Advertisement
Tom Daley
The front double somersault with tuck gone wrong.Dear Blog Readers,
I’m not sure how many more blogs I will be able to write as I fear that this time next week; I may have been reduced to a congealed, melted liquid of blood and organs due to the heat and humidity. It has already begun; in fact, it has come quicker than I was expecting. This is odd because I’ve been expecting it apprehensively since about October 13th 2010 which is when autumn finally arrived. The awkward question, “Do you sweat a lot?” which has been asked on many occasions can now finally be answered with, “Yes. Evidently.” I wake up. No wait, I should use that term loosely. On the fourth and final occasion of waking up after turning the air conditioner on during the night because I’m dying I have a terrible dilemma. Whether to walk to school where sweat will be kept at a reasonable minimum but sacrifice the extra fifteen minutes in bed or to cycle to school and arrive having to make the excuse that it’s torrentially pouring down with rain outside even when it’s clear blue skies.
I was asked if I wanted to play badminton on Thursday afternoon. I
Communist Pose
Tom Daley should strike a similar pose during the Olympics. said yes but when asked if I could go home to get some sports gear, they insisted that my tight blue shirt and khaki trousers would be suitable. After an hour and a half of playing, I ended up looking like I’d just run a marathon. This was embarrassing on a number of fronts. Firstly, the second grade boys playing on the court next to us were playing twice as hard yet hadn’t sweated a drop. Secondly, I was the youngest player by about 25 years, and lastly, I had to sit in my drenched state of embarrassment for the rest of the afternoon. This can only explain the multitude of flies which decided to swamp my misery. I killed at least four flies in the space of an hour (or 4 fph (flies per hour) if you would prefer).
Mr Oh was on top form again this week. A second grade student, Max, comes into the class about 10 minutes late. Mr Oh begins berating him for his unpunctual behaviour. After a brief Korean discussion, Mr Oh retracts and turns to me and says, “It’s OK. He had to go to the hospital. He needed a uranus test.”
River
River for swimming. Ironically, our lesson was going to be on the Solar System but my look of impending laughter must have been conveyed as confusion so I muffled out, “Do you mean a urine test?” He turned to the class and said, “Let’s give Max a round of applause for doing a urine test!” To which everybody started clapping euphorically.
Lost in translation also occurred between foreigners this week. Stephanie came round for some food and after half a glass of wine, Laura was already drunk and telling us that she “has no wit because she is French”. Laura excitedly showed Stephanie Chocolate flavoured Angel Delight (or as Stephanie remembers it, ‘Angel Fluff’). I don’t share Laura’s enthusiasm for a pudding which looks not too dissimilar to…I’ve probably mentioned my bowel movements enough in these blogs. Stephanie was shocked that we’d call such a thing ‘pudding’. In her neck of the woods ‘pudding’ is something different. We’re going to try it out next time we go to hers. To be honest, if Angel Delight delights Laura then I’m sure pudding doesn’t have too much competition. Furthermore, Stephanie had never heard of nettles and dock leafs. Come to think of it, I’ve
Laura
The front double somersault with tuck gone right. not seen any nettles in Korea thus far. Genuinely.
One student came into class with a sore looking eye. Mr Oh told me he had an eye infection but then he asked me what it is called in English. Some students have great difficulty even saying, “Hello, my name is Simon.” probably because their name isn’t Simon. You can imagine my surprise when I had thirty students repeating, “Conjunctivitis.” after me, and even better, remembering it at the end of the lesson. Unbelievable. Maybe I should make every other word something ridiculous but that they will remember. You’ll have hoards of Korean middle school boys coming to England saying, “Hello conjunctivitis my iridescence name platonically is chromatographically Simon.” Note, their name will probably not be Simon.
On Saturday, Laura and I went for a cycle ride to the river about 10km away where we went with Leonard and Michelle a few weeks back. When we set off, it was hot but overcast so we didn’t bother bringing any sun cream (I can hear the Korean women gasping in sheer horror at such a thought). Unfortunately, about 20 minutes after setting off, the clouds parted and we had clear
Diver
It's all gone wrong. blue skies. This was great at the time as the water was pretty cool because of all the rainfall recently so we had a great time diving off the rocks and swimming around to cool down. The cycle back was great too and we got some good photos. The next day, however, the Sun had shown its power on Laura’s skin. “Le Lobster est de retour!” Those of you who have been blog-reading from the beginning (‘the faithful’) will remember Laura’s Lobster phase during our time in Goa, India. Well it’s back with a vengeance. What’s worse, they don’t seem to have any after sun. I guess it’s because Korean’s put so much sun cream on even when it’s not sunny that if a Korean actually got sunburnt, the humiliation would be such that they wouldn’t even be able to do the walk of shame to the chemists to get the lotion. Consequently, we’ve borrowed some moisturising lotion from Stephanie and put it in the fridge.
On Sunday, we went to TGI Fridays for lunch with Sabrina, Stephanie and her friend Ben. It was great to have some Western food. Sabrina had come down from Seoul so our enthusiasm
No Swimming
It doesn't say No Diving. was probably a bit weird. I went to get a haircut afterwards. I went into one place and they had music blaring out of the speakers like it was a nightclub. I had to leave after five minutes because I thought my head might explode. I went around the corner to my ‘usual’ Unfortunately, my stylist Hairy was really busy so I settled for another stylist, Hong. His name clearly wasn’t as destined for the hairdressing world as Hairy but he did a good job. His helper who did the shampoo had just been told to ask, “Are you ok?” to me but unfortunately her English was limited to these three words. Consequently, I was asked if I was OK eleven times in half an hour.
Just so you know, we’re both OK.
Tink and Laura
Advertisement
Tot: 0.094s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 8; qc: 32; dbt: 0.0453s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 2;
; mem: 1.1mb
DAD
non-member comment
uranus
go to British Opthalmics Assoc. website www. Conjunctivitas.com. It's a site for sore eyes