Friday night we crashed - what a day!
We started at 10am with Kindergarten.... yes that's right, 4 classes, 240 students - whew!!! Luckily Park and Ki Tae joined me this time.... there were ulterior motives for that which we won't talk about, but I was glad of the help all the same :-)
Then back to the dojang for a brief break before starting classes again.... starting at 2:30pm with half hour breaks in between most of the classes we set in for another 5 classes - thankfully not as big as Kindy..... We finished at 9, spent an hour or so talking to parents and running around playing games with the kids before everyone finally cleared out....
For dinner we headed over to the University area and settled down for some BBQ Pork (Mr Doogan - I'm told this was your favourite meal here in Korea!!! I have to say it was pretty darn good!!!!)
Saturday started pretty slowly for which I'm glad - it was nice to have the sleep in!
We drove to the restaurant of the parents of one of our students for lunch where we feasted on noodles and dumplings. The student is the girl Mr Brown wishes he had for a student back home... Her name is Kim Ji Un and she's great. She's been studying English from books and with the help of a teacher at her school and speaks very well. She's also doing wonders for our class sizes as she's bringing her friends along to join class with her which is great for her and for us!!!
Unfortunately she wasn't there to eat with us as she was out with her friends so we located them and joined them at their school where they were in the middle of a low scale water fight.... This promptly escalated to a full scale water war during which we all got thoroughly drenched!!!
We finally left them to it and headed back to the dojang where Mr Chirtoca joined us in the early evening from Ulsan and we settled in for training.... The plan was to start with patterns and move on from there depending on how we were feeling.... Well three and a half hours later (yes I said three and a half hours!!!) we finished up to the end of the first dan patterns (well, Park and Mr Chirtoca did, Ki Tae and I reviewed some of Ki Tae's patterns while Mr Chirtoca worked with Park on his first dan patterns). And the time just flew by! I didn't even notice what time it was until we were done! It was awesome!
After a good feed the guys had the bright idea of us all staying at the Jimjirbang (찜질방) for the night.... Riiiiiiight...... Had heard stories and was a bit on the nervous side, but what the heck - right? When in Rome... (or Korea as the case may be).
The guys and girls are split from each other in the first part so Park grabbed a lady walking in at the same time as us and asked her to show me "the ropes" as it was...... The place was like an oversized day spa with spas, showers... and due to the time we got there, very deserted!!! Woo hoo!!!
We then dressed in the standard getup, loose shorts and t-shirts, blue for the men and orange for the women (red for the younger boys and girls....) and headed out to join the guys. It was pretty quiet... pretty much everyone there was crashed out on the floor sleeping. Ki Tae was shattered, so he joined them pretty much immediately......
Meanwhile Mr Chirtoca lay down on what looked like a Lazy Boy, but turned out that you fed this thing coins and it proceeded to massage you to a pulp.... meanwhile Park and I opted for the foot massage machines.... these things aren't the nice friendly foot massagers.... the Koreans are into pressure points and this thing basically mashed our feet.... we had three options, hard, medium and soft..... I ended up only being able to handle the soft option.... Later Mr Chirtoca winced and groaned his way through the medium option, but Park toughed it out with the hard option.... I don't know how he did it?!?!?
We spent some time talking to some young girls who came to practice their English on us and they and Park made us Ram hats.... very strange.... I kinda think Mr Chirtoca's got a Princess Leia thing going on don't you?
We got told off for making too much noise (we weren't as loud as the group next to us - honest!) so decided it was time to hit the hay....
Park escorted me to the "Women's Sleeping Room". Now, I'm short, but I tell you, they built this room to be able to heat it easily, so even I was doubled over walking into this thing..... I mean, obviously all people are doing in there is sleeping, so is not like you need alot of height, but because of the lack of ceiling height and the fact that it was dark, it was kinda like making my way into a cave..... There seemed to be people sprawled out on the floor everywhere. The room was really warm - they keep it at 30 degrees all night, heated through the floor (so if you're unlucky enuff to be on top of one of the heating elements then it feels even warmer!!!).
Sleep time........
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