Good evening ladies and gentlemen, we join you here live from a small town in a rural South Korea to bring you this important update: The sun is back. Boy, has it been a long time coming. The winter was long! So long that both Nathanael and I have blogged about how it’s dragged and how we don’t think the spring will ever come. Alas, it’s here. I think. Another spout of snow would send me into a spiral of catatonic rage akin to the scene in ‘Leon’ when Gary Oldman’s character Stansfield cries out for “EVERYONE!” I can just see myself stamping my feet through the school corridor ripping pages out of English textbooks and crying “why oh why?” The snow has gone. The cold has lifted. For now at least the sun is back and things are warming up at a pretty steady rate. The trees aren’t fully blooming yet, but, give it a couple of weeks.
Instead of talking about what I have done I want to mention a few things that I will be doing in the coming weeks as I’m very excited about all of them. As a matter of fact once this week has up and packed its bags its pretty home free for at least 4 or 5 weeks of pure joy and bliss oh and still lessons but hey, you can’t have your cake and eat it, right?
Natalie arrives for her third trip to Korea on Saturday. I’m looking forward to having her around again. It’s nice to have something to come home to that isn’t just your own face in a mirror, a pot noodle and a laptop. Of course, now the sun is coming back and it’s starting to warm up there will be a whole lot more to do in the evenings so I mustn’t grumble. I’ve also been cooking a lot more, Nathanael taught me how to make pad Thai, I’ve cooked some egg and vegetable based dishes, getting used to the tofu, cooking some stir fries, I’m no Gordon Ramsey but I’ve been eating a lot healthier this past week.
The week after Natalie gets here my parents arrive, which is really exciting. I can’t wait to show them around and spend time with them. It’s been a long time coming and I’m sure they’re going to have a great time amongst the shock of the new culture. We are spending a weekend in Seoul, mainly sightseeing and then heading back to my town for a week, after that we’re heading off to the coast to check out Seoroksan which should be in blossom by then, I hope.
Directly after that Kieran and Naoko arrive for a week which we’ll mainly spend around town. Oh, the joy of having folk come to visit. On top of that there are lots of spring festivals to check out, I think Natalie and I are going to head down to the Jinhae Cherry blossom festival at some point and if we can’t make it there then hopefully we’ll catch the spring flower festival in Seoul. I’m happy that things are starting to happen again.
Even this weekend Nathanael and I managed to escape our apartments. We headed down to the fabled swing which hangs below a bridge at the edge of town with a mission to fix it up. The mission wasn’t entirely unsuccessful but it could have gone a little better. The main trouble was that the swing was hanging too close to the ground, so once we remedied that we thought we were home free, alas we were wrong. The distance in-between the two ropes was so wide that it was very hard to get a proper swing going. We eventually gave up and headed down the river and sat near a little waterfall for a while. We cooked some fish that evening and then everyone hung out in my room for St Patricks Day. Whatever that means.
So, I suppose you could say things are brightening up. Even at school things are running a little more smoothly now I’ve worked out when to plan my classes. 3rd Grade are still giving me headaches but I guess I’ll keep trying. I think bribery is the next trick. Other than that though every class runs really smoothly, and despite a few last minute cancellations the schedule is being stuck too. Makes a change. There was a joke on a teacher forum that was something along the lines of “once my co-teacher gave me 5 minutes notice and I didn’t know what to do with all the extra time.” Round about sums it up, huh?
I was attempting to write another cultural reflections blog yesterday but I didn’t finish it, so expect that soon. They’ll be plenty more to write about in the coming weeks I’m sure. I’m also planning a new video blog (involving dogs), which I might even film tonight if the sun stays out. No promises.
You never know what might happen.
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