BUSAN!!!! Epic fail!

So, Friday arrived and Laura, Amy and I jumped on the number 113 after work and headed to Suwon, so we could meet up with Rubes the birthday girl, Phil - Rubes friend, who was lovely, Faye and Tambo and head to Busan for the weekend! We all arrived in plenty of time, bar Tambo, who seemed to be stuck on the otherside of Seoul. Our train pulled up and pulled off and still no sign of our bespectacled bud, though we weren't too worried, as we hadn't actually gotten tickets so, after speaking to him and ascertaining that he was still at Seoul station, we did the smartest thing and headed to Lao for a couple of drinks before the next train, which Ruby assured us was at 11.50pm. Can you guess what happened? You're probably right. Ben finally turned up with about 20 mins to spare, but alas, Rubes was off grabbing something from her flat. Still, we would have made it in time, had she not read the time wrong, the train was leaving at 11.40 not 50, so we watched, helpless, as another train disappeared to the party town without us onboard. Sad times indeed!


Still, not to be brought down, we crossed the street and headed straight into the nearest norebang in a bid to lift our spirits, and lift our spirits it did. Now, I'm not sure if I've explained a norebang before, but for the benefit of those who don't know, it's basically a karaoke bar, but much, MUCH more besides. For starters, you get your own room containing sofas and a big screen tv, microphones and a choice of about 300 different songs. Choices that night included such classics as 'Enter Sandman,' 'Celebration,' 'Zombie,'something by P Diddy and the never fading classic 'Ting, Tang, Tong', as performed by Miss Butcher, to a completely mortified, yet ecstatic, crowd. At one point Ruby even invited the Korean owner in, who seemed to take Faye's impression of Hangeul very well indeed. As did the rest of the norebang. That girl has some lungs on her! We spent pretty much the entire night singing our hearts out and dancing round to the sound of, well, whatever we wanted really and hitting ourselves with tambourines. Which we all enjoyed immensely. I think the general consensus was the it was the best norebang night ever but the money ran out, so we decided to head to Crazy Ducks, chatting up a taxi man (so, you have many wives then? Do you love us? Will you take us as your wives too? We're not prostitutes, you understand) and being accosted by a crazy Korean couple and having our photo taken lots on the way. Crazy Ducks, which is a RnB bar, I suppose, turned out to be as Crazy Ducks normally is. Which is to say I can't really remember much, though Amy did fall rather comically and Tambo's sense of humour bombed with a really rather terrible joke about Biker Mice from Mars. Awful, just awful.

The night came to an end and Laura, Tambo and I headed back to mine for some zzzz's and so Tambo could meet Henry. The mutual love was intense. I'm pretty sure that if Laura and I weren't there there would have been some hedgie loving that night and I don't think that Henry would have instigated it, though I am pretty sure that he would have been a willing recipricent. Rumour has it they're texting each other frequently and are planning a date this coming Wednesday.


Saturday afternoon we left Henry weeping into his spikes to join Faye and Amy for a slap up meal at Outback, the local Western steakhouse. There we were served by a lovely girl named Cheese and I was dished up a plate of raaaww steak with garlic sauce. Bloody brilliant. I adore Korean food, but sometimes all you want is a steak, with some chips (and cheesy at that), covered with garlic. We all pretty much ate our own weight in fat and then slowly walked over to the local DVD bang, where the proprietor got a bit of a shock as 4 girls headed off into a room with one man - a jealous guy he was indeed.







After the banging, we split, with Amy and Butchie heading off for a relax, before heading out in Insadong and the rest of us heading into Seoul to meet this time with Frank, Frank's friend Chung-geun, Mike and Anda. I have to admit that I was feeling pretty tired by this point, but off we went to 'All that Jazz', a place in Itaewon that plays, you guessed it, live jazz. This obviously filled me with joy and the first band that we heard were bloody brilliant. We popped off for a min for a nice street cocktail, served from the back of a van (you just have to, don't you) and then after listening to not such a talented musician who had stolen both mine and Anda's shirts we crossed to the Raggae bar, which, again, you guessed (you're doing well here), played Raggae, though this wasn't live. It did, however, have a pool table, so all was forgiven as Frank and I won to Chung-geun and Laura and we made our last transition of the night to the 'UN BAR' - which was possibly the best club ever. Ok, so by 'best club ever' I pretty much mean skanky and weird, but still. I met a nice Russian man, dressed entirely in white and white flares at that, who kept looking at me and repeating, 'Are you rrrrready?' before thrusting his nether regions at me and swinging his mane of hair about and a nice old Korean guy, who I needed saving from (thanks, Mike), when he got a bit too hot to handle. After leaving Mike snuggled this tramp and we were all so ashamed we left. I ended up heading to Anda's house after we'd partied out, it was nice to see the rice fields and smell Seoul air that wasn't polluted.











Sunday brought a trip to a jimjilbang for Anda and I- we found an awesome one, with a selection of different rooms (silver, charcoal, salt, ice, cave, pine nut) and a ginseng tea bath, which was amazing. After, Anda headed to home and I popped to say bye to the Woodhouse. We headed to a Japanese restaurant so I could fill my hungry belly and then a tearful goodbye was said as I jumped on the subway. I really wish Laura could have stayed here with us, but c'est la vie - I'm looking forward to South Africa!


True to form, as I always get everything wrong, getting the subway home wasn't as simple as it should have been. Due to the fact it was 12am, my connecting train to Suwon wasn't running (What? It was a connecting train! Come on!) so I was unceremoniously thrown out at Guro and left to fend for myself. Great. I walked out of the train station and was accosted by a man asking me if I wanted a taxi - Suwon was W30,000. Being the well travelled girl that I am, I thought, 'nah, you never get a taxi straight outside a station, they always rip you off.' so took a quick walk and then found another taxi. I asked the price and was told 30 again but after a bit of bartering got him down to 22, so I hopped in. Great. What was less great was that as soon as I got in the car the driver wound up all the windows, turned off the radio and locked the doors, which freaked me out a bit. We drove for about 10 mins and then he stopped to speak to another taxi guy, then pulled over. By this point, I was feeling slightly anxious, so 'you travel now with my friend' wasn't what I wanted to hear. Taxi man number one then charged me almost 10,000, for nothing. I got out of the taxi and refused to get in the second one. This meant that I was stuck, in Seoul, at half 12 at night, with no phone and God knows where I was. Worrying times. I took my phone to the nearest Family Mart to charge it and then headed to a pc bang to try to get hold of Seoul Ben, see if he could help me. Last time I saw Seoul Ben however was with Laura, so I knew that he was pissed and therefore wouldn't be awake. In fact, the only person that was was Tambo, who got about half an hour of my ranting, before he couldn't take it anymore. Poor guy! After the standard half an hour phone charging I returned to the shop to get my phone, only to be stared at by a weird looking Korean, who proceeded to follow me out of the mart and attempt to talk to me. I thanked him and said '언 이 여' I didn't want to talk to him. Which didn't put him off at all. He followed me for a while, trying to talk to me still, so I went into the nearest shop. He followed me in and started talking to the shop owner, who I had just questioned. I was starting to feel pretty freaked out by now, so tried to phone people and as soon as I got an answer (by this time I was back outside) he disappeared - which filled me with joy. I gave Ruby a call and woke her up as I thought she could help me find out where I was, and guess who came back round the corner? Crazy guy. Bloody hell. I carried on talking to Rubes and walked into the next shop again and after hanging around outside for about 10 minutes he finally left. Ruby was a complete star and found out that I was somewhere near Geumchong (after talking to the shop owner) and that I was pretty far from Suwon still. She bartered with the taxi man for me over the phone and then got me sorted out for the long ride back. Rubes, you are a true goddess and for that I am forever indebted to you. 40,000 later I was back in Suwon and then another 10 after that I was at home, in YoungTong and hitting my bed. All in a night's work really. Bloody expensive night at 60,000. Just goes to show that you can sometimes just get taxis from outside of stations. Oh, and note to self; leave Seoul before half 11. Tool.

I'm going to add to this one - best Korean diaries EVER. Part one.

One of my kindies (Yena) mum's obviously wrote this, but she's so cute and it's so cute, so it's being added.

My family is daddy, mommy and me like three bears.
My daddy is fatty. My mommy is skinny. I am so cuty.

It continues but that's not the cute part, so I'll stop. Sometimes I really do love kindy.


Felicia, 10th Aug - The life cycle of the butterfly.

Butterfly belly is very big. because baby is butterfly in the belly. Butterfly is pregnancy!! What time, a butterfly is eggs childbirth Is caterpillar. caterpillar is very cut(e). Caterpillar eating a little leaf. Caterpillar next was a pupa. Pupa is crawly. But next was very beautiful. because change the beautiful butterfly.

Felicia took great pride in telling me that she constructed this with no internet or diary, she used her own mind. Well done, Felicia!

Judy, 9th July - the American civil war

Until the American civil war, there were many slags inAmerica. President Lincoln thought this was fair.

Hahahahahaha. That is all.

Jake's 3rd draft - 23rd March.

Playing with Friend:

I called my friend.
My friend likes me.
I said, "Hey! I want visit your house!"
My friend said... "Yes! I invite you!"
I went to his house.
We played a game and watched tv.
It was very, very fun.


Sean - 23rd March, after the suicide of the ex-(before) President:

Before president is death.
He is suicide he had stress and because the police office is gave the fret president so he have stress and die. The people is very sad and I'm very sad. He is very good president. Good luck president.

Laura's here!!!! Plus I got to see Glen Hansard!!!!

So the weekend rolled about again, after a rather boring week and Teacher's Day, which also incorporated 'Market Day!'. Market Day is a brilliant lesson in capitalism for any Korean child. Basically, we reward good behaviour with stamps, which are then turned into dollars and when Market Day comes around they are 'spent' on such things as sweets, stationary and Korean food, therefore stamps are brilliant bribery during lessons. All day I had about a million kids running round and tiring me out, playing games and generally being, well kids. But kids with cash. I loved it really, I'll admit, but I was so tired out that, like a good girl, Friday night was spent sitting in the house and doing my Korean homework. I'm such a party animal. Teacher's Day made for some nice things though, I got some soothing eye gel (what are you trying to say about my wrinkles?), socks, flowers, chocolates, models in plasticine, stickers and a load of cards from children telling me that they loved me and to 'thank you for you'. So sweet.


Saturday morning I headed off into Seoul to meet up with Woodhouse, who was pretty streetwise for a bird who'd only been in Korea three days. She put me to shame straight away by telling me she already knew how to count up to 500won. I'm so bad with numbers! We had a bit of a wander and went for some food and a catch up before meeting up with Faye and attempting to go to to the Seoul National Theatre, where Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova (of Frames and Once fame) were playing. True to form, the plan didn't turn out as we'd hoped, seeing as we were in the wrong place and what I'd thought was the National Theatre was actually the National Engineering museum! Luckily enough Seoul Ben and his Korean ladyfriend were just a phone call away and after some trouble with taxis we were taken the, oooh 5 minutes down the road to the venue, which, is very posh indeed. Once there we had to leave Sharon, Veronica and Elaine's tickets outside, as they were late and settled into a brilliant warm up, who was most amusing, as well as talented. After that came the main attraction, music that was like a warm breeze floating over our souls. M and G are bloody amazing, their lyrics are beyond gorgeous and their voices the same. Glen even sang an entire song, to us all, without a mic. Now that's some power. Shame that Marketa has no stage presence at all. For someone so talented (and she is, amazingly so, we weren't expecting such a lady.) she turned up in a blue hoody and red trainers, shuffled on to the stage and barely spoke a word to the audience. Glen wasn't doing much better, I'll be honest. I understand that it must be intimidating to get up and sing, especially in front of a lot of foreigners that may not speak good English, but there was nothing there. Saying that though, they didn't really need so much personality, the singing betrayed a lot more than talking could, but it'd be nice to know what they were thinking.


After the gig we all caught a cab to the Wolfhound in Itaewon, where we were joined by Houley, Jamie - Sharon and Veronica's rather dashing friend, Frank, Ben (Seoul), Jon, Ben (Tambo), Mike, Amy, Patrick and Ruby and a few pints later we lost the Canadian contingent and went off to Hongdae and met with Anda and Rob, who was leaving on the Monday - boo! Come back Rob, we miss you!!!! Most of the remainder of the night is a blur, however, there was dancing, drinking, a cool live music place, with some awesome tunage, Go Go's and a beardy man. Fun times all round then! Most people lost something, generally a purse, a phone or their memories and I ended up sharing a taxi with Ben and Jon to stay at Ben's, in a far, far away place. On leaving the taxi Ben's glasses came off and the rather silly boy was far, far too drunk to realise this, so being thrown on to the 'people who lost something' pile Ben watched as his glasses were driven off by a Korean taxi man, making no effort to catch them at all. Rather silly, that. Luckily Ben and I share pretty much the same prescription, so I left him the next morning with my spare pair of specs and the efficient folk that are the Koreans enabled him to acquire a new pair by the Monday night. I ended up blind on the trip home, but oh well, it was an adventure!


Laura was shipped to mine on the Tuesday, leaving Ben (S) to catch his breath and prepare for the last leg of the girls trip. I met Laura at Suwon station and we headed for some lovely galbi and a few drinks in Lao bar (I had to show her what the best bar in SKwas like) before meeting with Ruby and heading to play some baseball at the arcade and hitting a sheesha bar, which was an awesome place to go.

The next day my lovely friend was able to join me at school for the day after having a wander round YoungTong whilst I had my Korean lesson. I managed to score 20/22 in my test by the way - ASSAH!!! I'll be a fluent Korean speaker yet! I had been talking to my kids about Laura for the past couple of weeks, such had my excitement been - so much so that John was continuously complaining that his ears hurt. From the minute the kids came in Laura was like a divine entity to them and they watched her every move and whispered questions to me whenever she left the classroom. One even asked Heidi teacher 'why has Penny teacher's face changed today?' Which was rather cute. Luckily, Laura didn't mind being stared at and told she was beautiful (even by John, who's ears seemed to have recovered) and it was with a heavy heart on all fronts that 8pm came around so quickly. I'm still being asked where 'Laura, Penny teacher's friend' is now, and it's a week later. Wednesday eve, we headed on over to the YoungTong shell restaurant, which is situated on the edge of town, in a tent. We ordered a massive pan of shells, which were bloody amazing and Laura is still maintains that that was the best meal she's ever had. Why thanks, Woodhouse! Afterwards we went off to Now bar (via Pavox and GartenBier), so that Laura could see the venue for our midweek carnage, so we had a few cocktails, met Mrs C and some others, but as Laura was getting ill and Amy was pretty tired we knocked it on the head quite early. Thursday was a quiet one, including a dvd bang and some wine and chatting, plus Laura kneeling on Henry (he was ok, luckily!), but that was fine by the both of us, as we had a weekend in Busan to look forward to!!!!!!! I shall do the whole Busan thing in the next post, as I don't want some people to pass out halfway through reading such an essay as both this and that combined, hey, Dean?

Fancy a festival? Erm, yeah, go on then...

Which was kinda what happened last Sat.


Anda facebooked Butch and I on Friday, to inform us that the house party was going to be cancelled, as everyone was off to the 3rd Annual Seoul DJ Fest. Lame. We had a bit of a chat about what to do and the resulting decision was along the line of the 'if you can't beat em...' so that's pretty much what we did. Pretty good, as I love DJs and festivals, but bad as I missed the rice fields!


Anywho, I headed on over to Faye's Friday night, for the first time, which has been pretty lame of me, seeing as we've been 'married' for almost 2 months now. Contrary to what she says, Faye's apartment is pretty cool, though, I'll admit, smaller than mine by quite a way. Still, cozy is the word that springs to mind, rather than 'box'.


I got in pretty late, but hadn't eaten yet, so we decided to take a walk to the bustling SungKyunKwan uni area and grab us some nosh. We found a nice bar, which looked like it did pretty awesome food, so pointed out 2 of the dishes to the bar guy - who kindly informed us that one dish was enough to feed 4 Koreans. So, wisely, we opted for just one. While waiting for the food to arrive, we got the pleasure of trying bondeggi for the first time. How can I describe bondeggi? Well, for starters, it's boiled silkworms. Sound nice? In the words of Ruby, 'you don't even know!' These things smell like burning plastic, and taste even worse. (Faye and I knew of the smell, but you've got to try these things, hey??) Once you put the little guy into your mouth you can taste the aromatics, and then, when you bite down they pop. And it's not a nice pop. It's pus. So, just to reiterate, you put silkworm into mouth, get the taste, bite down and get a gob full of pus. Nice. The pus then sticks to your teeth, so, even after you've swallowed the horror that is bondeggi, you have the taste in your mouth and not even a swig of Cass can get rid of that bad boy. Hideous. I rarely heave, but I admit, that was definately a heave time.


Luckily the food came pretty much straight after the bondeggi was consumed, so we fell on it, much like ravenous hounds, partly as we were, but also just trying to get rid of the taste.
The food was lovely, much like a chicken curry, so we decided to ask for rice along with our dish, which as you may remember, we were told could feed 4 Koreans. And yup, you guessed it, we ate the lot. Felt like a freakshow too, seeing as people were craning to watch the fat westerners eat what seemed like the world. Many jokes about fat people later and a waddle to the till to pay 20 thou each, saw us heading out to brave a DVD Bang. We were told that it would be easy to find a DVD Bang, but this proved untrue. An hour later we wandered into SungKyunKwan's own MULTIBANG (henceforth it will only be typed in capitals.). The akashi told us that 'one time' would be 13,000 so in we went (after being offered t-shirts, he was clued up was that old dude). To be fair, the MULTIBANG had everything. Everything. Karaoke, Wii, DVD, everything you could imagine. Well cool. We decided to watch The Shutter (which was ok, for a western film trying to do Asian horror) and were just getting to the good bit when 'click' off went the tv. We peeked our head round the door and gave the man a sad look and, check it out! He put the rest of the film on for us! SCORE! Til we got to the pay desk anyway, when the cheeky beggar wanted 23000 for the film (which, sports fans, equates to about 11.50 for one film)!!! We acted dumb and pretended that we had no more money - whilst constantly sniggering - and promised we'd return with the money in the morning. I'm still waiting for the 'help I'm being chased by the mental MULTIBANG man' call from Faye. Ha, tip, if you're going to steal, don't do it on your doorstep! (Especially, if, like Tambo and his klepto adventures, you nick a full sized family portrait...).

When morning arrived, Faye and I hopped on a bus to the capital and met with Luna, Panda bear and Rob. We had a bit of a wander round some shops and went for a noodley based dinner, which was nice and then decided to head on over to the fest, minus Luna, who wasn't going to pay the 50,000 won ticket price as she couldn't stay all night. We did, however, acquire Song-in, Anda's friend from the rice fields, who turned out to be a)awesome and b) really helpful with all things. What a legend of a girl. We got to the site and instantly were accosted with a Korean Reggae band, which put me right in the mood! We got our tickets and had a wander around the two stages, saw about everyone we'd met in Korea, had a gander at the crazy outfits people had donned and got my bottle of soju confiscated. Arse. Cost me a thousand one that did. Ok, so it's only 50p, but still.

After a bit of a dance I decided that I had to get rid of my backpack, as being in a crowd of people with a huge bag and a backpack is not fun, so I decided to head back to the station to drop my stuff off and pick up Ruby and Tambo, who were on their way.
When I arrived at the station I found out that the bloody lockers were broken and then, after a trip 4 stops down, that other tube stations lockers were broken too. Arse. Ruby, however, told me that we could head back to the Olympic Stadium (near the site of the fest) and leave our stuff in the Homeplus there, so instead of spending thousands of won, I spent 100, ace!
After I'd dropped my bag off and picked up some ddubokki from the local vendor Tambo arrived. I tried to trick him into the joys of bondeggi, but, alas, he wasn't to be fooled that they tasted like heaven, partly due to Ruby's heaving at my mention of the tasty treats. Still, not to be put off, Tambo stepped up like a man and tried one. And heaved . And heaved again. There's a video of it somewhere, which is possibly the funniest thing this year.
Anyway, after that, we headed, with the rest of the bondeggi cup back to the festival. One arrival we played the 'isn't it nice' trick again, this time with Anda, who ate the damn thing happily, until she heaved. Heehee, what fun bondeggi can be!
We jumped right into the swing of all things festivally after that plus met with Mike and Frank and I can honestly say that even though I was a bit conscious of the price I was well 'appy to be there! I did the usual disappear to the side for a bit of a dance and met such folk as 'weird Canadian man' 'wig man' and my personal favourite, 'Antonio, the man dressed as Jesus.' Now there was a hottie. A hot Jesus hottie. Never thought I'd say that!
There was only one mar on the night, which was Anda being punched in the face and dragged by the hair through the mud. Some stupid bloody random Korean bloke got lairy and decided to take it out on her. Mike took care of her though, and punched the guy, which ended up turning into a big fight and causing a bit of trouble. God, I hate fighting. But still, it happens, that guy was a cock and deserved it really. Still, Anda, Rob and Song-in left after that, which was a downer, but the night went on with soju, fun and more dancing. I think in the end we stayed 'til about 7, listening to random bands and feeling slightly like we were at Glasto or something, then Faye, Ruby and I wandered home, well, Faye and Ruby did, I just wandered after them like a zombie, feeling sick and a bit sad that I had to stop dancing. Bad times.

Still, Laura is now here (she's with Seoul Ben as we speak, I'm meeting up with her tomorrow), it was teacher's day today and I got lots of presents and cards bearing the legend 'I love you teacher' and 'thanks for being' and 'please keep healthy' (they have a teacher's day here, which is where the kids parents send teachers things so they're nice to their kids for the rest of the year, I'm yet to report whether it had the desired effect or not...)etc etc and the Frames gig is tomorrow! Roll on the weekend!

=o)

Why Children's Day makes me feel ok...

Today is Children's Day! Yey! This means that Penny got a whole Tuesday to herself! I was sorely tempted to stick a pin in a map and just head to wherever the pin decided, but fate intervened (or I spent too much money this weekend and was skint) so I decided to stay in sunny Suwon.

Come this morning I called Rubes and Amy and we all met at the legendary Batman sign (so named as it's the place we all meet, as when I first arrived it was the only sign I could understand!) at Suwon Station. For once I was on time, but this time Ruby was a little late, which gave Amy and I time to sit and check out the Korean couples in matching outfits, which happens a lot, and play the 'is that his or her bag' game. Ace times. When Ruby turned up we headed off to the park with both her and Sun, her Korean friend, and after 15 mins of 'are we nearly there yet?' I presented the girls with their first view of the park, which is a haven in the middle of the busy metropolis that is Suwon. In the park there is a huge lake, basketball courts, grass, a large clock, everything you want in a park really. Lovely.

We settled in to picnic times and with the arrival of Lisa cracked out the gimbap (both circular and triangular varieties), crisps, dips, popcorn, fruit, you name it sister. A couple of cheeky bottles of soju were added too, however, as I've decided to give my liver a break for the week, I kindly declined Cerberus' piss. A lovely time was had by all and we were thinking of heading back into Suwon, but there was one thing that I had to do. RIDE THE YELLOW BIKES!!!!!!!!

The yellow bikes are two bikes, welded together, with space for another person in the middle and a canopy over the top. Generally they are ridden by families with small children or friends wanting to exercise together, not 2 drunk Westerners, a me and 2 wasted Koreans. We hired one yellow bike and two singles and set off. I kept my position on the yellow bike for most of the time, only stopping on the single for a few minutes, though it was worth it as I've missed bike riding - the wind in your hair, the noise of tyres, just being alone - however there's a lot to be said for multiple persons when careening about. We flew around the park, scattering kids, youths and hajemars in our wake, yelling 'Pang, PANG!' (which is like beep beep in Korean) and apologising as we rode past. All was good, we'd navigated small and large paths for at least, oooh five minutes, before we got to the hill. The hill. Oh the hill. A sharp oren chuk and a Korean shrieking, (Sun, who was terrified) got us halfway up, until, alas, the leg muscles ran out of steam. We stayed in one position for what felt like an hour until slowly, slowly, we started to crawl backwards, picking up steam and heading towards the lake! Luckily there was a fence in the way, but it was a close shave. We were stuck in hysterics for about an hour before we finally pushed our way, with the bike, back to Amy and Lisa, who were rolling. Fun times. Still, we got the hang of it in the end, after being pushed up the next hill by about a million Koreans.

Ah, happy Children's day!!!!

I love Busan! Even though my head hurts...

So, my birthday weekend of joy commenced with yoga in the park, as per usual. It was just Elaine and I this week, well Elaine, me and my favourite old Korean man, who seems to constantly walk around the park. In fact, I think he may be getting paid to do it, as he's always there, in the same outfit, walking around and around the park - strange little dude. Still, he makes me smile when I'm in Downward Dog, so I'm happy. Elaine brought a special present with her to yoga, my brand new Hedgie, Henry J Tickleton! I feel pretty bad about it, but I actually already love him more than I did Broccoli, she was just moody and pretty ugly (sorry BC!!! You were good, but just so damn unfriendly) whereas Henry is cuter and actually enjoys doing stuff, a bonus for any pet, really. Within the first couple of minutes of getting him home he'd already got his head stuck in a loo roll and I spent a good five minutes laughing at him attempting to get it off. Bless.



Friday night heralded the return of dinner with the Korean teachers, this time, Annie, Greg (Annie's Aussie husband) and Heidi. We headed off to a traditional Korean restaurant and celebrated the fact that we'd finally finished all the tests, reports and monthly plans that needed doing, thank God! The food was amazing and I was rather stuffed, but happy, by the time I headed on home.


As sleepy time Fri was relatively early I was all set to meet Alex and Amy outside Homeplus (which is a huge Korean shopping centre, housing a Tesco's and other such delights.) at half eleven Saturday to get the bus into Seoul. Least that was the plan, 'til I put us on the wrong bus and we ended up God knows where, far from where we should have been. Luckily we alighted near a subway and a kindly Western fellow showed us how to get to Seoul, which was about 20 mins away by tube. So off we went. It was Amy's first time on the subway, which was joyous for her, 'til it got busy and then she seemed to like it less, for some reason. When we got into Seoul finally, our plan to become more cultured took us to Deoksu-gung Palace, which is near City Hall. I've got to be honest here and admit that I wasn't very impressed at all, the palace is heavily influenced by Western architecture and the charm that makes Korean buildings special was somewhat lost. Not only that but the central fountain wasn't working and there was building work going on, plus we couldn't enter any of the buildings. Oh and the purifying stream had dried up. Feeling somewhat deflated we headed off again, in the rain, and hit upon the setting up of the opening ceremony for May's Hot Pink festivities. I met a stilt balloon artist, who made me a pink monkey called Gay Lord, who became a bit of a mascot that afternoon, 'til I realised that I was talking through the monkey and referring to myself in the third person. Although we had to leave to meet Ben at the station pretty sharpish after we'd discovered the fest, we planned to head on back for the actual opening ceremony later that night. One tram ride, many police and a very confused Norwegian later, we got to Seoul Station and soon enough had met up with Busan Ben (oh how excited I was to see an old face!), two of his friends and Faye and Luna (the greatest Korean tour guide ever!). We obviously headed to the nearest bar, which resulted in us going completely the wrong way and traipsing down a street that just sold prosthetic hands, arms, legs and any other body part you could imagine. Weird. We left that place pretty quick and ended up in a UV bar with just the barlady, an old Korean woman, to keep us company. We loved it and bought a couple of huge pitchers before deciding to ditch the festival (the police were about as there was a massive protest to oust the Korean Prime Minister and by the looks of the truncheons they had, we were steering well clear) and to head straight to Hongdae where we ate galbi(surprise, surprise) on the street and drank more soju. After stuffing ourselves we headed (and for me at least, on slightly wobbly legs) to Ho Bar, where I was presented with a cake, sang to, and given foul shots from Ben. Cheers, love! Ruby arrived too, which filled me with joy and, well, that's about as much as I can remember (again, thanks for the shots, Benny!). Reports have it that I had an ace night though, running around, jumping, dancing on stage with a band in FF's, falling off walls (at what point was there a wall?) and hurting myself, drinking more beer, tipping drinks over Sharon and Elaine, getting to the station and finally jumping on the KTX (fast train) to Busan after picking up a random Korean man, then promptly falling asleep.



When I awoke, we were in Busan!!!!! Considering that I was debating on going down, I instantly felt happy when I saw the sea and was constantly in hysterics for the first couple of hours. Faye put this down to me still being wasted, however I claim pure joy, though I suspect that she was right and alcohol was part of the reason, specially as she kept repeating that I stunk of the stuff. Faye, Luna and I took a boat tour around the bay, which was nice, if not a little surreal, esspecially when I headed below deck to find about 12 hajemars dancing on a dancefloor at 9am and still wearing their visors, and then got off by the maritime museum and had to climb about 40,000 stairs to get to the road again, not good for my hangy! Still, when we arrived at the top, we were able to catch one of those funky little touristy trains back to reality again, with me giggling the whole way down, thanks to Faye's Singapore story. Food was a must by this point so it was off to Chinatown for black noodles and mandu (steamed dumplings with pork and veg) before meeting up with Anda, Rob and Thomas and catching a tube to Beomeosa (Bum ulcer) for some temple action and to meet Tambo Ben. This time I wasn't disappointed by a traditional Korean building, as the temple is gorgeous and about as tranquil as they come, which is amazing as it's near such a big city. We all fell in love with the place, and Anda and I have decided it's a good place for our temple stay, when we do it. Instantly, I felt so much more chilled and was happy just wandering and feeling the spiritual vibe, you know how hippy I can get! Ben told us that there was a hike further into the hills and so we all decided to give it a go (even though my hangover was screaming at me not to go anywhere except a bed) and 20 minutes later found that we'd only climbed up 0.2km of rock! Lame. Luna started to feel a little tired, so we headed to another part of the temple which we came across on the walk and spent some time looking round and finding a beautiful shrine in a cave and some cute doggies, that for once, weren't rats!



Once we left the temple we jumped straight on a tube bound for the beach, in order to catch the sunset. We failed miserably at catching the sunset, however we did get to the beach, grab something to eat and collapse on the sand with some vino and sparklers. Hours of fun were whiled away, and I can honestly say it was up there in 'Penny's coolest Birthday celebrations', though doesn't quite beat the 21st birthday, 'breaking my leg while dressed as a chicken' night. Anda and I had a 'hide the shoe in the sand' competition and generally ran about and wrestled each other to the floor as much as possible, the group was stalked by a hajemar brandishing Roman candles, Tambo carried on with the kleptomania by stealing me a birthday present, in the shape of a bright pink bear type thing, from a stall ran by another hajemar (although bad, this was better than his earlier robbing of a tramp. The man had no home for goodness sake, no home!), Rob kept us all entertained by being Rob, we ruined a guitar players set by being loud westerners, danced to traditional drummers, cracked out the iPods, buried me in the sand, did tricks with sparklers, watched fireworks, dipped our toes in the sea and generally had a bloody good time. So I was very sad (again, I'm presuming here, as the end of the night is very sketchy) when I was placed in a taxi and then had to jump on a slow train back to Suwon, when everyone else got to continue the adventure. Damn work, why couldn't I have Monday off over a bank holiday?! Least I finally got to sleep some, and did so quite soundly, save for waking up a few times panicking I'd missed my stop and exclaiming 'Suuuwwwoooonnnn?' To the old guy next to me, before nodding off again.


So then it was to work again, which is a shame. Still, tomorrow is Children's Day, so we get a day off and then heading to Anda's house party at the weekend, plus the arrival of Laura, so who knows what fun the next week will hold?!