Cool Running!

I have been off the streets for about 6 weeks due to a slight knee injury. I won’t bore you with the details, but it has been very frustrating not being able to go running. This has been amplified by the timing – when I had to stop it was just starting to get a little cold. Having never run in sub-zero temperatures before, I was hoping for a gradual transition from one season to the next. Unfortunately I have skipped autumn, and now I am trying to get back into a routine in the middle of winter. This is not easy!

The photo is me returning from a run just the other morning where the temperature was -7 degrees, but with the wind chill it was actually -13 degrees Celsius. During the first 5 minutes of the run my eyeballs were aching, and my lips contracted so tightly that I thought they may actually rip away from the sides of my mouth! Getting ready to go running now is often harder work than the actual run. I have to wear shorts, track pants, 2 pairs of socks, t-shirt, windbreaker long sleeve shirt, wind proof jacket, gloves, and a beanie. Running in these conditions is more about mental fitness than physical – perhaps it’s more about just being mental.

Cruizin' the Burbs

We have been lucky enough over the past week to have had a car at our disposal. Don (my running buddy) and his wife have gone to Guam for the holiday break, so they said we could use their car while they were gone. Driving has been quite an experience, and we have actually seen some things first hand that we previously thought were only folklore.

The first thing that we discovered is that the traffic lights are only put in place because they look nice – no one really pays any attention to them. This is a little scary when you are used to thinking that on a green light you are safe to go. Another novelty is when you are in a line of traffic waiting at the lights to do a u-turn. Generally you would follow the line of traffic down to the lights and everyone would make the turn from the same place. Here however, as soon as the car at the front starts to make a turn, then all the cars in the line (often 15 or 20 cars) make their u-turn from wherever they are in the line. It is quite comical to watch, and I’m sure it would make a dazzling performance from an overhead view.

Parking is another facet of driving that has been given that special Korean touch. We had heard stories that people often park their cars behind other cars and just leave them out of gear, the assumption being that when the person who has been parked in wants to get out, they will simply push the other vehicle out of the way. I wasn’t sure how true this was, but sure enough, when I came out of the supermarket the other day there was a car parked right behind ours in a perpendicular position. Luckily, the guy parked beside us was also leaving and he had already started pushing the offending vehicle out of the way. Of course the only place to move the car was behind other cars that were parked beside us – needless to say, that one particular car would’ve been moved back and forth quite a few times during its driver’s little shopping trip. Just last night, when we came out of the restaurant, we were parked in again. The car directly behind us had left their mobile number on the windscreen, so we got a passerby to call them for us. Within 30 seconds the owner emerged from a nearby restaurant to allow us to get out. I’m not sure how this system would work in Australia – I could just imagine where your car would end up if you parked behind someone and left it out of gear.

The Koreans have only had major highways for about 20 years, up until about 10-15 years ago, a lot of people didn’t have cars. Nowadays everybody has a car, and they love to drive them. It’s like having 40 million adolescent drivers on the road at once. The highways have not kept up with the increase in traffic volume, and traffic jams are a regular occurrence. A couple of weeks ago I drove to COSTCO, a large wholesale supermarket. The trip there took 30 minutes, but the trip back took 2 hours. Nothing like driving 35 km at an average speed of 17km/hr. The driving experience has been good for us because it has convinced us that we don’t need a car, we’ll be sticking to public transport – at least for now.

I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas!

Upon awakening this morning, I sat in front of the computer to catch up on the news and see what the day would bring weather wise. I noticed that my desktop weather widget was showing -2 degrees Celsius with light snow, so I drew back the blinds to see if any snow had fallen yet. What a wondrous surprise I was greeted with – everything outside was white! It must have been snowing all night, and the flakes continued to fall as we all quickly got dressed into our snow gear to head out and have a play. Hope you enjoy the happy snaps of our winter wonderland experience.The morning view from our apartment.

Our very first snowman!

Happy family snap.

Now that's what I call a snowball.

Funny how the snow falls when you shake the tree.

Afresco anyone?

My New Toys

One of my first missions, when we arrived back in August, was to buy a new guitar. It just so happened that my birthday fell on the same day as our first organised shopping trip to Songtan, a very westernised (US style) shopping district near the Osan military base. I had my heart set on an Epiphone Casino style guitar, and I found a few of these in the first guitar shop at fairly reasonable prices. Then I discovered that in Korea, they basically make the guitars and put whatever name they like on them. This would explain why a Korea made Ovation is only $400, compared to the US made version which sells for about $1000 in Australia. I continued my search and found a little shop (called Mr Potato Guitars) off the main street which had a good selection of accoustic guitars, and a few electrics. This is where I found the "Marvel" - a cheap nock off of an Epiphone Casino. The guy who owns and runs the shop, also makes the guitars, so the prices are very cheap and the qaulity is good. This particular guitar looks great, and sounds awesome. The tone is very rich and I have never heard a guitar bend a note like this one. I am very surprised at how good it sounds, as I never thought a cheap guitar would sound this good. The main reason for choosing a semi accoustic was so I could play it in our apartment without making too much noise, once I put it through my effects board and plug the headphones in that is. However, something was missing. Harper was not playing this guitar as much as he used to play my guitars at home. One day he said, "Dad, can we buy another guitar that isn't electric so I can play it. I miss playing the guitar." This was more than enough reason for me to head back to Mr Potato and pick up one of his original hand made accoustic guitars. I went for a classical (nylon string) accoustic cut away with pick up - which means I can plug it in and play through an amp. It is a lovely sounding guitar and Harper didn't leave it alone for the whole weekend. He actually came into our room early one morning and said, "Can I play the guitar now?" How can you refuse such enthusiasm? Even though it meant that we all had to get up then, the answer was yes. Notice the unique design of the headstock - Mr Potato's emblem is an eagle, so he tries to represent that in the carving. This is a unique guitar and one that will hopefully stay with us for some time, perhaps it could be Harper's one day - although I think he believes it's his already.

Is that really snow?

Well the winter weather has begun with a chilling vengeance. We are now experiencing highs of around 3 degrees, and overnight sub-zero lows. Luckily the days are still bright and sunny, so this gives the illusion of being a little warmer than it actually is. We had some snow flurries at school the other day, but it was wet snow, so it turned to water as soon as soon as it hit the ground. When we awoke on Saturday morning we were greeted by the nearby roofs and the surrounding mountains having a thin covering of white. The snow was very icy, but it was still a thrill for the kids to actually see it and touch it. The photos were taken on the roof of our building, and the hills are directly across the road from where we live. It appears that we could be in for quite a bit of snow this winter, who knows, we may even get a white Christmas!

Gyeonggi Suwon International School

School is continuing to go well, and the time is literally flying by. We are now only 3 weeks away from our major break for the academic year. We finish on December 22 and start again on January 4. Not the 7 weeks that we had become accustomed to in Australia, but we’ll make up for that when our June/July holidays come around. My role over here is Middle School Language Arts Teacher and I teach 5 classes: Beginning ESL (Grade 6 and I have 3 students in the class), Grade 6 Reading and Grade 6 Writing (10 students in each class), and Grade 7 Reading and Grade 7 Writing (14 students in each class). As you can see, the class sizes are very small and it is amazing how much you can get through with such small numbers. Education is very highly regarded in Korea and teachers are seen as highly respected professionals, hence the business card and the door name plate. Shouldn’t be too long before I change their perception of teachers.

Jenene is in charge of the Early Learning Centre, which is only available for staff children. She has 3 kids in her care, Promise, another Australian girl (4 years old), and a Korean girl (1 year old). She is enjoying basically being her own boss, but she gets very bored sometimes with no adult company for eight hours a day, and then only having me to talk to when she gets home. It is such a great feeling having all the family at the same school and being able to see each other regularly throughout the day.

The fees for the school are about $20 000 US per year and there are no words to describe how glad we are that we don’t have to pay for our kids! The school building is amazing and it is a strange experience to start a school with facilities that most schools have to wait for 15-20 years to achieve. Our Gym and Swimming pool are currently under construction and should be ready in March. Once that is done, the facilities offered by the school will be second to none. It is really a once in a lifetime opportunity to be a part of starting such a momentous project. This is something that the Cooper family will look back on fondly and it may be many years before we truly appreciate the magnitude of this experience.

Picture Update

Thought we'd just put in a few photos of some of the things we've been doing over the past few weeks.A container full of eels for sale at one of our local markets.

We went to the Hwaseong Festival a couple of weeks ago and saw all sorts of traditional dress and warriors.Hanging out at the Hwaseong Fortess wall has become one of our favourite pastimes.

When we're not exploring the trails in our local bushland that is.

The kids love making new friends - no matter what they look like!

They like talking to real people as well.

We are getting to see lots of amazing sights.

The kids are really getting the hang of posing for photos.

All the leaves are brown, and the sky is grey.

Things are really starting to cool down here in Suwon. Autumn (or fall) is well and truly here and it has been amazing to watch the leaves go through their transformation of colours before dropping to their inevitable end. We really got to experience this during our trip to the zoo where we were amazed by the many different colours. The experience was enhanced by the surrounding mountains which looked like they had been painted using the full spectrum of fall colours. The kids particularly enjoyed all the leaves on the ground, especially throwing them up in the air and letting them rain down. I think they actually enjoyed this more than seeing the animals. Over the past week we have been enjoying daily temperature ranges of 0 degrees to around 10-12 degrees. I was looking up some monthly averages the other day and found out that the average high for January is 0.6 degrees C, and the average low is -6.4 degrees C. Certainly something for us to look forward to.

Beondegi Anyone?

The Coopers have been keeping busy over the past few weeks and we have settled into a routine that sees us out and about exploring our surrounds every Saturday. Last week I took the kids to Seoul Grand Park, a beautiful area set into the side of a mountain; it contains an amusement park, a zoo and a hiking trail. We skipped the amusement park and headed straight for the zoo. On the way to zoo the path was lined with street vendors selling all sorts of snacks and novelties, including ‘Beondegi’ (boiled silkworm larvae). I couldn’t resist the temptation to give it a go and the vendor obligingly gave me a couple to try for free. They were extremely salty and surprisingly soft. The fact that I didn’t throw up or pass out was all the motivation that Harper needed to spear a couple with a toothpick and shove ‘em down. He actually liked them so much that he wanted to buy some – he ate about half of the cup before he said, “I think I’ve had enough now.” Promise said she wanted to try some too, but when she got it near her mouth she changed her mind – maybe next time. The next thing on our gastronomic hit list is ‘Mettugi’ – fried grasshopper. We’ll be sure to let you know how that goes.

The Odd Ones Out

It is quite a unique experience being in a society where you are the odd ones out due to your appearance and skin colour. This has both benefits and drawbacks, but luckily the benefits generally far outweigh the drawbacks.

Back in August, a few weeks after we arrived, we took the kids to one of the local water parks. It was school holidays for the Korean schools so the place was quite busy, in fact it was much busier than any public pool I have been to in Australia, including Wet ‘n’ Wild. First thing we noticed was that everyone was wearing bathing caps! This was a requirement so we bought the kids one each, luckily I don’t have enough hair to warrant wearing one so I was let off. As is often the case, we were the only westerners there so we were the subject of much staring and giggling. This was amplified when I took my shirt off and I wasn’t sure if they were staring at my bulging muscles (I may have forgotten to wear them that day) or my high percentage of body fat compared to their slender frames. It wasn’t until I was in the water with Harper and Promise that the reason revealed itself. A group of teenage girls gathered around us and were saying that Harper and Promise were very beautiful, and at the same time they were pointing at me and giggling. After a couple of minutes one of them built up the courage to come over and touch my chest! She quickly jumped back to her friends speaking in Korean at 100mph and laughing. Then they all came over to poke me in the chest and laugh. Of course I stood there making my pecs do a dance and lapped up the attention. Well that could have happened, but the actual truth is that I was quite uncomfortable so we got out and I quickly, but coolly, put my shirt back on. It was at this point that I realised that hey had never seen anyone with hair on their chest before and they had to touch it to see if it was real. Perhaps they thought that a gorilla had escaped from the zoo. I think that next time we go I will have to invest in some sort of full body bathing cap.

Swing the Monkey

Prep M, Harper's old class from CAC, have a special friend called Swing. He is a stuffed toy monkey that the kids get to take home and then write a little story about, telling what they did with Swing and take some photos of him doing these things with them. Miss Mullins (Teacher extrordinaire) kindly sent Swing over to Korea for a visit. As you can imagine, this was a very exciting time for us all and was great for Harper to see photos of his old classmates. We took Swing everywhere with us for about a week, at which point I had to spend a small fortune sending him back to Australia. While he was here we took him to Everland, a Korean version of Disneyland, as well as on a tour of Seoul. On our way back from this long and tiresome day we noticed that Swing was nowhere to be seen! He had done a runner. At this stage we were on the subway halfway back to Suwon, and in a state of panic. We mentally retraced what happened at the end of the day and worked out that we had left him on one of the tour buses. Of course there were plenty of tears and stress, and Harper had a bit of a cry as well. When we got home I rang the tour company and to our surprise, and relief, they said that they had him in their office. So 2 days later I was on my way back to northern Seoul to retrieve our little monkey. I have never experienced such relief when I finally had him back in my hands. This certainly was an adventure for us all, one we won't forget in a hurry.

Annyeong Hasyeo

Welcome to our first Blog posting. Hopefully we will regularly update information here about our adventures and expereinces here in Suwon and beyond.