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.
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