year or so, the events of the last week are much clearer in my memory, therefore much easier to write about! After the months and months of seemingly endless winter lead us to drink our weekends away, we decided it'd be nice to wake up on a Sunday and not be hungover. So, accompanied by Nick and Nat (surprise!), we made our way to Daedunsan, a mountain standing at 890-ish feet which is only about 40 minutes from us. The day started out a little grey and unwelcoming, but cleared up quite nicely and made for good hiking weather. We started out after lunch and tried to take it easy, seeing as we are a little less fit than we'd like at the moment!

The start of the hike was a little taxing, as there were somewhat irregular steps made from rocks for quite some way up, but we managed to keep going, despite the constant distractions of chipmunks scampering about and gym equipment to play on. The main reason we decided to hike Daedunsan was the fact that there are two suspension bridges to cross which looked quite fun. The first was a standard bridge between two small peaks which swayed and bounced satisfyingly as we jumped up and down on it. The second was a little higher up, and was more of a suspension staircase than a bridge. It was very narrow, very steep and very wobbly. And quite unnerving. All good fun though!

Oddly, both bridges seemed to have been added after the path was made and the hike could be done without crossing either of them, although it would've been a lot less entertaining. From the top of the second bridge it was only a short hike to the top of the mountain, which gave amazing views and a place to rest. Then, because we're lazy and going down mountains is rubbish, we got in the cable car and made a speedy descent.

Back home in Buyeo, Becky cooked us a curry and we sat around drinking wine, playing Articulate, listening to music and prank calling Nat's sister Christina on Skype until 2am. Somehow this didn't lead us into hangovers the next day, so we'd managed to keep our pledge for the weekend. Yay! Nick and Nat cooked us the best fried breakfast we've had since the Philippines when we dragged ourselves out of bed in the morning, before we headed out to Muryungsa, a temple outside Buyeo.

It's quite secluded and not overly upkept (is that a word? I'm not sure it is. Hm. I mean it's nicely run down), giving it a somewhat more authentic feel than many temples in Korea. We're also drawing very close to Buddha's birthday (I'm not sure how old he is this year. Must be knocking on a fair bit though), so there are brightly coloured lanterns on display everywhere we go, which make everything seem very cheery and nice.
We followed up the walk around the temple buildings by crossing some extremely unsafe stepping stones across a tiny tiny river and jumping around off rocks and benches as part of our current favourite pastime.This week should be another good one as we get Friday off and are going for camping fun. As long as the volcano doesn't send it's ash any further towards the Uk, we should be joined by Nat's little brother on Thursday night, and a big group of other later on, so many good times shall follow.

We are no good at blogging. But pretty good at jumping.

Ho hum. So, another series of months has passed with no update from us. Oops. Can't blame it on us having too much fun really, given the amount of time we spend sitting at computers at work now! I blame internet-blindness. So much time looking at pointless things on the internet can wipe your brain of anything really constructive (although it does lead you to amazingly pointless and fun websites like this... http://www.cowabduction.com/ ). But this last week has been especially good, and definitely warrants an update.The weather has finally started to turn after what feels like the longest winter in the history of winters. Not counting the ice age. That must've been the most depressing time ever. Um... Yes, so the arrival of warmth in Korea means the arrival of camping and shorts and general fun in the outside world. In order to welcome the good weather, we went for a weekend away with our friends, Nat and Nick. They've just bought a super cool van which goes by the name of Dolores, so after stopping by the park to watch my students at sports day, they gave Becky a break from the driving and took us down to Buan, a little south of Gunsan. There's a few nice beaches, some waterfalls and amazing temples in the area, not to mention all manner of odd theme parks and museums.



We skipped all the indoor options in favour of jumping around on beaches, and visiting the somewhat odd Chaeseokgang. According to the tourist information, this is a cliff which is not to be mistaken for a river. Hm. Apparantly, many many years ago in China, a man was drinking too much wine on his boat, when he saw the moon reflected in the water. Being drunk (and, let's face it, clearly pretty stupid) he thought the moon was actually IN the water and dived in to grab it. He drowned. Again, hm. Anyway, Chaeseokgang looks like the place in China where this fabulous story took place, which is why it has a name that means river. Hooray! We struggled to see any resemblance to a river. It's a cliff! Rivers are not made out of cliffs, they are made out of water. Usually.
Following that excitement, we drove around a little more, jumped off some things (it's the latest thing! Honest) then checked into a motel for the night. It hasn't quite got warm enough for camping yet. The next day we went to one of the temples, planning to head to a waterfall for some swimming. Unfortunately after we'd walked around for a while, we realised we'd gone to the wrong temple. It was a very nice temple though, and we finally got around to donating some money so we could right a message on one of the new roof tiles. Abandoning our plans for waterfalls, we went off on an exploratory drive and came across a really beautiful river. After parking up, we spent quite a long time trying to get down to the river from the road. Much more difficult than you might expect. Much crawling around in bushes later, I stumbled across 6 handbags in a little pile. Having rifled through them all we concluded that they must've been stolen and dumped off the road. For reasons not entirely clear to me, the fact that I'd got my fingerprints on them all made everyone panic and worry that I was going to get myself arrested, so we decided to take them to a police station before we headed home. In the end, the struggle down to the river proved entirely worthless, as there was a raging gale blowing through the valley and the water was freezing. So we took our new handbags to the police, gave our details with the help of Lokhee via telephone, and fled the area.


Two days later we made our way up to Dangjin, where Nat and Nick reside. Wednesday was Children's Day in Korea, and a national holiday. Hooray! We piled into Dolores and went straight up to Mallipo, a beach town on the north coast of our province. A group of teachers from Dangjin joined us for a barbeque and some jumping around on the beach with fireworks, before proceeding to play drinking games and talk nonsense for a few hours. The next day we struggled out of bed and went out for some lunch. Our hangovers meant that fish was not an option, so we wandered around for a while trying to find somewhere that sold something else. Eventually we found a place selling a few other options, but regretted it somewhat when our food still hadn't arrived close on an hour later. Most of us had ordered bibimbap which requires literally no cooking, so we were a little puzzled and irritated by the delay. It was pretty good when it eventually arrived anyway, but sadly what little sun had been allocated to the day had all but disappeared by the time we left the restaurant. Unphased, we headed for the sand and sat around for a while. Nick and some of the other guys developed a fun new game called 'One Hit, which is basically volleyball without teams or a net. And the loser has to go in the sea. Just like normal volleyball! Good times were had by all. Except Danny and Dave who kept having to go in the sea.


The weather forecast was looking good for the weekend, so we made plans to go another beach on Saturday, this time with Jimmy, Dan and Maggie as well as Nick and Nat (who have become our siamese twins. But without the health issues or discomfort. Good siamese twins). We picked up Jimmy from the train station at Nonsan, and spent the afternoon in the sun playing more One Hit and eating pizza. In the evening we went for dinner and drinks, followed by a good couple of hours in a noraebang. The evening of fun was only dampened a slightly unpleasant experience in the noraebang. At some point I went out to pay for another hour, and got semi-chatting to two very friendly happy Korean guys who didn't really speak much English. After I'd been back in our room a little while, the door opened and a Korean girl walked in, followed by the younger of the two Korean guys. I walked over to say hello and see what they wanted, just in time to see the young guy punch the older manin the face, knocking him unconcious instantly. He dropped to the floor like a stone, with blood spilling from his mouth by the time he hit the floor. The younger guy just walked away with his girlfriend, who didn't seem to react at all. I ran to get the owner, while Nick very sensibly put the unconcious guy in the recovery position. We decided it'd be better if we then left them to it and carried on with our awesome singing demonstrations. Odd.
Although having read this post again it kind of seems like we didn't really achieve very much at all, we did it all with good friends and decent weather, which makes it fun and good times. So... I don't care. And there's still four months until we leave for us to do loads more good stuff. Excellent. We might even blog about it.

Friends friends friends

Just under 2 weeks ago, our friends Nat and Nick from home moved out to Korea to work for a year. Becky and I have known them for a long time now (we met through Nat in fact!) so it's really nice to have them here. They're living in the same province as us, but on the northern side, near the coast. On the first weekend after they arrived, Becky and I drove up to visit them. Their town is bigger than Buyeo, a few more familiar shops and restaurants around, but seems to be in the only flat part of Korea we've found! We took a walk around town with them, went to a kimbab restaurant and translated as much of the menu as possible so they won't have to do too much risky guess work (the horror of the hotdog kimchi soup still lingers in my mind. Ick ick ick). After a tasty dak-galbi dinner, we introduced them to the wonder of Korean bars, soju and noraebang. Unfortunately Nick and Nat both decided it would be a good idea to video some our epic singing performances - most of which will hopefully never see the light of day. They certainly won't be featured on this blog!

When we awoke and recovered from the worst of the hangovers, we went to the bus station to figure out where they could visit using public transport - sadly not direct to Buyeo - then went for a bit of a drive up to the sea wall and posed for a lot of foolish jumping in the air pictures. The exertion used up what little energy we'd managed to muster, so after taking Nick and Nat to a supermarket to pick up some food and supplies, we drove back home.

After a somewhat dull final week of supposed winter vacation (we had to go into school! I had to teach! What kind of vacation involves working? Not my kind of vacation), we were in need of some more fun before starting back for a new school year. This conveniently coincided with a long weekend, so we dragged Nick and Nat down to Buyeo for a night, then drove to Muju for our second ski trip of the year. Lokhee and Anthony met us at the resort after I managed to send us the wrong way on a highway and add an extra 2 hours to our trip. Yay me! Once we'd got all our gear together, we headed slope-wards. The temperature has finally turned away from cold and snow (at least for the moment!) so the slopes were a little patchy and slushy, but still a lot of fun. Becky, consumate pro that she is, managed to finish her day without a fall. Unfortunately, the rest of us weren't so lucky, particularly the boys. Anthony and Nick crashed into each other, leaving Nick with a swollen knee. I was cruelly accosted by 2 seperate snowboarders, the first twisting my right knee, and the second knocking me into the air so I landed on top of the edge of his board, breaking my ski pole and twisting my left knee. Fun times! After I managed to drag myself up and ski slowly to the bottom, Nick and I decided we'd better not push our luck and sat out the last hour or so of our session. We'd convinced Anthony and Lokhee to stay the night with us at the resort, so all 6 of us piled into the car and headed off to find some suitable accomodation, alcohol and food. Many hours later, following many poor decisions concerning quantities of soju, we awoke and made the drive back up to Buyeo, this time taking extra care over navigation and taking in a tasty buffet lunch in Daejeon, where Nick and Nat got on their bus back to Dangjin.
Hopefully we'll continue to see a lot of them, as the last 2 weekends have been great. It's nice to have more English people to hang out with for a change, and especially English people as odd and excited about Korea as Nat and Nick. In fact, we will be seeing them again in 2 weeks, for my birthday celebration in Seoul. But hopefully at some point we'll have some stories that don't revolve around alcohol and hangovers. As soon as the weather gets a little more reliably warm, we'll be dragging out the tent and and hitting the beaches and national parks again. Can't wait!

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.