TLC Sports Day, Children's Day and our first day of proper teaching.

We had a fairly relaxed weekend after moving into our new apartment. We are now living in a studio apartment in central Nae-Dong on the fifth floor of a block of high-rises. This may sound pretty dire but the place itself is clean and tidy and it is so convienient for getting to school and getting around to other places in our free time. We live close to all of our friends now and we can come and go to the flat as and when we please.

So our weekend consisted of eating out with friends, exploring some of the excavated tombs in Gimhae, walking along the riverbank and searching through the endless crazy junk in the Korean 'tat' shops.

Monday was sports day and this day-long event took place in a public park which is adjacent to the school. Each teacher had a different event to set up and referee which meant that there were 7 events in total. At this point it is important to inform you that the events at a Korean sports day seem to be rather different to the traditional athletic events that we are used to in Britain. Here are some of the events that took place: Apple bobbing; treasure hunt; spin round as fast as you can then run five metres to sit on a balloon and make it pop; put your face in a bowl of flour and try and eat the candy that is hidden in it (this made one child rather ill); bounce a ball and then jump up and attempt to eat one of the crisps that were hanging from a washing line; twister and finally dodgeball.

After 6 hours of activities our boss took us all out for dinner to a really excellent local restaurant. We had pork on the bone which was cooked in a really spicy soup with lots of chillies and vegetables, served with rice and the usual Korean side dishes.

Children's Day is celebrated on May 5th in South Korea and is a national holiday to enable families to go out for the day together and give gifts to their children. We spent Children's Day on Haeundae Beach in Busan. It's a huge sandy beach with all the usual seaside entertainment and corporate restaurants dotted along the edge of it. It's admittedly not to everyone's taste but it made for a good day out and we got to meet some new people. In the evening we came back to Gimhae with Sarah and Jake and went to 'DVD Bang.' This is a place where you can hire a DVD
and go and watch it in your own private mini-cinema. It's really cool as it's cheap as chips and you can take in your own food and drinks and relax in the comfort of a very squishy sofa.

We are now both teaching about for about 5 hours a day but we go into school an hour or so early to prepare for our lessons. We are teaching mixed students from the ages of about 8 - 19. However, Koreans start counting age from the moment of conception so a child is already 1 year old when they are born. After about 3 months they then reach 2 years of age- so Korean children's ages are actually 2 years younger than an equivalent aged western child. The teaching is going well though some children are much more manageable than others. At the moment we are finding our feet and working out which techniques suit us and our students. We will keep you posted...