Keeping the Sanity Alive

Greetings everyone

well as you know I have been here for some time. I am starting to settle in nicely. Now I feel I can tell you what I do on an average weekend. So here goes.

Friday
worked till ten pm. That's PM one word. The crew, as I like to call them, went out for dinner and we had a delicious Korean BBQ. It was a new place as our usual Friday night diner decided to change over night into some other BBQ spot and it was packed, although there weren't any dancing girls, who dance outside to promote a new store women's rights are different here, but it was still no place for 8 foreigners. We found a nice place with delicious food just around the way. It was Duck. Fantastic.
So from there, Dave and I went to a little going away party which I thought would be a nice way to finish off the week. Have a drink and be in bed 2 am, maybe 3 am. That's AM, one word. Around 1:30 in the AM, the neighbour freaks out as we are being to noisy. Rightfully so, the nieghbour that is. After this man stood in the door way of Tess and Frans apartment, Fran is leaving, until we until we left, all of us did he let us be and went back to bed. From there we made it to Cass Rock. In Korean it is CassUH RockUH. We had some Soju and beer and chatted and drank the night away. Little to my awareness, we did drink the night away. We left the bar around 430 or 5 in the AM. The walk home which usually takes 15 minutes, took us a good half an hour, and not due to the drunkenness state that most of us were in. Just a relaxing walk back home, or the home as it is said in Korea. To make this short, I made it to bed by 7 in the am. It was a good morning.

As Saturday has already started I will tell you about after I woke up. I got up around 12 which is pretty good I think. I went down to Suwon station which is about a 20 minute trip. It was a good trip, I managed to make it to the adidas store well and fine. I did my business there and moved on, the interesting part here is that the had this huge lift, not sure of the exact name, on the side of the road and they were moving things back and forth over traffic. Picture a giant back hoe lifting and moving things over a busy road, say the 401 for example. Amazing.

When I returned to my place, I change and headed off to play virtual golf. Koreans love golf more than Texans love guns. I found myself with Dave and Neil in a good size room with three giant screen and a few others looking for a round of nine in the comfort of home feeling complete with air conditioning. Now I have played golf for a while now and felt pretty confident. What is left of that confidence was left as I paid for my round and went home. I was plus 45 for 18 holes. Virtual golf is more like golf on a big screen inside for people who cant afford 200 dollar rounds on out door courses. So with that said, I will become a pretty good virtual golfer. My excuses for the bad round. New clubs, the tee was too high, I slept maybe 5 hours, you cant really judge the distance properly, and the thing is in metres, also the water was green tea water. But with that said I did out drive everyone when I did hit the ball. Well.

Saturday night, Poker. I won one round and lost horribly the second round, in short I come out a winner, made 4 dollars. That's 4 milkshakes in a bag.

Sunday. Well Sunday was a good day. I played two soccer games and had a wonderful time doing it. I played with two totally different teams. One negative and one positive. I have to decide. It is hard, but it must be done. I played well even though I played striker. But I must add this quote, and I quote and you can quote me on the quote that I am quoting. :

Suwon player "so are you guys from England"
Emiel "no"
Suwon player "Ireland then?"
Emiel "no we are from Canada"
Suwon Player "no way"
Emiel "well I am Dutch but I grew up in Canada"
Suwon Player "But you guys are good at soccer, how can you be from Canada"

So the night ended, first game lost 4-1, second game tied 1-1, Emiel scored, I did not but I played well I think.

and so tomorrow I go back to work completely sane, enjoy the pics.

The Feeling of Safety

If you can tell me what this is I will bring you back something Korean, you must be correct, exactly correct.

Good Luck.

A hint, only cause Stephanie asked. The title is a hint.
Also they don't need arch supports in this building.

Family doesnt count cause I will bring you back something anyway.

Brianna Dawn Cordingley

This is a picture of my niece
she is beautiful, I must say

A New Addition

Greetings
this post has nothing to do with Korea,

On September 7th at 10:37 pm EST, back home in Woodstock my sister gave birth to a wonderful baby girl,
here name is Brianna, she is a little premature but doing well and is being taken care of at Woodstock General Hospital.
I am very excited, it will be hard to teach today as all I want to do is go home a for a day or so.
It is an exciting day for our family, I hope you may feel some of our joy.

Love can reach around the world as today I am filled with joy.

Living and Culture

hello everyone
it is monday afternoon and i am about to start my first full week of regualr classes. after teaching an intensive session throughout august it now seems that regular classes are quite easy. i have much more time to do everything. the days are nicer and not as hot but it is still sweating like a pig weather. the only difference is that it is not as humid, which in korea feels like walking through sweat. i have found korea to be a nice place to live. one of my goals of living here is to learn the lorean language. it is pretty easy to learn hot to read it, but the hard part is understanding it. if i were you i would wish me good luck. anyway, speaking of living here, i have come acustomed to living in such small quaters qhich feels a bit larger than my kitchen at home. but on the bright side i need no more than what i have. it is cheaper and well easy to keep clean. if something is messy it is in the way. so i clean it.
As for differences in this country, so far i have encountered many old men who confidently will approach me and tell me i am handsome. that is fine with me, old men have experiance and are repsected to high degree, meaning they can almost do whatever the please. but recently i was in a small area of seoul called Dungdaemoon stadium, which is a market for shopping. anything you need you will find it. i was on the search for a nice side bag, a small one for carrying things back and forth to work. as one of my colleagues describes it, a man pruse. i like it either way. as i was looking at a few bags none by the way looked like purses, a young man about my age came up quietly and non threatening and waited patiently as i looked through the many bags in front of me. i thought at first he was the salesman of the little hut. as i continued to search he didnt say anything and let me do what i wanted. he wasnt trying to sell em anything. so i thought to myself there is nothing i like here, so lets move on. as i went to walk away the young man, came a little closer, said "hello, you are very handsome man", i said "thank you' and we both went on our way, he in one direction and i in another, i looked back in amazement and saw that he was no shop owner and in no discomfort at what he had just done.
in Canada i am sure he would be in the hospital right now recovering from a severe beating unless of course it was me he said that to and i have yet to actaully hit some one for something they have said to me. nevertheless he was a young man with good intentions and meant no harm. it made my day as it was nice to know you can be honest about someones looks and not be seen as hitting on someone. so that is my first culture shock story for you, i hop eyou enjoyed it.

the pic you see is the view from my apartment. it is a nice one. i stare out almost every morning between emails and msn messages.