Buddha's Birthday Bash

Time for the Fat Man's birthday.....long weekend time. WOOHOO

The Plan...head up to Chuncheon Thursday night...party...off to stay in a cabin Friday and Saturday in Inje, Gangwon-do.....party. Sunday...feel terrible and revel in weekend antics.

Love this time if year. The weather is turning pretty hot and all you wanna do is go outside. So where better to go than the countryside......This is Min's Cabin. The owner is the closest thing to a hippy a Korean can be. He's awesome and his job is basically to entertain people who come and stay. This includes white water rafting, drinking, cooking bbqs, drinking, table tennis, drinking, horse shoes, drinking.....you get the picture. Our first day he was awake for about 30 hours. Legend

Set in the mountains of Inje, the cabin is a really cool retreat from inner city struggles. We had a cool little room that could probably have slept 8. I use sleep in a lose term as it's traditional floor sleeping. Not my cup of tea. But we drank enough to get over that. 

We start the night in Chutown as pirates..cause pirates are cool. We maybe stayed out longer than planned....I blame Jenn

Start the night as pirates....of course

Hungover, (and in Adnan's case looking like the proverbial hipster) but full of a pretty good brunch we make our way.

Braces...like a sir

It was pretty busy and we had to sit in the middle of the bus. Not sure this is legal in England....but Korea....no worries. (turned out we'd be doing a lot of improved seating in public transport that weekend)
T was in a pretty bad way....hehehe
But the sun was shining and we were finally on our way....

Not very happy

The bus to Inje wasn't much fun....I've never been more tempted to fart on someones head. 

 The weekend is spent chilling during the day...enjoying the surroundings. Streams, rivers, horse shoes, frisbee and sun bathing, card games and an interesting and competitive game of scatagories.
Another group of foreign teachers came with Andrei so there were about 20 people or so causing shenanigans.

The evenings were spent eating bbq and drinking games til the very early hours. Min runs on an honour system and everyone really just helps themselves and crazy cocktail concoctions. Min's awesome!!

Good times

Jenn came out with some crackin remarks this weekend...."i've had this birthmark
since I was born"

Safety First

It's Sunday and I'm hungover and I've just re read this post.

It's written so badly that I'm gonna stop now and just leave it as is......enjoy

Meeting new people
Being a pirate
Playing beer pong

"I drank all this????"

The worst journey home of my life.

It took 8 hours to get home.....we were uber tired. But an awesome weekend was had by all.

Sports Day

Sports Day....surely every kids favourite day? Well I have fond memories of egg and spoon races and three legged races and stuff like that. Different houses competing against each other for glory and bragging rights for the rest of the year.
But it's been a long time since I've taken part in a sports day for a elementary school so I was pretty excited to get involved in this one. So I was gutted when I couldn't take part in anything because my knee is still not up to par.

A glorious day greeted our fearless competitors. The school split into the Blues and the Whites. After careful consideration of the athletes (which consisted of finding my favourite students, and seeing which team had more) I nailed my banner to the white team. 

After the entire school does the warm up together with military precision it's game on!

Running races, skipping rope competitions, group wrestling, tug-of-war, random stuff I can't describe and the finale of a relay races between the grades.

The skipping contest was fun to watch. 

The kids got so competitive....the rules are basically the last kid standing. 3 rounds of skip until you can't skip anymore. 

Blues won this event. 

The rabble of kids here were holding one student up and the aim of the game was to make the other student fall. Sort of wrestling, rather dangerous and gladiatorial.
Disclaimer: No child was hurt in the process of these games

 You pick one side you're gonna make friends and enemies. 

Made some serious enemies that day. But this rabble were cool. 

Too cute for words

Even cuter!!! 

Just chilling

 A weird flag/banner game that I have no idea meant. Cultural differences kicking in here.

The day culminated with the last two events. The tug-of-war and the relay. My White Team were ahed and needed just one victory to seal an overall win. The t-o-w went to the blues....It was an epic performance on their part. It was OK though...the relay. Anything can happen. I'd seen spills, trips and even some poor mongrels following the wrong lines and run off in some random direction. So all to play for. 

They lost! Bugger!

But it actually squared off the teams. 1200 - 1200. So I wait for whatever tie-breaker is to come. I'm expecting jousting on midgets, or dwarf throwing....or the more likely rock, scissor, paper face off between the schools best rsp experts (yes these kids take that very serious)....but no. Nothing. It ended in a draw. I was outraged. Flabbergasted. Bemused. 

Kids need to know the thrill of victory and the bitter taste of defeat. None of this wishy washy 'we're all winners' rubbish. 

It was a really fun day, and made me want to be 12 years old all over again. 

Road to Recovery

Another month zooms by and I enter May in higher spirits than last month. The simple fact that I can now walk has really boosted my spirits. It's not all plain sailing but way better than before.

I have started Korean physiotherapy....not to be confused with psychotherapy, which one of my friends though I was going through, and explained why she all of a sudden was treading on eggshells around me. Oh Korea. My doctors and nurses at the little physio place are really nice and try really hard to make me feel comfortbale. I can hear them practising their English before they come and do some procedures on me. To their delight I always try out some Korean on them. 

Koren treatment includes shoving needles in me and hooking me up to electricity. Then some pulling and pushing. Followed by more electrodes and then a quick bash of laser treatment. Seems to be working because my knee has been getting a lot better. 

In other news I have been to my first baseball game in Daejeon. Home to the Hanwa Eagles. Literally the laughing stock if the Korean Baseball League after losing 13 games in a row. Oh Dear!! Not like my US experience of nearly getting arrested and paying for overpriced beer, the Eagles allow you to buy food and beer outside and bring it into the ground. Along with an MC boosting everyone and some agile cheerleaders rousing the crowd it's really worth the W10000 (6 quid) we paid to get our tickets. 

I must have been their lucky charm because they dismantled Busan Giants in an excellent display. 

There's way more theatre to it than any other sporting event I've been to. Definitely a must to anyone coming to Korea and it's baseball season. I'll be going again for sure.