Have you actually done anything exciting in Korea...

...or have you just been sitting around in your apartment scratching your unmentionables? Well, I actually haven't been doing much. A combination of a limited amount of money to get me through my first month, me being ill and then everyone else being ill has rather limited my opportunities to do stuff. There was one weekend where I did something worth mentioning, so here are some words and some pictures about it.

I travelled to the East coast of Korea with Shannon and Cherie (sorry if I spelt your name wrong) to go and look at a decommissioned American warship parked next to a North Korean spy submarine which crashed here a few years ago. Apparently one of the North Korean escapees made it to Jinbu where he was killed evading capture, but that's hearsay. From there we went to the slightly nuts village of Jeongdongjin, featuring a giant hourglass, a hotel built in the shape of a cruise ship perched on a cliff and most excitingly what is claimed to be the closest station to the sea in the world.

Here are some of the photos from our amazing adventure:

This huge craft is a North Korean spy sub. Crew 25. North Koreans must be really small.

And this is me on the front of an ex Korean Navy, ex US Navy warship. The Americans retired it, then sold it to Korea. The Koreans retired it and put it here for me to stand on.

I am actually taking candy from this baby.

Careful now, you wouldn't want to snp.

I'm guessing that these flowers were added after the vessel's retirement. These gentle arrangements hardly put you in the mood for pounding the commies with shells now, do they?

The Sun Cruise Hotel, happily sailing off a cliff. It's safe to say this one hasn't contained too many North Koreans.

Approaching Sun Cruise.

A slightly less glamorous boat, and yes, you guessed it, it's a North Korean one. This one held twelve defectors who arrived here late last year. It actually looks a pretty comfortable vessel. Better than the submarine anyway.

I stood on no less than four ship-like vehicles this day, and not one of them was in the water.

Me inspecting the damage to the sub.

Even Shannon is bigger than your average North Korean submariner.

Just because you're committing international espionage, doesn't mean your sub can't be kitted out with LOTS OF PRETTY COLOURS!!!11!!!!!

I'm driving a boat, and I'm not exactly sure how I feel about it.

Gunner Shannon.

What's your working day like?

Pretty good actually. Last year I got used to not having any kind of life outside work from Monday morning until Saturday afternoon. I was at work solidly from 7am to 8pm, and it was horrible. One of the reasons that I chose to go into the public school system was to avoid that this year, and it's certainly worked out well.

Monday to Wednesday I teach at the high school, and I have to be in at 8.20am and I am done by 4.30pm. Thursdays and Fridays are even better, I am done in my elementary schools by 3pm, which is just beautiful. The sun is quite often out on my walk home and I know that I have 6 or 7 clear hours to myself before I have to go to bed.

I am trying to use this time as constructively as possible. As I mentioned, I've started to play football here, which will keep me fit, allow me to meet real Korean people and do something I really enjoy. I'm also going to try to blog a little more, learn Korean and try some Korean cooking. I feel like I've done well tonight, having washed my clothes, tidied and cleaned my entire apartment, cooked an OK stew and then wrestled with Rosetta Stone Korean for an hour. (I swear I'm not saying it wrong, it must be the microphone's fault). Now I'm writing this blog post and feeling pretty pleased with myself.

While I was tidying today, it struck me that this is the first time that I have really lived alone in my life. I'm really enjoying it too. Some people who have lived with me might be surprised at how tidy my apartment is. In my defence I prefer things when they are tidy, but I also have a very high tolerance for mess. I even enjoy tidying when it's just my stuff I'm picking up, and not some other bastard's who's too lazy to clean up after himself. However, if I feel like someone else has made the mess, I'm quite happy to leave it lying around until someone else tidies up. Hence I have ended up living in a few real tips over the years, but my apartment right now is sparkling clean, apart from the kitchen floor, which is suffering from my lack of a mop.

Living alone makes you completely responsible for your own entertainment. I am trying at the moment to catch myself when I am wasting time (I have now completed Death Penalty more times than I care to remember) and forcing myself to do something useful. I'm beginning to get there too, although the urge to have another go at kicking footballs at zombies when I opened the page to get the link was almost overwhelming. However, with a language to learn, a blog to write, and the restaurants of a new town to explore, I think I can probably ixnay the flash games for a little while.

OK, I have wandered wildly off topic here, but never mind. I'm going to finish things off with a story and some predictions. First, the story. Last night I went to football, and ended up on a team with some other young guys who spoke a tiny bit of English. During a break we were chatting, and they were asking me the usual questions (Yes, including "Do you know Park Ji Sung?") about my age, job etc. Korean's are always very interested if you're married too, and the guy I was talking to attempted to ask me if I was married. He was close to getting the question right I guess, but his friend fell over laughing when he asked "Do you marry me?". I think that's the first proposal I've had in Korean, but perhaps not the last.

Lastly, two predictions. I want to put these here in order to be smug if they come up. Firstly, the premiership. I've done the BBC Predictor and I get United by a point from Chelsea (which will upset me a lot), Liverpool 4th and Hull to go down with Burnley and Portsmouth. Bolton to scrape to 40 points on the final day and wind up 14th, but looking forward to a better year next year. If these turn out to be wrong, I'll probably come back and subtly remove this post, but if they're right you'll never hear the last of it.

Secondly, a musical prediction. I've been listening to The Sleeper by The Leisure Society and it strikes me as one of those albums that could be huge if it gets heard by enough people. I don't particularly like it, but I reckon that in 2010 "Someone Who Cares" will be on an advert somewhere (probably for a bank) and go on to sell a lot of copies.

Anyway, that's it for today. I have four classes in a row tomorrow morning, so I'm off to get some sleep as it will be exhausting. I also have no co-teacher for two of them, so if I don't ever post again, I've been eaten alive by class 3-1. Otherwise, I'll be back soon.

A

What have you been up to?

Not too much exciting, though I'm starting to feel a bit more settled in and ready to do exciting things. Sometimes though, it just doesn't work out.

Everyone being ill

Pretty much everyone that I know in Korea who doesn't live in my town seems to be ill at the moment. At the beginning of the week I was planning to go to Chuncheon for the weekend to see some friends. Halfway through the week this got cancelled due to one of them being ill. "Never mind," I thought, I'll go to Suwon instead to see one of my old students from Guatemala, who has moved to Korea too to study for his masters. This hastily arranged trip was looking good until he phoned on Friday night to say that he too was ill, so we have rescheduled for next weekend. In addition, every Facebook status that I see tells some kind of tale of illness woe, or an American realising the benefits of socialised healthcare.

One of the reasons for everyone being ill (supposedly) is the "yellow wind", which happens every year at this time. From what I understand, it's a dust storm that whips small particles of sand from the Chinese deserts, carries them south and dumps them on Korea. Perhaps things aren't as bad here, as I haven't really noticed it, but everyone else seems to be slowly suffocating in it. I think it's more a case of the different germs you encounter here, particularly in a school, which is always a seething soup of nasty microbes. What really doesn't help, is that Koreans (much like my mother) don't really believe in days off, and so no matter how gravely ill will drag themselves to work or school and splutter their germs all over everyone else. The work ethic is admirable, but sometimes you wonder whether it's the best way forward. Anyway, if you're ill, I really hope you get better soon.

Soccer*

I seem to be talking a lot about soccer on my new blog (as ever). Last night saw the EPL clash between Manchester United and Bolton (my team) last night. This caused huge excitement in Korea as it pitted the only two Korean players in the league against each other. It's been hilariously marketed over here as "The Korean Derby". It needs to be marketed well though, as it kicked off at 2.30am. I didn't stay up to watch it. I drank most of a bottle of wine and fell asleep in front of the TV just in time to miss Chelsea's 7 goal demolition of Aston Villa. Still, as Bolton got beaten four-nil, I'm quite glad that I didn't.

I also played football (that's better) in the week. My co-teacher (who I need to point out again is an absolute star, and gave me a giant bag of delicious halabongs** on Thursday) found me a game with some guys from the town. I went down with Jay, who teaches at a local elementary school on the TALK scholar program. He speaks Korean, so managed to translate for me, and so I played an hour and a half on an excellent artificial grass pitch in the town which cost me nothing and was a lot of fun. A lot of the guys are slightly older, but I was impressed by the general levels of fitness and the desire to pass the ball. I think I could fit quite well into Korean football, and I'm rather hoping that the town team might pick me up.

I could write more, but I have some things to do before school tomorrow. If I get time later I might try to post up some photos. I'm going to try a "little and often" approach to blogging, so expect a bit more action on here soon.

A

*I could claim that I wrote "Soccer" here to help out the international readership that my blog (may) have. The truth is I did it without thinking. My English is getting steadily more American with every passing week. I might just as well go the whole hog, wrap myself in the star-spangled banner and start shouting at people for boiling their vegetables.

** Not a drug reference. A halabong is a kind of Orange grown on Jeju island.

What are you doing here?

I moved my blog here from it's previous home on Tumblr. If you haven't already, you can read my previous writings here. I've also changed the title as the previous one was rather snide and I remembered that I am (most of the time) a nice person. I do still think that using kimchi in the title of anything to do with Korea suggests a slight lack of effort in creating your blog title, but that's ok. I'm doing a fairly similar thing with my blog now anyway.

So what is my blog title about? Who is Park Ji Sung? The wikipedia link back there will tell you everything you need to know about him. He is a huge star over here, and my blog title is the first question that 90% of people ask me after finding out that I am from England. One of my major teaching ambitions in Korea is to get my students to use the question "Have you heard of...?" rather than "Do you know...?", or at least to bung a preposition in there for a bit more sense. Still for now I just smile and answer yes, and tell them that I know Lee Chung-Yong too for good measure.

I hope that you enjoy the blog in its new home. I'm always surprised by how many people tell me that they read it. Thanks. I hope you continue to do so.

A