Wind Farms

Hi all,

Finally, I am a free and unworried man again. Yup, yesterday I emailed in both of the masters assignments I have been working towards for (some of) the last five months, and I can look forward to a month off before it all starts again for the third time. I'm not entirely sure how I've done on this set - grammar and phonology. You're asked to achieve an awful lot in 3,000 words each (I ended up a combined 18 words shy of a 6,600 word limit) and there's no way you can talk about all you need to in the detail that I would have liked. Anyway, I know I've done enough to at least pass this module, but I'd really like an A. Results won't be out for a month, so I'm not going to worry for a bit.

All this leaves me with a degree of freedom for the next couple of weeks. I have to go to school for the mornings, but the students are still on holiday, so I won't be teaching at all. I'm determined not to waste the time though - I still have some books to read, and I feel like I should be leafing through some journals while I have access (ATHENS is a wonderful, wonderful resource). I also want to put a bit of time into some Korean study - I'm resolved to get much better this year. Finally, I'll probably be wandering around my little town a bit trying to visit everywhere one last time, as after these two weeks I'll be headed to my new home and job. Exciting times, but for a blog once I actually get there.

In the meantime, these are some photos I've been meaning to post for a while. They were taken in December, in the hills around Hoenggye, the next town over from me and where the 2018 Winter Olympics will be centred. I've always been rather fond of wind farms, and I've never really understood the argument that they spoil the countryside, I think the photos below show that they can often enhance it.

I really love the colours in this photo - it really was this colour when we were there. The blue was vivid enough to be slightly surreal.

 Before (above) and after (below)

 I wasn't really dressed for this kind of adventure.

 This is the ear-popping 800m descent to Gangneung on the eastern coast, with some amazing clouds.

 Stacy doesn't think she looks very good in this photo.

She might be right, I think she looks much better here.

Having written the above, I'm now off to hide somewhere until she calms down. Will post more, perhaps from a secret location, very soon.

A

I'm back

Finally, a post! Christmas break rather messed up my schedule, and knocked me out of my regular blogging routine. This is not to say I didn't have time, I did in fact have more time than usual, but never quite the time to post.

Anyhow, I've now been back in Jinbu for two days, which has been my first chance to pause and catch my breath for some time. Since my last post I've been through Christmas, New Year, three weeks of English Camp and then four weeks in the UK. It seems like a lot, and it was. It's been nice to get back to some stunning, and relatively warm weather, given that when I left the thermometer was holding steady around the -10C mark. This winter was by all accounts exceptionally cold. Too cold sadly for my boiler, which froze up during my absence and spat water all over the floor. Fortunately it's back in some kind of working order, though nowhere near what it used to be. What wasn't good was getting back feeling terrible, and having to retreat to bed for a while. I'm not sure whether it was readjusting to Korean germs, or the collected effects of jetlag and hangover, but whatever it was I didn't feel particularly well. I'm almost back to top form now though. Here's a nice shot of round where I live, seeing this always makes me feel better.

I'm going to try to put up a few posts over the next few days covering my period of absence. In truth they'll probably be photo heavy and text light, but that's probably no bad thing.

I'll start with Christmas. It's not quite the same festival in Korea as it is in the Western world, with just a single holiday falling on the day itself, and even on the 25th a lot of shops seemed to be open anyway. It certainly wasn't much of a holiday "season" as it is in the UK; in fact I had probably my busiest week of the year starting the 27th December. All in all it didn't feel much like Christmas at all.

Linda's birthday falls on Christmas Eve, so we went out until very late and didn't get up until about midday on the 25th. We popped out for a wander around Incheon's Chinatown, and then (having failed to secure a traditional Christmas dinner) attempted to take down an entire duck between two of us. This noble mission was sadly halted when we realised we could get a doggy bag. We did manage about 2/3 of it though, and it was delicious. For those that don't know about Korean duck, it comes part garlic steamed and then you finish it off over hot charcoals in front of you at your table. Then you wrap it in a lettuce leaf with some bean paste, garlic and pickled onions, and eat. Delicious.

After that it was back home for a Skype call with my family (this is the first Christmas I've not been at home) and then bed. Perhaps not a normal Christmas, but a good one all the same.

Linda's colleague Cindy and her husband, whose name escapes me.

Birthday breakfast (well, lunch by the time we got up)

Incheon Chinatown's Mural Street

Me and Incheon

Not sure what this was.

Nor this. I realise that this is not the finest captioning ever.

Cabbage art.

Cool, isn't it?

Douglas MacArthur, whose daring landing at Incheon changed the direction of the Korean War, and thus nearly 60 years later the direction of my career. Cheers Doug.

Confucius. And you wonder why he preached respect for the elderly.

Duckfest: Two people and one duck will enter. Two will emerge feeling bloated, one will emerge in a doggy bag. BUT WHO WILL IT BE?

Grillin'

New Year here is similarly low key, partly because Korea has two calendars and so has two New Years celebrations, with the lunar calendar festival (the Chinese New Year) being the bigger deal. Still, this doesn't stop thousands of Korean's heading to the East coast to catch the first glimpse of the sun on New Year's day, usually after drinking heavily on the beach all night.

We decided that we'd go and try to do similar, braving some freezing temperatures to get to Jeongdongjin, where we'd also been in the summer. The key attraction was the turning of the giant hourglass on the beach there. We were told that the festival was cancelled, but headed down nonetheless. When we got there we saw a suspiciously large amount of sand left in the glass, and having stood for a while in the crowd, realised it was already two minutes past twelve. Happy New Year.

Still, we got some sparklers, and then retired to the warmth of a chicken restaurant. Neither of us fancied staying up all night on a freezing beach in the end, so we caught a taxi back to Gangneung just as everyone seemed to be flooding in to Jeongdongjin. A bit of an anticlimax, but we did get free doughnuts and persimmon from our taxi driver.

All aboard... the night train!

The hourglass.

Jeongdongjin by night.

Annoyed by the hourglass not turning, Alex decided to effect a terrorist attack on it instead.

I'll try to post some more winter activities over the next few days before school starts again. Until then...

A

Grev takes to the (shallow) slopes.

Brrr. I've just checked tomorrow's weather forecast. It's getting down to -15C tonight, and won't get above -6C for the entirety of tomorrow. That's getting pretty cold, even compared to England's new status as an Arctic outpost. Still, I'm not too cold as long as I'm inside. Korean people seem to feel the cold worse than most. They've been complaining and banging the heating on since the temperature dropped out of the 20s this autumn, so the school is equipped with fierce sounding gas stoves in every classroom, and the teachers' room is kept at a sub-tropical temperature. The snow, however, is yet to become a regular feature.

This doesn't deter the Korean ski resorts around me, who have fired up their snow guns and been open for several weeks now. It's this can-do spirit that will hopefully see them land the 2018 Winter Olympics. It always amuses me to see Pyeongchang described as a candidate city, when it is in fact a tiny town of around 7,000 inhabitants. Anyhow, it seems a bit of a waste to live in the best winter sports area in Korea and not at least give it a try, so when fellow-teacher Tom announced he'd be out of town one Sunday I borrowed his boots, board, lift pass and goggles and headed for Yongpyeong to try some snowboarding.

I had my doubts about snowboarding. I tend to enjoy sports where I can make up for a complete lack of grace and finesse with physical effort. Snowboarding is definitely not one of these sports, seemingly requiring only balance, and the adjustment of downward pressure on your toes and heels to keep you pointing where you want to go. However, largely thanks to the Rudy's patient efforts to teach me, I was able to tackle a biggish beginners slope by the end of the day, turning both ways and being able to stop more or less where and when I wanted. Of course, I still managed to hit the ground spectacularly a few times, for which I am still paying now, but overall the fun I had was worth the pain, and I'll definitely be going again soon.

Here's the indisputable evidence that I was, at one point at least, on a snowboard:

Getting ready

Headshot!

Up...

Up...

And away!

Rudy's training methods get a bit ahead of themselves.

I didn't go up there. It looked terrifying.

This took a little while while they worked out what Yongpyeongs initials were.

On the lift. Proof that we at least went up high.

Smiles mixed with a hint of terror.

We went down here. As with the cycling photos, it's steeper than it looks. Promise.

Caitlyn in action.

After a hard day on the slopes, what better than some delicious Korean fare to warm the chill from your bones and the pain from your buttocks? We ended up in a restaurant in Jinbu that I'd never tried before. The menu didn't reveal much about each dish, and so I managed to persuade everyone to just pick something, in an attempt to expand my knowledge of Korean food. The restaurateur assured us that Do-ru-mok-jiggae was really delicious, so we rolled the dice. It turned out to be a spicy concoction of pieces of pregnant fish, with radish and onion. Interesting to say the least. In actual fact it wasn't too bad, but the eggs were a little chewy and didn't really taste of too much. My big complaint with Korean fish recipes is that the fish skin, bones, tail, eyes and everything else is simply chucked into the soup, meaning you spend as much time picking bits out as you do eating. Still, at least I know what Do-ru-mok-jiggae is now, and so do you.

Timing!