Why are you so pissed off?

Because I haven't had any exercise all week. The last time I did anything was Sunday, when I ran up every step to the top of the hill on Sunday. It had been a blazing hot day, but had cooled slightly to a perfect evening temperature. I stood catching my breath at the top of the hill, gazing at the endless mountains sinking into the evening's haze in every direction.

"Brilliant," I thought. "Summer's here and it's going to be awesome."

It's now Thursday evening and the precipitation has finally abated. I say precipitation, because I woke up to see a fine dusting of snow covering Jinbu this morning. There was also a little drizzle in the air, being vaporised again as it was smashed into the windows of my apartment by the gale howling up the valley. Still, it did stop, the sun came out today and everything looked nice again. Time to restart football again, which had been on a weather induced hiatus.

Excited, I rode my bike down to the sports complex, expecting to see many keen footballers who, like myself, had been forced to spend the week cooped up in their apartments. Like me they'd be keen to get out and run around. I'd even timed myself to be a little late so as not to have to stand awkwardly around not making conversation. This would probably mean walking straight into an ongoing game, right? Wrong. There was one car in the car-park, with one guy sitting in it. The windows were tinted so I couldn't even see who it was. Not really wanting to go and knock on the window (on account of not really being able to say anything when it was rolled down) I wandered on to the pitch. The car drove away. I was left alone on a futsal pitch, with nothing to do except lob a rubber ball around while a cold wind tried to sneak under my jacket.

"Bloody lightweights," I swore to myself, and rode home.

More Bad English

Big fans of an acronym, the Koreans. Every city seems to be "Happy Suwon", or "Healthy (or is it Wealthy, I can't tell) Wonju". The adjective is then acronimised to say Healthy, Aspirational, Personable, Pleasant, Yakubu or something. Anyway, there's an acronym on the way into the school which reads S.W.E.E.T. I'm not sure whether it's aimed at the students or the teachers, but it's aim is to set out the virtues of a good teacher (that's the T). I can't remember what one E is, but the other is Encouraging and the S stands for Smiling. Definitely not a description I'd apply to all of the teachers at my school. The W though, stands for "Warm-fearted" (sic), which I guess after a lunch of spicy fish soup and fermented cabbage, may well be applicable.

Just time for the Korean phrase of the day, this ones for the corporate amongst you:

저휘 거래를 했습니다

Jeo-hee keo-rae-leul haes-seum-ni-da.

We got a deal!

Ta ta.

A

How is learning Korean going?

It's very, very difficult. At least for me it is. Things that are difficult about Korean (so far):

1. Politeness levels. There are five different levels of politeness in Korean, from informal to honorific. All the verbs and pronouns change quite significantly between them too, so even if you can work out how you should address them, by the time you have you've probably forgotten how you should be conjugating the verb.

2. Number of words. For example, when dealing with family, there are entirely separate words for brother and sister, depending on whether you are a boy or a girl, and whether they are older or younger than you. None of them seem to have much of a link between them either.

3. Not having an alphabet to remember words in. I (if you believe in classroom intelligences) am a visual learner. I remember words by picturing the letters in my head. This worked OK for Spanish, as the alphabet was the same. In Korean however, I don't have that inbuilt alphabet to visualise the words (I can read and write, but very slowly). This means that I'm stuck with remembering sounds, which disappear out of my head almost as quickly as they arrive.

4. A complete new grammar. Korean uses a system of particles. Syllables added to words to denote subject, object, contrast, possession and suchlike. Word order is not so important as in English (though the verb always comes last in a sentence). Adjectives also get conjugated, though this kind of makes sense. It seems to be only for things like "the dog is big", where the "to be" part just becomes a part of the adjective. Finally, and this really blew my mind, verbs are also conjugated according to the conjunction that would follow. This means that the concept of and, but, then etc. is also contained in the verb. I am, eventually, going to really enjoy dealing with Korean grammar, but it's a long steep road ahead.

5. My pronunciation is terrible. It's terrible in Spanish too. I'm really past the age where I can train my mouth to form new sounds easily. Still, I try, but asking for stuff in shops still usually meets with a blank stare. I do wonder whether it's slightly that people assume that I don't speak Korean, but I suspect it's more because I'm mangling the words, not least because speaking it makes me really nervous.

Still, there is a bit of light at the end of the tunnel. I am beginning to pick out the odd word in what people say to me, and my student' minds are blown that I can say some things in Korean. I also have a posse of teachers (I'm at a loss as to what the correct collective noun is here), ranging from the Chinese teacher at my school to my fifth grade students at elementary school. With them, Rosetta Stone and the internet I might just get there. I also bought a new learning tool on Sunday. Here is a picture:

Disturbingly, this is not the first book I've seen here that has misspelled English on the front cover. I could fill another entire blog (and people have) with examples of dreadful translation I see here, but you would think that getting the subject of the book spelt correctly on the cover might not be too difficult. Anyway, I theorise that while the English may be awful, the Korean is probably OK, so I'm going to learn a few phrases from here, and so are you:

일자리가 있습니까

Iljarika iseumnida?

Do you have any openings?

I sincerely hope it's talking about jobs.

Good night.

A

Are there cherry blossoms in Korea like there are in Japan?

Yes, yes there are. And there's a nice spot to see them in Gangneung, a city on the coast about 50 minutes bus ride away. With this in mind, Molly the Shitzu, Shannon and I set off to travel there to have a look.

Things got off to an average start when we got to the bus station and I remembered that the delicious packed lunch of roast dinner sandwiches and pineapple rings we had made was still sitting by the door in Shannon's flat. They then got worse when Molly started to retch about five minutes into the bus journey. She was sat on a towel while Shannon and I crossed everything in the hope that she wasn't sick. This obviously worked, as fifteen minutes later she went quiet and fell asleep.

Not sick as a dog, thank goodness.

Could this be the new Coke ad?

Also, check out the unusual (at least outside Korea) 250ml can.

On the way in to Gangneung we saw plenty of cherry blossoms out on trees dotted around the city. Spring was finally coming to Gangwon and it was nice to be out doing stuff. After a quick trip to MacDonalds-euh (to give it the Korean pronunciation) owing to forgotten lunches and making a new friend (Hi Kwang-ki!) who very kindly put us on the right bus, we headed off for Gyeongpo beach. Sadly, when we got there, not many of the cherry blossoms were actually out. Seemingly the pollution of downtown Gangneung is a more encouraging atmosphere for the flowers. Still, we got off at Gyeongpo-dae and went for a look around.

Gyeongpo-dae. My co-teacher says that this is a fort, not a temple. I'm not convinced. There's a bloody great statue of someone peaceful looking in the grounds, and it doesn't look too defensible. Mind you, the Koreans seem to have a bit of a history of being conquered. Maybe this is why.

Me, a shitzu and an idiotic grin.

Creepy Polaroid man, who offered to take a photo of my "wipe-euh" and I for 5 dollars. We politely declined / ran away.

Gyeongpo Lake through cherry blossoms.

The bloody great statue I was telling you about, and me, and Molly.

There were plenty of people out and about and most of them seemed to be full of the joys of spring. Out in this part of Korea foreigners are still a bit of a novelty (Gangwon-do is the most rural of all the Korean provinces) and to see two foreigners together, and with a dog, was absolutely mind blowing for a lot of them. As we walked around the lake to the beach, we said hi to numerous children, adults and other dogs; we were given a can of cider (the American non-acoholic kind) by some dancing old ladies and disconcertingly assumed to be married by pretty much everyone we met. The concept of people of the opposite sex being friends and doing stuff together seems to be a little strange here. This led to some rather awkward photos, as it seemed easier to let them continue to labour under a false assumption than try to explain that we were just friends in Konglish.

At least there were fake cherry blossoms.

And some real ones!

A Korean couple took this one. They told me I was handsome. This happens about once a fortnight too. I love Korea.

After that, we walked down the beach for a coffee and a game of Rummikub (I won for once), talked to more children and the waitress at the coffee shop, then took a promising looking bus that actually took us right back to the terminal, and headed home. We finished the day back at Shannon's flat eating the sandwiches I'd left there - so at least they didn't go to waste. All in all a pretty good day.

Lunch?

The Tera Rosa coffee shop. If you're in Gyeongpo, you should go here. The staff are nice, the coffee is good and the building itself is awesome. It's down the far end of the beach if you're interested.

More soon...

A

Little and often, right?

At least that's what I said two weeks ago, and then didn't really do. Anyway...

The Weather

English people get accused of talking about the weather a lot, and rightly so. It's my theory that we're not naturally predisposed to talk about the weather, it's just that the weather in England merits a bit more talking about than other countries. For example, in February 2008 I stared out of my office window at the cloudless blue sky over London. The thermometer read 18C. I mentioned to my boss that we should commence the cricket season now, as it would doubtless chuck it down all summer (it did). In February 2009 I taught an English class based on a newspaper article describing the two feet of snow that had fallen on England. Guatemalans, on the other hand, don't talk so much about the weather. It's difficult to raise much of a comment (unless you're a taxi driver) when the weather is hot and dry for 8 months of the year, then hot with two hours of rain in the afternoon for the other 4. So you see, we talk about it more because more happens.

I don't know if people talk about the weather much in my town. I bet they do though, as it's definitely pretty interesting here. This morning I believe I may have discovered a whole new kind of weather. Small chunks of ice blown horizontally were hitting me in the face as I walked across the bridge to school. What was this strange phenomenon? Light sideways hail? I'd like a Met Office team to come out and have a look at this, especially as the sun was out when it happened. The weather here is entirely unpredictable. We had sun and warmth all last week; tonight while I ate dinner at a friend's a light dusting of snow fell. One day it's raining, the next beautiful sunshine. I carry my umbrella every day just in case. The one constant seems to be wind. There's always at least a stiff breeze blowing through the valley, if not a full on gale. One day it was blowing in the front of our building so hard that the lift (elevator, international readers) doors wouldn't shut and I had to climb the ten flights of stairs to my apartment. This wasn't cool. What will be worse than cool is next winter, where temperatures will drop to around -20C. There's also Monsoon season to look forward to in a couple of months time. Not brilliant, but certainly not boring.

The weather also varies drastically town to town. I don't think we've had more than three or four inches of snow at a time here. In the ski town 15 minutes away they had about 24 inches overnight. This had two consequences that I am aware of. One, the English teacher there had to dig himself out of his house, and two, I was able to take this photo:

OK, I have now rambled for so long about the weather that I don't have time to tell you about anything else. So not only have I reinforced a negative stereotype of Brit's being weather obsessed nerds, I also don't have time to tell you about how I mistook a girl for a boy in class today. Maybe tomorrow...

A

What's drinking in Korea like?

This weekend I finally spent my first night away from my little safe haven of a town, where I now know pretty much every shop on every street, and headed for the bright lights of the big city. I went to visit an ex-student of mine from Guatemala, who has been awarded a scholarship to study for his masters here. This was a friend who I thought I may never see again, so it was nice to be reunited after just a few months. Such a reunion, combined with a couple of birthdays, inevitably led to drink being taken, and led me to today's topic.

On Sunday morning, around 5am, I woke up fully clothed on top of my bed in a "love-motel" in Suwon. This perhaps is not as bad as it sounds. I had chosen to stay there, as they are cheaper than normal hotels, and this one was less seedy and more smart. There was even a guy staying there with his kids; at least I sincerely, sincerely hope they were his kids. Anyway, the reason for my unbecoming state is named soju (소주).

Soju is almost the only Korean spirit. At least it is all I see drunk out here in the country. Just as almost every meal that you eat is served with kimchi in some form or another, so no group of Koreans in a bar or restaurant is without a, or more usually several, bottles of soju. It is a strong rice wine, usually about 20% alcohol by volume and sold by the half litre.

The price is the first indicator that what you're getting into may not be the best for you. A half litre bottle in a grocery store retails for just less than a dollar, which means you're buying more or less a bottle of wine in terms of units for around 60 pence. Go to your nearest store and try to buy a bottle of wine for that. You can't, of course, so buy the cheapest one you can find. Taste it and you'll begin to see what we're dealing with here, and you're drinking wine which costs about four times the price.

In terms of taste, soju is not really too bad. The closest thing I can relate it to is when in one of my much, much younger days I mixed vodka with water. It's not unpleasant, but it is entirely unremarkable. Where it really kicks, or at least it really kicks me, is the following morning. I have hardly drunk the stuff since I have been here, but each time I have it has left me with a disproportionately large hangover. The Sunday morning in question was no different. It left with me with a bastard behind the eyes and a general sense of confusion. Almost exactly what you don't want faced with a four hour bus journey in a country where you lack the ability to construct all but the most basic sentences. I blame soju for the fact that I read my seat number as the platform number at Suwon bus station, thus missing my bus and adding another hour on to an already near unbearable journey.

So, as you may have guessed, I am not the biggest soju fan. I am definitely in the minority here. Soju is everywhere you go. There is even a bottle in the fridge in the teachers' room at my school. Korean socialising simply would not happen without soju. Koreans can be a little awkward (hence the reason I feel fairly at home here) and so it seems to help them a lot if they get drunk. Binge drinking is definitely acceptable here. At the beginning of work dinners that I have been to a huge amount of bottles will be placed on the table and the men start furiously gulping down shots. People are drunk within half an hour, but seemingly having a wonderful time. I get more English spoken to me at teacher dinners than I ever do at the school, so I guess in this way it's a positive thing that everyone's hammered. Anyway, it's quite an interesting cultural difference between here and the UK. Most of the professional events I have been to at least try to seem as if it's not just an excuse for everyone to get shitfaced.

At a personal level I haven't really done that much drinking in Korea. Being out in a quiet town and surrounded by people who don't drink has mostly killed my desire to drink anything. Hence there's been a bottle of wine in my cupboard for almost a month and a bottle of soju in the door of the fridge for just about the whole time I have been here. Previously, this would have been unheard of in one of my residences. Still, I think it does me good - once again weight seems to be dropping off me quite nicely and I feel pretty energetic all week for not boozing the whole time. Could it be I'm growing up? Not if last Saturday is anything to go by.

I think that's about it from me for now. I'll leave you with a few photos courtesy of Quique's Facebook, as my camera is out of action. Until next time...

A