September in Korea is lovely. The hot temperatures of the summer are gone, the leaves are changing colours on the trees and new teachers arrive in Korea for the second semester of the year. We met up with the new teachers shortly after they arrived and took them out for a meal just as had been done for us when we arrived. My canadian friend Alex, and his korean friend Inki started a language exchange in Eonyang, which is really helping to bring the foreigner community together in the town and giving us all a chance to learn some Korean and make Korean friends. A language exchange is a two hour meet-up in which foreigners and koreans get together and teach each other their language. So for the first hour we learn some korean and the second hour we teach the koreans English. Then we all go to the pub for a well deserved drink!

One highlight of September was a day trip out to an arboretum with my elementary school kids. The principal wanted me to chat to the kids in English a lot so they practiced while they were on the trip so I tried my best to help them do that. It was a very enjoyable trip and I even got to hold a snake which was a very cool experience.

The weekend of 26th September was the Korean holiday of Chuseok. This is the Korean harvest festival and an important time to honour their ancestors. They return to their hometown's and perform special rites on Chuseok morning where they prepare food for the spirits of their ancestors and then they bow to honour them. It is one of the two most important holidays here. On Saturday I went to Busan to the Dongnae area with a korean friend. While some things were closed, most places were still open. We saw ancient tombs, a fortress and gate, a confucian academy, the house of a woman involved in the anti-japanese occupation movement, government buildings and a large shrine complex dedicated to those who opposed the japanese in a war in 400 years ago. For the remainder of the Chuseok 4 day holiday, I mainly rested but I did go to the cinema to watch the next maze runner film - Scorch Trials on Sunday, which was brilliant.

The first weekend of October, I went on a trip organised by the EnjoyKorea organisation. It was an early start on Saturday and then a four hour drive up to Gangwon province (the north eastern province of Korea) in a small cramped minibus. We stayed in a mountain condo at the High 1 resort where the winter olympics in 2018 will be held. The first activity was a "coaster" - a toboggan ride. To get up to the top of the mountain we sat in a rickety old mountain cable chair (like a cable car but just a swaying seat in the wind - a little scary but fun!) At the top we had a safety briefing and then did the 4 minute toboggan ride back down the mountain. It was a lot of fun but also quite nerve-wracking because I thought it would fall of the rail any minute. The views over the tops of the other mountains were stunning. After that we checked into the condo and found we were seven to each apartment - an apartment that included just one double bed and an empty room as a second bedroom. Eventually I worked out that there was floor mats and bedding for most of us to sleep on the floor which was a bit uncomfortable but I got used to it. We ordered pizza from Dominoes which took an hour to arrive and we had to eat it as we rushed out the door to get the bus to the KPop concert.

The concert was on a mountain top but unfortunately it was too dark to get the amazing views. It was also freezing - even with a coat on! We had managed to get tickets very close to the front so had brilliant views of the singers. Unfortunately my phone battery is dying so I couldn't take many photos. The concert was put on in hopes of a successful 2018 winter olympics and top artists performed including Shinee, Exid, D-holic, Got7, M&D, Clc, Ailee, Bts and Vixx. I hadn't really got into KPop before now because many of the songs I had listened to weren't very good. However, over the past few weeks I started to look for some on youtube and itunes and found some really good songs. In my opinion, it seems that each artist has a few good songs, but no one has lots of good ones. But overall, I've now found a decent number of KPop songs that I like. The concert itself was amazing and I really enjoyed it. The performances were all awesome! It's definitely one of the highlights of my time in Korea so far.

The following day we went to a cave called Gosu cave. It was full of interesting sculptures and rock formations. It was also a very narrow cave in many parts and I even had to crawl at one point, or walk up long steep staircases at other times. It was a good workout lol, but it was a great experience that felt like a real cave should - narrow, dark, wet and beautiful. Then it was off to the clay pigeon shooting range. This was also fun but unfortunately I didn't hit anything in my 6 shots. Finally it was time to come home - another 4 hour journey in a cramped bus but driving through the Korean countryside is so beautiful now that the leaves are all turning different colours. A truly memorable weekend!