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.