Jeokdeokdo

A couple of weekends ago we set off to do some offshore exploring among the islands in the West Sea, off the (air)port city of Incheon, where Linda lives. The most famous of these is probably Yeonpyeong-do, up in the north, which was the scene of a North Korean attack last year when we all got a little nervous. We eschewed this option in favour of the more southerly Jeokdeokdo, safely out of North Korean artillery range, but more importantly with nicer beaches.

We took an early ferry out of Incheon port, which at 44,000 won seemed rather expensive, but given that it worked out to 30 pounds return for an hour trip, probably just points to the fact that transport here is usually ridiculously cheap. This gave us the chance to have a look at the new Incheon airport bridge, which really is impressive. As you can see below, it's pretty long and must have been incredibly expensive. No wonder the Korean Highways Agency is tricking people into using it.

We get off the ferry and hang around in the port town for an hour or so, getting a coffee while we waited for a bus. This duly arrived, and we set off for the beach with about 30 other people. At the beach, everyone gets off the bus, and disappears. Linda and I are the only people on a 1km long stretch of beach. We're not really that sure where everyone went, but we assume it was to the pensions (houses you can rent for the weekend) up in the village. Wherever they went, it seems that these Korean people were not big beach goers.

The beach itself was really nice, a long stretch of sand, which turned into mud flats before the sea. There were many of the shells below around, which proved surprisingly mobile. The flats were also inhabited by lots of small fish, and huge crabs like the one below.

OK, so maybe not so huge, but interesting to look at at least. We also went for a paddle, and then just hung out on the beach. I wrote lovey messages to "Rinda" in Korean, and then we went off to get some Kalguksu for lunch. This turned out to be incredibly tasty, so much so that I forgot to photograph it.

After that, it was almost time to go home again, after having a quick beer in the park. There was time while waiting for the ferry to take a photo that shows what a nice day Linda had, and how much I hate photos.

I've just realised that this is a quite horrifically boring blog post. If you get this far I apologise. I will try to write something a little more exciting.

A

성원 아파트 (Seongwon Apartments)

In the kids' playground

he plays the harmonica.

A child wails above.

Attacked!

A couple of Sundays ago I was sitting in bed, talking to my parents on Skype when I felt like something was wrong on my stomach. A slight pain, but more of an irritant than anything else. I lifted up my T-shirt to find a tick stuffing it's face in to me in the hope of a three day blood meal. This caused ripples of excitement especially in my mother and girlfriend, who were very keen on burning the little bugger until it jumped off, with little concern for my safety. A look on the internet suggested that fire was not in fact the best way to extract it, and that it was better simply pulled off with a pair of tweezers. This was far more difficult than the internet made it sound - and it took me a couple of attempts at pulling, and then the tick snapped in half, exactly as it's not supposed to. Anyway, I don't seem to have caught Lyme's disease, or any other horrible tick based infection, so I think I'm OK.

Anyway, one of the things I love about my little town is that it's right on the edge of Odaesan national park, one of the most beautiful in Korea. With summer here I've been able to take a bit more advantage of it. Here's what I've been up to:

The above photos were taken when Linda and I went for a stroll in the park just before Buddha's birthday, hence the lanterns, which appear all over Korea at this time of year.





This set in from the Pyeongchang teachers' annual hike. Everyone in our county set off one afternoon to climb this peak. While it may look impressive scaling 1,300 odd metres, we actually set off from just 1,000, which makes it less of an achievement. The chap in the green is my high school principal, with whom I walked part of the way - he's a really great guy, and even speaks a little English which makes communication easier.

I did manage to commit a small faux pas on this trip though. My elementary school principal gave me her packed lunch to carry, and thinking she was in front of me, I proceeded to climb the mountain. Unfortunately she was behind me and so was left lunchless. I have no doubt that she was amply fed on the selection of chicken, pork, kimbap, snacks and goodness knows what else was being hauled up the mountain to aid flagging hikers. She was fine about it anyway, and a gift selection of roll cakes the next week made sure everything was fine.



These few are from our 'camping' trip to Odaesan last weekend. However, on arrival at the campsite we found it closed, possibly due to shamanism (yeah, me neither). Instead we decamped to a minbak (a kind of holiday home) near the park entrance, explored a cool abandoned building and then proceeded to eat 3.5 kilos of pork and drink an awful lot of beer. All in all, an ideal weekend.

That's all from me for now. I'll write again soon, especially as I might be off to dodge North Korean shelling on the West Sea islands next weekend. Until then,

A

미안 (Sorry)

It hasn't been often that I've had to start a blog post with an apology for not posting for a while. Pretty much every post I wrote in Guatemala was prefaced with "sorry", but up to now in Korea I've been a lot better (probably because I've been an awful lot more sober). Worry not readers though (and some, well one, of you did), I haven't slipped back to the bottle, I have genuinely been too busy with other things to post on here.

I'm now starting out on my MA research assignment, looking at the effect of making your learners experts (relative to the teacher) in non-linguistic content. This involves video-recording, carefully planning 3 weeks of lessons and an awful lot of reading, all summarised in a 6,000 paper. I know I've already written about the difference between this and undergraduate work, but tonight I started to write my introduction more than 9 weeks before my assignment deadline - an unheard of and salutary experience.

I've also been busy tending to my other presence in the blogosphere, over at http://breathyvowel.wordpress.com. If anyone's interested in what I'm doing professionally you'll find quite a lot of stuff on there. I'm afraid that blog has taken priority over this one as it might help me with the next step of my career, which will probably take me away from my little town in Korea with a very heavy heart. More on that in the future when I actually figure it out.

As per usual these days, I haven't really been up to very much interesting. I've probably said this before, but my life as an ex-pat is probably far less exciting than yours, coupled with the fact that I need a mortgage to buy a block of average-quality extra mature cheddar. My days still follow a familiar pattern of Study Korean / Work / Exercise / Study TESOL, with the only thing different being whether I play Futsal or go to the gym. It does mean that I'm in pretty good shape - I'm weighing in at a positively weedy 11.25 stone (158 pounds) and there is some evidence that there may actually be muscle under the layer of flab on my belly. With the summer now almost here, I'll be quitting the gym next week to play football almost every night, and hopefully breaking out the bike again.

With the advent of summer, the opportunity to engage in one of my favourite pastimes comes around again, namely that of drinking outside shops. Many things in Korea are against the law, but tacitly accepted so long as you're not making a nuisance of yourself whilst doing it. Drinking in public is one of these. It's a very peaceful way to pass a summer evening, sitting outside your local supermarket with a 6 pack of beer and a tube of peanuts, and popping back in whenever you run out of anything.

I was reminded of the fact that I can do this by an old man sat outside the supermarket today. Due to the Confucian philosophy on which Korean society was founded, age is venerated, seemingly no matter what age is doing. In Korea it's not the juvenile delinquents you need to watch out for but the elderly ones, who seem to have license to do exactly as they please. This particular chap was taking advantage, and was sat alone with an empty litre bottle of soju and a pack or corn chips at least twice the size of his head. He appeared to be offering a running commentary on everything going on around him, to nobody in particular. This was going on when I went in to the store, and didn't appear to have let up at all when I reappeared 10 minutes later. One day, I hope to spend my idle afternoons in the same way.

I think that's enough words for now. I do actually seem to have some free time coming up, so I might manage a picturey post before the end of the weekend. If I don't, then I will at least try to post something soon, possibly pictures from the reprise of last year's camping trip, which I'm heading off on on Saturday.

Cheers,

A