Saucy

Believe it or not, not all the children I teach are angels.  Therefore every now and then I feel its appropriate to get my own back. In one of my classes we were discussing food, and being a naïve Englishman I asked what drinks I should try in Korea. The first answer was ‘fish sauce’, and all the other children agreed that this was a  tasty drink. They then recommended a specific brand made from sand lances (small, thin type of fish) and wrote the Korean name down for me so I could buy it next time I am in the supermarket. Before I continue I just want to make clear that I know fish sauce is for cooking with and is only used in small quantities, not for drinking in any way. So I go to the supermarket and purchase said sauce. At the end of the next class I bring out the sauce from my bag, open it and drink the whole bottle, much to the classes complete astonishment. Some shouted ‘nooo‘, some shouted ‘why?’ most just filmed it on there phones. Little do they know that I switched the sauce with a mixture of coke and water. MWAHH HHAA HAAAA! 

Myeongdong

We went on our first shopping trip yesterday to Myeongdong in the centre of Seoul and survived! Myeongdong is like the Oxford Street of London but is bigger and crazier. There are several big department stores as well as hundreds of shops and stalls. Most imortantly there is an H and M, Zara and MAC!

Lunar New Year - Skiing, Ice fishing and hiking

For our first long weekend we decided to explore a bit more of Korea by taking a trip to Gangwando with a company called Adventure Korea (http://www.adventurekorea.com/). We made our way to Hongdae station to get the bus VERY early on Saturday morning to get to the ski resort. It only took a few hours to get to the ski resort called Phoenix Park and I was surprised that the snow was fairly good, although the setup is no where near as big as those in Europe. After an afternoon of skiing, I spent the evening in the water park (hot tub) while Jack went night skiing.

nice sunny weather!

The next day involved more skiing and lots of drinking games, ending up in a deserted club that we made our own! The next day we set off early to the Ice fishing festival on a very cold day, between -5 and -10. We didn't catch any fish through the ice but Jack did catch three with his barehands! 

Fishy!

Which you then had to put down your shirt...

T After another coach journey we made it to our final destination where we (well some of us) did a morning hike, which was described by the guide as a ard walk but was one of the steepest hikes  I have ever done! It was still nice to get out into the country side though :-)

At the top but we didn't realise what was to come!

Happy New Year!

Today we got a gift from our director for the Lunar New Year. Chocolate, wine, toiletries, these are all gifts I would have wanted, this is what we got ....

Hair success

I put up with my roots for as long a possible, but I couldn't wait any longer so a friend took me to a hairdressers in Hongdae, where they specialise in western hair. It was definitely the nicest hairdressing expereince I have had, two people were working on it the whole time and they gave me a steam treatment to moisturise it! It was just as expensive as at home but it was worth it!

Lost in translation

Seoul Electronic Music Festival!

Last weekend was our first experience of  a Korean 'festival' Seoul Electronic Music Festival (SEMF), which was very interesting! The festival itself was in the Kintex, an huge new building, only about 15 minutes from where we live, very handy. On arrival it didn't look too busy although the room was so big it would have been difficult to fill. After swapping our money for tokens to buy a few beers we manged to meet up with  couple of friends, a minor miracle seeing as they don't have a mobile phone! There was just one minor hiccup, they ran out of beer at about 1.00am which meant you had to use your tokens to buy the more expensive spirits, hmmm!

Crystal Castles

Alice Glass, an amazing performer!

Justice

Jacks picture from the front of the Justice set

School news

Wow! I can't believe we have been here for 6 weeks, it feels like we have been here for ages but at the same time it has gone so fast! The job has gone smoothly so far, the past week was our busiest week as we have had to fill out mid-term reports. This involves entering scores and evaluating the students, its not hard but it is time consuming. This also means you have to make sure all your students are up to date with their homework which is sometimes impossible! The classes are going well, we don't always know if we are doing things the right way however we are being observed my our manager this week so I suppose we will find out :-/

Oh I was persuaded by some of my younger students to sing Abbas Dancing Queen! Singing is definitley not my strongest point!

What!!

Just a quick post to say we saw some apples in the supermarket today thats cost £50!! Not joking! There are lots of New Year (Lunar New Year) gift sets in the supermarket at the moment, there are all sorts of things including ginseng gift sets, shampoo and conditioner gift sets,  spam gift sets and apple gift sets! All of which are pretty expensive but we have never seen 10 apples, big apples, but still apples so expensive! Didn't have a camera on us at the time so no photographic evidence :-(

Gyeongbokdung

After 5 weeks we finally made it out to do some sightseeing around a palace called Gyeongbokdung, only about half an hour from where we live. It was pretty cold yesterday (about -6)  but  it was a nice place walk around, I think we saw more wildlife there than we have since we got here ... about 10 birds!

Never ending underground market!

Unfortunately you can't really get the right perspective from a photo, but this underground market just feels like an endless corridor of stalls!

Jacks first Norae Bang

So, in Korea they have these things called Norae Bang’s. A bunch of  private karaoke rooms that you can hire out for you and your friends. The first Friday, after work me and Imogen where taken out for a nice meal then onto a few bars finishing in one of these Norae Bangs. To cut a long story short all I remember is  Purple Rain by The Artist Formerly Known as Prince blaring out at me while I threw up on my shoes. *sigh*

Happy New Year!

We started of celebrating New Years Eve with an amazing turkey roast dinner cooked by a friend in a kitchen the size of a cupboard! It certainly made up for our lack of Christmas dinner! We saw in the New Year in Hongdae, the student area of Seoul, which was packed to say the least! Everybody seemd to be in Hongdae particularly all the foreigners, it was odd seeing so many together. We had a great night, going to 2 bars, 2 clubs a coffee shop and a restaurant!

Other news .... we have successfully ordered our first takeaway which included  pizza, a duck, mozzarella sticks, pasta and coke for £12! Very healthy.... 

We are  starting morning classes at school this week for a month while the kids are on their winter holiday, so the next we are going to be pretty busy,  we also have plans for a ski trip and an electronic music festival too!