Title.

Citizens of Ireland,

I have news of no great import.

We had a rather dramatic week in work. Three more teachers have run away resulting in much upheaval in the staff room. I don’t blame them though, our boss is a cad and a charlatan and he treats his staff most shoddily. One day his uppance will come!

I shall quit this odious subject now for it wearies me to talk of work. The weekend has been filled with activity. On Saturday the G-man and I ventured to Wolchulsan National Park. It was a place of great beauty and splendour. There was much huffing and puffing on the way up the mountain as I am cursed with the black lung; a condition that has been severely aggravated by Korea’s ‘yellow winds’ that are filled with sand and particulates of industrial pollution blown over from China. However, the view from the top was worth the laboured climb. We were surrounded by the park’s immense craggy peaks on one side and in the opposite direction we could see a patchwork quilt of multi-coloured paddy fields stretching off into the distance. The highlight of the climb was a bright 52m red steel bridge spanning two ridges. Crossing from one mountain to the other via the bridge felt very Indiana Jones-esque. 

Although the park could not be faulted the journey to Wolchusan was laced with peril. Before embarking on our expedition we had sought the wisdom of a tourist information guide in order to plan the swiftest route. The guide led us to believe that we could get to the park easily enough in less than four hours by catching two successive buses. However, it took six hours, three buses and a taxi to get there. The return journey was equally hazardous as we mispronounced the name of our destination when purchasing bus tickets and found ourselves in the far-away town of Gwangju instead of the nearby town of Gangjin. We subsequently missed our last connecting bus home and had to shell out for a taxi. The taxi man was nice though; he chatted away to us in Korean and didn’t seem at all bothered by the fact that his words conveyed little or no meaning to us.

The next day we journeyed to Busan to attend the Sand Festival. The festival goes on for three days so most of the expats were already there. We joined them on the beach for some beer (though some people preferred to drink some rather ingenious ‘cocktails in a bag’ that were being sold by the seaside.) While we were drinking we amused ourselves by watching some trim, well-oiled Asian men play some kind of sport. It was a pleasant way to pass the time but truthfully I don’t actually care for the beach for it is nought but a field of glorified dirt. Most of the people there were pagan types who worship the sun and like nothing better than to cook their flesh evenly on both sides for hours on end. Their tans look good now but in a few years those heathens will look like leathery purses. The Sand Festival did have its merits though; the sand sculptures were very impressive. We saw a small scale sand version of the famous Shinsegae shopping centre, depictions of Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz using coloured sand and we also saw many a sandy mermaid built for the purpose of luring sailors lost at sea down to a watery grave. We also saw a couple of Korean children who had been buried up to their necks in sand and had then been abandoned by their mothers… After frolicking on the beach for a couple of hours we went with some of the other foreigners to their ‘Minbak’ by the sea. A Minbak is a private home with rooms to rent; people pay for a large room and then make a nest for themselves on any spare bit of floor. We hung out at the Minbak for a while and then went out for some Korean barbeque. Gareth and I caught the last bus back to Jinju that night but most people stayed on in Busan for another day of beach time. 

All in all it has been a good weekend. :) I’m taking it easy today and plan to go to the cinema later tonight. This will be my first time venturing to the cinema here in Korea.  I believe that the only English films that are currently playing are Kung-Fu Panda and X-Men: First Class. Perhapsement Thor might also be playing; the bloggular review of my illustrious friend James has tempted me to see it. I have no idea when films are released in this god-forsaken land  and I am also hampered by an inability to read the Korean film schedules but I swear by the hammer of Thor that I shall not return from the cinema until I have successfully viewed something!

On this note, I shall take my leave.

P.S. I forgot to mention a bizarre incident that took place last week. Jinju has a local heroine called Nongae who is famed for killing a Japanese General during the 16^th century Japanese occupation of Jinju. She is described on information placards as ‘a professional female entertainer’; a polite term for ‘foul venereal diseased whore.’ Anyway, she used her feminine wiles to lure the General to a cliff and then she bravely hurled both herself and the General into the sea. The people of Jinju were having an event to honour her sacrifice down at Jinju castle last weekend. They had rather amusingly set up a blue bouncing castle that was to represent the sea and children were taking turns jumping onto said castle whilst clasping a life-size Japanese doll. This cracked me up; imagine if Irish children were encouraged to take turns shooting British mannequins for a laugh? Anyway, here’s a picture of the children playing ‘kill the Japanese man.' :)