Inner Mongolia...in China!

Yup! Inner Mongolia is in China!  This had us somewhat confused as we walked along the Great Wall (which granted was just over three months ago now) only three hours outside Beijing and were told "China's on this side of the wall, and Mongolia's on the other".  How far had the bus just taken us? Were we really at the China-Mongolia border?  And if so, why the hell were we going back to Beijing after the wall-walk to get a bus from there to the Mongolian border??  Seeing the looks of confusion on our faces, the next sentence was "Not real Mongolian, China Mongolia".....Ah right, that clarifies it alright!  So there you have it, Inner Mongolia is in China!

Back to work, back to reality!

Or a reality of sorts anyway!  My timetable has changed slightly this semester, same number of hours but now I have Mondays off instead of Fridays and I've taken on a few extra hours on Saturday mornings as well to help with the savings.  Still though, a fairly nice reality to come back to after what was a great nine weeks off!

Summer time and the livin's easy..

...Or so the song goes anyway.  One of the first things I promised myself when I started this new job, teaching English to college students, last March was that I wouldn't fall into the trap that so many others seem to.  I would not complain.  I work a mere 14 hours a week and I have three day weekends every week.  I also get 20 weeks holidays a year.  The job is not stressful and complaining about it to other foreigners living in Korea who are not as fortunate job-wise as me, and who work much longer hours both daily and weekly,

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!

Vacation Preparation

Cycling around Jeju-do, an island off the south coast of South Korea, and Korea's largest island, seemed like a great idea when there were weeks to go to vacation time.  Yes, I said vacation! Forget your holidays in Korea, its all about vacation.  'Vacation' is understood, 'holidays' provokes a blank looking stare.  Such is life in this desperately American-centric, lunatic asylum of a country.

Anyway last Friday week was the start of our vacation/ holiday.  We got 12days.  An almost unheard number of days off in this work obsessed place.  Especially for a couple of hagwon workers.  2 days is not unusual, so we took our 12 days quite happily, and we skarpered.  

That Friday night was the birthday party of one of our co-workers.  It consisted of a dinner of pizza and fried chicken, paid for by the birthday girl as is tradition here.  We then moved to one of the many bars that are seperated into private rooms (heaven forbid you might talk to someone you don't know) where, upon the suggestion of beer by me, the menu came out because you can't possible have a drink if you don't eat, never mind the fact that we'd all just had dinner together ten minutes ago!  A chicken salad was ordered, as was a giant bowl of fruit salad drowned in a combination of milk, cider and ice cubes.  Cider is lemonade here, not cider.  The side dishes, that accompany every meal here in Korea, were not the usual kimchi and radish, but instead were 3 cherry tomatoes (to share?), a spoon full of sweetcorn and a bowl of puffed rice snacks, similar in appearance to hoola hoops!  A birthday cake was then produced.  We all sang happy birthday and the girl of the moment cut the cake up into nice neat sections, before chopsticks were handed around, and everyone attacked the cake.  The sections were redundant, completely.  All in all, a pretty normal Korean Friday night!

Chicken Salad and a somewhat dubious looking Fruit Salad, with the Birthday Girl to boot!

Appetizing Side Dishes!

Saturday was spent getting our bikes in order for this cycle, the extent of which I was trying not to think about, never having cycled much further than 15kms in one go before.  Actually, Nick sorted the bikes out, checked the tyres, attached new peddals, attached bottle holders and who knows what else.  I stuffed a few bits of first aid into a washbag, threw a couple of t-shirts into my rucksack, along with my ground mat, my book, bike lights and a lock, a touch, my camera charger, my phone charger, sun-cream and some mossie spray. 

We didn't actually leave 'til Sunday, we'd booked a ferry from Mokpo to Jeju-Si at 9am on Monday morning, so that we could relax at home on Saturday and not have to set an alarm on the very first day of our holidays.  When we woke on Sunday, a little bit worse for wear it must be said, it was raining...exactly what we didn't want on the first leg of the cycle.  It is monsoon season so it wasn't a total surprise, just not a very welcome one.  Anyway due to us being some what tri na ceile as I've mentioned, it took us a bit longer than it should have to get out the door and by that stage the rain had stopped.  Silver lining.  The combination of the humidity, the wet roads, the hastily, over packed rucksack and the hangover made for a pretty awful cycle to the bus stop but get there we did and got on a bus, bikes and all, with an uncharacteristic lack of hassle.  The vacation had well and truly started at this stage!

Tortoise Stef, leaving the apartment the first morning, wondering if this really was such a good idea after all!

We arrived to Mokpo about 4 pm that day.  Which way to the port? Good question.  A question we posed to a group of waygooks (the Korean term used to describe foreigners) who walked passed and, as it turned out, lived in Mokpo.  'Oh its quite a ways away' was the helpful response.  We're on our bikes, we clearly intend to cycle it, the distance is irrelevant, just point us in the right bloody direction would you?!!  Despite the waygooks mad answer, we did get there.  We found a nice cheap motel beside the port, went in search of dinner and got a much needed early night. There were many, many more kilometers ahead of us!