At last!

It's a sad fact, and one that does the profession no good at all, that English language teaching can be seen as something to do for a kind of working holiday; a chance to see the world for a bit while earning a little pocket money, before returning to your home country to get a 'proper' job. Strange then that I seem to have worked far harder over the two and a bit years since I left the UK than I ever did within it's borders. This has never been more true than over the last few weeks since getting back. Fortunately, things now seem to be settling down a little bit after the initial slog at the beginning of the semester, and my weeks are starting to be punctuated by public holidays, elections and school trips. Good news for you, dear reader, as I actually have some time to write my blog, and I have some half-interesting things to write about.

School Picnic

My first non-teaching day for 7 weeks fell last Friday, when the high school decamped to the sports ground for the day for the school picnic. This was a nice diversion, and was largely a chance to eat all day and play dodgeball, football and foot-baseball. The only photos I have are of my first year girls foot-baseballing; this is a shame as it doesn't show my triumphant performance in helping class 1-1 overcome 1-3 in the big football match. I don't think I've ever played a higher pressure game, as the respect of my students was on the line. Fortunately we won 4-2 and class 1-1 are now eating out of the palm of my hand. Class 1-3 were also suitably impressed, expect for the one of my students who I managed to headbutt. Oops.

My co-teacher, who for a woman of five feet two in her late 40's possesses a pretty decent right foot.

Cherry Blossoms, Raw Fish and Caves

The weekend after the picnic Linda and I set off to see the cherry blossoms in Gangneung. Though time seems to pass fairly quickly here, it does seem like a long time ago that I made this post about them last year. It was great to catch them in (almost) full bloom this year, though the howling wind was stripping them from the trees as we watched. It also gave me the chance to visit the lamest festival I've yet been to in Korea. A ragtag collection of stalls selling 1,000 won crap, and a hotdog stand. Still, we managed to pick up a pig ornament for Linda, so all wasn't lost.

After that we headed down the south coast to Samcheok, one of my favourite places on the east coast. It's port area has an array of excellent raw fish restaurants, which was a big reason we headed there. The fish was excellent, but the highlight (sort of) was the dish of still moving octopus tentacles you can watch me chow down on below.

Meat that moves! from Alexander Grevett on Vimeo.

The following day we headed out to Samcheok's principal attraction (perhaps even more famous that the penis park), Hwangseon cave. This is a 12km series of tunnels deep into one of the mountains around the town. Only the first kilometre is open to the public, but it's a pretty spectacular distance, as the cave roof is in places at least 100 feet high. Sadly the atmosphere is somewhat spoilt my the multi-coloured LED lighting that marks the gantries and rather detracts from the earthy feel of the place.

More cherry blossoms.

The funicular railway. Korea calls this a monorail. Fools.

Tee-hee.

Rejected Marilyn Manson B-side title winds up in Korean cave.

A spiral lime deposit, possibly unique in the world. Que exciting!

That's it for tonight, as I have some work to do on my teaching blog. In an attempt to make it look nice I'm learning to code CSS, which seems to be easy enough at the moment, but will doubtless become horrifically complex in the next few steps. There's not much exciting coming up in my life, but I should write about going to see Gangwon play last weekend. if I have time I'll post that up tomorrow.

Adios,

A

Naksan-sa and Seoraksan

And so the blogging continues. It feels rather like I'm chasing my tail here as there is an ever growing folder of photos on my desktop waiting to be posted and written about. My new camera is proving to be somewhere between a blessing and a curse. I have some great photos to share with you, but I now have so many it's a marathon job just sorting and editing them.

This means that there will be fewer words in this post than normal. Pictures are far more use here anyway, as this is the document of a trip to Seoraksan National Park, widely considered to be the most beautiful national park in Korea. I hope the phtographs do it justtice, as it is truly spectacular. Huge sandstone rocks jut out against the sky, before sweeping down into slopes covered with many hundreds of greens. I'm really glad that summer is here, as all over the land is turning from an arid brown covered with slush to a lush green. It really is rather pretty over here.

The first few shots are of Naksan-sa temple, which is literally on the East coast, followed by some shots of the hike we took along the bottom of the valley. We were supposed to be climbing to the highest peak in the park, but we were not allowed to. More details on that post-pictures.

The insect museum close to Naksan-sa. Occasionally my old house in Guatemala looked a little like this.

This guy liked banana and almond bread.

My first Korean newt!

Amazing dual coloured cherry blossoms.

This is a spring where the water has a very high iron content, which is why it looks more like the site of a human sacrifice.

So just one short story to tell you before I go then. We arrived at the base of the trail up to the highest peak in the park at about 1pm. We were informed by a park ranger that we couldn't go up, because the trail closed at 3pm. Why did the trail close at 3, we enquired. "Because we don't want people on the mountain in the dark". "Fair enough, I suppose. So what time does it open again in the morning?" "3am." Grrrrrr.

I think that's enough about this little trip. I plan on taking a little break from doing stuff so hopefully I will get caught up on the blogging. It's already going much better than my Guatemala effort though. Coming soon: posts on my debut for the town football team, shark-diving, Buddha's day parade and some other gubbins.

Hasta entonces,

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