Four weeks completed, but it's a marathon, not a race. Settling down now into the teaching week. I am getting tired on a daily basis. Already extremely tired of the dodgy 'Andy and Euri' Americanised dialogues that we have to play to phonics classes. Slowly beginning to put names to faces - they all have English versions but not all of them will wear their name tags happily. I have a mixed bag of classes and because of problems, with different level abilities wit...

At the risk of sounding like I am in some kind of prison, it's three weeks down, 49 to go. I'm settling in and slowly making inroads into the culture and the language. I take my phrasebooks wherever i go and sneakily have a look before approaching a market stall, for example, and speaking only in Korean. I've started to teach myself Han-gul.. it should not take too long.. once I have got the basics, I should be able to build up, in my mind, the various combinat...

Sunday again. At my 'church' - the PC Bang, that is, sending another blog. Just seen England beat France 11-9 to reach the Rugby World Cup Final. Fantastic stuff. This entry is mostly concerned with yesterday's speech contest at a local higher education college, not far from the national stadium and sports park (see photos). After completing my second week with what seems to be the usual mix of noisy and soporific students, myself, Andy and Wyn went to the Inte...

DAY 12: Philip is in the PC BANG again. So, I surprised myself by going to church Sunday. Despite starting to read 'The God Delusion' by Richard Dawkins, I felt that I had little to lose by accepting an invitation from a Dutch preacher, Arianna. It was OK. Reminded me of Fakenham Baptists somewhat - more reassuring than challenging. I had to stand up and introduce myself (reminiscent of 31 Dec) and I received a welcome gift - a small hand towel. I think the...

Hi. It's Saturday evening. I'm at a PC Bang in Banji-dong - about 5 mins walk from my flat. Well, I've got through my first week. Admittedly, I only worked 4 days. No more holidays now, however. I've started taking classes by myself, which can be tough as some of the younger kids can be quite disruptive... they happily punch each other or push each other off their chairs. Got my 'safari' duck out on Thursday and used it to get Korean and English names from the ki...