Blogs from Cheongju, South Korea, Asia - page 5

Dear Blog Readers, I’m sitting in a beautiful ‘Angel-in-us’ café supping on a comparatively ridiculously priced hot chocolate in what can only be described as a chalice. The girl who served me tried out her English before dropping all of my change on the floor, much to the (embarrassed) laughter of the other waitresses - gutted. I need to try and make it last though. Laura’s gone into Cheongju to buy another pair of jeans which will be exactly one inch less than the same ones she bought from the same shop last week because the extra one inch on the current ones make all the difference. I’m sure all of the women reading this are agreeing wholeheartedly with her actions whereas all the blokes will be scratching their heads and adding it to the list ... read more

Dear Blog Readers, I woke on Monday morning with breath smelling like something had literally crawled into my throat and died during the evening, but more worryingly, that whatever had died had also caused my vocal chords to more or less cease to function. The Daejeon Rock Festival had well and truly taken its toll. Fortunately, Wonnam is a pretty small school and there was no need to be shouting to 30+ students so I was able to push through without sounding too ridiculous. The coughing fit that ensued in the second lesson prompted my co-teacher to get my a jinseng drink, which apparently pretty much solves any health problem in Korea. It worked a trick, and the embarrassment of me nearly dying in front of the students was soon forgotten when one student offered an ... read more

Dear Blog Readers, I’m glad that these blogs are typed rather than spoken because all you would hear now is a croaky old man voice which is sometimes comically interweaved with the odd very high pitched note which comes from nowhere. Unfortunately my throat has been getting progressively worse during the week and the rock concert in Daejeon last night may have finished me off. More on that later! Monday at Wonnam was great. I did my lesson on ‘What Do You Want To Be When You Are Older?’ - although I have since changed this to ‘What Do You Want To Be In The Future?’ because Koreans find the word ‘older’ really hard to pronounce. The school is currently being demolished because next year, Wonnam, Songni and Naebuk are merging together. The new school will ... read more

Sad news: I started this blog last night at work (on a PC) and I wrote a good portion of it. When I returned to it, it asked me to log in, and deleted my stories. So here I go again. P.S. This is a couple weeks old at this point. The last few weeks have been a whirlwind. Mostly because of drama/frustration/lack of communication at work. This includes working Saturdays, which means 6 day work weeks with 1 day off. The good part of the whirlwind was our FIRST and possibly only, visitor! Jeanne has already come and gone. It was SO wonderful to have someone from home here and get to show them our life here. I know she enjoyed seeing the places and things we experience everyday. She also reminded us how different/foreign ... read more

Dear Blog Readers, We get ushered into the finance department of the Boeun Education Office after another horrifically awkward meeting with another supervisor who is the supervisor of my co-teachers’ supervisors’ supervisor. Angela, Laura and I exchange confused looks as to what the 20 minute meeting could possibly have been about but then were overwhelmed as everybody in the department stood up and began applauding us. After this welcome, one of the supervisor’s introduces us to the department, “Please welcome, Angela, Simon and Neall.” So, quite a good, well actually, funny end to our third week at school! Last weekend we completed our settling down period in Boeun by finally getting our mobile phones! Thanks to our co-teachers Yuni and Eun-bi, they managed to wangle us a good deal. Laura has got a swish touch-screen phone ... read more