I’m all sad today.

Recently the school I work at has been sold. That’s not the bad news though!

So... fair enough the new owner wants to get to know us a little, short interviews were arranged with him for all of the staff. Mine was today, as were most of the other teacher’s I think. That was about the point I got all sad. We discussed a bunch of issues about the school, about life in Korea and life outside Korea. We also discussed the fact that I will be leaving in 3 months. 3 months!!! That is no longer a long time for me. To be totally honest I want to stay for longer, I am already missing the place. 3 months is not enough. I will try and extend my contract but I am not sure if it will go down, I dunno.

I’m not so good at goodbyes, and I am not looking forwards to it at all! Hopefully there will be a change of heart, either I will want to flee the country or they will want to keep me on for another few months.

We shall see...

'GO!'

Sunday 12th November

‘You passed preliminary in Burrito Eating contest. Please attend the final.’ – was the text I got at about 3pm on Saturday. Preliminary round ended on Thursday 9th, so I thought that all of the finalists would have been told and I wasn’t invited. But I got the text and went to the final today. It was a giggle actually. A whole crew was out there rooting for me, I definitely had the most support! Thanks guys!

After my preliminary jumbo burrito in 1minute 52 seconds, I was well placed at third. There were 8 of us there eating, two of the contenders failed to show. Mr. Choi explained the rules; two heats, 4 in each, one medium burrito, go when he says, and shout ‘Choi’s Tacos’ when you’re done. I was in the first heat. Stting next to the first seed, I just wanted to watch in awe, his preliminary burrito was 1 minute and 6 seconds! When I saw that I thought I was a little out of my league.

So he said ‘go’ and I tucked into it, I was eating quick, but the guy took it in 3 bites! I came third in my heat so I wasn’t in the final. I took 5th in the end and have a certificate for it. I also got a free jumbo burrito token. The finalists had to go on to eat a jumbo burrito and when I watched them I was a little happy that I wasn’t one of them. It was pretty savage.


I don't have any pictures of the competition myself but i will get some from Ryan for y'all. In the mean time here are some seasonal pictures. They were taken in and around Incheon Grand Park.

Sorae Fish Market

Saturday 11th November

Today I went to Sorae with Nami, my girlfriend. There is a fish market at Sorae that I really wanted to go to. We managed to get the bus, the one that takes us to Shinsegae, the one that says Sorea on the front (in Korean) but unfortunately it was going the wrong way, my bad! So we got out of that and get a taxi there instead (the taxi went straight back the way we came, ooops).

The sun was setting and it was beautiful. There is a bridge on the other side of the market so we made for that to catch the rest of the sunset, but that place was rammed! Loads of families, people carting stuff around and there really wasn’t much room in the gangways anyway! The place was like a small maze with dead-ends and all. Unfortunately, we missed the best of the sunset while trying to get to the bridge.

Coming back through the market was interesting, now with a lot more time to look around there seemed to be a lot more to see! Mini white shrimp, slightly larger pink shrimp, shrimp with pink stripes, octopods of many sizes, big live crab, little live crabs, crabs in soy sauce with chilies, little fish, live little fish, big live fish and lots of other products too!

By this time it was time for a bite to eat, and I have been looking forward to having the shell fish BBQ since mum told me about it! We went to a place where the lady outside was really trying to convince us to go in, to be quite honest there wasn’t much cooking going on behind the scenes, cos you do the cooking at the table, so it didn't seem to matter which of the many restaurants we went to. The meal is great! On the BBQ you have a metal bowl which has chili sauce, garlic and fresh chilies in, this cooks to make a nice sauce for the shell fish. The shells, either opened of not, are put on the grill and BBQ’ed in the shell. When they are done you put them in the sauce and eat them. Pretty simple, but definitely effective. And of course, I had to go for another dish while I was there. A few restaurants had a tank out front with shrimp swimming around in it. They looked so cute outside the place we were at and I couldn’t resist. They came in a pot, on a burner on a bed of sea salt. The lady chops them up and you eat the tails then the head, and they are sooooo tasty. So simple but I think it was the freshness that really gave them a lot of flavour.

Fire Chickaaaan

Saturday 5th November.

Remember, remember the fifth of November the gunpowder treason and plot. Well I’m just about to sit down and watch V for Vendetta for the nth time!

But before then… Mark is still gone, and still missed.

Had a good weekend, went out with my girlfriend. Yeah, I didn’t mention it before; I didn’t want to jinx it. But I’ve been with her for about 4 months now I’d say. Went out with her and some of her friends for a leaving do. Tried to do a centurion, this turned into a Power 50 minutes with the 40-50ml shots of beer that we were drinking. It was good fun. Then came back to my area and bought a big crab!





















I am still reeling from dinner tonight, about an hour later. I ate a meal called booldak which translates to ‘fire chicken’. It’s a bit like dak-kalbi but less vegetables and it’s much spicier. Its possibly one of the spiciest things I have ever eaten. It rivals the 40 chili curry I made while at uni. It was so spicy at one point I felt light headed.

Blog back log!

here are a bunch of blogs that I wrote on the dates shown, sorry for the delay.

Thursday 2nd November

So Mark’s gone now. It was a busy weekend; I actually don’t remember what happened on Friday but Saturday was a really good day! We started off in a quiet bar in our town where we did a pub quiz made up by James. There were 17 people taking the quiz, so four teams drawn out of a hat. It was a little unfair when my team was picked as the only team with no Korean(s). Balance was tipped more in our favour when James announced the bonus round was about cockney rhyming slang! Of course… we won, which was nice as Mark was also on our team. Brian never loses quizzes even though he comes up with absolute gems sometimes…

What TV programme was Robert Downy Jr thrown off for his drug habit? ‘Its cocaine! Cocaine!’ Errrr Brian? That’s not a TV show.

Who will play Venom in the up coming Spiderman film? ‘Don’t say it too loud but its VENOM’ Brian… Venom isn’t a real person.

So I’m sitting at a PC babbling on cos its Mark’s PC I am taking care of it for him. So now I can bore you by babbling on at 9.30 a.m. sitting around in my underwear!

Its gonna be strange without mark. He is totally chilled and easy going. Good luck Mark, see you in Incheon 2014 for the Asian Games! Or I might just come to America.

The worst computer in the world!

I'm at school trying to upload my blog but its sooooo slowwwww. This PC is so bad :(