BIG BRAAI and a memorable farewell

In March we had a 'party weekend' of note. Two of our good friends were leaving Sangju and had organised a farewell bash at Sangju's only, and barely-functioning, night club, and Jules and I organised a fundraiser-braai for the day.

We have found a supplier of SA Braai meat in Seoul - it is delicious, albeit it pricey, meat (boerewors and lamb chops) and everytime we invite friends to join us for a braai there are 'ooohs' and 'aaahs' about the meat. So we decided to capitalise on our good braai-reputation and arrange a braai to raise funds for a project my Mom runs at Hermannsburg. (See pic below).

It was pretty stressful to organise: for some reasons we've found it incredibly difficult to get people to commit to events: whether these are purely social, or in this case, a fundraiser. We had asked people to RSVP by 4 datys before so we could order the meat, but by the night before our RSVP list was still changing, rather stressful! This was also the first time either of us had 'single-handedly' organised an event with food where people would be paying - which of course makes it imperative that there is enough food, but since we were trying to raise funds, not too much food and not enough people to pay for and eat it. Fortunately it went really well, everyone had a good time and enjoyed the food, and we managed to raise around R800. Yey!

The group photo we took at our braai venue, under a bridge at the river, is rather amusing and indicative of our ignorance as foreigners in Korea: the sign behind us reads 'no cooking'. Our Korean friends only told us this as we were packing up.

Faux-pas of note! Haha!

No Cooking?!

Marize, Marg and I. Marize is South African and Marg Australian. Two lovely ladies I feel lucky to have met in Korea.

Inga from Umtata, Whee the master braaier, and Kelsey, whose farewell we were going to 'celebrate'.

The festivities then continued at 'Shampoo' the possibly dodgy night club in Sangju. Some of our friends interpreted the name of the club as a dress-up theme, and arrived in bath robes: classic! We also managed to pick up a new friend from the rubbish dump: Chuck The Commissioner: he is now a firm favourite on facebook and accompanies us on weekend outings.

Shampoo? And the ernest Mr. Barker.

The 'Dong-Crew' with our new friend, The Commissioner.

('Dong-Crew' = our friends who live in Dongducheon, north of Seoul.)

Merry Christmas in Korea

We had a wonderful Christmas weekend! Thanks to our dear parents we had lots and lots of gifts and treats! I managed to produce lots of lovely sweet & spicy Christmas biscuits, Gluehwein and Christmas mince pies.

Thanks to our friends in Korea for good times: the Christmas Eve dinner on Thursday night, walk on Geumosan on Saturday morning, delicious pa-jeon and makkeoli for Christmas lunch, Sherlock Holmes (movie) on Christmas afternoon, Suanbo & Weoraksan snow, Cockburn's Port, pheasant & makkeoli on Boxing Day and a dinner party and live music to finish it all off with a flourish!

Here's to a fabulous 2010!

Fly-by-night Sumo Trip to Japan

A few weeks ago we had the wonderful fortune of going along on a trip to Fukuoka in Japan. The main, and almost only, purpose of our trip was to watch the Sumo Wrestling Grand Tournament which was being held in Fukuoka. There are four grand tournaments a year, and only on in Fukuoka - the nearest Japanese city for us - so it was the perfect opportunity. We took a train down to Busan (3 hours) and then a 3-hour ferry across to Fukuoka.

The only part of this experience which was bad, was the awful mission we had to go through to get visas: we had to provide so much paprework, for a 2 day visit. What made it all the more annoying was that the Brits, Canadians and Americans whom we went with were visa-exempt - love it! (Wait 'til we got o China...:))

Anyway, we had a really fabulous time. We were a group of 8 and all got along like a house on fire, I was amazed at how a group of 8 interdependently-minded people could make travel decisions without too much struggle at all. Yey!
We also managed to fit in a delicious Japanese drinking-meal and a some late night capers in a Bourbon bar in downtown Fukuoka - where I was incredibly privileged to be given a Kimono as a gift - a 60-year old one at that, thanks Bourbon+Asian generosity :)

The next morning we managed to fit in a visit to the Robot Center and the beachfront before catching our ferry home.

Here are the pics I showed my students - they laughed SOO much at the sumo wrestlers, they loved it! I tried to emphasize the importance of respecting Sumo as an ancient part of Japanese culture and get them to look beyond the 'sexy panties' and big bellies and 'boobs' but that was lost on them :)

6 months in Korea

Many hats make a party!

We have reached our first major milestone in Korea!

We feel this is quite an achievement: our first few months in Korea were quite tough and there were quite a few instances where we wanted to throw in the towel...but here we are halfway through our 1 year contract and we're doing surprisingly well! So well, in fact, that we might just stay another year! This is of course not to say that we are absolutely ecstatic and feel like Korea is our new home (not at all in fact!) but life here has taken on a comfortable routine and we have got used to many of the bizarre aspects of life in Korea! We keep reminding ourselves that we are MILLIONAIRES every month anew... and that our jobs in Korea are opening up many opportunities to us that we would otherwise not have. Who else can say that they have actually eaten REAL Kimchi? Who else can say that they've been to a REAL noraebang? Who else can say that they have to change their shoes at school AND at the gym!

Anyway, the point is we are getting on just fine. The 'injection' of new foreign teachers into Sangju has also been fun...we had an AMAZING party to celebrate our 6 month anniversary with Korea last weekend. Our little apartmnet was full to the brim with people speaking English, eating, drinking and having a good time, it was quite something: the first real house party we've had in Sangju!

Our NET (Native English Teacher) numbers have more than doubled over the last two months. When Jules and I first arrived in this little city, we were only 7 public school native teachers in total. There were some other hagwon (academy) teachers around but we felt rather isolated, to say the least. Anyway, so in the last few weeks our numbers have increased to about 20! Yiipppeee! More friends, and more importantly, we can now start CHOOSING our frieds - and not just be friends by default, what a luxury (Do you realise how ridiculouc that is??)

Another plus of having all these new teachers around is that, as Jules puts it, we have now 'graduated' from being 'newbies' to being 'oldies': quite a pleasant feeling. We are now the ones dishing out advice and coming up with phrases like 'don't worry about x you'll get used to it' 'oh, really? that happened? oh well, that's Korea for you!'

So here are some pics of our highly successful "6 Months in Korea Hat Party"...some of you might recodnise them from facebook but here they are anyway. (We told our friends that hat parties are a South African tradition...it's ridiculous what lies one can get away with in the name of culture and cultural exchange :))

James and Barbara: our first ever friends in Sangju - very special people and without them we'd have felt even more lost and lonely

Jess and Nawaal: Nawaal is one of the new teachers. She's from Cape Town, yeyyy! Some more South Africans!! She's a sweeties and hass the cape accent down to a tee....'takes me home' everytime I hear it!

Devon, Jess and Kimberly. Devon's been here a month longer than us. She's from the US and we've had some good times with her. Kim's also from the US and is a newbie. The two of them have the real 'gift of the gab' (is it a gift???) and can talk the hindleg off many a donkey - they make me seem like a very quiet littel mouse!

Kelsey, Barbara and Jules. Kelsey is also new and can also talk (no surprsie then...she's also American)! She's quite a character: she studied fashion design but it was wearing her out (funny one!) so she's come to Korea...won't be long til the Koreans wear her out!!

Brad, Jules and Kelsey. (Told you she's a nutter!) anyway, Brad is an old faithful and has just finished his first contract. He's just gone home for his 2 weeks vacation and is coming back for more!

Jules and Devon...these two have that funny love-hate relationship...

The night would've not been complete without a visit to the noraebang (singing room). We traipsed off to 'World Cup' noraebang, one of our favourites in town - we are friendly with the son of the owner who turns out to be involved with the Korean mafia...and they have cool wigs and masks!
A great time was had by all...with loads of beer and loads of singing: on and off key!! I'll let the pictures speak for themselves...

Christmas Good Times

Here are a couple of photos of our celebrations at Christmas.
We had cheese and wine for Christmas Eve with a British friend Emily who's stopping over in Korea on her world backpacking tour.
On Christmas Day we had two of our teacher friends, Devon and Shirley. join us for a lovely roast lunch and home-made christmas hats!
A great time was had by all - as is customary on Christmas, we gorged ourselves on good food but it was so delicious and all in all we had a lovely relaxing day.

Season's Greetings to you all! Love Jess and Jules x

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In my new Christmas dressing gown - my treat to myself!