This morning I was invited back to conclude my presentation on the UK to a group of Korean adults. This is part of a club run by a friend to help adults learning english by inviting different speakers on various topics. The first part of my presentation was in September but we had to stop halfway as with korean translations for each slide it was taking too long. In part 1 we covered history, modern politics, pop culture, social change, food, music, film, tv, come...

This weekend a friend had organized and invited me to an ice festival at Mt Bisuel just south of Daegu. Nice for someone else to do the organzing for a change as its usually me. The tricky part was the logistics of getting there by public transit. You can take a city bus from Daegu. But my friend that lived out that way said it was a tremendous waste of time with every bus stop on the route. Instead there is a Hyunpung express bus from Soebu Bus Terminal for 2200...

This week in february school reopens again for graduation week. Last year I had classes mon-wed with graduation ceremonies on thursday. This year I was told I had no classes which suited me fine as I just came back from my SE Asia trip saturday and needed to rest and start my blog. As not everyone can fit in the gymnasium only graduating student and invited students from other grades were allowed along with the student parents in the back. Events are filmed and b...

The Board of Education recently ran a contest where we had to work with our students to find and correct english spellings in korean information websites and publications. Extra marks would be given for findng errors in Daegu publications where we lived. This was a good idea but frustratingly they only told us this towards the end of december, after students had done their final exams and lost interest in doing anything with the end of term. School closes at the ...

For the next part of my journey I was going to take the airport express train from seoul station to incheon airport. There are actually two trains, the local train with stops, and the express. The local train runs every 10 mins for 3800w ($3) whereas the express runs every 30 mins for 13,000w ($12). Journey time between the two is only 10 mins faster on the express at 43mins vs 53mins on the local train. The only other advantage is the express has nicer airplane ...