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,

A Few Days in Osaka

Japan, or at least the small part of it that I was in, was very different to what I was expecting.  I'd been told from a friend that used to live there that it'd all seem very similar to Korea, and maybe because of that, I was astonished at the differences, which to me seemed infinite and everywhere.

DMZ: Demilitarized Zone or Domestic Money (Making) Zoo

Hyejeon College turned 30 on the 30th April, a while ago now I admit, and we all got a day off to celebrate.  The college held a ceremony, the students drank soju and Nick and I went to the DMZ!

We'd been meaning to go for ages.  It's one of those places you feel you need to see while you're in Korea and an unexpected mid-week day off seemed as good an opportunity as any to go and check it out.

Coming of Age

The number of 'National Days' in Korea for this, that and the other never ceases to amuse me.  They seem to start with Valentine's Day, a 'holiday' we're all used to.  Although here, it's a day for the boys unlike at home where it's predominately a day for the girls.

Next, comes 'White Day' which is the same as Valentine's Day only it's one month later and it's a day for the boys to be spoilt by their other halves.  Same date, another month on, is 'Black Day' which is, from what I can gather, a bit of a depressing day for singletons when they are supposed to eat black noodles to highlight their single status!

A Week Off to Procrastinate?

Last week at work was review week. A nice handy week, spent going back over things I'd already covered, answering questions from panicked students about the content and difficulty of the impending mid-term exam and then breezing out the door at lunch time on Thursday, not having to be back in until next Thursday, when they'll be sitting my exam.  I was expecting to be bribed with a tonne of presents from my students, in exchange for the promise of a good grade, but presents were disappointingly lacking.  All I got was an orange!

101 Things in 1001 Days

Writing a list of 101 things to do in 1001 days has become a bit of a trend it would seem.  It's the newer, cooler version of writing a bucket list, from what I can tell anyway.  Bucket lists can be great, but I think the main problem with them seems to be the endless time frame, or at least the perceived endless time frame, in which to complete the tasks on the list.  The trending 101 things in 1001 days is more restricted time wise and as such aims to help focus your time and energy a bit better in the hope that you will actually complete the list instead of stumbling on it in years to come and glancing at it wondering if you ever actually did any of the things you'd wanted to!

Anyway, I've written one, of sorts, and posted it here for you to see.  I'm going to keep it as updated as possible and hope to complete all the items on it at the end of the time frame.  That's the plan anyway....

Sick and Tired of the News

The daily post is a blog that runs a weekly photo challange that I've been meaning to get involved in for some time.  Whether the fact that they're wordpress born and bred and I'm on blogger is an issue or not, remains to be seen!  Anyway, this week the theme of the photo challenge is 'Colour' only they spelt it 'Color' but I won't hold that against them!

This week for me has been both colourful and colourless all in one go.  I've had a chest infection (green) and as a result I've had no voice for most of the week making my speech, and more noticeably my classes, colourless.  However, the frustration at not being about to communicate effectively has made my thoughts extremely colourful, in a way that was perhaps better left inside and unspoken, at least for the sake of my students!!

But, had I not been sick, and had I been able to be out and about, and if by some small miracle I'd been able to take photos of what I'd wanted, this week my entry to the Weekly Photo Challenge would've been of the vividly colourful, bolshy rhetoric being spouted by the man-of-the-moment up North, Mr Kim Jong-Un! 

Now that I think of it, that could be why I've been sick.  Sick of Kim Jong-Un and his bellicose nonsense but even more sick and tired of the world's media and their sensationalist portrayal of life on the Korea peninsula in a desperate attempt to sell more newspapers, with little or no regard for the truth.