Cycling, cyling and more cycling!

My weekend was spent in Chuncheon (1hr east of seoul on a bus) mostly sat on the saddle of my little bicycle. A friend from climbing got himself a road bike last week and as we are off climbing at Seoraksan National park at the end of this week, we decided that we would do a cycle to from where he lives in Chuncheon to the park. It is an estimated 120km so we thought it would be a good idea to see how the bike felt!



Chuncheon is a smallish town set by a lake and surrounded by lots of mountains. The roads are very good and quiet too, so it is perfect for a long ride. As usual, pictures to come! We set off on a loop around the lake, up and over the mountain cycling through some stunning scenery, stopped off to see a temple and made it back after 86km. There was one MEGA hill where I thought it would never end, however when I did make it the top, it was a satisfying feeling! On the way we took a ferry to cross one section of the river and encountered a snake which had been run over but was still alive (we put it out its misery) - we stopped for this half way up the hill for this... always a good excuse to have a rest!



Managed to get some wakeboarding in on Sunday. It was very different to wakeboarding at Cheongpyeong as there is NO traffic on the lake.... So smooth!! I had a bit of a suprise when I got back in and then realised the driver was just a little bit tiddly lol!! Good ol' Korea for you :)



Back to Seoul and off to the Drum Festival. This was fantastic. There were performers from Korea, Peru and Mexico and I now want to learn how to play the drums! :) Thoroughly enjoyed it.



Some good news about the teaching teachers - I am not teaching them how to teach at all!! All the teachers don't teach English, they just want to learn more English :) So, it is just like my parents class and there are only 12 people in the class. I was relieved when I figured that one out! ! We've had some good classes so far. There are three of us teaching: a girl I am working with temporarily and a bloke (who neither me and and the other girl particularly like...) I teach the middle group, my friend the lower group and the bloke the higher group. I think we'll have a fun few weeks with them!



This coming weekend is Chuseok - Korea's thanksgiving holiday. So, we have Thursday to Monday off work. Much needed!! We were given a present from school today to celebrate this holiday - a lovely gift package with different types of oils, spices and honey. I had the sesame seed oil mixed with soy sauce with dinner tonight - lovely. Because it is such an important holiday, everyone goes home to their families. Which means that the roads are blocked with traffic and a journey that usually takes 3hrs can take up to 9hrs. This is one reason I am relying on my bike for transport!! Apparently Seroaksan is fairly quiet hence why we've decided to go there for the break. There will be about 20 of us going to get some climbing in. Seoraksan is supposed to be one of the most beautiful places to see in Korea, and with autumn coming, the colours will hopefully be turning.

I am lucky enough to only be teaching today and tomorrow - Wednesday is lesson planning day this week. Off to Chuncheon Wednesday night and on my saddle Thursday morning to hopefully arrive at Seoraksan early afternoon.. Wish me luck!

Some photos...

View to street from my window on a rainy night:

A flower at school after the rain:

Some entertaining work done by the kids :)

This is the way to shift flowers around :) Motorbikes here are fully ladened with anything and everything. This one doens't have much on it - I will have to take a picture of one which looks like it shouldn't be able to stay vertical.

The eclipse:

Drying chillies:

Me and my boss Jenny shopping for blankets in my first week in Seoul.! I think I got the only blanket not covered in 'pretty' flowers :)

Back to the PCbang!

It's Saturday morning, it's raining outside and it smells of the rain at home! The weather is changing and the mornings and evenings are now quite chilly, but the sun has been shining most days. It's still flip flop and shorts weather :) I think this is the longest time i've been able to leave the house not even thinking about a whether or not I need a jumper, an umbrella etc since I left Kenya. It's been nearly 4 months! Brilliant! I could get used to this ;) (the winter is supposed to be unbelievably cold though... apparently if you go hiking, you aren't allowed through the gates if you don't have crampons!)

The last month has been a busy one. I've had to write tests for all my kids, then get all the marking done and write reports on them too. The reports was the hardest bit because I don't really know the kids well enough - i'd only taught one lesson to some of them at the time so I ended up just writing reports for the kids i'd had more teaching time with.

It's now the new term, lots of new students in. We had James' leaving do last night (hence why I am sat here now rather than doing anything too active! Ha ha!). Shame he is going but luckily he is only leaving the school after his year contract and not Korea. He has a one month old baby - beautiful girl! - so is taking some time out to spend with the family. We did have a new teacher supposed to be arriving next week but he wrote us an email two days ago to say he wasn't coming.... Arggghgh! I now have to cover all of James' lessons including his extra ones and start teaching new material from Monday onwards - makes for a fun weekend preparing! And some longer days too... My boss will be taking over some of my lessons and we'll just have to split the workload until we get someone new... Hey ho.

I've been asked to take a training course - when I say take it, I mean teach it. There will be about 200 local and foreign (I still hate that word!) elementary teachers taking a teachers training course over a 13week period. Eeeek! I'm a new teacher and some people on the course will have been teaching for a lot longer than me... They are all teachers in the area who will come in for 2hour long lessons. I think it is 3 times a week that I have to do it. Luckily a friend of mine does the same thing as a full time job at a university so he's going to give me hand with everything... I am being paid extra to do this so that's definitely a bonus!

hmmmm, think it'll be a long couple of weeks to Christmas! Or, it'll fly because it is so busy. Who knows?!

I've joined a cricket team called Pacific Storm. There is a league with 10 teams - each team is generally made up of people from the same country e.g. Australia, Korea, Pakistan, New Zealand, India, England.. Our team is however a good ol' mix :) We have Koreans, Americans, Canadians, Australians, Pakistanis and Indians. We also have the only girls in the league :) Me, and a Korean woman who is completely new to cricket! It has been great fun so far :) We beat the Pakistani team who were runner's up last year and have a cricket's 6s tournament coming up in 2 weeks to look forward to.

The pitch at SKK University:

Pacific Storm with some players from the Pakistani team taken after the match.

Went on a really good climbing trip last weekend. Absolutely fantastic!! It was my first real climb on rocks and I was really chuffed with my climbs :) I even managed a small overhang! On these weekends there are usually about 10 people who go, but for some reason, more and more people kept arriving! It was a few people's birthdays, and there was nearly 40 of us celebrating at the campsite on Saturday night! The place we went to is called Ganhyun and it's about 1.5hrs east of Seoul. Beautiful place. The rockface is just by the river and the river is so clear you can see straight to the bottom of it. We had a few swims inbetween climbs to cool off. There was also sand on the river shore so that was the tents went up :) Here are some piccies!

The view from the tent:

The first climb:

The view from the top of my second climb:

Third and last climb - coming up to the overhang:

Navigating the overhang...

Whoop!! I did it! near the top!

The train ride back:

Am still managing the hikes and rides before work in the morning. I have also found a POOL!! Extremely happy about the find, however... it is extremely busy. And its a half an hour away which isn't great.... But, I can still get there and back before 9am and it's just good to get in the water again.

Only a few more chances to go to the lake to wakeboard before it gets too cold. My good mate Victoria is coming up from Gunsan tonight and we are heading out there tomorrow. One of the blokes from climbing lives very close to the lake so he is going to join us too.

And that is me for now! Will put up some random pictures in a minute. Then, i'm off to cricket training :)

Bye for now!