We're Going to Wembley!

Last night I went to my first Busan I Park game. Busan I Park is in the K-League, Korea's versions of the Premier League. Last night's match was not a league game though. It was the FA Cup semi final against Chunnan yellow (I've never heard of Chunnan either!).

The match was held at the Asiad stadium in Busan. This stadium was built for the world cup  and seats close to 55,000. However only about 1,000 people if that turned up last night...for the FA Cup semi final! In preparation for this shortage of fans, make shift stands were created close to the pitches and there were still a lot of empty seats.

What a match! Busan took the lead in the first half, one of their players(I don't know any names) heading a corner 6 yards out after the keeper made an awful attempt at punching it. After the break Chunnan equalised. 2-1 busan, then 2-2 to take it into extra time. Busan made it 3-2 in extra time and the hardcore Busan fans(myself included) were going mental! At this time we made our way over to the home fans section and started singing with the Busan fans. God knows what we were singing but it was awesome!

The designated drummer for the Busan fans got so excited he broke his drum!

After the match, the players came over to our stand and did a Jurgen Klinsman chain.

One of the players tried to throw his jersey over the net separating the fans from the pitch. It didn't go over the net, but hit it and slid down. One kid put his hand through the net and caught it...mayhem ensued! All the kids in the stand, Sam and Jez included, rushed over to wrestle the shirt from the poor lad.

About 5 quid the ticket was, and it was a semi final. A season ticket is only 25 quid. And I had an absolute ball. Even bought myself a scarf! 

Yup, I am now a lifelong I Park fan, that is my team...and we're going to Wembley!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT0hdpkPCa4

A Week Without the Kids!

Last week was Chuseok here on the Korean peninsula, the Korean equivalent of Thanksgiving. It was officially on Wednesday but, like Christmas Eve and Boxing Day, Tuesday and Thursday were also celebrated. Some teachers here had to also work on Monday but luckily my slave driving principal found that cell in her body which has some compassion and gave us the week off.

My Chuseok started Saturday morning. The night before was Matt's birthday and I had found myself incapable of walking in a straight line by 4am. So, when I woke up at 11am the room was spinning and my mouth was dryer than Nora Batty's knickers!

I staggered down to the bus station and picked up Ruth. We dropped her bags at my apartment then went down to the Lotte Mall. A huge department store with lots of Western shops and a garden on the roof with a fantastic view of the city. We got there on the right day aswell, there as an acrobat show happening right in the middle of the mall, they looked Russian. 

We then walked down to Jagalchi fish market. I mentioned the fish market in my last post so I won't talk about it much but one new thing I saw on this visit was shark meat. A HUGE piece of boneless meat was sat on a counter. At first we thought it was a very big piece of  Salmon but the woman selling it told us other wise. The picture below isn't one I took, but this is what it looked like. 

Later on we went back to the KongBul restaurant in Kyungsung. For anyone who hasn't been there I highly recommend it. If you don't know how to get there just send me a message. There's a gas hob in the middle of the table and they put a large tray on it filled with vegetables, some extremely spicy sauce and a big squid. Just make sure you ask for it to be not so spicy otherwise it will blow your socks off.

The next day we got the bus to Gyeongju, the old capital of the Silla kingdom, which ruled the Korean peninsula a long time ago. As such it is one big museum. Lots of tombs and old stone buildings which were something important in their day. The tombs all looked like teletubby hills. 

We took a bus out of this city the first day to go visit Bulguksa temple and Seokguram Grotto. Bulguksa is an old Buddhist temple outside the city, about 40 minutes bus ride away, well worth going to see. 

From Bulguksa, you can walk 4km to the grotto or take a short bus ride. Being the lazy louts that we are we decided to take the bus. Seokguram is very disappointing! It's an old hermitage with a Buddha statue inside and is certainly not worth the trek unless you are on some sort of pilgrimage. I think the best thing at Seokguram Grotto was the stall were you can buy a slate and write a message on it. Outside this stall there are dozens of sample slates that people from all over the world have written their own messages on. There was even one from Uzbekistan (more on the Uzbekistanis later).

Just east of Gyeongju is Bomun lake. The surrounding area has been transformed into a resort with 5 star hotels (a Hilton being one of them), an Expo Center and an amusement park. In the summer they hold performances, such as traditional Korean dances, are held at a small Amphitheater around the lake. That night I missed the Liverpool-Man Utd game to go watch one such performance. After finding our way to the food village, which is situated around the lake, we then walked for what seemed to be miles, only for the performance to be cancelled due to the fact that the rain was coming down faster that Michael Jackson's nose.

On Monday we decided to go check out King Munmu's underwater tomb. I've heard about this before so I assumed it was one of Korea's "must see's". DO NOT GO! 

King Munmu's underwater tomb is nothing more than a bunch of rocks, sticking out of the water, 100m of the coast. You can't take a boat out to the rocks. All that there is, is a sign saying "Underwater Tomb of King Munmu", and a short story of why he's buried there. The bus runs about once an hour. It takes an hour to get there. Then once you arrive, it takes you 10 minutes to realise there's bugger all there, then a 50 minute wait for the bus back! DO NOT GO!

By the time we finally got back to Gyeongju it was 2 o clock and it took us another half an hour to find somewhere to eat. By the time we finished our late lunch, the bike shop across the road said it was too late for us to rent a bike. So instead we walked down to the Tumuli Park, just a park filled with Telletubby hills (they're actually tombs). There is one tomb you can go in but there's nothing of interest in there. 

A short walk from this park is Anapji Garden. This is beautiful and well worth seeing, especially at night when the "oriental gazebos" (for want of a better name) are lit up quite spectacularly. 

The next day we went to Yandong Folk village. During Korea's immense industrialisation of the 70's and 80's, the government decided to set up some traditional folk villages, such as Yandong, to keep alive rural traditions. Yandong is a 40 minute bus ride and 15 minute walk from Gyeongju. It's simply a really big housing estate, only difference is the houses are very traditional with the curved roofs and all that. The beauty of the place is spoilt a bit by the cars sitting outside the houses. It must be very weird for the residents of the village. Imagine every day bus loads of people, many of them foreigners, walking around your estate or neighbourhood taking pictures of the houses.

When we got back to Gyeongju we went to see the museum. It's cool and interesting, and has a lot of Buddha statues. That night we bought some refreshing alcohol and sat on the roof of our hostel with a bunch of other foreigners who were passing through Gyeongju. A very random moment occurred when I saw 2 Scottish lads on the roof I'd met in Kine-Eye in Busan last Friday. I remembered them because they rocked up wearing kilts. But as Richard Elizabeth Richard once said "The Scottish are allowed to be transvestites."

I think that's more than enough for one blog. Hope I haven't bored you. I'll post again soon with the highlights of Daegu and Seoul.

Birthday Week

There are two things in Korea that I hate but cannot seem to avoid...Kimchi and mosquitoes. As I sit at my desk in school writing this, I am waging war with a single mosquito that seems to have an appetite similar to that of the Klump family.

Anyway I just wanted to mention that this week was THE birthday week in Busan. 5 birthdays in just 6 days. On Tuesday, I hit the ripe old age of 23 and to celebrate ate a chicken that had a beer can placed up its rear entrance.

Wednesday was Jemma's birthday and a few of us went to Fuzzy Navel down Seomyeon. Flash's birthday fell on the Thursday so we went to Jagalchi fish market. A big warehouse with stall after stall of crates of water, each bustling with a variety of sea life. 

After much bargaining we managed to buy a flat fish, a very big fish, some sea urchin, a sea worm that looks like a willy and octopus tentacles. The fishmonger killed the fish we had bought in front of us like it was the most natural thing in the world and very second nature to him, then everything was taken to a restaurant above the market, where for a small fee they cooked all of the food for us. The oddest thing was the octopus tentacles, which had moments ago been cut from a live octopus and so were still wriggling as the nerves weren't dead. Reading my Korean guidebook, apparently this is a delicacy and every year a handful of people die because the tentacles stick to the happy eater's throat!  In fear of this it took me a long time to put a tentacle into my mouth and when I finally did, the thing attached itself to my tongue! Luckily it came of very easily and after 5 minutes of chewing the thing I plucked up the courage and swallowed without any fatal consequences.

Friday was Matt's birthday. Many naughty tales were told in Thursday party at Gwanganli beach over a game of I have never before a trip to Kino Eye in Kyungsung University where the rest becomes a bit of a blur. Some things I do remember is meeting two Scottish lads wearing skirts, Curly Vicky being absolutely fascinated my an automatic door, and the hardcore of us moving on the the Ghetto club. Unfortunately for party hardy Kev age showed and I hit a wall wheras everyone else went to a Karaoke room. 

Next week it's Chuseok (추석), which means a week off work! I will be travelling round with Ruth for a week and will post about it next week :D

A visit from Seoul and Daegu

What a weekend! On Friday after school, me and Lindsay went to Busan station to pick up Ruth who had come from Seoul, and Shaun, Jacob, Mike, Lara, Connie and Kailey from Daegu. We then took the subway to my apartment in Geumnyeunsan, via a cheeky stop at Family Mart for some beer.

If last weekend taught me anything, it's that old Koreans do not like noise when they are travelling. Admittedly we were a tad loud on the train, since we had not seen eachother for a few weeks. But I think it was the sight of a group of foreigners drinking and being rowdy that triggered the reaction of the angry Korean lady we were stood by. After listening to our noise for long enough, she had had enough and gave us a verbal dressing down in Korean.

We then booked the Daegu crew into a Love Motel, the Korean equivalent to a highway motel an office manager takes his secretary.

After a fancy plate of pasta down Gwanganli beach, we were too late to catch the last subway so instead we took taxis. In the process of travelling to Seomyeon, we managed to lose Jacob and Mike. As a result, we spent half an hour walking round the biggest area of Busan, looking for Canadian and a Jew!

Eventually we found them and Jeremey again and went to a bar called the Fuzzy Navel. You know it must be a good bar with a name like Fuzzy Navel. And it didn't dissapoint. It has possibly the coolest dance room I've ever seen. The room is a sphere, pitch black but with lasers whizzing around it.

The following day, most of us were hung over and so we just stayed on Gwanganli beach. Mike bought himself a very fetching pair of pink shorts. 

It was not such a good day for the beach, sure the waves were class, but Mary monsoon showed her ugly face. In the night we went to a restaurant down Kyungsung called Kongbul. You have a gas hob on your table and they bring a large metal tray out, filled with vegetables and raw beef. After about 10 minutes of the thing cooking away in front of us a lady came over with some tweezers and some scissors, and pulled a squid from under the vegetation...where did that come from!? She proceeded in cutting it up with the scissors then we were free to eat it. It was delicious. 

Ruth brought a coffee cake down from Seoul which somehow survived the trip and was much enjoyed all round. 

A few doors down from the restaurant is a 3D rollercoaster. One of those spaceship things you sit in, with a screen in front of you taking you along the track while the seats your sat on move from side to side. Being the mature English teachers we are we had to go on it. There was a screen outside so you could watch the reactions of the people on the ride. We were stood outside watching it while the first lot of us went on and some Korean teenagers came to speak to us, amazed that we could say hello in Korean.

When we were finished reliving our juvenile past times we went to the Vinyl Underground to One Step Beat and Lhasa. The members of these bands were all expats who had lived in Busan for a number of years. Lhasa were rubbish, one guy playing guitar and keyboard and one playing drums, very boring. One step beat were much better though. They sounded like UB40.

From Vinyl Underground we went to Kino-eye which was awesome. They were selling a drink called an Irish Car Bomb!

The following day saw a trip to Busan aquarium, a boat ride across the shark tank and visit to Haeundae beach.

It was a good weekend, next week is birthday week, with 5 birthdays in 6 days and the start of the Chuseok holiday...so it should be a mad one! :D

I have been in South Korea now for two weeks and during that time I have tried to keep a diary. However, I've found writing everyday both impossible and boring and so have decided to write a blog during the 3-4 hours free time I have after lessons everyday.

I'm not sure what I should be writing about so I'm just going to write about what has happened so far. I arrived in Korea on Wednesday 18th at Incheon airport, just outside of Seoul. When I arrived, EPIK, the agency who got me a job out here, had buses waiting for us to take us to Jeonju City, the site of the week long orientation we were about to embark on. 

When we arrived at Jeonju University, we were placed in our rooms with a room mate. I opted to be placed with James, and American dude I had met on the bus. James had studied Korean for two years and lived in Seoul for 7 months so his command of the language was top draw. We instantly went out looking for booze. We went to a 7 eleven. Our version of a small Tesco Express or what the Americans would call a convenience store. Outside this 7 Eleven were 3 picnic benches. It was like sitting in a pub garden. Every time we needed another drink we would go inside, get a can from the fridge, pay for it then set at a picnic bench outside. A few more Americans joined us, and it was at this point that I was introduced to Soju. 50p a bottle, about the size of a small coke bottle. It tastes like a weak version of Vodka which is why it's so deadly, you think you can drink more of it and you get hammered. 

That night was just a sign of things to come. I spent 7 of the next 8 nights out drinking and only spent about 50 quid. One night I ended up on the roof of our dormitories till about 4am will Donny the Irish guy and Callum from New Zealand. 

On Sunday, we went to Hanok village, a traditional folk village just outside of Jeonju. Well they told us it was a traditional folk village, but you can see from the second you arrive that it is set up for tourists. It was fun though. We made traditional fans

ate Bibimbap

and visited a Buddhist temple

We were given the choice of studying Korean or Taekwondo. Me, Shaun and Andre chose the latter. The lessons were given by a Korean guy who was also an instructor for the Korean national team! A small pleasant looking dude, but you knew he could snap you with his nose hair. One time we were lined up in front of him and he was talking. A dragonfly had flew in through the open window and was hovering in front of him. He stops talking and looks at the dragonfly. I know what you're thinking, Mr Miagi, I was too. But no, instead he screams, and does a back flip...then continues talking! Anyhoo, for our second lesson we were given a Taekwon Do uniform (whatever it's called) and a black belt and told we would be performing at the farewell ceremony.

Our week in Jeonju went by far to quickly and before we knew it we were off to our schools and our given cities around the country. I've been sent to Busan, the second largest city and home of seafood, watersports and beaches :D When I first got here my co-teacher and her husband picked me up in their car. "Hello Mr. Kevin, what food you like?".To try to impress them I said Duck Bulgogi, so they took me to eat Duck Bulgogi. Duck meat and some vegetables cooking in a spicy sauce on a cooker on your table. We were given leaves, which the owner grew herself in the HUGE allotment in front of the restaurant. You wrap the meat and vegetables in these leaves and stuff them all in your mouth, delicious.

Next day i had my first lessons at Yongsan Elementary school. It's a great school, very modern and the English department is bigger than any other department in the school. I'm the only native speaking English teacher. The Korean English teachers here are brilliant, as I'm typing this one has just brought me a rice cake and yesterday she brought me pizza. 

The kids are crazy but respectful. There are no cleaners at the school, the kids do all the cleaning, even the toilets. They seem fascinated by my height and nose! "Mr. Kevin you have high nose."

Busan is a great place, very built up but has lovely beaches. My apartment is a minute walk from Gwangali beach. From the beach you can see the diamond bridge and at night the bridge is light up in a spectrum of colours. 

Last weekend we went to a football match. Busan Transportation cooperation vs Mokpo FC. Division 2 of Korean football, one of the worst games I've ever seen but we were allowed to take our own food and drink into the stadium so it was a great crack. The next day we went to a small festival. There were 2 guys on stage playing guitar and drums for about 2 hours,it was very boring. Then it got a bit later and Korean DJ came on and played a techno remix of Paradise City. All mayhem ensued. All of a sudden there was a small crowd in front of the stage. Beach balls were flying across this small crowd. And most strange of all, there were Korean kids running through the crowd with water pistols and bottles and whatever they could get their hands on to soak the foreigners with. It was one of those classic, random Asian moments that makes you want to come back to this part of the world.

I know this has been the longest blog post in the world but it was long overdue so I had a lot to write about. Thanks for reading folks.