Blogs from South Korea, Asia - page 333

Hello everyone, I wasn't gonna write until I got to Japan as life is basically routine at this point: work, train, eat, sleep, fun on weekends... However, last weekend, a great opportunity presented itself. Claire (another SFU alumni, the original to come here) got invited to go riding with a Korean guy and his snowboard instructor buddies. They extended the invitation to the rugby crew so 6 of us girls headed out to Vivaldi Park on Saturday afternoon after rugby practice. I was not in charge of the organisation so I had no expectations, only jitters as I was excited to get a first day of skiing under my belt. The way there was a blur with taxi rides, food gathering stopovers and running to make the bus as we were quite late. Luckily, Claire's friend ... read more

So sometimes there are just some things that keep a girl going you know?! In the absence of a suitable partner I have turned to other means to satisfy myself. In steps the toast man. The toast man can be found every day a 5 minute walk from my work. He can rustle up the best toasted sandwich I have ever had in my life, so good in fact that the other day, once I had already been for dinner, the toast man was out on the street at 2am (bless his cotton socks) and such is my commitment to showing you dear people a true slice (or two) of Korean life that I ordered a toast sandwich so that you too could witness the fitness. And yes, of course I ate it. There followed a ... read more

...Each morning the drivers pile their cars onto the sidewalk and the bit of asphalt in front of the company building. The small, always-chipper man directs them and calls out "Good morning" to me whenever he is not preoccupied with the morning rush. I haven't heard him speak any other phrase in English. Well! He doubles as a package delivery man for the editing office - and he dropped off the enormous, cumbersome, Tolstoy-novel heavy package to editing - which became a main character in the office - since someone was either blocked, inconvenienced or in awe due to its size, - with each remark I basked in my package glory. "Whoa, who got that big mama?" "Brie, it's in my way, can you shift it to the right?" "Jesus, what was in that thing? Cookies? ... read more

Hello Everyone! About a week before Christmas, our good friend Ramit from Los Angeles came to South Korea for a visit. Ironically enough, the same day his plane arrived from sunny California, we had a large snowfall....the only snow we've seen this winter so far! Before picking up Ramit from the airport, we unfortunately both had to work this day. Larry found ways to make the most of it though...as you can see he chose to have some snowball fights with his students! But anyway, Larry went to Incheon Airport to pick up Ramit later that same day, and had a nice surprise waiting for him at the airport...the entire Korean Soccer Team was there! Of course he took lots of pictures! Once he found Ramit, they hurriedly drove back to English Village together... They were ... read more

After being in Korea for a month, Kovats and I started to feel pretty lazy with the lack of physical exercise. We were drinking lots of beer and eating lots of rice. That's a bad combination for the appearance of any body. So we had the option of either joining Taekwondo, or joining a gym. We joined "Kyunghee University Taekwondo". We refer to the owner as Grand Master. There are also two other instructors, whom we refer to as Mr. Lee and "Kevin". They are usually the ones teaching us. For the first two months we were White Belts. White is a symbol of innocence, as in we have no idea what we are doing. Thankfully we're since then graduated into Green Belts. There is lots of kicking and lots of stretching. I don't think I've ... read more