Blogs from Incheon, South Korea, Asia - page 10

As time continues to fly by I thought it was about time for another update. No trip to a sunny island to tell you about this time, but life has been very busy in other ways over the last few weeks and there’s always lots going on. Now that I’ve been here for six weeks I am feeling more familiar with the place and the people around me. Thankfully, I seem to have made a favourable impression with the Korean teachers at both of my schools and I have been taken out for countless lunches and dinners by my very nice colleagues. Two teachers from one school have asked me to help them with their English. They offered to pay me but I didn’t want to take money so, in return for meeting them every Wednesday ... read more

This week is supposed to be my YAY KOREA week. I'm invoking the SECRET and using the power of positive thinking. I'm going to WILL Korea into something better than it actually is. BUT I have to tell you, I think it's actually working a little bit. It officially started on Sunday when I was on the train coming back from Pusan. A little Korean girl was sitting in front of me very interested in the foreigners (us) behind her. We said hi. She said hi. Then, we started playing a card game. She then turned around and proceeded to ask us what game we were playing. This turned into a very chatty conversation and it turns out this little girl can speak more English than any of my co-teachers. As a matter of fact, this ... read more

Ok so this last week has been a little hectic due to new teachers arriving everywhere and old ones leaving. Thursday we all went out for a korean meal (dont ask what cos i cant remember but it was the same as the 1 i had on my 1st day) and i got a chance to meet all the other foreigners in our apartment block. All really nice people. Then we went along to a kareoke room, you rent the room out and the whole thing is set up with like 6 tv screens and beer and food comes in etc.. we all know i cant sing so i was quite happy watching others.. some good .....some bad! Finally gave in to peer pressure and sang YMCA.. (yeah you can sing it!! well im sure some ... read more

D-Day Some people are notoriously early, some are anally punctual and me…well a safe description would be fashionably late….always! 1:30pm, casually making may way through the x-ray rigmarole when the X-ray operator asks if he can search my bag. I politely oblige and next thing you know I’m being accused of owning a firearm, go figure. After the third X-ray and round of interrogation he decides the only way to get me to admit to transiting munitions is to show me the screen cause he couldn’t identify the ominous munitions he was convinced he was seeing. Clearly Mr X-ray operator has never been lucky enough to own as nice a set of watercolour paint tubes (packaged in a very neat box) like I now own courtesy of my girls! Relieved that I wasn’t going to be ... read more

Last weekend was pretty amazing. It was definitely the highlight of my time in Korea so far and for that reason I hope you will forgive me for delaying this blog entry until I could get hold of some photos and give you a better idea of where I’ve been. As you may recall from my last post, we have just had the Chuseok holiday here in Korea. Whilst Koreans celebrated it in traditional style, it appears to be customary for every Westerner within reach of the Incheon ferry port to descend on Deokjeokdo, an island about an hour off of the west coast. Catching the earliest ferry on Saturday was something of an ordeal. This was partly because we had misjudged the amount of time it would take to get tickets and partly because they ... read more