During summer and winter school breaks public school native english teachers are required to teach camps at their or another school location. Camps are to take precedence before the booking of any vacation time. This summer I taught three camps, one at mine, and visited two other local schools. The last time I taught camp at another school was Jan 2011. Last summer I had too many vacation days so was travelling, last winter nobody asked me to come to their school...

Here is the latest installment of the ongoing cultural battle of koreans having prejudiced stereotypes against foreigners. This time a group of foreigners had a beach party at Wando Beach in Jeolla province, a small coastal town. Aside from getting drunk, they were running naked on the beach, broke into a locked washroom under construction with no plumbing, relieving themselves causing an unhealthy mess, and left lots of trash on the beach Locals have said they d...

I thought I was done exploring the local temples in my neighbourhood before I move end of next month but then I found another one. As I was teaching summer camp at another school I could see a large complex in the distance by the mountain so I wanted to check it out. I was teaching at Guam Middle School which is close to Hamji High School. At first I thought it was the lotus temple I had already visited but the size and pattern didnt seem to match. Despite the 30...

As I'm moving out of my neighbourhood in a couple of weeks I decided to bike north into Gyeonguk Province and Dongmyeong which I havent the entire time I've lived here. I heard there was a nice temple along the Mount Palgong trail I wanted to check out. I live on the northern end of chilgok and biking north a few minutes I reached the city limits and the sign markers for the start of Gyeongbuk province. Some of my students live here and come by bus from Dongmyeon...

Recently a friend from Busan was visiting Daegu for the first time before he leaves to return back home to Canada. We decided to visit Mount Apsan which would be a quick and easy trip from downtown instead of the Mount Palgong Temples further away. This was my first time back in more than a year and we experienced the new viewing platform that was added in recent months. As we were short on time and neither keen hikers we took the quicker option of the cable car ...