Potos!

The concept of ph making a /f/ sound is often lost on Korean children, hence the deliberate mispelling of the title. I have just set up a link to my photo account (well, Mike did, I watched the HTML being copied and pasted with wearied eyes). I have also just spent the past couple of hours uploading photos for you lot to have a gawk at and am now about to crash into a welcoming, hopefully mosquito free bed. Feel free to make cynical comments about them, and speculate about possible air-brushing (plastic surgery is unseasonably cheap over here....!)

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Yellow Belts and Sandwiches

I thought I would precede this blog with some space set aside in a homage to Mike's sandwich making skills. I have to say, he makes a mean sandwich and as he would say, with a ponderous look on his otherwise expressionless face, 'Isn't it strange how eating one sandwich only makes you more hungry?' Fortunately, his sandwich didn't send me down the dangerous path of wanting more sandwiches (the nearest sandwich shop to here is about twenty minutes away on the subway).

A-ha! Myself, Fan, Irene, Angela and Muireann were crowned yellow belts on Saturday! It wasn't the humiliation fest that I had steeled myself for - sure there were lots of tiny little boys with red belts (who were, rather disconcertingly, kicking the crap out of each other) but we just about managed to hold our own, even for a marathon photo session at the end of the ceremony which made us feel like particularly shifty politicians. We have also been informed, through translators, that we must attend a feast of samgipsal (a barbequed meat which looks like bacon, but tastes nothing like it) with our beloved Grand Master - a man who nearly dislocated my shoulder blades with what was probably meant to be a hearty, humourous slap. He is something of a sadist - Koreans are notorious for their stretching skills, none of which I seem to have inherited - so our stretching is less than adequate for him. So, very often he will come and stretch you into the splits, stand on your legs until they give way to the pressure or force you to do several push ups...and I can't even do them the on-your-knees girly way. Consequently, our loud bursts of raucous, nervous laughter morph quickly into screams of terror.

Canada Day was stacks of fun - there were lots of attractive Canadian men (unfortunately, these were not the ones that chose to remove their shirts) and for the boys, a few bra-clad women who, as an added bonus, were also soaking wet. The band was ok, there were games, such as tug'o'war, in which I think that Manitoba were the victors ( a presumed first) and lots of other fun and frolics. Mike and I had a beer fight, not something I would ever advise, and everyone was dancing up a (dust) storm until, precisely at 6pm, the Korean rainy season started. And believe me when I say, I shall never complain about Ireland's hesitant drizzle ever again.

The World is Clearly Orange

Ha - tomorrow is my first ever day of physical reckoning. God knows that I have ran plenty of Aussie cross country trails, jealously guarded by truculent teachers at various, unavoidable check points (so there was no chance of you slacking off, as many tried desperately to do.) I have also swam plenty, made occasional trips to the gym, only to stare slack jawed at people who spend twenty minutes on those fiendish stepping machines that make your thigh muscles feel as if they have been moulded out of burning carbon.

But tomorrow - tomorrow I get the chance to cancel out all my humiliations and my general non- athleticism when I and my fellow Tae-Kwon Doers will be trying out for our 'orange' belt (Note: it's actually a yellow belt but our self-styled Grand Master insists that it is orange, and that sounds a little bit better so why correct him?). We have a routine to go through, involving high and low blocks, snap kicks and organised stepping and it requires co-ordination, something which I didn't previously think I had. Unfortunately, as we are complete novices, we will have to perform for our belts with another group of amateurs - tiny children who have also just begun. Our moment of glory shall be tempered with a smattering of humiliation as the kiddums parents attempt (most probably unsuccessfully) to hide their sympathetic laughter. If I do actually get this, though, I shall get stunningly drunk tomorrow night.

This weekend also brings about another event that I am completely inexperienced with - Canada Day. Let's face it - why would I ever have chosen to celebrate Canada Day previous to this very moment? What would it have entailed on the Emerald Isle? Would we have made cardboard cutout beavers, drank dodgy imported beer, tried to disguise oak leaves as maple? However, on Sunday, I am attending a huge party at the UN compound celebrating the Mountie-d ones and there shall be much beer and aboots to keep me happy. I shall also probably witness the Canadian boyfriend in what is fairly close to his natural environment and hope that he shan't suddenly become passionate about the sticky political topic of Quebec's desired autonomy.

Birthday Belatings

I am sitting in the staff room and not too far away, some shrill voiced children are performing an off-note edition of Kum-Ba-Yah. Normally, I would be moved by such a performance - however, the bitter fact that Kum-Ba-Yah will now be stuck in my head for at least 24 hours, cancels out any trite sentimentality.

I spent a nice birthday, replete with cake and drinking. I was out a few nights, including one where several health and safety rules were smashed with some women swaying drunkenly on the shoulders of unstable men, and other women dancing on shaky tables and benches. I recall that if that happened in a club or bar in Ireland, at least seven over-sized men in black, all conferring with each other on chunky Motorola walkie talkies circa 1982, would lumber over, sending at least three unsuspecting drinkers flying on their way, and kick out the offenders. In Korea, the bar staff whoop them on.

I have also been eating lots of icecream. I'm not sure of the nutritional merits of icecream but something embedded deep in my psyche informs me that it possibly isn't something that should be consumed as if it is one of the more important food groups. I blame my co-worker Shaun, who also has a penchant for the cold stuff. Unlike me, however, he has an over-active metabolism which means that he is Korean-thin and just as grumpy looking. Maybe ice-cream, over time, will cure such ills.

Hyot!

This is the delectable sound that me and my fellow Tae-Kwon doers are meant to execute everytime we kick or punch - I think the idea is so that air is expelled from the abdomen and will mean that if there is an ensuing blow, it will hurt a lot less. It also means that we sound like your average drunken Irish Joe down at Magennis' pub, who has drunk himself into thinking that he is Bruce Lee.

Oh, and I'm now 22. Yay! It means that I am no longer the fresh faced university graduate that others had blindly viewed me as - I am now hardened and cynical, who sneers at small children, waves a dismissive hand at literary criticism and kicks the last vestiges of my youth firmly in the testicles. This is probably not the case, as can be proved by how I fussed over a puppy at the weekend as I lounged on the beach and honed my frisbee skills (I'm still crap).

I also saw the gayest Korean men ever at the beach. They sported tight brief shiny Speedos (which they kept pulling off each other as they wrestled, connected at the hips, across the sand), artfully tied scarves around the neck, interesting headgear and a pre-dilection for dogs - 'I like dogs' was the only English one of them appeared to know. They were openly squirming on each other in full view of other Koreans - predominantly families - but maybe the stench of soju was enough to overrule their usually conservative judgements, as no one even glanced at them. However we, in our bikinis, were still, apparently, a much more entertaining sight.

Also, can anyone tell me the problem with the phrase 'at the weekend'? I have been sagely informed by a Canadian, the obvious inventors of all modern English dialects, that it should be 'on the weekend'. And this all from a race who have never heard of a fortnight. I shake my fist at them - although, this has been rendered impotent by the classic 'tomato/potato' debate which always stops any pronunciation arguments cold.