Sunday.....

Ok - so have you caught up with Friday and Saturday? Let's talk Sunday......

After an interesting night's sleep in the VERY warm room (reminiscent of Bikram Yoga Ms Miller!!!), we finally emerged from the Jimjirbang a little bleary eyed, but relaxed just the same....

Time for a quick brekky before heading off to Busan to meet up with some friends of Mr Chirtoca's to go exploring....

Where did we end up? Yonggungsa temple, the one that Mr Van Roon rated as one of the most beautiful he had ever seen..... Mr Brown and I had been there before, but the day that we had been it was raining, and it seems I'm a sucker for nice temples, besides, it was a nice day, and the company was great.....

After a wee drive (I say that in the nicest possible way cos the drive was extra long as the guys got lost) we finally made it to the temple which, as it was when Mr Brown and I were there, was teeming with people.....

OK - time for some photos....

In the entrance is a set of statues representing the Asian Astrological Signs, which, for those who don't know, are set by year rather than by month.....















Mr Chirtoca's Asian Astrological Sign is the Snake.....


















Park's is the Horse....



















Ki Tae's is the Monkey (very suitable)....


















I'm a Rabbit.....

Sorry? What's that? You want to see some photos of the actual temple? OK - sure....

This is the view that you first get as you make your way down the stairs.....

If you turn left before you get to the bottom of the stairs, you make your way out to a point on which is a small statue and a beautiful view of the temple from the viewpoint of the sea....

I took this photo when Mr Brown and I were at the temple but didn't post it then as the scaffolding for the lanterns for the upcoming celebrations of Buddha's Birthday didn't look great in the photos..... But I love this dragon and had to post it :-)

Wonder if this guy's happy cos he's well fed, or happy cos the sun's out....

One of the things that I love about all of these temples is the stone carvings.....

Do you think Park's got the makings of a dragon? I think he might be close.....

Anyone recognise this guy? Coloured Belts - check your grading syllabus!!

All in all - another great day here in Korea albeit a long one, we were all pretty fried on the way back into Busan with a number of the crew falling asleep in the van.....

Am going to close this post with a photo of the group of us that were at the temple.... signing off for now!

Friday Night To Saturday Night.....

So - the weekend.....

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........

The Park Down The Road....

This park is about a 60 second walk from the dojang and my place in Gimhae. I got some great photos last night after getting back from Busan....... Not as good as Mr Hanna's photos.... (by the way sir, I'd love to talk to you about your camera!!!!)

And this is it during the day.......

Advertising....

So we've been doing a massive advertising campaign in Gimhae this week, brochures, visits to schools and they've even pulled in a group of guys who have been beating the street, cold calling, you name it to increase the class sizes in Gimhae.

This morning we met at the dojang at 7:30am, jumped in the car and took of around the schools in the area, standing outside the gates saying hi while the hired crew collared kids and told them they should come to English Taekwon-Do and handing them brochures..... It kinda felt a little strange doing the whole advertising direct to children thing, but hey, it's Korea :-)

Whatever they're doing must be working though.... we've gone from the one class of 4-6 students, to 4 classes. The student numbers in each class are not particularly high, but as the dojang isn't huge that's ok.

I want to show you some more of Gimhae. It's not so much like Busan with the streets packed with buildings and glaring colours and signs everywhere.... yes there is a central area of town that is packed with restaurants, and the area around the University was still teeming with people late last night, but Gimhae is alot more green than Busan with trees and parks everywhere.

I've got heaps of photos... which I'll upload as soon as I work out why my pictures aren't uploading today..... Unfortunately logging in from Korea means I get all the instructions in Korean..... hopefully its just a temporary error....

Korea leaves for the World Champs....

So the Korean crew left today - don't forget to say hi to them team - there's only 3 of them!!!!

Yesterday was a quiet one, Mr Chirtoca and I thought we were going to be training in the afternoon, but they skipped the training session for some reason.

Instead Mr Chirtoca went to catch up with some friends, and I tagged along with President Kim, Park, Ki Tae and Jung to find Jung a team tracksuit for this week... talk about leaving it to the last minute!!!! We found the perfect thing - personality wise and style wise and then spent another couple of hours tracking down someone who could a) supply Korean Flag patches, and b) sew them on right then and there..... once we found him I swear it took about 5 minutes to finish!!!

Today's just been a quiet one. Ki Tae and I took a walk into town, then he and I took a class at 5, it was supposed to be just me, but the student didn't speak a word of English (not even hello until I'd finished with him) and then my normal Monday 8pm class. When I first started instructing the 8pmers they started off as a pretty unruly bunch, but they're settling into the swing of things now..... I don't know whether they're getting used to the work and the way that I instruct, or they're just resigned to the fact that there's no use complaining cos I won't understand them...... :-)

Anyway, have been doing some study to finish off my day before heading off for an early night ready for an early rise tomorrow morning - work in NZ have requested my assistance, so it's online 6am my time (9am for most of you).

By the way - we're still looking for instructors to come over and continue the work that Mr Van Roon, Mr Brown, Mr Doogan, Mr Chirtoca and I have been doing. We're wondering what might be holding you all back from putting up your hand and coming over for this amazing experience.... sooooooo, I'm asking for your help....

I was hoping you could spare me 5 minutes of your day and send me a quick email telling me 2 things - 1) are you interested in coming to Korea to instruct Taekwon-do? and 2) what - if anything, is preventing you from putting up your hand......

You can email me on chrismorton75@hotmail.com

I look forward to hearing from you!!!!!

More updates later!

Farewell to Mr Brown.....

Okay have been holding out on this update for a little bit cos I didn't want to give the game away.... But hopefully everything has gone to plan and Mr Brown has made it home safe and sound and a little earlier than planned (Surprise Min!!!!)

There's a bit of a story behind this.... and I'm not sure if Mr Brown is going to keep blogging - so I'll give you a quick run down....

Mr Brown's mentioned "changee changee" before I'm sure of it.... everytime we think a plan is in place, it changes, everytime we think we're going somewhere, we end up somewhere else etc etc etc.... well get this....

In the middle of last week Mr Brown gets an email from his travel agent.... guess what?!?! changee changee!!!! Without any known reason, Mr Brown's flight has been cancelled!!! He was given two choices, leave a day early, or leave 3-4 days later..... errrrrrm can you guess which one he chose?

Over the last week Mr Brown has had a roller coaster ride of emotions from what I've been able to see.... he's soooooooo happy to be going home to his wife, his kids, his grandson... (by the way guys - hi! I feel like I know you from all the stories I've heard!!!!), and at the same time he's sad to be leaving Korea and the people we've met here.... I'm sure Mr Doogan can testify, the people here are fantastic, it's like being part of a Korean family.... :-)

Anyway... back to the story.... So I had to break the news to the Koreans that the plans had changed and there was a flurry of phone calls etc as plans were re-organised.

I caught the bus in the afternoon to Busan with one of the English teachers from the Kindergarten (Michael) who had met Gwyn and wanted to say goodbye. I think we got to Busan around 6:30 or so? We had tea (no, really?) and then dinner, and then suddenly Mr Brown, Michael and I were left alone and told that we'd be contacted later.... well, we thought that was a little wierd, and decided that we weren't going to hang around the dojang for an unknown period of time. By this stage we'd found out that Roman had had to finish instructing in Ulsan before he could come and join us so we knew he'd be late, and Park and Ki Tae couldn't leave Gimhae until 11 when they'd locked up the dojang/fitness club, so we figured what the heck, we'd go and see a movie..... we decided on Pirates of the Carribean.... good movie, lots of fun, but soooooooooooooooo loooooooooooooooooong!!!! By the time it had finished we had missed 73 calls on Michael's cell phone from the crew wondering where we were.... Oops! But it wasn't as if they had told us what the plan was.... (It's ok guys, I'm kidding, relax....)

Anyway, we cabbed it back to the dojang where we were met by President Kim, Director Kim, Instructors Lee and Gung (from Ulsan where Mr Brown was based for a while), Mr Chirtoca, Jennifer Hierlihy (a Canadian student of Mr Brown's), her fellow English teacher Kerrie, Park and Ki Tae and we headed off for some beer, soju and snacks. After we'd terrorised the staff for a little while we made our way back down the hill to the local Noraebang (Korean version of Karaoke) and sang ourselves to about 4:30 in the morning (and no I won't post any photos - what goes on tour stays on tour).....

Mr Brown headed up to the hotel to do the final pack and collection of his gear which we dragged down to the dojang, a cup of tea or two and we headed out to the airport... We got there at about 5:45am if I recall rightly, and check in turned out not to be until about 6:30, so we spent some time cooling our heels, trying to stay awake....

The last goodbye itself was pretty moving, I think we were all completely drained and probably a little bit at a loss for words....

Anyway.... Mr Brown should be home now - a day early.... I understand his daughters knew what was going on, but that he is surprising his wife (who was going to go up to Auckland today to surprise him!!!!)

Hope you had a good trip Mr Brown! See you at Nationals!!!

Free Day.....

So what did we spend Buddha's Birthday doing? Well after a 10am start, Mr Brown and I hit the shopping centres starting in Seomyeon at the Lotte Department store....

You get a sense of what you're in for as you make your way from the subway station.... especially with the mini Trevi Fountain in the entrance....

The department store is huge and is jam packed with stores like Prada, Gucci, Chanel, Tiffanys..... needless to say I was in heaven!!!!

Next stop was Nampodong, home of the Busan Markets.... we stopped for lunch in the area and then just wandered around looking, shopping.....

According to my calculations Mr Brown and I were out and about for a good 6 hours.... by this time the feet were getting sore and we were starting to fade and decided to head back to the Yangjeong.

Later we were packed into the van and driven across the city to the Russian quarter for Chinese food.... yes that's right - the Russian quarter for Chinese food..... and pretty darn good Chinese food in fact!!!!

On another topic entirely - Mr Brown heads home this weekend.... is kind of strange, Mr Brown was there to welcome me when I stepped off the plane after a 17 hour trip (including stopovers and customs...), introduced me gently to some of the..... errrrrm.... different (?) customs here in Korea.... and he's been my travel, shopping and exploring buddy..... and now he's going!!!

Mr Brown - thank you for everything! I hope your trip home is comfortable and I look forward to seeing you at Nationals in September!!!