So apparently I am really really terrible at this blogging thing. I tend to be better with the mass e-mails because I get family back home asking me where the next one is, but so few people read my blog, and most of them get the mass e-mails in any case so that the blog ends up being a little pointless. I need to find new things to put into the blog rather than just adding the mass e-mail stuff and expecting people to read it and find it interesting. Someone did give me an idea today though. I am making myself a Korean bucketlist.

A bucketlist, for those who do not know (though I am sure that all of you do and this is just another pointless ramble), is a list of things to do before you kick the bucket. My Korean bucketlist will be things that I intend to do before I leave Korea. Since I only intend to be here for a year, this list will have to be doable and not involve things like "visit every city" or "adopt a Korean baby". Also, since I do not intend to be a teacher for the rest of my life and, in fact, would rather avoid teaching ever again after this year, it will not involve things like "become a better teacher". So here it is, my Korean bucketlist in no specific order whatsoever:

1. Visit Jeju-do. I wanted to live there, for goodness sake. The least I can do is fork out a little cash and pay the island a visit.
2. Go to at least one city in every province. There are nine provinces. Thus far, I have visited five if you include my day trip into Daejeon. Visiting Jeju would count as another two in fact, because I would have to hop onto a ferry from a province that I have never visited to get to Jeju, which is another province in itself.
3. Have a conversation with a taxi-driver in Korean. I feel that if I learn this much Korean, my time here will have been a success. And no, telling a taxi-driver that I don't speak Korean in Korean does not count as a conversation.
4. Earn some money. I did not come to Korea to save. I came here for an adventure. But it would still be nice to put away some money at the end of that adventure for when I go home and find myself in need of cash. I haven't been doing too badly so far, but there are plans for trips in the future to Thailand, and plane tickets from South Africa for one specific visitor, that need to be paid for. After these expenses are paid, it would be nice to have a little cash in my pocket. Please?
5. Learn to play the guitar. Since I arrived in Korea, I have been doing things for other people. Tutorials for other people, taking trips because other people want me to, going out because other people insist that I get out of the house. Don't get me wrong, I like making other people happy. It brings me great amounts of joy. But I want to do one thing just for me, and that is learning to play the guitar. I started learning when I was back in South Africa, and I was thoroughly enjoying it, but I ended up not having enough time for it. Well, here I am. I have one year. I must learn to play like a pro, even if it means ruining my fingers forever (which looks to be the case so far.)
6. Write mass e-mails on a regular basis. It doesn't really matter if no one ever reads them. It just means that I am writing something on a regular basis. I might end up looking over those letters and stringing them together later to tell the story of my year abroad. Or I might end up never looking at them again. My point is just that I want to be a writer, and this requires me to write things. Often.
7. Write. This one goes a little bit beyond merely writing mass e-mails. Sure, those are handy and might come in useful later on in my life when I want to string them together to make a comprehensive view of my year here. But I also want to indulge in my creative side. This is why I intend to keep my second blog going while I am here. That way, I will have an outlet for my creative work as well as one for my adventures. I also intend to keep what I write in my blog different from the mass e-mails that I write. This blog is supposed to be for random rants and ravings whenever the need comes about. This is where I will write all my happenings. The mass e-mails will merely highlight the most important events and I intend them to be interesting, but far less so than the blog. I can't write a mass e-mail whenever something interesting comes up, after all, but I can certainly write a blog!
8. Make a Korean friend. And by this I don't mean a Korean-American or Korean-Australian or a Korean who has lived abroad for most, if not all, of his or her life. I mean a Korean. And by friend I don't mean one of my co-workers who I see on a daily basis but who only speak to me when they need something or when I need help with something or who invite me places out of a sense of pity or who I tutor on a weekly basis. By a friend I mean someone I call up to have a drink with after a rough week. Someone I go partying with or call over for a movie. I have yet to make one of these kinds of Korean friend, though I have many of the other kind (both Korean-American and -Australian and co-workers and tutlings, etc.)
9. Hike. There are so many beautiful trees and hills and mountains and they all have these lovely hiking paths that I am dying to go running up. But there is no way that I can. I am not even close to fit enough for running up mountains. But I can try to hike my way up. I want to start hiking on a more regular basis and I want to bring my camera along when I do and take tons of pictures that I can feel proud of.
10. Take pictures. Last year, I took a camera and started snapping. And some pretty cool pictures came out of it. I looked at them and thought to myself, "Wow. I can be a photographer if I put my mind to it." And then I had to give the camera back. And it made me sad. Now I have a camera of my own, albeit a mini-me one, and I am going to take advantage of it dammit! I am going to take pictures like there is no tomorrow! I am going to tape the thing to my hand if I have to, but I am going to take photos!
11. Go somewhere else in Asia. I mentioned earlier that I am hoping to take a trip to Thailand. That is going to cost some money. But I am excited about it nonetheless, because I am in Asia! HELLO!!!! When else am I going to have a chance to hop onto a plane for a minimal price and be in Thailand the same afternoon. Bangkok here I come! Phuket too I hope!
12. Find a Dr Fish. All the searching in Busan has gotten me very very excited about the prospect of having my feet nibbled on, and I don't think that I will feel complete if I leave without having the experience!

There are likely to be many many more things added to this bucket list over time, but I feel like I may need to add to it in sequence because not only am I getting overly excited about all the possibilities that lie before me while I'm in the staffroom, which I feel is really inappropriate, but my brain also happens to be turning to mush while I am trying to think of other things. And a mushy brain is no good in a classroom, which is where I have to be in 15 minutes. So more on the bucketlist later, perhaps when I actually write these things down. For now though, I bid you all (well, the four people who actually might read this thing) adieu!

When I was a little girl of about 10 years old, I went to Disneyland. It was a little girl's dream - filled with colour and parades and rides... and I didn't go on any of them. Sure, there were a couple like the teacups that suited my fancy, but when it came to the rollercoasters, I was terrified. I refused to go anywhere near them (and for good reason, since I have quite a vivid image of my very pale parents coming out of Space Mountain, and that in itself should have been enough to stop me.) And so, Disneyland was largely wasted on me. It was pretty and it was fun, but I didn't take advantage of it when I should have and I regret that now. See, a couple of years later I was forced onto the Cobra at Ratanga Junction (hardly a comparison to Disneyland, I know, but still...) and I found that I loved it! Since then I have become a giant fan of rollercoasters, and when I heard that there was a theme park just outside of Seoul, I knew that it would only be a matter of time before I would find myself there. And so, when I was invited to Everland last weekend, there was little hesitation.

Saturday dawned and my bags were packed and ready to go. We had decided that the best idea would be to spend a night in Seoul and catch a bus to the park early on Sunday morning to miss the queues. But before we could head through to Seoul, Patrick insisted that we go to see Iron Man 2 - he had apparently been waiting with baited breathe since the first one came out - and so, I met Patrick and Blake (another friend who was joining for the trip) at the movie theatre at 11:00 for an early lunch and a quick show. The movie was good, but it wasn't the reason for my waiting on the edge of my seat. I was dying for it to end so that the trip could finally start! It eventually did (after what seemed like an age) and we made our way to the bus terminal and booked ourselves some tickets on the earliest bus to Seoul. Of course, we forgot to check exactly where in Seoul we would be winding up, and ended up in a completely unfamiliar area. We walked around for awhile, trying to figure out where we were and how we would get to the park the next day, and after about an hour of scouring the bus schedules (all in Korean, and me being the only person there who could read Korean), we managed to figure out which bus we needed to be on the next morning. Once we had figured that out, we decided to try and find ourselves a place to stay for the night. The only trouble was that we had landed up in what seemed to be the only motel/hotel-free area in Seoul. We asked a passerby, who thankfully spoke a little bit of English, and were informed that there was nowhere to stay in a two mile radius. And so, we split up (agreeing on a time and place to meet later) and started searching for places based solely on the flashing neon signs that surrounded us. After about half an hour of walking the streets, Blake and I bumped back into each other and managed to discover a little motel on a sidestreet, with a bright red flashing sign overhead that screamed "CHEAP", which we hurriedly booked into. Having realised that three people would be staying in the room rather than two, the owner quickly brought us a variety of matresses and duvets to make up a bed on the floor, and once that was done and we had found Patrick, Blake and I headed to the English bookshop (a godsend that I had not been expecting filled with delights like Jose Saramago and Salman Rushdie, though I decided to skip buying these in favour of copies of Catcher in the Rye, To Kill A Mockingbird and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, all of which I had been dying to read but had never gotten a chance to.) Patrick decided to stay in the motel and take advantage of the giant bath. When we returned, it wasn't long before we were all fast asleep and dreaming of the rollercoasters of the next day (well I can't speak for the other two, but I certainly was.)

We all woke bright and early on Sunday morning, at 7:30, and made our way down to the bus stop. We all decided that we were going to need some food and hot drinks to get us through the bus trip, and so we made our way to the cafe just outside the stop. As we walked out of the cafe, we saw our bus driving away and started cursing our stomachs. So we ended up sitting at the bus stop for an extra half hour or so until another bus came along, and this one was full, so we ended up having to stand uncomfortably as the bus weaved its way along windy roads and through ridiculous traffic (all apparently headed to Everland), and after about an hour we had finally arrived, all grateful to place our feet on solid ground. We pushed through the people and, after buying tickets and going through a suspiciously simple security check (no metal detectors? No body searches? What the hell?!) we were through, into the park, and were confronted by a tree that looked like it had crept its way out of the Avatar set and covered itself in as many colourful flowers as it could find to disguise itself. The queues were already fairly crazy, and so we made our way to what we knew would be the longest one, realising that it would be even crazier later in the day. And so we came to the T-Express; the steepest wooden rollercoaster in the world, and certainly the steepest that I'd ever been on. Looking at it made my stomach churn, and yet somehow I found myself happily making my way through the queue to the front of the line, placing my bag in the cubicle, getting into the rollercoaster and strapping myself in. It was only after I had done all of this and the rollercoaster had started that I began to wonder what the hell I was doing. I asked Patrick (who was sitting next to me) over and over again why he had let me get on the ride? This was followed by choruses of muttering and swearing to kill him if I survived, which were shortlived because by this time we were at the top and about to head over the edge of the giant cliffhanger of doom. Two minutes later, with my hair ever so slightly dishevelled (it's to be expected when you are going at a sensory speed of 200 km/h), we all got off, looking slightly pale but all with the same question on our minds: Should we go again now or later?

This was the start of the day and was followed by another smaller rollercoaster, another ride on the T-Express, a water ride involving a raft, and an electric guitar ride that liked to throw all of us around (this was by far the scariest and gave a whole other meaning to the word headbanging for me, as we did somewhere around 10 loop-the-loops and were upside down for about 80% of the ride). Because it was the first decent weekend of the Spring, the park was packed and so these five rides took us all day. By the time we finished on the guitar ride, it was almost 6pm and Blake and I decided that we were over the queues and that it was time to head home. Patrick wanted to stay with his friend, Carene, who had joined us later in the day, but didn't want to bus back on his own, so he reluctantly joined us, but insisted that we not go back to Cheongju through Seoul. Instead he thought it would be quicker to go to a town on the outskirts of Seoul known as Suwon and from there to catch a bus to Cheongju and that way avoid the hustle and bustle of the city. And so we got onto a bus to Suwon (which took an hour and a half) only to find when we got there that there weren't any busses to Cheongju. So we decided to take the subway back to the bus terminal in Seoul in any case (taking us another hour and a half) and we arrived at the terminal only to be told that the earliest bus we could get tickets on was leaving at 23:05 (it was about 21:45 at this point, and we had been hoping to get tickets on the 22:00 bus, which would usually have been fine but a great deal of the Everlanders seemed to be from Cheongju.) And so we boarded a bus at 23:05 and arrived in Cheonju an hour an a half later, thoroughly worn out and unimpressed. From there, it was still a 15 minute taxi-ride to my house, and so I arrived back in the comfort of my own space a little before one in the morning - just in time to miss getting a full 6 hours sleep after I had showered, changed and tidied my room ever so slightly (involving taking things off the bed and finding places to put them so that I could in fact get some sleep.) And so, what should have been a 2.5 hour trip in mild traffic, 3 hours at the very most, ended up taking almost 7 hours.

And now I am back at work, having a typical Monday. Though the weather is beautiful (I am feeling hot in my long-sleeved shirt), my classes have been very difficult. The techniques and games that worked in all of my classes last week are refusing to work today, and I had not been told that I would be having my school photo taken today, and so was thoroughly unprepared in the clothes that I grabbed off the line this morning because I was too tired to find anything else. I am, however, extremely grateful to note that it's almost over - I only have one class left - and I will be able to sleep soon enough. Plus, Wednesday is a public holiday in South Korea - while you will all be celebrating Mother's Day on Sunday, the Koreans will be celebrating Children's Day on Wednesday. I quite like this tradition. Not only does it mean that the kids get appreciated once in awhile, but it also means I get the day off school! Hooray! I have already been invited to a hike up to the fortress that surrounds Cheongju on Wednesday, so you can be expecting some pretty pictures soon enough. For now, I must stop daydreaming about the holiday to come and get back to reality where I am faced with a lesson to teach in half an hour.