Goodness

Has it really been more than a month? It honestly doesn't feel like it, but it must be. As ever, I've been really busy, and I'm already back to the night before my first class of this semester. The masters project is in (all 98 pages of it) and I have a few weeks off from studying, which will be a welcome break.

The day after I handed the project in I headed off for a week's break in Bangkok. It's nice being on this side of the world and having some fairly exotic destinations close at hand, and in a time zone similar enough to negate jetlag. Thus, without really knowing much about what I was doing or where I was going, I headed off to see Adam and Kathryn.

The first thing that struck me about Bangkok is what an international city it is. Having come from Seoul it was pleasing to see so many different people and hear so many different accents. It’s been a while since I was able to play guess where someone is from (except with Americans and Canadians), especially based on what language they are speaking. Weirdly though, it was also fun to play spot the Korean. Any girls with their shoulders, and almost everything else covered with a very flashy pair of shoes poking out from the bottom almost certainly were. Men were a bit harder to spot, and I did get fooled once by a couple in couple wear. Seems like the Thais lack a sense of dignity too.

Probably my favourite way that the international nature of Bangkok manifests itself is through the food. Restaurants there seem to be owned by nationals of that country, whereas in Korea they often seem to be Koreanized. This means you can get pizza without potato wedges (actually not bad) and curry that hasn’t had half a dairy poured in it. Even better, you can get a proper breakfast with real black pudding, and rather disappointing steak and ale pie. It also gave me a chance to revisit the all you can eat Japanese meat fest (ooh-err) that is shabu-shabu. When the waitress brought out our 17th tray of meat, I was finally able to put aside the disappointment of Tokyo 2006, when I made a foolish decision not to order more meat with 10 minutes of our all-you-can-eat time remaining.

It’s also well worth mentioning the Thai food we ate. Bangkok is one of those wonderful cities with a proper street culture, and the food to match. Wherever you go in the city, you pass food stands selling a variety of meats on sticks, fried chicken or for a more substantial meal, noodle soup or rice with duck or pork belly – you choose (we chose both). The curries and coconut based soups are also spectacular – I’ve returned armed with some packs of pastes determined to recreate some. The only thing I didn’t manage to eat was Pad Thai, which loses me 100 tourist points apparently.

Being exhausted from a month of hard MA work, and several months of teaching without a break, we wisely decided not to spend all of our time whizzing around Bangkok in a tuc-tuc trying to see everything the city has to offer, figuring that drinking lots of beer in the evenings was a better way to relax than tourism. We managed to stick to the more legitimate bars in Bangkok. I don’t think I even saw a ladyboy, and disappointingly the midgets on motorbikes sex show I was promised by the guidebook never really materialized.

We did do some touristy stuff, checking out the Grand Palace (proving that the Thais are a little more decorative in their buddhing than the Koreans), Khao San Road (surprisingly only one set of dreadlocks) and a large market which sold almost everything, as long as it was what I’d classify as “ethnic sh*t”. By far the best thing we did was visit the “Ancient City”, a huge park in the shape of Thailand, with models of buildings both standing and destroyed in the position they hold/held in the country. It’s an awesome way to see a lot of Thai architecture in one place, as well as to spend your time zipping about between monuments using either a bike, golf cart or car as you choose. The only downside being that when we went it was full of obnoxious children all on bicycles, a recipe for disaster wherever you are.

On my last day I sampled a last little bit of Thai culture before getting on the plane, the Thai massage. I don’t know about you, but when I think of a massage in an exotic land, I imagine nubile young girls, candles and lots of oil. Thai massage, be forewarned, is a little different. It starts with a rather nice footbath, where the guy washing my feet does well to hide his horror at the nuclear sunburn on my legs I managed to pick up on the only day of this Korean summer. Then I get led to a darkened room, where he proceeds to sit on top of me, crack every joint in my body and dig his fingers into my muscles. Not really what I’d imagined beforehand I must say.

As an Englishman, my natural territory is not a darkened room being manhandled by a male masseur, thus I tense up. At one point he has to actually tell me to relax. My problems are compounded by the fact that having just put away a lot of thinly sliced meat swished in broth, I now need to pass gas quite urgently. This doesn’t help with the relaxation, particularly when he pumps my thing up towards my torso, almost receiving a face full of fetid air in the process. The massage ends with him sitting on my calves with me lying on my front, and grabbing my arms and pulling them back so I’m bent completely the wrong way in the middle. Twice. “Don’t worry Grev,” says Kathryn, “You might feel a bit sore now but in the morning you’ll be able to move everything and it will feel great.” Some hours later, I awake after an hours sleep crunched into an economy airline seat. I can’t move anything, and I feel rubbish. So much for Thai massage.

So lots of whinging, but I did actually have a great time. I’d definitely go back to Bangkok, there seems to be a lot to explore there and it would definitely be an interesting place to live. It’s probably where I’ll end up when I’m 40, balding and lonely, as that seems to be the type who does well with the ladies there. Thanks loads to Adam and Kathryn who put me up, showed me around and annoyingly refused to let me pay for anything. I took your advice guys and bought myself a trendy new wallet at duty free.

There’s a Flickr album of my photos here.

I’ll try to put a few more adventure photos up soon. Until then, it’s back to the kids.

Alex

Gangwon FC 1 Incheon United 3

It's taken a while but I finally got to see my local K-league team play again. I didn't go to the game with very high hopes (Gangwon FC's record stood at played 6, lost 6) but I did think we might be able to kick our season off with at least a draw. The game was one of the few a season played at our 'other' home ground in the city of Chuncheon, so it made for a nice excuse to meet up with some friends and head over there for a day out.

The stadium in Chuncheon is pretty spectacular, perched on the edge of a lake and entirely surrounded by mountains. I imagine it's a little like watching football in Switzerland, but with less Stephane Chapuisat.

We get to the ground just in time to purchase a couple of kimbap rolls and a few tins of beer, more for the novelty factor of being able to drink in your seat at a football match than any desire to get all wobbly in mid-afternoon. We also have time to peruse the banners of the Incheon fans, whose team provided the opposition for my first Gangwon game. I'm initially disappointed to see that they have dropped their "Meet you in the hall, boys" banner, until we realise that this year it's just written in Korean lettering instead. Regardless, I still have no idea what it could mean. I'm also not really a fan of "Terror and Trembling", at least not when it isn't specific as to who is doing the trembling.

The crowd is a little disappointing, given that Gangwon only play in Chuncheon four times a year, and it's a beautiful sunny afternoon. It doesn't seem to affect the men in orange though, as they set about absolutely dominating the opening exchanges, playing a very pleasing brand of passing football. However, I worry that the passing may disguise a lack of desire to run anywhere with the ball, as Gangwon look a little slow around the pitch, and seem reluctant to attack Incheon with their fullbacks despite the fact that Incheon (as per most Korean teams) are playing with all the width of Lily Cole on a diet. Still, the pressure tells eventually and following a clever flick, Gangwon's striker is clean through and tucks it neatly under the goalkeeper for 1-0. It stays this way with no real alarms until half-time. Could we be on for our first points of the season?

I spend half-time dampening my own expectations, and those of my friends, with the stories of the previous two games I had attended (both of which, I think, GFC were winning at the half). History does indeed repeat itself as Incheon come out ready to attack a little more, and immediately Gangwon look very shaky at the back. They hold out for 15 minutes before failing to clear the ball and allowing Incheon to equalise. For the next twenty minutes it's one way traffic, with Incheon scoring twice from a series of chances, the second goal from a three-on-four attack which somehow still results in a free man for Incheon.

Then Gangwon are thrown a lifeline. As a striker burts into the box, a defender slides in and flips the ball away cleanly for a corner. The striker goes over his leg and the referee points to the spot. An unbelievable decision to almost everyone in the ground an on the pitch. We'll take it though, and it might just be the leg-up back into this game that we need. Sadly, I couldn't get my camera working in time to capture the whole thing, but you will probably be able to guess what happened from my reaction.

Yep, in a passable impression of Chris Waddle, our man spanks the ball miles over the bar and into his own fans behind the goal. Maybe he felt guilty about the ridiculous penalty award. We'll never know I guess. After that, time is played out quietly, and Gangwon stretch their pointless run to 7 games. At least there's no relegation in the K-league.

The great advantage of a trip to Chuncheon is the chance to eat some Dakkgalbi, a spicy mix of red-pepper paste, garlic, ginger, cabbage, potato, rice-cake and chicken, all cooked in front of you. It's among my favourite Korean meals. I might even do a blog post on it one day. Once that is done, a plate of rice is thrown into the pan and fried in all of the juices, making a second delicious course. Ryan loved it so much he made ours into a little heart:

And that's the end of another post. I'm going to spend the rest of my day off working on an essay, and then learning a little more about how to teach speaking. I might even treat myself to a trip to the gym. Lucky me.

A

Things ain't what they used to be...

I was looking forward to being a student again. The thought of rising at 2pm on a Sunday, going to the shop for a tuna sandwich and 4 cans of Strongbow and then settling down on the sofa for a day of Pro Evolution Soccer seemed an attractive one, especially because at no stage in that process did I envisage taking off my dressing gown. The reality isn't quite matching up to the dream at the moment. Turns out that a 40 hour week and an MA is quite a lot of work.

Given the amount of work I did at undergraduate level, I feel reasonably sure that I could have managed a 60 hour week, my degree and still managed to establish Bolton as the dominant power in European football. However, my MA requires me to do things completely alien to me like order journal articles from Japan, keep proper bibliographic notes and read things outside of those which I'm expressly commanded to read by my tutors.

This Sunday morning I rose at 10am (after a luxury lie-in having stayed up to watch West Ham's annual charity drive for Bolton's ailing goal difference) and after a quick breakfast and shower set to work reading about the theories underpinning communicative language teaching (Canale & Swain 1980). I stopped at 12 and caught the bus to Gangneung to purchase some knee supports, dental flossers and a jar of olives. I read Jeremy Harmer's Practice of English Language Teaching (2007) on the bus here and back. Then I got home and went back to work until 5, when I stopped and spent a couple of hours cleaning my apartment, during which I even used two different hoover attachments. I felt a bit studenty using window cleaner in lieu of furniture polish, but not nearly as much as I felt simply old. I hadn't even finished work either; take me back to Exeter.

All this work doesn't leave much time for having fun, so I don't have much in the way of photos of exciting stuff in Korea. I would have some cool shots of penguins and Linda feeding an otter, if I'd remembered to take my camera to Sea World with me last weekend, but I didn't. It also doesn't leave much time for cooking, so in a new feature I present Cooking With Grev #1: 10 minute Mandu-guk.

Mandu is the Korean word for dumpling. They're not so different from either Japanese or Chinese dumplings really, though Korea tends to fry less and steam more (healthy). Guk is one of many seemingly interchangeable words for soup. Mandu-guk is the cheap and warming lunch that gets people through the Arctic winter in my part of Korea. If you want to know how to make it properly, I suggest looking at Maangchi's excellent Korean cooking site. Here though, is the ten minute "student" version.

You will need:

2 cups water

1 tbsp soy sauce

1 tsp sesame oil

1 tbsp Korean beef stock powder

Salt & pepper

1 tbsp sesame seeds

6 largish frozen dumplings

Handful of sliced rice cakes

Handful of roughly chopped green / spring onions

1 egg

2 small sheets of seaweed

Steps

1. Add the water, sesame oil and soy sauce to a pan, and bring to a boil.

2. Add the beef stock, rice cakes and dumplings, plus a good slug of pepper. Boil for 5 minutes. While this is happening, chop the onions (if you haven't already) and beat the egg.

3. Add the sesame seeds and the onions, and boil for a further minute.

4. Take off the heat and then add the beaten egg. Stir gently otherwise it attaches itself to the bottom of the pan.

5. It should look something like this.

6. Pour into a large bowl, and crumble the seaweed over the top. That's it. Serve with kimchi and a saucer of soy sauce for mandu dipping.

There we go. I don't know whether there will ever be another cooking with Grev, but at least you know I'm not starving to death out here now.

Until next time...

A

Ice Fishing...

..at night. OK, maybe not, but it did remind me of this, from John Paul Jones' album The Thunderthief. The piano's nice, but the lyrics are truly awful. Sadly, this isn't even the worst offender on the album.

Moving on, we come to one of the things that defines my little town, the trout festival. I live in a town of around 10,000 people, but one that for two months in January and February attracts visitors from across Korea. The county of Pyeongchang is one of the only places where trout has been successfully farmed within Korea, and so to publicise this, they dam the river, wait for it to freeze over and then dump a whole load of trout in for the public to fish for.

The festival really transforms the lower part of town. A whole complex of buildings gets put up (seemingly just after they were finally taken down after last year's festival) and earth movers work for several months to completely block off the river, save for a small channel running down the side. Then everyone sits and waits for it to get freezing cold, the ice forms and everyone gets their festival on.

The main festival activity is of course, the ice fishing itself. Hundreds of holes are drilled in the ice, and individuals and families come to try their luck, either with their own equipment or the plastic sticks with a metal fish as a lure that are sold at the festival. I felt like the trout may have got wise to this by the time we started fishing, as they'd been swimming through a forest of jiggling golden lures for several weeks beforehand. While we did see some people get lucky, Linda and I's only fishing success was the ice that formed on our line.

Fisherman at work.

The equipment.

The lure. Good for luring, well, nothing.

Popular game, catching ice.

There's only so long you can stand on a freezing river in -20C weather with a very slim chance of catching anything. What the sensible festival goer does is head over to the side-event, the bare handed trout catching, instead. This takes place in a pool away from the river, which is kept slightly warmer (it's water, not ice, but barely). With around 30 others, I head into a warm changing room and change into fetching orange trousers, a grey T-shirt and rubber shoes. We then surround a pool, do some shouting in Korean (I'm not sure what I'm saying yes to here) and then, to the considerable annoyance of 100 or so trout, we leap into the water and try to pull them out with our hands.

Trout catching proves to be fiendishly difficult. The idea is to drive them to the edges and then flip them out on to the edge, where you can stuff your trout in a plastic bag to be carried away later. The trouble is, as soon as you locate one it's slipped through your grasp, and your legs, and headed back to the middle of the pool. The water is so cold it soon becomes painful to put my hands in, and I wonder whether I'll suffer the ignominy of failing to catch a single fish. Then, a gift. Like a big cat spotting one labouring wildebeest, I spot an easy target. One trout is trying to hide itself between two rocks at the edge of the pool, little realising that it's entire rear half is sticking out. Quick as a flash, I reach down, grasp it firmly and lift it out onto the side, to cheers from the crowd. I'm excited as I stuff it into my bag and leap back into the water. My enthusiasm is to no avail though, as the trout continue to evade me. When it's just me and some kids splashing in the pool, I accept defeat and head back to the warmth of the changing room, clutching Barry, my trout.

The pool.

The contestants.

"3...2...1..."

Missed.

"Bloody hell this is cold."

"There was one here a minute ago I swear."

"Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees!"

"No."

The Korean's being a friendly people, my lack of fish is noted and an old man is dispatched to the pool to catch me another one. This is, of course, hideously embarrassing but it does give Linda and I the chance to try two different ways of eating trout. My gift trout is given to an old lady in one tent, and in a matter of seconds it's delicious pieces of sashimi. It's tender and delicious, especially dipped in a little hot sauce. Having eaten half of that, we then headed to the grill tent, where Barry is taken from me, wrapped in foil and plopped on the grill. It's not long before we're tucking in to an even more delicious trout, grilled to perfection, moist and succulent with the subtle flavour nicely preserved. The fact that it was my catch made it all the more tasty.

Where I failed, the old man with waders and a net succeeded.

On the cutting table.

Vicious.

Sashimi.

Barry and I.

Barry and I again.

Barry, you were too dumb to live, but you didn't die in vain.

OK, maybe feeling a little guilty now.

And with that, it was time to get out of the stinking cold, and head home for a hot chocolate. I'm spending the summer working on my trout grabbing technique.

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