It is Sunday night here. About two in the morning and I can't sleep. Frankly, I am a bit stressed out. Tomorrow I start teaching classes at Daewon Foreign Language High School. It is a very prestigious private school over here and I am not really feeling as prepared as I would like. Too much work. This is basically a job that got sorted when I came here. Technically all the schools are off for winter break. However, the Korean education system does not really give its kids a break. Instead, all the private schools and private academies (hagwons) run these winter camps. So the kids do even more hours to fill the gap and if the kids are in, so are the teachers...

Plenty of hours has been the story since I got here. A lot more work and class preparation than I envisaged, and more frankly than I wanted. Those of you who have recieved a brief e-mail or got some chat on messenger will have heard me complaining. Things are a bit disorganised here. Nae lesson plans and nae materials. So a lot of my free time has been taken up sorting that out. Anyway enough whinging. Let me try and share some of the interesting observations I have made of Seoul so far.

Mountains. Bizarrely Seoul, one of the denselypopulated cities in the world, has been erected around loads of mountains. In fact, my apartment or officetel as it is called is right next to Suraksan mountain. This means tons of hikers are bustling around. Little hiking stalls and shops in the subway sell a range of hiking gear.

Staring. Koreans will stare at you on the subway. Genuinely look at you intensely for uncomfartably long periods. At first I thought I must have sat down next to a semi naked Stuart Dunk to recieve such gazing. Nope. Neither is it my own spongy, yet alluring handsomeness that is the attraction. Foreigners just get stared at for being foreign. At first it is a bit disconcerting, but it is very quickly becoming bloody annoying.

Taxi Drivers. Are fucking difficult. They get pissed off if you get in a cab and they are driving in the opposite direction that you want to travel in. This means a lot of crossing roads to hail taxi's. They are bloody stubborn also. After one senile old geezer started taking me in completely the wrong direction I tried to get him to turn around. No, he was sure he was going in the right direction. Eventually, I got him to pull over an absolute distance away from where I wanted to go. It then took about two hours of subway travel to actually get to work. Leaving both a dented wallet and a reduced day .

So anyway that is some chat for everyone to have a look at. I won't be posting a great amount during January as it is intensive month, but should be getting some stuff up intermittently. Hopefully, I'll have some decent lashing adventures to report in time as well,

Peace out,

Kenny in Korea