When Irish Eyes are Smiling (you know you've been robbed...)

Greetings kindly knaves and wily wenches,

Happy belated Paddy’s Day!

 I was worried that I would be unable to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day over here as most people seem to be unaware of its existence. Indeed, I have many students who don’t believe in Ireland let alone the holidays that are celebrated therein. We were learning about holidays in one of my classes a few weeks ago and the children had no problem identifying Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, New Year’s etc. However, when I held up the picture of the green dancing leprechaun that was supposed to represent St. Patrick’s Day they drew a blank. I asked if they could guess which country this holiday belonged to and they responded ‘Mexico.’

Happily, Eoin found a forum for foreigners online that told of a Paddy's Day party that would be taking place in a bar at the other side of town. We dutifully went there after work to check it out. At first we were wary about the whole affair. It seemed too good to be true to believe that there were other foreign folk in Jinju! Eoin feared that the online post he read may have been part of an elaborate ruse to lure us into a back alley and steal our kidneys or possibly just make sport of us for being Irish. Thankfully, the party was real! The bar was riddled with round eyes clad in green from all over the world!  We met Americans, Canadians, English, Scottish, Irish and a large group of Frenchmen who were in Korea for the purpose of ‘making zee helicopters.’ I had to drink a few green beers before I had worked up the courage to approach all the shiny happy people but by the end of the night we had mingled the bejaysus out of that room! A good night full of shamrocks and shillelaghs was had by all. We were a mite hung over at work the next morning, especially a certain Welshman who somehow managed to lose the sight in one eye for a brief spell. I guess you know you’ve had a good night when you go temporarily blind the next day!

We spent our Saturday at a nearby coastal city called Tongyeong. We took yet another cable car to the top of a mountain. I believe it was called Mireuksan. Cable cars really are an ingenious invention; they really take the stress out of the whole mountain climbing malarkey. I didn’t even break a sweat! This particular cable car stretched out 1975m. After the cable car we went to Gangguan harbour to admire the prettiful boats. This peaceful scene was disturbed somewhat though by the Korean heavy metal band that was playing on the promenade… The men were making a valiant effort to look hardcore with their black gloves and badass balaclavas but it was hard to view them as threatening when one looked at their audience which consisted almost exclusively of Korean school girls wielding ‘We luv u’ banners.

I shall bid you adieu now and go in search of chocolate.