An Island Adventure!

We needn’t have brought a camp stove, we could have cooked on my feet!!

For Jesus’ birthday we all get gifts and eat altogether too much food. Similarly, last weekend for Buddha’s birthday J and I did a considerable amount of eating. We also got the gifts of wonderful memories, new experiences, and horrific sunburn.

We began our adventure like all the greats: at mental o’clock on Saturday morning. It seems that this crazy hour is the time for all of the activity as we buzzed about throwing our supplies into the bags and then banging out the door, laden with everything one might want on a camping trip. Bar my sleeping bag which remained on top of my wardrobe. An unfortunate oversight on my part, but I’ll blame the early hour for this one.

So we bungled ourselves onto the subway (line 1 to Hadan), and grabbed a bus to the famous Geoje Island. In typical fashion, both Jamie and myself had looked at different sets of directions as to how to find the right place to catch our last bus to the beach. This resulted in a panicked leap from the bus in Okpo and an over-long sojourn at a forlorn bus stop waiting for a bus that would never come. Needless to say we looked like something Keats could dream up, alone and palely loitering.

Eventually, having given up all hope, we descended the hill into the town proper and searched the internet for the correct set of directions. It’s a shame there isn’t some kind of internet connection available on you mobile phone when WiFi is not available, that would be very handy. So, we finally managed to find our bus stop (after climbing a hill that felt like some kind of paved Everest if I’m honest, but that may have been the tiredness) and make it to Gojura Beach.

Worth it!

Hike-Ho Hike-Ho

Once again the rain is coming down in Korea. Sadly, due to the cost of the warning messages I got all last year (see here for more), I did not have prior warning of this.  However, the weekend that was more than makes up for this positively Irish weather.

Friday saw us take a severely indulgent trip to the “Urban Camping Barbecue” in KyungSung (right next to Monk bar for those of you Busanites looking). This place serve everything the way you would if you were camping. That is if you were camping in a premium spot with easy access to water and refrigerated alcohol, of which we drank too much. Luckily we had Costco pizza and hotdogs to clear up any nasty hangover the following day.

The true highlight of the weekend though was certainly our 5 hour hike on Sunday. We met George and Ciera, an old friend we will miss as he’s headed home and a new friend we will miss just as much, at 10 and took the subway (line 1, orange) to Oncheongjang. From here we took the cable car up to the Geumjeong mountain (click here for Lonely Planet instructions).

The Hips, Hops, and Haps of Hong Kong

We arrived to HK on this ship… At least that’s what I’ll tell anyone who asks

Please excuse my goofy hair, I promise I got it shorn the minute I got back!

The 1881 Heritage building is a huge tourist draw. Filled with shops and cafes that looked far too fancy for us plebians!

These guys were far more suitably attired.

The Ladies’ Man at the Ladies Market!

The Temple St. Market was one of the highlights of the trip…

…That may or may not be due to this feast of fried noodles and the lemon chicken we ordered.

Nathan Rd. lights up like nowhere else!

Bruce Lee himself welcomed us to the city.

Unfortunately, the smog is thick enough to cut with a knife so the view of the city is less than ideal.

We hadn’t had lunch since the previous afternoon, therefore we opted for mystery meats in noodle soup.

Beer was pricey, but the view made the whole thing worth it!

They say never meet your heroes, can’t imagine why.

We began our quest for inner peace on a cable car into the mountains

Sadly, I found the sneezes before the peace…

…but not before lunch…

I think the man on the mountain has the answers

Just think this was almost our last unenlightened selfie

Falling into tourist traps is easy.

My Bud told me finding inner peace is even harder. My search will have to continue

Luckily, this train actually goes to the happiest place on Earth.

See hw our smiles are getting bigger…

…and bigger…

…and still bigger!

We were reminded that it’s a small world after all.

In which Ireland clearly plays a major role (/modesty)

No long faces allowed!!

Anna and Elsa may be used to Snow, but Snow ain’t so used to them!

And so came to an end the greatest vacation.

And the Award Goes to…

Well readers, I knew it was only a matter of time before someone recognized my genius and nominated me for an award, and here we are: I’ve been nominated for a Liebster Award. I joke of course. I am actually wonderfully and pleasantly surprised to have been nominated for anything given that I thought the only reader was my sister and some others who found themselves here by chance of a botched Google search.

So, I thank Alice over at Inlallyland for the nomination. I really appreciate it! It seems Alice is a fellow teacher here in the Land of the Morning Calm. The award is for new (or newish) bloggers and aims to get them to reach out to other bloggers and find their place in the so called Blogosphere. In order to do this we are asked to share 11 facts about ourselves and answer 11 questions from the blogger who nominated us. Then we’ve got to nominate 11 more blogs for the award. I guess 11 is the magic number, someone ought to tell Schoolhouse Rock about this…

The Quiet on This Eastern Front

Well well well, it seems I’ve finally gotten back to this blog after two months of seemingly having forgotten its existence. However, I promise I have a good reason, in fact I have many good reasons. At least that’s what I’m telling myself.

Firstly, I’ve begun applying for university courses… well preparing my applications for university courses as I won’t be starting until at least September 2016. This process has involved quite a lot of back and forth with good universities, great web resources, and even better friends.

Now, I know that this excuse isn’t great because I was basically already at my computer and a blog post is barely three clicks away, but on top of all of this, I was also packing up to leave the “Love House“. The stress of packing was much greater than I anticipated as it’s hard to pack what you might use into boxes to be undisturbed for a month or more. Added to this the fact that I had to come to terms with leaving my school, which felt more like home than work, was difficult. Even if I had made the decision months beforehand.

Finally, J and I went to Hong Kong as a birthday celebration, as you may have seen on my Instagram in the sidebar. I truly promise to steal Jamie’s pictures and post them here for your enjoyment once he has finished uploading them, I know you are dying to see what typical tourists do in HK. I’ll just say that it involved a whole lot of Disneyland, Dim Sum, and dothering about worrying which subway to catch!

PS Yes, the cover image isn’t of great quality and no it’s not just a bad filter, the pollution is just that bad in the city at 4PM!

Let’s Get Real

This weekend I had a mission: find a Realtor to help me move house when the time comes in April. This was to be no mean feat as, in spite of all of my talk, I have still not mastered Korean. Instead of doing what a reasonable person would do and asking a Korean friend for some help, I decided to wander through the area in which I want to live, walking into Realtors’ offices.

When I came up with this plan, I thought I was onto a sure winner. I mean how hard could it be? No I didn’t know the Korean word for Realtor, nor any other words one might need in the field of real estate, but how hard could it be?

My naiveté was once again blinding as I wandered around my desired dong (get your mind out of the gutters it means neighbourhood).  After an hour of poor results I began to lose That is until I realised that the buildings with all the papers pasted to the windows, were in fact Realtors or  부동산 .

So, biting the bullet, I found myself walking through a door into a small office. Inside I found two women, smartly dressed, typing away at their desks. Immediately, they stand up and come to the door to welcome me in with a warm “안녕하세요”. “Ehrmm… Do you speak English?” I ventured. Perhaps a tad hopeful. My answer was not as I had hoped however. “No… but body language” the older of the pair declared with a suggestive wiggle of her hips.

Thus began one of the longest hours of my life, in which I was shown to two separate flats in the The Realtor was so kind and understanding of the language barrier, and yet I was awkward and stuffy. My mind racing over all the things I needed to ask, and how foolish I had been to think I could do this alone. After the second apartment, about two liters of sweat down my back, and some awkward negotiations through Translate, the kindly Realtor and I called it a day and went our separate ways.

With only one month left until the big move, I am beginning to feel the stress of the impending deadline. Now I know how Mario felt with the ever-advancing screen as he killed koopas and gobbled up mushrooms. Luckily, I did find a Realtor who spoke English after lunch, however, I was informed that I’m too early to find anywhere for April and so shall have to wait until the end of the month.

I’ll be honest and say that this came as rather a shock to the system because back home if I didn’t have a place by now, I wouldn’t be getting one. The pace of life is definitely different here that’s for certain! If you too are looking for a new place in Korea, I strongly advise you to find a willing Korean to help you or an English-speaking Realtor recommended by a friend. Or better yet, learn Korean and solve the problem before it arises.

The End of the Rockstar Teacher

Rockstar Teacher (n): A teacher who strolls into class convinced of their own importance and full of righteousness. Can often be seen playing games and aiming to become a friend rather than educator. Most easily identified by a lack of preparedness and over-reliance on games in the classroom.

Over the past number of weeks I have felt like a great teacher. My classes like me; we laugh and joke and cover the required pages in the textbook and then joke around some more. This felt like I was doing my job to the letter. Instructing English lessons was no problem at all.

Slowly, I began to feel like the Gene Simmons of English language teaching. No, I didn’t have the face make-up and I shan’t comment on the over large tongue, but I did feel like a rockstar. It was wonderful. I could rock into class and do the work set out by the text book, high-five some kids, and we would rock through the lessons.

However, I began to notice that the kids haven’t actually learned anything for this rockstar teacher. Sure, our textbooks are full of worked examples, but the kids were not equipped with the skills they needed to reproduce this on their own. At first, like many other teachers, I thought it was the students being unwilling to understand although that didn’t feel like the right answer.

The truth is that I was unwilling to understand my students’ difficulties, and no amount of high fives of laughs could cover up something like that. So I have decided to change my methods. I still hope to be a “fun teacher”, and the high fives are here to stay, but the poor attitude of “bad students” is being laid to rest.

This is the end of the rockstar teacher.

P.S.

Apologies for the long absence readers, but I’ve been very busy trying to assimilate and not get snowed under at work. Not to mention that I’ve been off skiing, and bowing, and helping friends move house over the past few weekends! More on the skiing later when I put together a picture album of the snaps J took.

How to Manage Your Money As A Nomad

As an aspiring traveller (albeit in a year’s time) this was an eye-opening read. I will definitely have to take this into account come this time next year as I begin preparations to jet off!

The Nomadic Lifestyle

We’ve been asked time and time again how we manage our finances while we’re on the go and in so many different places. We were recently approached by Xapo, a bitcoin company, on the topic and thought it was the perfect catalyst to go a little more in depth on the subject of how we work out our money.

I wrote a post a few months ago about How to Drop Everything and Start Traveling The Globe. In that post I highlighted a few services and tricks that you can use to make your money go further. I’ll touch on a few of those here, but add a little bit more now that we’ve learned along the way.

Managing finances on the go boils down to two things. Now, these two points are true for managing money anywhere, but when you’re on the go there are a few extra…

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Culture Shot: Putting the Toil in Toilet

Oh god, where are the toilets in this place? I crane my neck looking around for the toilet sign, the slick of sweat at the bottom of my back is quickly becoming a trickle. My brain is foggy. I need to find the bathroom, quickly. My eyes are roving the whole of the cafe, searching every possible location for the sign. Meanwhile, my bowels are growling like a dog about to bite. Oh Jesus. Ah! There it it! A quick exit stage left and around the corner. I can make it.

Jumping into the first stall and sitting down, I breathe a sigh of relief. Just in the nick of time, man that was a close one. Yet, as I sit here in the drafty cubicle of the Korean Barbeque, I can’t help but think something is missing in here. I can’t quite put my finger on what’s missing, but no time to think about the interior design of a toilet stall right now, I have to get back to the table…

Oh no.

No.

No. I can’t have missed the most important step of going to the bathroom in Korea. I’ve been here too long to have forgotten. 

The Culinary Cabaret

Good day readers, welcome to Monday, when the questions make no sense, and there’s not enough coffee in the world to wake you up! The worst thing about Mondays is not the fact that I have to wait 5 more days until the weekend, but rather that the weekend is over, almost as if it never happened! This is particularly grievous when you have had such a wonderful weekend as I had.

“Emmet, this post is tagged as ‘Food Glorious Food’ get to the food bit!” I hear you cry, well ok then enough waxing philosophical. Let’s begin.

Caffe Primo: The Best Brunch in Town.

Determined not to fall into the usual trap of waking up late and doing nothing, Jamie and I rose early on Saturday morning with the vain hope of completing a hike (a hope we have almost every weekend). However, stepping out into the cool air and flapping wind we settled for a walk on the beach and a massive brunch second breakfast.

Naturally, Caffe Primo (Korean website here) was our selection as we were already at the beach. The brunch menu here is excellent. There are so many options to choose from on the menu. Such as, Eggs Benedict, BLT, a full brunch, and many others I’ve not tried, but all of which look delicious. Even my picture below does not do the ‘Primo Brunch’ justice, it’s that good. Sadly, I didn’t manage to persuade J to delay wolfing into his BLT to snap a pic.

I opted for no mushrooms on mine as they are my Kryptonite… Ok that’s a lie, I just hate them.

Check out those fluffy eggs and crispy bacon. A veritable feast!

You would think that after such a massive meal in the middle of the day, we would choose a small dinner late in the evening. Especially given that we went to the ‘First Busan Foreigner Market’ and ate delicious muffins and other snacks here too. Alas, no, we continued the theme of food by following up with dinner in a French restaurant, Le Jardin.

Le Jardin

I know those of you who know me from back home will be amazed that I went to a French restaurant given that I have never been a massive fan of France. Not since I stayed there aged 8, a self-catering holiday in the rain. Perhaps, I’ve realized it’s time to let by-gones be by-gones and move on. I’m getting off topic, right, Le Jardin.

Walking to Le Jardin kind of feels like you’re walking away from anywhere that you might find a great place to eat, as it’s about 15 minutes from the KyungSung University subway station (exit 5, turn around and then take a right, keep walking until you see the university and pass a T-Mobile on the corner then take the next right, it looks like a blind alley). However, it’s worth the trip!

Upon entering, we were greeted by the smell of cooked garlic and the friendly staff in the semi-open kitchen. We were also met by a blast of heat, much needed and often absent in restaurants on these cold winter nights!

I had the Chicken Tourte (above), which was deliciously creamy and so filling, without being overly greasy or too heavy. 

Jamie had… the above. I can’t remember the listed name, basically it was cheesy bacon, potato and onion… Google informs me that this dish is, in fact, called Tartiflette. Jamie was willing to share thank God, because this looked so mouth-watering. I think it was my favorite of the two, the potatoes were delicious, the cheese was good (a true rarity in Korea) and the whole dish was perfectly seasoned!

It is unsurprising that the food here is so good as the chef is French, which really surprised me when I saw him in the kitchen. It also adds credence to Lumiere’s assertion that in France “The dinner here is never second best!”.

Truly, the weekend was a triumph of food, or rather of our stomachs, as they took all the food we scoffed. On Sunday, the stomachs had their work cut out again as we had lunch in Costco on our monthly jaunt. Hot dogs, pizza slices and chicken bakes abounds, all washed down with unlimited soda. Sure, we may have gained almost a stone weight (14 pounds or 6kg), but it was delicious, and that’s what counts!