SNOWBOARDING IN KOREA

Four of us went snowboarding for Christmas; two teachers from my work, Karol, my visiting friend and myself. We went to a resort called Hyundai Sangwoo (or something like that) for two days. It was really great. Despite the early start to catch the bus two hours out of Seoul we had a lot of fun. One of our students has membership there and hooked us up with a free condo for the night (thanks Sarah) plus tons of discounts on lifts passes, the spa and the restaurants.
Although the resort wasn't very big and not a lot of fresh powder, it was great craic. The weather was perfect, it wasn't too crowded and no one got injured, despite it being Karols first time ever and my first time in two years. All in all it was a wonderful way to spend the Christmas break.

Sunny days.

Fun for the whole family.
Karol, Tyler and Mike.
Sunburnt.
The mandatory poser shot.

GUN LAWS AND SCHOOL SHOOTINGS

Today in my Current Issues Discussion class we were talking about gun laws, school shootings and violent video games. One of my young students spent most of her teenage years at school in teh U.S. She told me about shooting drills. As well as fire and earthquake drills the school regularly had them practice what to do if and when there was a shooting. Stackign desks against the door, zigzag running, etc, etc. It was scary to listen to.

CULTURE DAY

My best mate from home, Karol, is now here in Korea visiting me for a couple of weeks. Last week a couple of Korean friends took us to a traditional village where we saw a lot of cultural stuff and partook in making traditional foods and drinking nasty traditional alcohol.

Karol impressing locals by cooking up Korean sugar candy like a pro.Hyang Mi and I being cheeky Emperor and Empress.Karol and I about to get very serious on a very dangerous see-saw game.Hyang Mi; one very lucky girl!Traditional Korean rucksacks.

ONE MAN'S TRASH IS ANOTHER'S TREASURE

Koreans, like the Japanese, have a wonderful habit of throwing out perfectly good items as they replace them with newer, better, shinier stuff. So quite often furniture and household items are left out in the street overnight for collection. Why they don't pass the things on to a second-hand shop for others to use I'll never know. But it's to my advantage as this week, walking home from work, I found a nice and well-needed lamp for my apartment. Although certainly not everyone's taste, I like my new lamp and feel it has a lot of character. It works perfectly and even came with a bulb!

FUNNY HEADLINES

Maybe it's just my humour today, but when looking at CNN News a few of the headlines struck me as bizarre and funny. And there are just from the homepage. (Click on title to read article or watch clip)

Jumping viruses threaten man and beast

Woman 'pregnant' with monkey is convicted

Deer crashes into classroom, kicks boy

Army dad shocks girl on Santa's lap

Santa freaks out screaming toddlers

GOODBYE KAREN!

Today my only friend in Korea leaves. Before coming to this big scarey country, Karen, an American I met half way between Japan and China last year, was the only person I knew. She was super helpful with my stupid pre-departure questions and introduded me to lots of peope when I arrived here.
Thanks Karen. I'll miss ya.

TODAY IT'S RAINING

Today it's raining, which is kind of funny because last week it snowed.
I didn't have my morning coffee so was sleepy on the walk to work.
Avoiding Korean people and Korean puddles wasn't easy.
But the raindrop pitter-patter on my cheap umbrella was quite pleasant.
And to the soundtrack of Ravi Shankhar in Carnegie Hall, it was a little surreal.

JUST ANOTHER DAY ON EARTH

Earthrise from Apollo 8.

POETICALLY DEAD

I don't know if it's the city or just me, but I blame the city. I've tried to put a few poems together in my head walking to work or waiting for the subway, but I get nothing. Maybe it's the traffic, skyscrapers and twenty million people distracting me, but I've never experienced this before. In all other places, short (and usually rubbish) poems came into my head as I walked alone, but here nothing. Maybe I need a brief escape to nature...

TEMPLE ART (FROM WALLS OF BUNGUENSA)

PET PEEVE

God I hate it! I've just spent thirty-five minutes ironing four shirts for work. Thirty-five minutes of my life spent in misery. I'm not shy about housework or anything like that, it's just ironing that I hate, and especially ironing shirts. I would rather cook, wash the dishes, hoover, mop the floor or even scrub toilets than iron shirts. I think I'll have to find a cheap laundry service.

ZOOLANDER WATCH OUT!!

Just got this snap of my two little cousins (and ex-housemates) Danny and Sarah. As you can see Danny already has aspirations, like me, to become a male model like Derek Zoolander. Here he is practising 'Blue Steel'. However in my opinion I still have the upperhand as I've learned how to control chin-dribble most of the time.

ART EXHIBITION IN SEOUL

My Korean Teacher, Jung Eun, very kindly invited me to an industrial art exhibition opening that her friend was in. I went along and it was fun. Admittedly I didn't understand most of the art, but I thought a lot of the stuff was cool and it was fun.These are all cigarette packets painted as comic book heroes.My thoughts exactly!This wasn't my favorite, but I love the heading.Marijuana smoke shapes. You don't need to be stoned to see this is a lady. But it might help.Soo Young (left), one of the artists and my teacher, Jung Eun (right).Yin Yang

CHANGING SEASONS

It's been pretty warm here for mid November, but from tomorrow the temperature is to drop from 12 to 2 degrees celcius.

Autumn leaves near my apartment.Look at the size of those leaves! (And no comments about my girly feet please)

TRYING TO BE ARTISTIC

Candles in my room.
Candle photographed using 'twirly-wrist' technique (although this may not be correct technical name).
This is a tree near my home that has lights on it. How abstract am I?!

DID YOU MEET BECKHAM?!

My students are all pretty intelligent people, but some of them haven't traveled that much, so I occassionally get a comment that surprises me. Today I was talking to a student about yesterday's university entrance exams. He asked me about the system at home. I told him about our GCSE and A-Level system and that I went to university in England. Ignoring my opinions on why our system is less stressful and fairer for students, upon hearing 'England' he excitedly asked "Did you meet Beckham?!".
"No I didn't meet Beckham", I replied, "England is a big country". He looked so disappointed that I couldn't help but feel bad.

COLLEGE ENTRANCE EXAM DAY

Today was college entrance exam day here in Korea. Here, in the city of Seoul, nearly 600,000 students (more than the population of my capital city, Belfast) took the exam. They can only sit it on this one day and this single day carries the weight of nearly eight years school work. I think it's like the American SAT exams, but more intense. It's very different to our system at home where the exams are spread out over weeks and so the pressure is immense. Basically it seems that a persons whole future is determined by this one exam. In the Korean society great emphasis is placed on which university you went to and how high it ranks. This in turn determines which company you get in to and which position.
So one this day huge provisions are made for the students, some I didn't actually believe until I read in the paper. Understandably extra subway trains and buses were scheduled for the morning rush as the students made their way to the nearly 1000 exam venues around the city. But flight departures and arrivals were also postponed and rescheduled so the noise wouldn't interfere with students. Company workers and civil servants were told to come to work an hour later to ease traffic jams, etc. Car drivers and subway drivers were told to refrain from blowing their horns except in emergencies. And on top of all that, police and ambulance services were at the disposal of any students running late. So if a student got held up (or took too long eating breakfast) he could call 911 and a police car, motorcycle or ambulance would pick him up and bring him to the exam venue because anyone arriving late must wait another year for the test.
It all sounds very fascinating to me, and to add to the excitement of it all, the younger highschool students came out in force to encourange their school mates with cheers and chants and other bizarre behaviour. It's all completely normal here, but as exciting as it sounds, I can't imagine going through that kind to pressure at the age of seventeen, or any age for that matter.

Here are a couple of related articles from today's Korea Times:
College Entrance Exam Today
Korean Test Culture ― Too Unique

HE HOOVERED MY HEAD!

Got my haircut this morning on the way to work. There's a cheap chain barbers called Blue Club that a student told me about. They cut my hair for only 6000 won (less than 3 pounds) and did a pretty good job despite the language barrier. After the haircut my barber grabbed what looked like a hoover attachment from the wall. As he pulled it toward me a flexible hose extended from teh wall. He then used this device which had a soft brush head on the end to hoover my head. It was surprising, but felt quite nice and stopped hair getting all over my shirt on the way to work.Genius!

MORE DOBONGSAN SNAPS

FIRST HIKE IN SEOUL/LAST HIKE IN SEOUL

I went hiking on Sunday. An American friend, Karen,and I climbed Dobongsan ( mountain). It's only about fifty minutes away and accessible by subway so made for an easy day trip (or so I thought). The leaves are turning here at the moment so I wanted to get a few snaps with the new camera and recharge the batteries after all this city life.
One of my students very kindly recommended this mountain and a route. He went to a lot of trouble and printed me maps and pictures of landmarkers enroute to ensure I didn't get (too) lost.It was a nice day out and the weather was perfect; cool, crisp and clear. But it was not the type of hiking I am accustomed to. For me, hiking is something I do to escape society. Hiking alone or with a small group of friends is how I like it. But I guess here in Korea things are a little different, or at least here in the capital city. There were MILLIONS of people on teh mountain! MILLIONS! Or at least many hundreds. I knew it wouldn't be abandoned, but I had know idea I would get pushed and jossled by old people with telescopic walking sticks and all manners of other fancy hiking equipment.From the minute Karen and I changed subway lines for the direction of Dobongsan I knew we were in trouble. Even with our nine o'clock start the train was already packed to the rafters with hikers, nearly all over fifty in age, and certainly not as gentle or frail as the pensioners back home. I got bumped and bashed several times without apology, but of course, being a gentleman, didn't hit any of the old ladies back. Well, at least not on purpose.After the madness of getting out of the subway station things were still too busy. Masses of people marching together to conquer one small mountain.
The hike itself was quite nice and neither too long nor too strenuous. We reached the summit after about two hours and could see great views out over Seoul and appreciate the size of this massive city (20 million in greater Seoul).
Whilst at the top a rescue helicopter came right over us and did some pick up or drop off just out of sight of where we were. It returned several times and at one point one of the rescuers waved back to an old Korean lady, so we assumed it was a training drill. But I later found out they were genuine rescues and several hikers had fallen over the side and had to be hospitalized (but no deaths). Probably from all that pushing and shoving.I enjoyed the day for the most part and it was great hanging out with Karen who I met last year on the boat from Japan to China. But I don't think I'll return to this mountain and will ensure my future hikes near Seoul are on weekdays or in the dead of winter when noone else is about.