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A couple of weeks ago Kat and I along with Emily and her parents immersed ourselves in Korean culture at Korea house. Korea house is built in traditional Joseon architectural style and offers a traditional Korean meal followed by a traditional performance and was one of the things on my … Read More

I know this blog has been a bit all over the place of late. There has been a lot going on. I have just one thing to post to finish off everything on the Snow Crab Festival, Daegaya Experience Festival and Gayageum celebration (which all happened on the same weekend). … Read More

After the Daegaya Experience Festival we stopped on the way back to Seoul to take part in a ceremony paying tribute to the Gayageum (가야금) (a traditional Korean zither like instrument) and the man who invented it, King Gashil. I swear the Koreans find almost any reason to hold a … Read More

Beginning with grubby insect infested accommodation and culminating with an illegal contract; my English teaching job in South Korea found through i-to-i didn’t quite live up to my expectations. Their advertising material offered me a job where I would earn enough money to save to go travelling, professional support from … Read More

I’ve finally done it. I have resigned. The first phase of “the journey” is almost over and I can’t wait for phase two to begin. Most of yesterday passed in a haze. I spent the morning waiting for time to pass until I actually handed the director my resignation. Then … Read More

…maybe not but I did get a taster of how it feels to have a camera shoved in you face whilst someone tells you how best to stand so they can get a good photograph. I was at the Daegaya Experience Festival in Goryeong. I thought the festival was about … Read More

I’m trying desperately to get the blog up to date but I seem to be still writing about the first weekend in April. It’s starting to feel like the world is conspiring against me to stop me getting it done. I want to find time to sit and write but … Read More

After the snow crab festival we embarked on a mammoth three hour bus journey, that was only supposed to take an hour(!), to our accommodation. We unraveled ourselves from a cramped and now smelly bus in the village of Gae-shil where a group of ajummas dressed in matching uniforms awaited … Read More

Kimbap or Gimbap is such an institution in Korea that it if wasn’t for their obsession with Kimchi it could be their national dish.* Kimbap was first described to me as a Korean sushi and I have since discovered it was the name the Koreans used for sushi after their … Read More

I can’t actually believe I’ve done it. I’ve booked my tickets to the Philippines. Nineteen days in the sun, six of them in Manila 13 of them at Brian’s in Baclod on the island of Negros. Oooooo I’m very excited! Can you believe you can book a hostel with a … Read More

As the day of reckoning draws closer I decided it was time to contact i-to-i regarding my situation. Naively I arranged my job through i-to-i paying them an absolute fortune for the privilege. It is incredibly frustrating to realise I could have avoided myself this situation and an awful lot … Read More

One afternoon a young fisherman took his young virgin fancee out to sea to collect seaweed. They stopped on a rock a short way off shore and she began picking seaweed. The fisherman returned to shore promising to come back and pick his betrothed up from the rock. As the … Read More