At work I'm still the celebrity. I thought it would'vedied down by now but its definitely just as bad as day 1. I gave an interview for some 6th graders school project the other day and the girls just sat and giggled for 10 minutes and slunk off. It's very strange.
In fact my 6th graders are still being pretty forgiving. Not sure how long that will last. The 3rd graders are just full on insane. Those little guys just bounce off the wall for forty minutes whilst I try grab their attention. Everything is done on these interactive CD's as well, its pretty smart. It means that lesson planning is so much easier. Its less so for Michelle, whose school decide to stray from the trusty books and CD's to use other materials. This week she's had just too much fun writing lesson plans on classic books such as 'The Dark, Dark House'. Try getting some crazy 8 year olds to sit and listen to how dark and gloomy things are for 40-minutes whilst it's baking hot and sunny outside. Needless to say, they were having none of it.
Last weekend we had an awesome little explore of Ulsan. We went across to this place called Dae-wang-am, which means Great King Rock. It was cool as hell. Here's a little picture of the bridged walkway into the sea....
Along the way we got to see one of the beaches of Ulsan as well, over in Ilsan. I had actually heard that Ulsan's beaches were horrible, largely due to a combination of having the largest petrochemical and shipbuilding plants in the world. Anyway, it was actually awesome....
The next day we had a horrendous miscalculated trip across to Andong, about 100 miles north of Ulsan in Gyeongbuk province. We went to see a few friends and check out a mask festival that's kind of a big deal around these parts. Anyway we soon got stuck in traffic on the coach, soa 2 hour trip took 4.5 hours. Next the bus driver decided to throw us off the coach in the middle of Andong, not at the bus station. How far was the bus station? Oh, only a brisk 4k away. What a nice stroll for us to take. By the time we found the bus station, it was about 4:30pm. The mask festival was 40 minutes away, and the last bus back to Ulsan left in 2 hours. So, we hopped back on a bus to Ulsan for another nice 4 hour ride. A horrendously pointless day all in all. Not cool.
The next day was a little better. We went hiking up Mt. Munsu, a 400m high peak right near our apartment. We were invited to go up there with Michelle's teachers, but crossed-wires came into play yet again. Before we knew it, we were on a school trip on our day off. Another thing was that we got to the top and everything was great: a good view (check the picture!) and a nice bit of exercise.
So everything's all systems go when Michelle's co-teacher tells us that we're seeing a temple on the other side of the mountain about a third of the way back down. Oh nice, sounds good to me. So we take it in, pretty nice temple, as far as temples go. Then, instead of taking the route continuing down the mountain, we're told to scale back up to the top again! Our legs took a serious beating. The poor kids were a wreck as well! It was some military style training right there.
Anyway, this week I joined a gym as well! So I have my own bank account, phone and gym membership now. I'm fully settling in. Michelle and I are going across to Busan this weekend to check out this huge film festival too. It promises to be most excellent. I'll update later I'm sure.
No comments:
Post a Comment