I want a puppy. And a kitten. And a hamster and a bunny and a turtle and a hedgehog and a brightly coloured fish and a baby otter. But mostly a puppy and a kitten. And going to the pet store to look at them doesn't really satisfy my need for them. In fact, going to the pet stores only makes it worse.

I met up with Kate after school today. The intention was just to meet up for dinner, which we did (Kraze Burger ftw!) But then Kate mentioned that she wanted to go and find some dog food so that she will be prepared for her new little housemate when it arrives on Sunday. How could I say no to the prospect of fluffy creatures? I must learn how to.

Three hours later and I walked away from the last pet shop on the stretch of pet shops in Cheongju, vowing that I was going to convince Grant to adopt a white kitten (so that it could grow up to cuddle with Puddims and look cuter than anything on earth), convince Mom to adopt a grey Persian as well as a bulldog (who looked just like Baggins, but whose head was too big for his little legs, so he kept toppling over his feet) and convince myself that keeping a pet in Korea could be a genius idea. Not that I need much convincing. I know that it's a bad idea, terrible in fact, but the cute factor is always going to win out for me, and having kittens playing with my hands and puppies vying for my attention (and seeing hamsters run around in circles on the wheel and watching videos of baby otters... you get the idea) eats away at my determination.

I have made a decision though, and it is one that I do intend to stick to - if a puppy or kitten follows me home (and by follows me home, I mean follows me for more than two blocks), then it is mine and I am taking it and keeping it forever and ever! BWAHAHAHAHAHA! But in all seriousness - if I find a stray, I will take it as some sort of sign and take it in. But I am not going to go out of my way to find myself a pet, at least not while I am here.

Mud. Even the word sounds dirty. I hear the word and another sound instantly pops into my head - the squelch that it makes when my feet sink into it. It makes me cringe to think about it. So why in God's name was I sitting on a bus on Saturday morning preparing to go and play in it?

We arrived at the mud beach around 11am on Saturday and I made my way down the steps, carefully avoiding the pools of mud that lined them. The irony of this was not lost on me. I made my way to the bottom and carefully took my first few steps on the mud. The goo engulfed my feet and spread between my toes no matter how softly I stepped. I made my way to my group of friends to be greeted with muddy hugs and flinging piles of the stuff. By the time the five kilometer marathon started, I was fairly dirty; by the end of it, I was filthy; and by the time we left the beach, I was unrecognisable - I was covered from head to toe, my hair was at least three times its normal size filled with mud. If I had thought about it for long enough, this might have bothered me. It didn't.

From the mud beach, we made our way to the actual event - Mud festival 2010 at Boryeong beach. We arrived at the apartment that six of us would be sharing (five girls and Mahir) and dumped our stuff before heading out to find some food and hit the beach. A few kebabs, two bottles of soju and a good number of beers later, we found our recently cleaned selves getting covered in mud once more. This mud was not the same - it was not the brown oozey gooey kind of mud, but a grey watery equivalent that wasn't nearly as fun. There were mud slides, mud obstacle courses, mud wrestling and a mud prison, coloured mud, mud massages and gifts made from mud. Mud was all around. I took part in the obstacle course, coming last and gaining a few plastic burns in the process, and the mud prison where I got completely covered in the icky grey stuff (the man throwing it took offense to my look down and so made sure to get a whole lot in my face, which meant that I was spitting up mud for a good long while.) When we were tired of being filthy, we made our way down to the beach and cleaned ourselves up in the sea, entertaining ourselves with volleyball games and launching people into the air. I made a new Korean friend, Shin Ji I believe her name was, who decided that I was the bee's knees and clung to me, hugging me around the waste and leading me by the hand on occasion and shouting "LALA" when she found me when she thought I had been lost forever to the crowds of people covering the sand. And no, she was not a child, but a fully-grown, rather beautiful, Korean woman who was prancing around in her underwear. I feel that she was very drunk. The night was spent eating Sangyeopsal, drinking, listening to a rather terrible DJ, watching Eric entertain the Koreans with his neon-glowing poi-stick-things, drinking some more and relaxing on the beach.

The next day, I was determined not to get sunburned, and the sun was determined to thwart my plan. It was boiling hot and the mud was not enough to save me this time around. I covered myself in sunscreen, but alas, that did not work either. Though I did indulge in the activities and muddy myself up, I quickly decided that I would far rather be clean and washed myself off in the sea before heading to the shade where Geri was patiently waiting for all of us, watching from a distance to avoid the sun. This is where I stayed for the rest of the afternoon, excluding a trip to the bus to pick up my book so that I would have something to do.

For all my worrying about getting dirty, the weekend ended up being more fun than I had anticipated. I got muddy, I partied, I relaxed. A fairly balanced weekend in my opinion, and one that I would definitely want to do again if I were to stay for another year.

I first heard about Dr Fish two months ago on my first trip to Busan with some friends of mine. We had made our way to the coast to celebrate the three day weekend thanks to the celebration of Buddha's birthday. It was the first real summer weekend, and we were all looking forward to some quality tanning time. We arrived on the Friday afternoon and spent a couple of hours on the beach. I even braved the icy water before heading back to the group and warming back up on the sand. It was a glorious day. It was the only one. That night it started to rain, and it didn't stop all weekend. This put a serious damper on our plans to hike up to the temple. What were we going to do?

Kathryn mentioned it. She had read something about it in a blog on Busan and thought that it sounded interesting. I happened to agree. Having the dead skin cells of your feet sucked off by fish. It's not really something that you do every day. It's a story. An adventure. Something to write home about. But alas, the others were not quite as keen, and though Kathryn and I did keep an eye out for it on our minimal travellings, we were at a loss. We left Busan that Sunday with a day of sunshine and a night of partying under our belts and bags pull of soggy clothing on our bags.

This weekend I returned to Busan, and one of the first things that popped into my head when Zach asked me what I wanted to do was that I wanted to find Dr Fish. It turned out that Zach had also heard about this phenomenon and was equally intrigued. And so we did some research on Saturday morning (after a night of good food and slight tipsiness) and found out that there were two Dr Fish's in the area - one near the Kyungsung University subway station and the other near the Seomyeon subway station. Being closer to the Seomyeon station, we made our way there first.

"It's around the Judies Taehwa, I think on the same street as the burger king and the arcade with the lights in the sidewalk. It's on the third floor of the building, but I think they keep a sign on street level."

These were the directions that we found to the Dr Fish in Seomyeon. It sounded simple enough. Find the Burger King, and we would be set! We found the Burger King subway exit, and felt like we were really getting somewhere. We got onto the street and looked around us, expecting it to be right there. It wasn't. We walked around for a good ten minutes before actually finding the Judies Taehwa (skillfully spotted down an alley by myself) and quickly found the Burger King and arcade after that. But alas, no Dr Fish sign could be found. We looked at the third floors of the buildings all around us, looked at eye-level for a sign, walked around the block because maybe it was in a building nearby and eventually gave in to asking for directions. But alas, there was no Dr Fish in Seomyeon, at least as far as any of the people that we asked were concerned. We weren't deterred though. So the one in Seomyeon had probably closed. There was still another that we could go to.

"It's part of a new cafe replacing a Chinese fusion place, 2nd floor above NongHyup Bank, right across from Spark and Kyungsung entrance...called Dr. Fishfeet or something along those lines."

The directions to the second Dr Fish sounded far more promising, and so we headed slightly off the beaten path to Kyungsung to try again. We spotted the NongHyup on the map without too much trouble and headed towards the correct subway exit, filled with hope, our feet tingling for some fishy nibbles (well, I can't speak for Zach's feet. Only my own.) But alas once more! On arriving at the NongHyup and looking towards the second floor, we discovered that the Chinese fusion restaurant had been replaced by an Italian one. No Dr Fish for us.

With all hope gone, there was a sense of disappointment lingering in the air. No Dr Fish. No relaxing foot therapy. Sadness. But instead of wallowing in our sadness, we decided to check out the famous Jagalchi Fish Market - we were in a fishy mood after all! And so we made our way to Jagalchi and walked along streets filled with every kind of fish imaginable, and even some that aren't. My favourites were probably the orange, whiskered fish with the brilliant green and blue fins.

The rest of the day was spent wandering around Busan and visiting Chinatown and Haeyundai. While both were good fun, I think it was the fishy part of the weekend that I enjoyed the most. Here are some fishy photos so that you too can indulge in the fishiness of Busan in a small way.

A whole semester has passed me by!

I am sitting in my office and it is a-buzz with commotion. Teachers are hurriedly packing up desks, shredding important documents, throwing old lesson materials into the paper bin. Boxes are stacked with belongings as each teacher prepares to be relocated, myself included. Rubbish-filled bags, divided into paper and plastic, are crowding the corridors. The students are finishing their cleaning, helping to close up boxes, asking last minute questions. There is a sense of desperation behind their every movement. They are dying to finish, dying to go. And so am I.

School is over, and for the next month I will have the luxury of waltzing into school somewhere around 2pm to teach my classes before leaving promptly at 4. There will be a week of summer school where I will have to leave at 5:30 (the horror!) but I am sure that I shall survive.

It's hard to believe that it has been a full semester since I arrived in, what was then, a freezing Korea. Thankfully, since I was mostly teaching the first graders, most of my students were as new to the school as I was. It was a fresh start for all of us. But, as the students have grown confident and comfortable within their school surroundings, so have I. Hey, they still have a helluva advantage - they are able to speak Korean, connect with the other students around them, tell someone when they are having a problem - but I still think that I have settled into this school as well as can be expected.

Someone was telling me yesterday about how it is common in Korea for co-teachers to resent their Native English speaking counterparts. I looked at her as though as was crazy.
"Why on earth would they resent us?"
"We are coming here and taking their jobs away from them!"
This made some sense to me, I suppose. After all the xenophobic attacks two years ago in South Africa, I can kind of understand where they would be coming from - here we are, young and naive, coming to their country and taking their jobs, earning more and, in some cases, even doing less work. After all, the Korean teachers have to work every second Saturday, have to plan exams and test and worksheets, do not take sick days and do not get vacation.
But then I thought about my school.

If I was not working here, there would be no other teacher taking my place. Each teacher at my school has a very specific role, the English teachers especially. Jinny teaches the low-level first grade students, the teacher that the kids have nicknamed Avatar (and whose real name escapes me) teaches the mid-levels, and Sunny (who also likes to be called Cindy depending on the mood that she is in) only teaches high-level first graders. If I was not here, this would not change. A new teacher would not take my place. Though they have to accompany me to classes, and I can see how that would be kind of annoying, I am essentially relieving them of part of their responsibility. It is the same with my second grade teachers, though I feel that they really should hire a third permanent teacher for the second grade. I don't think that my presence here is what is stopping them, however.

I might not work every second Saturday, but I have more classes than my fellow co-teachers during the week. The first time that my co-teachers looked at my timetable, each one of them tutted about how busy I was going to be and how crazy it was to expect me to work so much. 22 hours of teaching?! Unheard of! On the other hand, their free time is spent hard at work, while mine is spent frantically trying to get as much relaxing in as I possibly can.

I certainly don't think that my co-teachers resent me! I have always been treated as a part of the staff. I am awarded the same heart-felt, friendly greetings when I walk into the staff room, they show sincere concern for my well-being when I am sick and interest in my everyday life. Every one of them is excited to meet Grant when he comes to visit. Some ridiculously so. And I have become very used to the staff at my school. I feel like a part of something here, even if I do occasionally feel useless. But resentment? If I am resented, they sure are good at hiding it!

Technology in South Korea is an amazing and awesome thing. The internet is blisteringly fast and I could download a movie (though of course, as the upstanding citizen that I am, I would never do that) in about five minutes flat, depending, of course, on how recent the movie is and how many people have it. Plus it is uncapped, which means endless hours of skyping, facebooking, etc. without ever worrying about running out of my cap. I am sure that my future employers will curse the Koreans when I try to do this back home and end up capping myself within a day or two. Well, perhaps my employers won't mind too much, since it would be me paying for the extra gigs that I would need to get my work done.

Then there are the cellphones with their awesome capabilities - the standard MP3 players and cameras of course, very cheap messaging, calling and even video calling, cheap wireless internet and, in some cases, being able to watch TV from your phone. Mine is just a dead standard crappy cellphone of course - pretty, but without the extra features. My students on the other hand, have the top of the range cellphones. And this is where I start to hate the awesomeness that is convenient technology. It can be used anywhere, anytime. Including during my classes.

I just came out of a class where a girl had been sitting at the back for a good ten minutes watching TV on her cellphone. I couldn't see what it was that she was watching, but I could see the moving screen that she tried to hide when she realised, a little too late, that I was approaching her desk. I held out my hand for the device, but she didn't hand it over.
"No," she said defiantly.
"I saw it."
"You didn't see anything."
"Give it to me."
"No."
This kind of attitude does nothing but infuriate me. I caught you red-handed using your cellphone in class, which you know you aren't allowed to do. If you hand it over to me, you don't get into any trouble, because I am not allowed to give you detention or discipline you in any way. If you cause a scene, my co-teacher will notice and you will be in a lot more trouble than you are with me. So why fight it? You know you are in the wrong. Give it over. No. Eventually Cindy noticed and confiscated the offending device. I received glares from the girl for the rest of the class, which I merely shrugged off as bitterness for being caught. If you are going to do something that is against the rules, at least have the decency to hide it properly.

TV-watching via cellphones isn't my pet-peeve with technology in Korea though. No, no. That would be TV-watching via GPS, the favourite pastime of most of my taxi-drivers. 8 out of 10 taxis that you climb into will have a GPS fastened to the dashboard, a useful device when used properly. But 8 of 10 of those GPS devices will be tuned into some TV or other - be it sport, comedy or drama. It would seem that, though it is illegal to talk on a cellphone while driving here, it is not illegal to watch TV while driving, an activity that I would have thought to be far more dangerous, especially since most of the taxi-drivers I have had are terrible drivers - cutting into lanes without any warning and without looking where they are going, running through red lights, making the way to the front of long queues and cutting in right into the front of the queue. Then again, all of this is done without any protest from other drivers, so perhaps it is expected. And watching TV probably is illegal, but they do it anyway. It's not like the cellphone law really stops them from doing that either.

Technology here has its pros and cons, and I tend to ignore the cons when the technology is benefitting me in some way or another. I am sure that if I had a cellphone that picked up TV broadcasts, I would be taking full advantage of it, and I am sure that if I were a taxi driver, I would want something in the car to make the endless driving a little less boring. But I don't and I'm not. So instead I will indulge in the pros of the technologies that do benefit me and complain about the cons of those that don't.

I have always seen myself as a bit of an undiscovered singer. I have been told a couple of times that my voice isn't bad and that I should try out for shows like Idols. Which I did once, only to be turned down in the first wave of contestants, the ones who don't even make it to the judges. A humilation that I try to forget, and that not many people know about. But despite my embarrassing thumbs down from the Idols people, I still like to sing. A lot. When I used to drive the ten hour road trips between Cape Town and Grahamstown alone, I would always have music blaring and I would be belting along with it, dancing in my seat and singing my heart out. Whenever there is a karaoke evening, I am always there, singing at least one song. And now that I am in Korea, I have discovered the joy that is the noribang or singing room.

For 21,000 won (or there abouts, depending on the place) split between however many people are taking part, you can rent yourself a room for an hour equipped with a very big TV, two microphones, luxurious couches, a karaoke machine and controller and an assortment of disco/rave/dancing lights (again, this will depend on the place that you choose as they all differ in terms of what they have to offer.) You and your friends can then have your own private karaoke party, belting out anything from the list that your particular noribang has to offer and making fools out of yourselves. Or, in my case, indulging your desire to be the rockstar you know you were meant to be.

I have been to noribangs a couple of times in the four months that I have been to, and I have always had a good time, but I don't think any were as good as last night's session with Dawn and Shaina. Crooning along to Killing me softly, I will always love you and If I were a boy; putting on our own performance of Bohemian Rhapsody, bouncing along to Grace Kelly, screaming at the top of my lungs for Song 2 and moving my hips to Maria Maria were among the most memorable moments of the night. But what makes it so fantastic is that we were all joining in. None of us cared that we were acting like idiots, making fools of ourselves, most likely losing our voices in the process. All that we cared about was that we were all having a great time, and that's what really mattered. We left the noribang somewhere around 1:30am, and I was exhausted. But despite that, I couldn't stop the thought running through my mind that I could have stayed up for another hour singing along to the other tunes on the list and making a mental note of ones that I will have to do the next time around.

So, as teenage-girly as it is, I am a fan of Twilight. I am not a crazed fan who goes nuts over the show, but I like it. I find it entertaining to watch Jacob with his shirt off, there is not denying that, and I have read all of the books and found them to be entertaining as well. They aren't particularly well written and they aren't award winning stuff, but they are definitely riveting enough. Stephanie Meyer does know how to keep a reader, and the directors of the movie do know how to keep an audience.

Anywho, tonight was the release of the Eclipse movie in South Korea. And so, in celebration of this event, some friends of mine decided to get together and celebrate. To start, Shaina and I got together and made t-shirts. There were supposed to be more of us involved in this, but most of the friends who were coming work in hagwons, and didn't get off work until 7:30 or 8:30 at night. And so, the two of us got some paint and painted some white t-shirts. Here is mine:



After the shirt painting, we all met up for a nice meal at Kraze burger and had a good time chatting and catching up before heading to the movie. Which was fun. The main point of this blog is actually the shirt. See above. How awesome am I? Yeah. That awesome.

This past weekend was another travelling one and this time I travelled to Gwangju, a city in the southern province of Jellonam. I had never been to Jeollonam before, and I wasn't sure when I would be coming again since there isn't a hub of activity there like Seoul or Busan, so I wanted to try and stay awake for the two hour and forty minute journey. I settled myself into my seat on the bus, made myself comfortable, stuck my earphones in and started looking around me as the bus left the terminal. But I quickly discovered that staying awake on a busride is a lot more difficult than I had anticipated. The music playing in my ears relaxed me too much and I found myself dozing. I tried to read instead, but the rhythm of the moving bus started rocking me to sleep. Eventually I gave in and snoozed my way through to Gwangju, not noticing too much on the way. It wasn't a sleep so much as it was me being zoned out and just not taking note of the things that were passing me by. And so I arrived in Gwangju feeling slightly rested, though not nearly rested enough, and ready to explore.

On arrival I met up with my friend, Zach, and after a quick late lunch of KFC, we made our way by taxi to the centre of town to find ourselves a room in the Windmill Motel. For 40,000 won (shared between two of us) we were given a room with a queen sized bed, a big screen TV, a computer and blissfully a bath! We chilled in the room for a bit, air conditioner blaring, watching some TV and chatting, and after awhile I decided that a relaxing bath was in order before we headed out into the city. By six o'clock we were ready to do some exploring (or I was, since Zach had been there before). And so we made our way to downtown Gwangju, a short walk from our hotel, which turned out to be a lot like downtown Cheongju - a lot of the same shops and stalls - but bigger. Both of us were still full from our late lunch, so instead of heading out to find food we walked along Gwangju's art street, filled with shops selling handmade jewellery, furniture, fans, artworks and such things before heading to the Ethnic Bar, a popular hangout downtown where people could smoke hubbly and where the thus far elusive fruit soju could be found.

As Amy pointed out when I told her the name of the place, anywhere else in the world calling a bar "The Ethnic Bar" would probably be seen as inappropriate. Not so much Korea. We made our way down a candle-lit and flower-lined staircase and into the basement of the building. In the middle of the room was a pool of water filled with a number of small fountains and surrounded by cushions, low tables and more candles. A low hanging chandelier hung from the ceiling over the middle of the pool. On the sides of the room were coves filled with more cushions and low tables, closed off by sheer curtains of various colours and at the back of the room were little staircases that led to more tables and cushions at different levels and more sheer curtains. It looked like something out of the Arabian nights. Zach and I found a table at the back of the room and ordered a jug of pineapple fruit soju. It was my first time trying the drink, and I immediately fell in love with it. Delicious but dangerous, fruit soju is a mixture of pure fruit, ice and soju blended together to make a wonderful concoction that tastes nothing like alcohol (thus why it is so dangerous). It is also dirt cheap, a jug that can easily be shared between two costing only 8,000 won or around R45. After polishing off one jug, the two of us decided that we were hungry and made our way back out into the city in search of The First Nepal, an Indian restaurant that came highly recommended from Zach. We arrived at the restaurant, not getting too lost in the process, and I took one look at the menu only to realise that I had seen it before. It turns out that the owner of First Nepal has one other Indian restaurant in South Korea, and I am certain that it is called Hungry Eyes in Cheongju. Their menus are identical from the story in the front to the spelling errors scattered throughout. It was also equally delicious. After a dinner of Chicken Saag, basmati rice (a luxury compared to the rice that I am forced to eat everyday at school - and when I say forced I mean that my Principal looked at the amount that I had taken and shouted at me telling me that I had to take more), vegetable raiita and garlic naan, we headed back to the Ethnic Bar where we met up with more people and spent the night relaxing with more fruit soju (strawberry and apple this time).

I woke up fairly early the next morning after a terrible sleep thanks to the ridiculously uncomfortable bed. Koreans don't believe in soft mattresses and all of them, including the one in my apartment, are hard as rocks. I have just gotten used to mine. In any case, waking up early meant that I could relax a bit more in the room, watching some Star-craft TV, before heading back out into the busy (for a Sunday morning anyway) city. For those who do not know what Star-craft is, it is a computer game that most teenage boys are obsessed with. But Koreans go completely overboard. They have contests with spectators watching the action on a projected screen behind the players. And these contests are televised. There is a whole channel dedicated to it. Though I do not find it entertaining to watch, it was the first time I had heard about the channel and was utterly fascinated by the enthusiasm with which it was broadcast. In any case, I watched the channel for a short while before heading back into the real world for a good English breakfast at a restaurant downtown, followed by a cup of tea at a place known as the "Pet Cafe".

I had heard of the Pet Cafe before, but hadn't known quite what to expect. We arrived at the cafe, and I was warned that I would have to run into the room very quickly as the door shouldn't be kept open too long. I walked in and was pounced on by multitudes of multi-coloured dogs! When I say multi-coloured, I mean multi-coloured. Purple ears, orange paws, blue spots on their backs in the shape of paws. Though this might sound a bit cruel, and it certainly did to me, I was assured that none of the dyes are toxic in the slightest, and all of the dogs seemed in tip-top shape. There were Poodles and Chau-Chau's; Spaniels and Scotties. Any and every kind of dog you could imagine. There were also cats and kittens, both Persian and Siamese, all rescued and all seemingly happy to call this cafe their home. Unfortunately we couldn't play with the puppies and kittens since they were being kept separate from the other animals to prevent diseases. To visit the cafe you had to buy something, and the R35 that they charged for a cup of tea went towards looking after the animals that were kept there. And so we spent an hour being adorned by cats and dogs while sipping on cups of iced-tea. Here are some pictures.







After we were finished at the Pet Cafe, we returned to the art street only to find that everything was closed. We walked around for a short while before I decided it was time to head back to the bus terminal. We hung around the book shop there while waiting for my bus to arrive, and I couldn't resist buying another book for myself even though I have so much to read at the moment. Finally my bus arrived and after a quick goodbye, I boarded it for another two hour and forty minute ride back to Cheongju.

Thus ended my Gwangju adventure. I am determined to go back soon and see more of what the city has to hold, so perhaps you will be hearing about another Gwangju adventure sometime soon. However, the next adventure you can expect to hear about will be the return to Busan in two weeks time. In the meantime, you will just have to live with reading the blogs about my uber-exciting everyday life in Cheongju!

There are certain aspects about Korea that I love. I love the independence and the freedom that I have here - to do what I want when I want without worrying about what other people will think about it. I love the Korean kids - there are no cuter babies anywhere in the world, I swear it! I love being able to climb into a taxi and be taken anywhere in the city for under R60, as long as I know how to say the place's name. I especially love being able to hop on a bus whenever I feel like it (taking work into consideration of course) and getting to anywhere in the country within 4 hours.

I have been here for four months now and have done a fair amount of travelling. The odd trips to places like Wonju, Chuncheon and Daejeon, the longer trip to Busan, the regular trips to Seoul - all of them have combined so that I have ended up spending more weekends away from Cheongju than I have spent in the city itself. And it is so easy to get there! Just go to the bus terminal, announce the place, the number of tickets (usually "hana" unless I am travelling with someone else, in which case it's "dugae") and then hand over some notes (it will never cost more than 20,000 won or R130 unless you are taking the express train, which I have yet to experience.) Then you will be given a ticket for a train which is usually leaving within the next 20 minutes unless it is an irregular bus, in which case you can expect to wait about an hour. Everything can be done very last minute and impulsively without too much hassle. And then you find yourself in a comfortable reclining seat, listening to music and reading books (or whatever it is that you do on busses) for the hour or four that you are on the bus, and before you know it there you are. Another city, ever so slightly familiar because of the dreary apartment buildings that scatter each city but at the same time completely different. A new place to explore, a new adventure!

Of course, this is usually the way that it works out. A generalisation if I may. If, however, you want to go from Cheongju to Gwangju, as was my plan this weekend, it is painful.

"What time do you want to go to the bus station?"
It was Tuesday afternoon and I was chatting away to Patrick, who was supposed to be coming with me to Gwangju for a date and was getting impatient about mapping out the details.
"Well, I am meeting my friend at 4, and it is a three hour trip, so around 1?"
"But that means you waste the whole day!"
It was something I had thought about myself, but nothing that I could help.
"But thats the time we are meeting."
"Can't we go there earlier?"
I had seen this coming. Of course Patrick wouldn't be happy going so late, and I wasn't too happy myself, but it was the plan that I had made. Patrick wasn't easily qualmed though. He liked to get his own way.
"And sit around for hours in the bus terminal doing nothing because I don't know where I am going in the city? No thanks."
"12?"
"No."
"But what if there isn't a bus at 1?"
I hadn't considered this, but it didn't concern me too much.
"There will be."
"But what about Busan? There weren't too many busses to Busan!"
Another thought that hadn't occurred to me. I didn't think about it too long though. It had been a busy weekend. Sure there were lots of busses to Busan! Why wouldn't there be? Busan is a big city, after all!
"There were lots of busses," I rebutted confidently. "They were just all booked up."
"Okay, well fine."
He had given in to my logic, but doubts had started to develop in my own mind.

By Thursday, the doubts were overwhelming, and I decided to take initiative. With the help of my friend, I found a website for the Cheongju bus terminal and, though it was all in Korean, started searching for busses to Gwangju, just so that I would know the timetable and be able to arrive in good time to book myself a ticket on the bus. I rifled through the Korean words until I found 광주 and instantly started feeling proud of myself. My Korean skills had come in handy! I clicked it and a bus timetable came up with all of the details about the trip. But something wasn't quite right. 92kms, it said. And it also said it would take just over an hour, when I had been told it would be three. I looked closer at the name and saw, in brackets, that this was 광주 (경기), a city called Gwangju which was in another province altogether. I was looking for 광주 (절로남). I laughed off the mistake and started scouring the list again for the right Gwangju. After half an hour of searching, I was still at a loss. I had been up and down the list, and there was no bus to Gwangju in Jeollonam, only to the one in Gyeonggi. I started panicking slightly, but then remembered that I was going to dinner with my co-teacher that night. She would know what to do. She would sort things out.

In the car on the way to dinner, I slipped it into the conversation. Jungyomin quickly offered to drive me there herself, and when I insisted that it was completely unnecessary, she promised to help me out with trying to find the busses timetable. After dinner she came back to my (rather messy) apartment, sat at my laptop and started searching. She came up with nothing. She tried to phone the terminal, but there was no answer. She phoned her sister, her brother in law, her own brother, but to no avail. No one knew when there would be a bus to Gwangju, if there was one at all. This was when I really started to stress. I didn't want to arrive at the bus terminal on Saturday only to find out that there was no way to get from Cheongju to Gwangju, and I wasn't prepared to make transfers at bus terminals in cities that I didn't know. I decided to go down to the bus terminal myself after school on Friday and sort everything out so that I would know what was happening when it came to leaving on Saturday. Jongyumin was kind enough to offer to drive me.

We arrived at the bus terminal around 6pm on Friday evening and made our way up to the front desk. Jongyumin spoke to the woman in Korean, and I could catch little words of their conversation. Little words like "opseyo", or "there isn't". I could feel myself starting to panic again, but I didn't let myself. Instead, I asked Jongyumin if we could go to the express bus terminal nearby, which she agreed to. On getting there, Jongyumin spoke to the woman behind the counter, and this time was successful.
"What time do you want to go?" she asked with a smile.
I almost jumped for joy at having managed to organise a bus! That desire has never come over me before.

Jongyumin insisted on paying for the ticket and wouldn't budge. On arriving at my apartment, I also discovered another 20,000 won that she had sneaked into my bag to pay for the ticket back, knowing that I wouldn't take it otherwise. The trip to Gwangju ended up being a lot of fun, and I am glad that I went, but my God was it a mission to organise getting there. At least I will know for next time.

There are certain aspects about Korea that I love. But there are also aspects of Korea that I hate. I hate not being able to go to restaurants that surround my building because I have no idea what they sell. I hate not being able to communicate with Koreans on any meaningful level. I hate coming back to an empty, rather messy apartment. But most of all, I hate that small things that should be simple become difficult. Small things like buying panado, going to the doctor and booking a bus ticket. But then again, maybe I just got too comfortable with the simplicity that buying bus tickets here awarded me. Sometimes it is good to struggle. It makes you appreciate when things are easier.