Gyeryongsan National Park

Earlier, I met up with Juli and Pino to go hiking in Gyeryongsan National Park, just outside Daejeon. To get there, take the 108 bus from Yuseong or National Cemetery subway stations. As if to prove that Wales is indeed the centre of the known universe, there was a couple on the bus (he was German, she was Korean) who currently live in Bangor!

Little Buddha nestling in the snow

Juli and I

Pino and Juli

The trail starts off gently and leads to a Buddhist temple in possibly the most beautiful setting particularly with snow and sunshine against a mountainous backdrop.

Buddhist Temple

Then we took a path that would take us to the top of the mountain. Unfortunately, we hadn't realised quite how snowy the paths here still were and the path going uphill was quite treacherous in places. All of the Korean hikers wore proper hiking boots with crampons (spikes) attached; we were not so well equipped, so we gave up about half way up and slithered back to the bottom and onto a restaurant where we ate spicy daktori (pieces of chicken in a spicy, red soup), perfect post-walking food.

It was a pity that we didn't make it to the top this time, but I will return once the weather gets a bit warmer!

Christmas in Korea

Well, this year is the first year ever that I haven't spent Christmas in Wales with my family which was odd! As Christmas Eve ticked over into Christmas Day, I could be found doing some shopping in Homeplus, open 24 hours a day, including Christmas!

I woke up early on Christmas Day and decided to get up and go out for a walk as it was a beautiful day with sunshine and clear blue skies. I walked out towards the edge of Songchondong (also the edge of Daejeon) and walked through a tunnel which ran under the motorway and into the countryside. This area is part of Gyejok mountain, one of the many mountains which ring Daejeon. I scrambled up a bit of hillside and came across some monuments, which are probably tombs. Mountains seem to be important places for Koreans. Mountains are often home to Buddhist temples and statues and these tombs are obviously well tended.

Looking towards Songchondong

Gyejoksan (-san means mountain in Korean)

That evening. I went to a potluck Christmas dinner hosted by Collun (a teacher who lives next door to Juli). The table was groaning with dishes ranging from pecan pie to bulgogi (my contribution) to cheese and crackers to fried chicken.... We played beer pong and a card game called Bullshit, it started to snow, Ken (a Korean guy) gave a speech in Korean (no-one in the room spoke Korean) which seemed to go on for a long, long time, we escaped to Sponge Bar, but were followed by Ken, where me, Juli and Jill remained until closing time (5am!) and then went to a noraebang. It was almost light by the time I got home.

Bullshit and Beer Pong

Gill, Juli and Ken in Sponge

So, a non-traditional Christmas with no turkey, no stuffing, no gravy, but on the plus side, no brussel sprouts. No family or old friends, but some new friends.

Bucheon Revisited

At the weekend, I revisited Bucheon where I spent my first year in Korea and caught up with Claire and Jeong Sook. I took the KTX up to Seoul (Daejeon to Seoul Station in less than an hour). Unfortunately, I had to wait 2 hours for a train with an available seat, so next time I think I'll take the bus direct to Bucheon!I met Claire, Jeong Sook and little Haley in a new coffee shop near Hyundai, sadly my favourite chocolate cafe has closed and been replaced with a Pascuccis. Haley was a little shy at first, but soon started giggling and showing off!

Jeong Sook and Haley

Later, we went for jimddak at my favourite restaurant near GS Square (now a Lotte department store, things change so quickly in Korea!).

Claire enjoys the jimddak

In the evening, we met up with some of Claire's friends and took the bus into Hongdae to the Seoul Shindig, a 60s night being DJ'd by Claire's boyfriend Mikey. It was a fun night and I did lots of dancing. A whole night of 60s music is not really my cup of tea, but most people seemed to be really into it!

Expo Park

On Sunday, Juli and I walked to Expo Park. The park was built to host the Science Exposition in 1993.The Expo bridge leads to the park and looks great when lit up at night.

Expo Bridge

There are lots of quirky little statues along the riverbank, including these swans!

There is an observatory in the park where you can see views over the park and parts of Daejeon.

The Observatory

The park also houses Kumdori Land, a mini theme park. We had a laugh riding the 2 rollercoasters!

Kumdori Land

I suppose the park is nearly 20 years old and it is almost the middle of winter, but it almost had the faded glory type feel of an old British seaside resort. Many attractions were closed down and it wasn't clear whether it was permanent or just for the winter. I'll have to pay Expo Park another visit next year. I noticed an outdoor pool complex which would be great for cooling down on a hot summer's day!

Exploring Daejeon

It's the end of my first week in Daejeon and all is going well so far! Everyone at my school is really nice, although it's a bit strange being the only foreign teacher. I work from 11.00am to 7.00pm every day and teach around 6 hours a day - my classes range from kindergarten to middle school students. I teach some phonics classes - the first time I've taught phonics (as the Korean teachers handled phonics at SLP). It's fairly easy, but fairly boring, although, as the students are in elementary school, they're a lot of fun and enjoy playing silly games!

I spent the weekend exploring Songchondong and some of Daejeon. Even though it's the middle of October, the weather is still warm and sunny. There are some shrines in my neigbourhood, the largest of which is called Dongchundang. The park is a tribute to a Confucian scholar Dongchundang who lived here.

Dongchundang Park

Songchondong is on the outskirts of the city with countryside and mountains just the other side of the motorway. The nearest mountain (visible from my apartment) is called Gyejoksan and apparently there is some kind of fortress at the top, so I'll definitely be hiking up there sometime!

The city centre is a little spread out. The old downtown area (Eunhangdong) is between Daejeon station and Jungangno. There is a large outdoor market near the station and then a mostly pedestrianised shopping district over the river with clothes/shoe shops, coffee shops etc. There is also a large underground shopping mall which runs from Daejeon station.

The bridge which leads into Eunhangdong looks a bit like a giant Croc shoe!

Then there is new downtown near City Hall in Dunsan-dong which is centred around the Timeworld/Galleria department store. There are less shops here, but lots of restaurants, bars and clubs. The main foreigner bars seem to be Yellow Taxi and Sponge. Then there are a couple of large department stores elsewhere. Say is in Seodaejeon and is a pretty big department store with lots of concessions including Uniqlo, Artbox and Kosney. There is a Lotte Department Store somewhere, but I've not found it yet!

Arriving in Daejeon

I landed at Incheon late afternoon and was met at the airport by someone from the recruitment agency who put me on a bus to Daejeon. The bus ride was about 2 and a half hours (I think) and we drove over the new bridge which Lisa and I had gone under on the ferry to Deokjeokdo last summer.

I arrived safely in Daejeon and was met at the bus terminal by Jessica, my new principal and two other members of staff (HJ, who had interviewed me, and the receptionist Sarah). They are all Korean, but have adopted English names which is common here for staff at English language hagwons.

They took me to my apartment, which is in an area of Daejeon called Songchondong. Its on the top floor of a 3 storey apartment building and is more cosy than my last apartment. There are three sets of windows, so I can have a fairly panoramic view and I can actually see countryside from the side windows! It was about 11pm by the time we got to the apartment, so they left me to get some sleep. It was nice because they provided me with a mobile phone and had bought some groceries for me, so it felt very welcoming. I slept very late the next day and was woken by the door bell about 5pm; the principal came round to drop off a pizza, which again made me feel welcomed.

I spent the whole weekend sleeping off my jetlag, so haven't had the chance to do much exploring. My neighbourhood, Songhondong, is on the eastern edge of Daejeon and there is a small shopping area with Homeplus Express, some coffee shops and restaurants etc. It is much more of a low rise area than Bucheon.

Tomorrow, HJ is coming to pick me up at 1pm to take me to the school and introduce me to the staff and students. Better get some sleep, so I can hopefully feel a bit less groggy tomorrow!

Return to Korea!

Ever since I finished the CELTA course in May, I had been pondering what to do and where to go in the autumn. I was offered 2 jobs in Europe - one in Bratislava in Slovakia and one in the Czech Republic. Both jobs looked great and I would be teaching teenagers and adults rather than young learners, but sadly the salaries offered (and those throughout Europe) seemed close to subsistence level. I was really keen on the Bratislava job, but after spending a weekend there, it was clear that my net salary would barely see me through the month.

Soooooo, I decided to come back to Korea! I was hoping to get a job in Seoul, but the huge influx of young American grads due to the recession meant that jobs were not so easy to come by for a 30-something Brit! I had three phone interviews and was offered two jobs - one was with an English village in the middle of nowhere which had shorter hours and more vacation time, but was in the middle of nowhere and one with a hagwon in Daejeon. The woman I spoke to in Daejeon seemed really nice and friendly on the phone and they were willing to give me an extra 2 days vacation as they really wanted me, so I accepted and a few weeks later was on a flight to Seoul! I flew with Emirates - nice food, lots of legrooms and a widescreen video screen with tons to watch! I had a whole set of films I wanted to watch on the second leg of my flight from Dubai to Incheon, but fell asleep immediately after finishing my meal and didn't wake up until the next meal service came round, about an hour before landing! Nice to get such a good sleep on a plane though!

Birmingham and Surrey

After finishing work with ELAC, I was offered another summer camp job with a different firm (who shall remain nameless, but who definitely lived up to the summer camp stereotypes!).

On the way down to Surrey, I stayed overnight in Birmingham and met up with Tunde from my CELTA course who was teaching at Birmingham Uni over the summer. She definitely had a cushier job, teaching for about 12 hours a week for much more money, but then again, she does have years of experience teaching adults! We went out for some food and had a good catch up.

I arrived in Surrey on the Monday to find everything in chaos awaiting the new students arrival. I waited at the station for about an hour for someone to pick me up and there wasn't a bedroom ready for me. In the end, another teacher and me just went to find a room and picked one that looked as if it wasn't being used! As the camp was at a boarding school rather than a university or college, most of the rooms were shared (luckily all the staff were given single rooms the next day) and didn't have locks, so I had to lock all my valuables in my suitcase and hope for the best.

The camp was expecting around 200 Chinese students aged between 10 and 12 for 2 weeks. The teachers were expected to teach for 3 hours a day and do activities for 6 hours a day, a pretty hefty workload, especially with staff meetings on top. The Course Leader was a deeply unpleasant man and was pretty much unprepared for the new students. The students were not streamed according to ability and I ended up with one class of 30 students ranging from complete beginners to Intermediate! One of the teachers lasted a week then quit and I lasted about a week and a half... not a great experience!

Nottingham

I spent July teaching at a summer camp in the UK (in Nottingham to be precise). For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of summer camps, they are a study vacation for (mostly) European teenagers studying English to give them a chance to be immersed in the language and culture for a couple of weeks. Working for summer camps has a bit of a bad rep due to long hours, low pay, shoddy accommodation etc, but I struck lucky working for ELAC. They were recommended to me by Jim, one of the guys I was on the CELTA course with as he works as a Course Director for them, and fortunately I ended up working with him and his friend Kera, who I met when she visited him in Budapest.

As the camp was based at Nottingham Uni, we all got our own en-suite rooms which were in good condition. We taught for around 6 hours a day and supervised evening activities a couple of times a week. As the students came with their own group leaders (usually their teachers), we didn't have any onerous pastoral duties (getting the students up in the morning and making sure they go to bed at night). We also had 3 meals a day provided; the catering was a bit monotonous (and the Italian students complained a lot about the food), but it was much better than the food I was served at university!

We had to plan our own lessons (although we did have plenty of text books and other resources) which was time consuming, but meant we could be creative in our lesson plans and I could put all that new CELTA training into action! For the most part, the students were great and I really enjoyed teaching them. They were mostly Intermediate-Upper Intermediate, so the speaking activities flowed really well as they were able to reason in English and put their views across.

The best thing about working here though was definitely the people! The other teachers were all great and I made some really good friends. After a few days, it felt as if we'd known each other for years! We would always go out for a few drinks on a Saturday night which is how we invented slide conga and Rich invented slide-boarding using ashtrays as skis!

Nottingham itself was nicer than I thought it would be.... the city centre is very Victorian with lots of grand buildings and is great for shopping! We gave the pubs a good sampling - special shout out to the Three Wheatsheafs where we spent many an hour and the Johnson Arms for introducing me to Crabbies Alcoholic Ginger Beer! The only dodgy moment was being shouted at by some chavs on a Saturday night who took objection to the house party we were at and threatened to "shoot us up"!

St Davids

The day after returning from Croatia, I went on yet another holiday; this time a family holiday to a cottage by the coast in St Davids, West Wales. St Davids is a special place for me as we used to come here every year with my whole family, staying in caravans on the cliffs near Porthclais harbour. This part of Pembrokeshire must be one of the most beautiful areas in the country.

Whitesands Bay (view from back garden)

As you will see from the photos, we were very lucky with the weather. It was a very relaxing holiday, much needed after all my hard work on the CELTA course! Evenings were spent watching the sunset over the bay, glass of wine in hand, of course!

Glorious sunsets

One night, we watched a thick fog roll in off the sea. Eventually we were unable to see past the wall around the garden. The fog seemed to deaden any noise, so it seemed very eerie!

Sea fog

The cottage overlooked Whitesands Bay, one of the best beaches in Wales. Sadly, the sea was far too cold to risk taking a dip! I say a cottage, it was really quite a big house with 4 en-suite bedrooms and a massive kitchen. It was dated in style, but very clean and well equipped. Ben seemed to enjoy lieing outside and soaking up the spring sunshine!

Whitesands Bay

Ben

Mum and I went for a walk along the coastal path to St Justinian's Lifeboat station. The spring flowers were out in full bloom.

Pembrokeshire coastal path

(our cottage is the house on the right)

St Justinians Lifeboat Station
I also got the chance to catch up with my friend Suzanne, who lives in North Pembrokeshire, who I hadn't seen for over a year. We met for lunch on one of the hottest days of the year and ate salad in the beer garden of the Farmers Arms pub in town. We then walked down to the cathedral and Bishops' Palace. Although St Davids is only the size of a small town, it is officially a city (the smallest city in the UK) due to it's cathedral named (founded by?) for the patron saint of Wales. The Bishops Palace lies next to the cathedral, but is now in ruins.

St Davids Cathedral and Bishops' Palace