It's been a while!

August 12th, 2012??!  I knew it'd been a while since I last posted anything, but I didn't think it had been that long!

I suppose a brief synopsis of what's been going on since then is what's called for....

I did get Laser Eye Surgery. LASEK to be exact.  It was massively painful at the time but I can see perfectly now, and have been able to for months and I'm told my eyes are in excellent health.  Success.  Money very well spent.  Delighted.

The last shot of me wearing glasses! T minus 30mins to surgery!

Post surgery! Trying to put on a brave face and pretend it didn't hurt too much!

Next, winter came to Daejeon but not before Nick entered a Chinese Dragon Boat race on the local stretch of river and won, I went to Seoul for a Hen Party, and we both went to Busan for a wedding.  When it did come though, winter came in a suit, ready for business.  Temperatures plummeted and the lovely warm weather of Autumn quickly became a thing of the past BUT I can't say we minded too much because at this stage we, Nick and I, were on the count down to Christmas at home!

Nick, the rest of the team, and 1,000,000 won prize money!

Snowy walk to work

Outside our old apartment in Wolpyeong

Finished work on Friday evening and came outside to this!

The local park of an afternoon!

We headed off from Daejeon on the 22nd of December, clad in matching Christmas outfits (which blended in nicely in Korea, not so nicely in London or Dublin!), leaving our apartment and our jobs to two of our friends to take over.  This made the packing process somewhat easier, knowing that anything we wanted to leave behind would be safe in our now old, apartment, awaiting our return!  After something awful like 36hrs on the move, we landed in Dublin, where it was 30degrees warmer than it had been in Seoul!  From -15 to +15 just like that!

Incheon Airport wearing matching Christmas couple outfits, and under Steff Hotdog to boot!

There really is nowhere like home, and no more so than at Christmas time.  It absolutely flew by and now seems like a distant memory, dominated by oodles of rich food and washed down with plenty of festive gargle.  Great fun altogether but it really highlighted the badness of our diets back home.  Food that was too rich, too processed or too sugary when I first got home soon became normal again, not that it stopped me from wolfing it all down and having a grand ol time for myself!

The over-eating induced lull after Christmas Dinner!

 
I spent a total of 9 weeks at home, and nick was there for 10.  In that time, we went to a friend's wedding in Roscommon, we visited relations and friends in the west of Ireland, we acted as beaters on a woodcock shoot, we ate a very fancy dinner post-shoot in Markree Castle, and we caught up with as many friends and family as possible.  At the same time, I was on the look out for a job back in Korea, starting about the 1st of March, and Nick was furiously studying for the Oral Defence of his Ph.D.

Kathy & Kev's Wedding on New Years Eve in Roscommon

Family Fun in Kilmuckridge. All ten adults and 5 children worth of us!

Stunning, bleak, Connemara scenery

The woodcock shoot we were beaters on.  Gas day out! Unfortunately there wasn't enough tweed to go around!

 

Very fancy post-shoot dinner at Markree Castle

After much job hunting, and much study, we were both successful!  I got a job and Nick got his Ph.D! Delighted, the pair of us were!


Week three in my new job is almost drawing to a close now.  I'm teaching conversational English to college students in Hyejeon College, just outside of Hongseong in Chungcheongnam.  It's a small enough college about an hour outside of Daejeon, tucked away in a quiet little mountain town.  The college has provided me with a nice apartment just off the campus, as well as a huge office on campus, next to my classroom.  They did however mis-spell my name as 'Step' on the door of my office which means I'm probably going to be Step from here on in!  However, I only work a trying 14hours a week, and I have every Friday off.  Each of the two terms in the college year are 16 weeks long,  and the rest is holidays, paid holidays at that. 

Hard to make out but this is my office door and it says 'Step Ruth Russell'!

'Knock knock, open wide, let's see what's on the other side'!

The view over campus from my office window!

The last few weeks I've been wandering around, pinching myself, wondering how in god's name I ended up here, with this ridiculous job, where I have tonnes of free time, loads of holidays and all the while earning a salary decent enough that I can put some money away for a rainy day!

And that folks, in a nutshell, is it. The past 7 months, crammed into one little blog post!

Skiing in Pyeongchang

The Ski Season in Phoenix Park officially ended last weekend.  As a result, there were some pretty good deals to be hand.  A company called Adventure Korea was offering transport to and from Seoul, accommodation just off piste, lift pass and equipment rental all for 70,000won (about50euro).  Although it hasn't snowed all that much this winter, Pyeongchang, the area where Phoenix Park is, is due to host the Winter Olympics in 2018 so we figured the snow'd have to be half decent!  We booked the KTX, or fast train, for Friday night at 10, thinking we'd be up to Seoul by 11, find somewhere to stay and then meet up with the group the next morning.

Pyeongchang as seen from a cable car

We'd had a bit of a rough day in work, Fridays in general are never that nice, so when the train came and there was someone in one of our seats we weren't too shy about waking him up and telling him to clear off.  We caused a bit of a commotion, and the man didn't budge.  A ticket inspecter came along though so we thought he'd sort the eejit out for us.  Turns out, we were the eejits.  We were on the wrong train!  It was still going to Seoul though, just going there a bit slower, so it was almost midnight when we arrived, without a notion of where we might stay.  We had planned to stay in a jjimjilbang, but neither of us having been to one yet, we decided that we'd try and find a cheap love motel instead.  We found one without too much hassle and just as I sat down on the bed I realised that I hadn't a notion as to where we were meant to be meeting the group the next morning!  I had to ring a friend in Daejeon to get her to look it up.  With panic number two over I was out like a light.

I'd set the alarm before going to sleep but got woken by a text message.  Who the hell is texting me before half six in the morning I wondered.  The answer was nobody.  It wasn't half six.  It was ten past eight.  Forty mins AFTER the meeting time.  I had somehow managed to set the alarm for 8:45.  Brilliant!  Panic number three!  I've never seen either of us get up and dressed and out the door so quickly!  We jumped a taxi to the bus station and bought a ticket to Pyeongchang, then belted across the road to a PC Bang (internet cafe) to look up the phone number of the guy we were meant to meet and tell him we were chasing them!  Got it, legged it back to the bus station with about 5 minutes to spare and finally let out a massive sigh of relief!

After a particularly wobbly start, everything else went as smoothly as you'd hope for.  We arrived, met the guy, dumped our stuff in our room, got our pass and gear and jumped into a cable car.  The day had been pretty overcast up to that point, it even tried to snow a few times but as we got to the top of the mountain the sun came out.  It was so nice to be back in the mountains on a pair of skis.  I really want to do another ski season, being there just gave me the thirst for blood!

The view from the top

Acting the eejit

Nick stylin' it

The lift passes are structured in a slightly odd way.  There are morning ones, afternoon ones, and two night time ones.  Ours went from 12:30pm to 4:30pm and from 6:00pm to 11:00pm but there was another one you could get from 11:00pm to 02:00am.  I couldn't believe the number of headbangers out on the slopes 'til that time.  I suppose if you do work like a lunatic and that's the only chance you get to hit the slopes you would, still seems a bit crazy to me though.

Night Skiing

This should read 'Play Hard, Drink Hard, Smoke Hard, but only after you've worked hard too'!

The slopes were dominated by boarders.  There were very few skiers to be seen.  And the get up on the lot of them was crazy.  Ski slopes can be fashion shows at the best of times but this was something else.  Everything was brand new and all designer.  They seemed to treat their boards quite carelessly, and it seems on purpose.  There's an overwhelming sense of being 'too cool for school' about the place.  Although I suppose if you work like a lunatic, splashing out on new snowboarding kit probably seems like a very worthwhile expense.

Nick desperating searching through his phrase book to chat up one such boarder!

Anyway...got on the slopes and got back into the swing of things fairly quickly.  Had a brilliant day despite my boots being the smallest, most uncomfortable pair in the world and my ski's never having been edged or waxed!  Filled up on a load of sundubu jigae, hit the sauna to ease the aches, had a few beers and fell asleep feeling pretty content with the world!!

Smallest Ski Boots in the World...barely came past my ankle!

Discombobulated in Seoul!

Which way?? Your guess is as good as mine! Lots of Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts and other familiar places but totally alien at the same time....need to get going on learning a bit a the ol' local lingo!

Departure....

Terminal 2 Dublin Airport! Seoul here we come!!