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5月16日 New ApartmentWow!!! After months of research and days of deliberating we finally decided to go ahead and sign a contract for a new apartment being built in a city called Pyeontek (one hour south of Seoul)... Check out the vids: show room = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loc6s0_8qow our place (under construction) = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htBtRRTVXIk Photos to come soon! 6月26日 World CupSomehow England have just scrapped through their 4th game in a row - beating Ecuador 1:0 (sorry but, due to my lack of sleep and watching second-rate soccer I'm not feeling too patriotic right now....)
The time difference here in Korea (compared to Germany) inconveniently forces us to stay awake into the small hours.... local time for games are 22:00 01:00 and 04:00 . . . .
If you haven't been following the Korean team, (FIFA ranking 29th - I forgive you) they got knocked out the other day... this is a snap of us at 6AM as we left the bar....
Come on England !!! 6月15日 Wednesday 7th June 2006Welcome to a day in the life of me… as I mentioned before I wanna tell you guys what my life here in Sanbon (South Korea) is really like so this is my illustrated account for today - Wednesday 7th June. as you can see it's taken me a week to get it online!!! To start with, this is a video of my flat (hold shift down as you click the link).
8:00 A knock on the door woke me up this morning, after a quick time check I saw I wasn’t late for work so decided to ignore it (we have Jehovah's Witnesses here too!), I heard the door open then close a few seconds later so I stumbled out of bed to investigate. I peeked out the door and saw HeeYong, my ex-neighbor, by the elevator. My Korean is a little bit better than her English, so still in the midst of sleep, we struggled through a conversation for five minutes. She’d come to give me a couple of free tickets to Everland (Korean’s Disney world) that she’d won on a scratch card from Starbucks. It sucks because the tickets are for this Sunday which is already half used up due to school camp. I guess me and Sunhee will go along for the afternoon.
8:10 Sunhee sent me a “Good Morning” Skype message as she left for work and as I read it I noticed Nik was still logged in (currently in England) so we chatted for a half an hour about work and stuff. After all this highly unusual morning activity, I laid back down and read a chapter of my book, Memoirs of a Geisha.
8:40 In the shower I remembered an electrician was due to come round at 11AM to take a look at my fridge. The rattling from somewhere beneath it has been getting progressively worse over the last 6 weeks to the point that it’s started to wake me up at night. After several failed attempts at fixing (kicking) it I’d gotten a korean to call someone out. Since Bigwig uses my whole kitchen as an extended toilet I had to get the mop out and do some early morning cleaning in preparation.
9:45 Met Chris by the elevator for a coffee before work, he was still in a coma after only getting 3 hours sleep. We headed downstairs to school on the 5th floor, watch my commute to work (hold shift down as you click the link). Yesterday was a public holiday so everybody (apart from Chris) looked and felt refreshed this morning. Even the kids didn’t have their usual midweek blues.
10:40 Wednesday mornings are pretty easy for me, I have two free lessons (out of five periods) so after my first lesson I headed upstairs to wait for the fridge-man. Nik couldn’t sleep so we chatted again on skype for a while until Mr. Electrician arrived. It took the guy about sixty seconds to reposition the offending drip-tray that had become lodged against the motor. The fridge returned to its gentle hum and I paid the guy his $8 fee.
11:10 My first two lessons are with my homeroom class (hold shift down as you click the link) – seven 6/7 year olds. I’ve been teaching them for 16 months now so it’s a very relaxed class. We’re learning about ‘putting on’ and ‘taking off’ clothes right now, the drawings in the book are easily graphic enough to keep the kids entertained until the bell rings.
7:20 My working day is not yet finished. By word of mouth or strategic advertising English teachers can earn a pretty decent side line by teaching private lessons. These extra-curricular lessons are not strictly in line with our visa regulations. Normally on a Wednesday I teach two more hours after school (allegedly), my wage from these two hours is equal to what I earned teaching the whole day in school (allegedly). Today my private lesson (a 35 year old friend of a friend cancelled) as she had a business meeting in Busan (in the South) and the boy I teach before her arrived, without his books, 30 minutes late so my two hours of evening work boiled down to a 30 minute discussion about last weekend (allegedly).
8:45 I called on Belinda as I got back (us foreign teachers all live down the same corridor) and we headed out to KFC for dinner. Eating out is so cheap here I haven’t ‘cooked’ anything more than a toasted sandwich in the last six months. I’d like to be writing about some Asian delicacy we ate for dinner, and I guess I could have engineered our choice of dining establishments but I left the choice in Belinda’s hands in an attempt to avoid bias.
10:30 I’ve been trying to play pool with Dave (a Canadian guy from another school) for a few weeks. We used to play pretty regularly but due to busy schedules in and outside school we haven’t played for about a month. So Dave text’d me for and game and we met up at our local billiard/pool hall. The owner doesn’t seem to mind us bringing our own drinks so we brought along a few beers to keep us going. We both played pretty badly, clearly our absence had left us out of practice. After two hours of 8/9 ball the final score was 6 games to 5.
02:30 So here I am at the end of my day. I just brushed my teeth and noticed Bigwig staring longingly at me, with my hectic morning I forgot to give her breakfast so to compensate I gave her a good stroke (until she bit me) and topped her bowl up with Korea’s finest $4 rabbit food.
I arrived back home too late to wish Sunhee goodnight, and now after spending 2 hours writing up the rest of my afternoon I’m ready to collapse into bed. 02:42 night night ZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz 5月18日 Teacher's DayAt last the sun is shining….
It’s been ages since I wrote my blog… and I’ve managed to max out my schedule, so these days I’m not finding myself with too much free time… sorry for being super lame about replying to emails too!!! My teaching life has become busier both in and outside school… We have 20 or so more students and two more classes a week now which is great for Mrs. Kim (the owner) but, for us monkeys, it just means more lessons to plan, more tests to write and grade and more homework sheets to fabricate and sign. Free periods and break times alike are slowly morphing themselves into extended visits to the photocopier and countless hours of rearranging poorly constructed sentences. The staff list has changed a little with the ‘retirement’ of Korean long-timer Samantha ‘monkey baby’ Walker and the hiring of Francesca from the States. Outside school I’ve taken on a heap of extra work which means a few days a week I’ve got myself working 12 hour days. The extra work is always a daunting prospect at the end of your school day but when you’re actually in there teaching it’s quite pleasurable, teaching one on one (or two) is actually pretty rewarding when compared with a whole class of screaming kids. Most extra-curricular classes provide you with some sort of refreshment (ranging from gourmet sandwiches and fruit juices to a few slices of apple) thus normally satisfying my staple diet of random food.
Recent weekends have been spent between nursing hangovers and continued exploration of Korea. Back in June Chris, Sunhee and I set out to attempt the grueling climb to the top of the mountain which hosts Seoul tower. We took the subway into Seoul and then climbed aboard a 30 seater bus with 100 other Korean families all out to enjoy the first ‘spring weekend’ of the year. The bus gradually climbed high and higher up our ‘K2 challenge’ until it dropped us off barely five minutes from the peak… we duly followed the hordes of families heading towards the tower and purchased our Seoul Tower tickets. The view from the top was surprisingly uninspiring, Seoul is a biiiiiiiiiiiiig big city and lacks any sort of central manifestation of business or culture. So the views are basically of apartments, offices and the random non-descript land marks. There were however geographically accurate markings on the glass, locating the major cities of the world… so we claimed our own (Sunhee’s pointing to a random city - as we were already in Korea).
Sunhee and I spent our long weekend visiting Nami Island and Chinchon. A two hour bus ride followed by short ferry trip took us to the island. The island itself is the setting of a Korean TV show (called Sonata – I think) and is real popular in Japan. So, in the same way English tourists flock to Ramsey Street, the island was awash with Japanese soap opera fans. We watched a circus act, hired bikes and rode a train around the island (Darren Mullins would have been proud). The queue for the return ferry journey was easily a kilometer long so I abused my rich westerner status once again and hired a speedboat which sped us back to the mainland. In the evening we went to an area called Dok-Galbi Street, basically it’s a long windy back street full of restaurants serving Dok-Galbi (a kind of chicken and cabbage stir fry type thing – kinda of). It reminded me of Brick Lane back in London, but instead of enticing you with 20% discounts these guys were offering free cola…. bargain. Teacher friends from Sanbon had spread themselves around the country visiting Busan, Jeju Island and Seoul but every one of us had torrential rain all day Saturday so whities around the country were confined to motel rooms and bars to sit out the storms.
Back in April we paid 35$US and traveled for 3 hours to random forest to play paintball. It was great fun (besides the journey). After a basic instructions in broken English we were divided into teams and formulated our battle tactics. As the whistle sounded our plans were instantly disregarded, wannabe heroes ran forward and got shot in the face while those who wanted to remain bruise less and injury free cowered in more tactical positions behind trees or in make-shift trenches. We played three games. In the final seconds of the last game Chris demonstrated his survival skills with a solo run of desperation (miraculously dodging capsules of paint from all directs) to capture the flag and win the game. Unfortunately for us Chris was on the opposite team, but still I feel a little bit safer back here in Sanbon knowing I work with such a military expert.
Back at the ranch we have been wasting our time having death battles: Yuki vs Bigwig (Belinda’s dog vs Nik/Jac’s rabbit). Bigwig was clearly the underdog (or underrabbit) but over recent weeks she has started to stand her ground. We are all waiting to see Bigwig’s special move – which we predict to be a bite to the nose. After school one day last week Belinda and I took Yuki for a walk and ended up coming home with; an old cabinet, a chair and a satellite dish... hum…. why…. I hear you ask…. isn’t it obvious????…. well I guess not … we recruited Chris and Francesca and spent the following 4 hours cutting, chopping, burning, hammering, screwing (and eating pizza) and finally the Sanbon Herald Super BBQ was born!!! We celebrated the fact with a rooftop BBQ and ten pitchers of beer last Friday night.
Well I’ve paid the price of my less than sporadic updates here on msn… I’ve probably missed out a heap of things that haven’t immediately sprung to mind. I kinda feel that my quarterly updates don’t really describe or illustrate my day-to-day life here in Sanbon so when I get around to it I’m gonna write up ‘a day in the life of an English teacher’ type thing to put an end to rumors of rat kebabs, tropical islands and other misconceptions of Korea that seem to be lurking around people’s imaginations
Anyway take a look at the snaps in the album called 'April and May Stuff'
- See ya' 3月30日 Mountain HikingSo last weekend me and Sunhee took a trip Seoraksan Mountain.....
Itinerary:
* Got up faaaaaaar too early on Saturday morning and took a 4 hour coach trip to the mountains
* Ate a cheap-arsed lunch * Climbed a grueling(ish) mountain and a trillion stairs * Nearly taken off from the peak by gale force winds (17.4 on the beaufort scale)
* Ate meat * Got drunk playing random drinking games with random Americadians
* Too hungover to meet for breakfast (8AM)
* Too hungover to meet for the morning hike (9AM)
* Too hungover to meet for the hot spa (11AM) * Sat in a 6 hour traffic jam on the way home
the lack of doing anything substantial was the best part of the weekend!!!
now I'm back to school with tests to mark and aching legs.... take a look at the mountain photos..... 3月16日 It's nearly spring!!!Wow!!! I’m still in Korea… I completed my contract last month and after weeks and weeks of prior deliberation I finally decided to extend for another year. The deciding factor was procrastination; of real life and of packing up my belongings - I seemed to have filled my apartment with an excessive amount of random items which is going to take serious planning before I (eventually) move on.
So what’s new???
2006 started well, I passed out very prematurely on Jan 1st after a barrage of Vodka and Soju shots, mysteriously, I evaded a hangover (which certainly wasn’t a sign of things to come in the new year). In the course of our Christmas and New Year festivities I got together with my girlfriend – a girl called Sunhee (or 선희 if your monitor can display that). It’s a pretty interesting life dating a Korean girl… besides the obvious language barrier there are a whole heap of cultural and social codes of behavior which I seem to break quite regularly 8)
Most of January and February were spent in hibernation. The winter here is bitter (certainly compared to England), temperatures lingered around –14C for a time and wind tunnels created by our grid-design downtown buildings ensured you could feel every last degree of it. We took advantage of some of the ‘whiter weather’ with several trips to ‘Ji-san’ (mushroom mountain) for snowboarding. For the rest of the time I reveled in the fact that I didn’t have to leave the building to work, sleep or indeed eat.
Chris, Sam and I took a road trip around the South-East corner of Korea. Our LPG-charged Sonata took us passed a mountain fortress, hot springs, towns with names like Daaaaaaaaangyang and Bundaaaaaaang, miles of national park and Eastern coast-line and the delights of Busan - Korea’s second biggest city. It was the Luna New Year long weekend. We’d been constantly warned by every Korean person that due to the trillions of Korean people commuting to see their families, we’d be sitting in a five-day traffic jam. Armed with Jac’s atlas and expert navigation from Sam and Chris we managed to avoid all but 30 minutes of traffic.
I managed to blag a trip back to England before my new contract started… t’was wicked to catch up with friends and family again… I was more than a little anxious that after two and a half years away and ebbing communication, deteriorating from excited telephone calls to exchanges of group emails, that conversations and friendships would be strained. Without exception after ten minutes of chatting it felt like I’d never been away. I pretty much packed out every lunchtime and evening meeting people and getting drunk in various towns and cities… the two weeks flew by and before I knew know it I was back on plane at 30000 feet.
Now is the start of the new semester at school. I lucked out with my teaching schedule with a fair number of decent classes. By decent I mean classes in which you can have some sort of rational English conversation. Other classes are spent playing charades and generally repeating instructions at increased volume until the small beasts pretend to understand what you’re trying to teach them. (© Fardell’s ESL Teaching methods).
12月20日 me and my guitar...If your speakers are turned on you’d have already noticed that I’ve managed to get some music playing on here…
When I left home I really wanted to spend some decent amount of time playing, I wrote up a few guitar songs to take with me to keep me motivated. Since then, I’ve filled up two other books. My visions of quiet reflection while strumming the hours away have all been satisfied in some amazing locations. My mind is being flooded with memories of playing; in the Thai jungle with drunken Jonnie from Germany, sitting under a thatched shelter on the bank of the Mekong river in the middle of a thunder storm, ‘Son of a Preacher Man’ (badly) with expLaura doing a her best Dusty Springfield impression, Bob Marley (the only truly internationally recognized artist) to a group of Vietnamese kids while me and Joe were waiting for a train, the same Jack Johnson song so many times in Bali that Jac Connell breaks into a sweat at the mere mention of his name, ‘500 miles’ to Danish girls on balconies on Thai Islands (Tommi - I still think of you in the Firkin every time I play that!!) and far too many others to keep writing about…
As well as playing and a little writing, recently I’ve been trying to record some tunes into my laptop hence the new addition to my blog. If you get bored of listening to it just hit ‘escape’. Muttley – ‘Teenage Dirtbag’ will be on soon, just for you.
November and December have been treating me well. I finally signed up to (and attend) a gym. School seems to be more relaxed these days. It’s ccccold outside but our heating system is now in super-good working order which makes it hard too leave the building! I have been out snowboarding a couple of times, with Brenda, Terry and Erin the first time and then with Belinda, Dook and his entourage of giggling Korean girls yesterday.
I’m finding the language barrier especially frustrating this month. I guess I’ve been hanging out with Korean folk a little more recently. When talk relies on the few words people can scrap up from their high school English lessons and my (very) basic Korean, by the time any level of comprehension has been established the essence of the conversation has normally dissolved into translation. One liners turn into paragraphs and comical timing is very much… delayed. Miscommunication can be fun (especially when it involves charades) but every now and again I come across somebody who, in a less linguistically challenging environment, I would imagine to be a good friend. I really wish I could plug a Bable Fish into my ear and speak to my friends as normal friends speak to each other…………. grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr The other interesting trip I have made this month was to the DMZ (De-militarized Zone) between North and South Korea, which has been expertly, concisely and pictorially documented by Chris Teacher. 11月28日 Trick or treat...Four weeks ‘till Christmas and God (or whoever else invented the Gregorian Calendar) certainly had a smile on his face when he pondered 2005. We’ve had to sacrifice our entire winter holiday quota for a mishmash of days off to accommodate the meager school holiday period. Not that I’m bitter.
Outside school we had a great Halloween… Gem arrived on Oct 29th and we went straight out to a party in Anyang (a town near here)… we had lots of fun running around the town looking for ‘Rocksin Bar’ haunting as many locals as we could in the process. The bar was free so we were all very suitably inebriated. The following weekend we hopped onto Korean’s own ‘bullet’ train aka KTX and sped our way down to Busan (on the south coast). We slept a night at sauna place called a ‘Jim-gil-ban’, climbed a big tower, ate dinner with a friendly local, watched some western live music, went clubbing, visited a temple and jumped back on the train to drop Gem back at the airport. It was really great seeing Gem again after so long and also a long overdue change of scenery.
The last couple of weeks have been occupied by; Jak’s birthday trip to the theatre to see a show called ‘Nanta’, inter-school late-night poker sessions, making a trillion tests for a trillion kids, going to a raw fish restaurant yum yum… not and most recently (today in fact) eating a Thanks Giving lunch (expertly cooked by Nik and Jak).
As the end of my contract approaches faster than the KTX to Busan I’m trying to decide what to do next. It’s hard being so far away from so many people back home, but life here is kinda sweet. I really love Korea and especially Sanbon so some sort of contract extension or renewal is highly likely. If all goes to (a very half-baked) plan I should be able to blag a couple of weeks off to visit home sometime near March/April. I hope so anyway.
Once again the weekend has disappeared from beneath my feet leaving but a few hours of sleep between now and 30 kids running down the hallway screaming “goooooooood moooooooooooorning”. Soooooooooo bedtime… I hope everyone is doing well… night night
PS We totally forgot about Guy Fawkes this year, I'm sure we'll redeem ourselves soon enough with more drunken firework fights on the roof. 11月1日 Living at home…Can you imagine living with your folks until you had the good fortune to get married? Well Korean people can and do……The experience of sneaking around the house at 4AM after coming back from a club or trying to blow smoke far enough out of your bedroom window to avoid getting caught is bad enough as a teenager… these guys are in it for the long-haul as they wait for their knight in shining armor to whisky them away on the back of a moped. Hold on – it gets worse, If you are the eldest son you are trapped for eternity. You are expected to continue living in the family home, even raising your own family within those four walls. As you slowly become the head of the household you are required to provide for your parents as and when they retire and enjoy their older years… The upside of being the eldest sibling is you pretty much inherit the house, lock stock, so the years of living under the command and control of your nearest and dearest finally pays off… for me, I’d prefer a mortgage any day! Sorry mum!!!Any comments korean people???????10月27日 Sleeping Pills ZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzOkay so, it’s taken me a while but I’ve just figured out that there’s no point in having a blog if you neglect to add your ‘blog-worthy’ news… I’m afraid you’ll have to make do with my perception of ‘blog-worthy’…
For no other reason besides laziness (and quite possibly forgetfulness) the following story takes place between now and sometime in July, in reverse chronological order…
I guess that starts me off here, laying in bed at 2 in the morning thinking about how tired and impatient I’ll be tomorrow (today) at work. I’ve been a little ill recently, the doctor prescribed me an array of pills to treat stomach cramps, headaches, the d-word (abbreviated for spelling as well as taboo reasons) and on my request, sleeping pills. I’d never taken sleeping aids before last night. Tonight, after freaking myself out about (accidentally) drinking a glass of wine and necking four non-descript (quite possibly placebo–profit-related) white pills, I decided to skip the final course of medicines, hence my higher (than sleep) state of consciousness.
There’s been a whole heap of changes for me recently so I guess life is quite different. Firstly, close to home, Alena and I broke up, I’m really not sure what to say about that. We had a fantastic time in Australia and Korea (as I’m sure you have read from emails) but the pressure of living and working together as well as other inexplicable events and emotions took their toll. Alena decided to go and explore New Zealand and after just a few days found accommodation and work just North of Auckland. On the subject of break ups, Mum and Dad broke up in the Summer. Mum is still living at Batchwood Drive and Dad is currently renting a property somewhere near Radlett. I guess msn isn’t the best forum to go into detail, but just to let you know.
On a lighter note (besides illness, sleep deprivation and break-ups – isn’t life fun) half the staff at school have quit and been replaced with fresh and energetic new teachers. There are four foreign teachers here now (Sam from Melbourne, Chris from Toronto, and Belinda from Sydney (although due to Korea over-zealousness of the North American accent, she was introduced to parents as a yank and hence is our token American)). The other teachers are Cindy, Elisa, Erin, Sue and Suzie (who is 9 months pregnant) – don’t be fooled by their English names, they are real Koreans. Their adopted synonyms, are however, infinitely easier to remember (and pronounce) than Kim Eun Jin or Park Chun Man. Over the last few weeks we have been kept busy with, Thanks-giving (or Chusok) celebrations, field trips, speech-contests, spelling competitions, sports day, an English-village trip, written tests, speaking tests and countless lessons (of very dubious quality). Most of the events in school are followed by a seemingly magnetic attraction to a local bar, most recently ‘Number 10’ (or nuh-um-ber-ten as it’s is known). It’s a real good crowd to be working with, I’m happy. For those of you who have too much time on their hands I’m sure Chris’d be thrilled for you to check out his blog. http://www.clemensonline.com/ is exponentially more detailed and expertly written than mine – click on ‘about news’. We’re all preparing for a weekend of Halloween celebrations, Monday’s lessons have even been written off in favor of an all day party!
I’m starting to feel lazy here in Korea. I live on the 6th floor of a building and the school is on the 5th floor. Due to a 15 second commute to work and the plentiful availability of food delivery, some days I probably don’t walk more than a hundred meters! On top of lack of exercise, 18-year-old-like drinking habits are dying hard. My Korean neighbor thinks I’m an alcoholic. Tonight she spotted my half filled wine glass as she exited the elevator and said “Hello…. drinking?!?” in a kind of embarrassed question/statement like tone. So I’m toying with the idea of an alcohol detox for 2 weeks. Nik just did a complete alcohol AND food detox for a week (don’t ask me how you can not eat food for a week). So by my next (and hopefully more timely) entry here I’ll be an active health-club member, of the sober variety, hummm.
This weekend Gem has studiously decided to spend her reading week in Korea to visit her big sis and bro. I can’t wait to see her. As she was unable to come to Sydney last Christmas, it’s been 25 months since the last time! She’s picked a good week, with the Halloween Parties etc, but it’s starting to get cold now!!! Remember your winter jacket Gem! On the subject of sisters, a couple of months back, Nik got herself detained by immigration officers for working a private lesson at a school (outside of her visa regulations). Jac told me about her that afternoon and we spent most of the evening figuring out how we can get her released rather than deported. Eventually on the advice of my recruiter, the next morning I donned shirt and trousers (and more importantly withdrew US$500) and headed down to Mokdong Detention Center with Cindy. We waited and waited and finally spoke to the right person in the right department who was happy to accept the US$500 in exchange for a very patronising lecture on everything Nik had done wrong. She was served with a deportation notice (with no limitations on furture re-entry) which she carried out by the means of a long weekend in the Philippines. Not so bad after all – well, apart from a night in a cell with half a sweat-shop.
Well it’s an hour and a half later now and I’m sure I’ve forgotten a whole heap of things that have happened but hey, this it’s a good start. If nothing else this has provided my body with enough ‘alcohol-free’ time to deal with a sleeping pill…
Night
PS If you write 1 comment you will have good luck for the next year if you write 2 comments you will win the lottery if you don't write anything your pets will dieGroup e-mail from July-ishHi guys... I reckon it's about time for another installment of "Mike News" so get comfy...
So I think the last time I sent a group email was from Alice Springs in the center of Australia (that was back in September - opps). By this time I'd already met Alena my girlfriend and we were traveling together with a couple of other people. We visited Ayres Rock and Kings Canyon, both really beautiful and mysterious places.
After a week of sweating ourselves to near dehydration we continued North bound in Liddy's (our Ozzy friend) 4WD. We arrive in Darwin at the beginning of October with pretty much zero money left. I'd worked really hard in Thredbo (the ski resort) to save up enough spending money to keep me going but that kinda all got spent on beer. So anyway we needed to find some jobs... Alena got a job in the first bar she asked in and I spent two days pounding the streets (laying by the pool) looking for work. It was the start of Mango season in the Northern Territory so we decided to join an old friend of Alena's at a Mango farm about an hour from Darwin. The farmer guy (Danny) sounded quite reasonable on the phone so we packed up and jumped on a bus.
The mango farm was literally in the middle of nowhere and was .... hum... an experience... Danny owned two massive mango fields, a farm house (where the girls slept) and a beat-up old bus (where the boys slept). Years of seclusion had messed with Danny's head (and that's being nice). There were about 8 of us working there and we basically picked mangos all day. Surprisingly it was quite fun work... we chatted most of the day and Danny kept busy by screaming abuse at us. He'd definitely eating one to many mangos and lost all ability to talk normally to people... If you were unlucky enough to end up picking near him he'd start screaming "Why are you picking them f**king mangos" or "you lot are f**cking useless" or another similar motivational line-liner. We lasted about ten days there before 'offering our resignation'.
Once again work had failed to provide us with hordes of $$$ for us to spend (on food/water etc) so on arrival in Darwin the job search re-started. Luckily our hostel were looking for people to clean tour buses, so we spent a day having a water fight and scrubbing, earned ourselves 4 or 5 nights free accommodation. My Ozzy working holiday visa was sadly coming to an end so before I spent my last pennies I bought a flight to Bali so that I could re-enter Oz with a tourist visa (valid 3 months). In our last week in Darwin we hired a car and had an amazing trip together in and around Kakadu and Litchfield National Parks.
So after oversleeping and missing my first scheduled flight to Bali I finally said my goodbyes to Alena and Oz and flew to Indonesia. Jac (a girl) who I'd been friends with in Laos, Vietnam and Oz was also in Bali at the same time so we planned a trip together. Indo is fantastic, we spent a few days relaxing, swimming and surfing (well ok... trying) on Kuta beach before traveling to Ubud, Lombok, the Gili Islands and Java. We saw some of the most amazing beaches, temples, sunsets, volcanoes and people. Apart from constantly missing Alena (still in Oz) we had a fantastic time. Indonesia was definitely one of the best experiences I've had since traveling. Jac was on her way home to sunny UK (sorry Jac) so we said goodbye and after a HUGE stress over obtaining my tourist visa I re-entered Sydney and finally met up with Alena again!!!.
With no money left what-so-ever we took advantage of friends and crashed out on sofa's and floors (thanks Jules, Vix, Damo and Luke). Once again Alena found some work and I did... well not much actually. Mum, Dad and Nikki were on there way to see Christmas Australia style so we were basically killing time before being spoilt by Mum and Dad. They arrived mid Dec and we hired a camper van to tour some of the east coast. We had a great time driving up to Rockhampton and back visiting almost every tourist attraction along the way. Christmas dinner was a BBQ and New Years was fire-works at Sydney Harbor. It was great seeing the New Year in with Alena, Mum, Dad, Nik, cousin Rob and so many old friends that were still in Sydney.
After the family left Oz I got a job with Rob in a metal factory in Mona Vale. We packed up again and left Luke's rather luxury flat in Manly and relocated to Mona Vale into a cockroach infested flat owned by a guy from the factory. It was thrilling work, (very) basically I had to push a bar of steel into a machine every 21 seconds (I counted - lots). Alena had a couple of jobs in a beach cafe and a Vietnamese restaurant... free food... MMMMmmmmm.
A friend of mine Lianne (danger) was teaching English in South Korea so I had a few chats with her about life in Korea and with limited options we decided to head Asia-bound. So after working enough to pay a couple of credit card re-payments and saving up flight money in February we flew here to South Korea and got offered a job teaching English at a school in Sanbon (50 miles - 80 Km South west of Seoul). Alena soon got offered a job in the same school. We teach kindergarten kids (3-5) in the morning and elementary/middle school kids (8-12) in the afternoon. It's a pretty good life out here. Teaching is heaps of fun and apart from a few weird and (not quite) wonderful Korean customs and ideologies the people are great too. We're trying to pack in as much as we can while we're here... as well as earning as much $$$ as possible, we've been learning Korean, learning piano, sightseeing all over South Korea and eating out in as many restaurants we can find! (average meal is 7000 Korean Won / $7US / 4 quid). My contract is until February '06 so we'll be here at least until then.
I've been busy putting photos on my Messenger ‘My Space’ have a look next time you're on msn. I've also now got a London telephone number... by the magic of internet if you dial 020 7871 5694 you'll get connected to me here in Sanbon (for the price of a London call) so give it a try, if I'm sleeping or working, leave a message on the answer machine and I'll call ya back. If you wanna see our flat you can download a video clip I made today by clicking here... It'll take about an hour (or more) to download as it's 55Mb so...... be patient.
I hope everyone is doing well and you're all having good summers, if you are planning a long distance trip pleeeeeeeeeeeease arrange for your stop-off to be in Seoul and I'll happily put you up and show you around for a couple of days... as I said I'll be here until Feb '06 so keep it in mind.
So that's it... back to work/sleep/TV/drinking* for you.... take care and speak soon, Mike xxxx
* delete as appropriate PS If you're a SYKPE user my userID is "alengel3" 7月17日 RaindropsHi guys...
Well I guess the monsoon season is nearly done... it's only raning a couple of times a week, most days it it just grey. Nothing too exciting going on right now had a lazy week last week and a lazy weekend right now...
Went drinking with Matt and Sam (both teachers at the school) on Friday, drank 4 lires of beer, then 4 litres of soju cocktail, nearly got into a fight, sang karoke for an hour, stumbled home and woke up with a hang-over surpirse surprise!!! The rest of the weekend has been relaxing, tried to recorded some guitar onto CakeWalk and went round to Nik and Jac's for lunch.
Looking forward to next couple of weekends as we're going camping (in condo's) with the school then Alena and I are going to Jeju Island for our Summer Vactation, also got Nik's birthday to celebrate...
Ok time 4 bed... See ya.... Mike... PS.... I have blonde hair right now! 7月7日 London BlastsWow... I can't believe (watching BBC World) the scenes of London rocked by the bombs I've seen today. I've spoken to a few people who live/work near the area and thank God everyone seems ok.
It was only 2 years ago that I was living in the East End, 20mins walk from Aldgate East Station and working just 5 minutes away from the Tavistock Square incident. The photos and video clips seem far too close to comfort even though I am the other side of the world right now.
I hope everyone is OK and the death/injurey list doesn't creep up too high during the next few days....
6月26日 MonsoonHello.... The monsoon season seems to have just started in South Korea!!! The heavons have opened and they say it's gonna rain for the next 6 weeks.... woooo-hooooooo Had a great weekend, went to Charle's Birthday party on Saturday and a picnic with Hee-Young and Eun-Hae (our neighbours) today.... off to the flicks tonight.... 6月25日 Hello!!! and welcome...Hi guys!!! welcome to 'My Space' so I'm using this to keep my photos on the web so I hope you like it! Me and Alena are out here teaching in Sanbon (near Seoul) in South Korea. We started in Feb '05 and our contract is for a year... It's pretty cool, teaching is heaps of fun and apart from a few wierd and (not quite) wonderful Korean customs and idealogies the people are great too. We're trying to pack in as much as we can while we're here... as well as earning as much $$$ as possible, we've been learning Korean, learning piano, sightseeing all over South Korea and eating out in as many restaurants we can find! (average meal is 7000 Won / $7US / 4 quid). We've got heaps and heaps of photos and video clips so I've already put some on this page and I'll keep it updated as much as possible... laters... Mike PS I think you can add a comment if you wanna say hi.... |
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