Happy Pepero day! Yes that's right the Korean's celebrate a biscuit! See pictures on the latest album. I had no idea when I went to school this afternoon that I would be given a lifetimes supply of Pepero's from the kids. It made for a great days teaching though, "If you are a good student you can have a Pepero"!! Even the naughty kids were well behaved; it's amazing what chocolate can do!

Tomorrow I will have been here for 4 weeks, time has flown, I have been so busy. My working hours are good though as I have some mornings and some evenings off. I work every other Saturday as over time for 4 hours and also 2 mornings in the week for 2 hours with adult classes. Definitely makes a nice change to teach adults after the kids although they can be more demanding. I am really enjoying it though.

This weekend I worked on Sunday as well as Saturday as my boss needed some extra staff for a weekend language camp she was involved in. Charlie worked on the Saturday and I worked the Sunday.What we didn't realise was that we would be expected to run a Yoga class for an hour as soon as we got there!! Neither of us have ever even done Yoga ourselves so the idea of teaching it was a scary and ridiculous prospect. However it didn't go so badly, in the end both Charlie and I just did prolonged warm up and cool down stretches with lots of deep breathing, thank goodness for the days of Body Combat and Kickboxing classes! J The rest of the day was more English related, and was really fun, met some nice American ladies that live in Waegwan cause of the army. They were so nice and have offered to buy us anything on the base that we may need.

Halloween was a lot of fun. We had a party at school; in fact we had 5 parties. There are 5 teaching slots on Fridays so one party for all the classes in each slot! I dressed up as a cat which the kids loved. Charlie and I organised a treasure hunt, the kids had to find 6 clues in the school and then guess what the Halloween related word was. We then played a game where they had to throw "Candy" (sweets) into the pumpkins Charlie and I had made from a distance. If they got a sweet in we would reward them with another sweet. So obviously the best shot would have the most chance of tooth decay. Afterwards we played musical statues and limbo and I taught a couple of the classes how to dance the Time Warp, had to be done but I obviously left out the pelvic thrust move!

The Saturday after Halloween, Charlie and I went to Gumi to climb one of the mountains that it is surrounded by, Mt. Gumusan. It was a lot harder than I expected as it is steep so the path is mainly stairs. We had been told that once you get pastthe waterfall that is half way up the path gets a lot steeper and harderto climb soI was slightly worried about that but I carried on anyway for about another 5 minutes. I gave up when I got to a point when I felt like I was rock climbing without a rope and nothing to stop my plummeting down to the bottom...not my idea of fun. Charlie went up to the next view point though and told me that I was right to stop when I did as the next bit was a rock steep rock face with some chains to help get across! I may try again one day when I am feeling a bit fitter and when it is less busy. Koreans love hiking so at the weekends all the national parks fill up and the paths are so busy. We have also discovered that not only do Koreans like hiking; they also like to get drunk on Soju (rice wine) while hiking. Rather than water bottles some people had bottles of Soju with them. Perhaps it's so that if they do fall they will bounce??!

After our days hiking we had planned to meet Becky in the evening to see a band and Halloween party.We headed back down town where we got changed into our Halloween costumes again much to the amusement of the other ladies in the toilets at Gumi train station. Koreans don't usually celebrate Halloween so naturally seeing 2 westerners dressed as a witch and a cat gave them reason to stop and look at us. I have just remembered we had our first experience of being photographed for being white on the mountain. A man asked us to take a picture of him and his wife and then he wanted one of us!! I feel like I'm a movie star J The band were good and even played Ghostbusters however Charlie and I missed the last train, which is a 2.15am. I accidently left one of my bags behind so we had to come back for it. Luckily Korea is a civilised country with a good public transport system so we just waited till the next train at 6.am. The bar stayed open till about 5.30 and then the station was open so we waited there. Was obviously not an ideal situation but we had fun in our costumes getting on the train with the commuters!

Right enough blogging for one day and I'm hungry J

Hope all is well, keep in touch,

Love Gaelle xxxx