The week after the craziness of the conference and Everland was also a pretty traumatic week! Firstly, Greg and I had been ‘told’ by his mental co-teacher that we were organising an English Day at his school – we were supposed to think of activities to entertain 350 boys in one hall for 1.5 hours!! So, we got all stressed trying to think of ideas, we were even asking the lecturers at the conference if they had any ideas – they all thought it was a crazy idea and couldn’t think of any suitable activities, which made us even more worried!! Luckily, we were saved! The co-teacher decided to ‘postpone’ the English Day, and then said that we didn’t have to organise it anyway! That made me pretty happy, as I think it was a disaster waiting to happen! Apparently, we just have to read a quiz out now, which seems pretty ok...although it does mean I have to work on a Saturday for no money, but this is Korea, so there you go!
The week was also stressful as we were both preparing for the Jeollabuk-do Office of Education co-teaching ‘competition’, which is basically a fancy word for an inspection! We each had to record a lesson with our co-teachers and send it to the Education Office to be judged, alongside a written lesson plan! It was not good, Greg had to do 5 lessons to be filmed (two at one school and one at his other 3 schools) and I had to rewrite my lesson plan about 30 times as my co teacher got really anal about it, and kept changing her mind about what she wanted to do! I have presented the lesson yet, we are doing that next week, but it’s going to be BAD! Especially as our lesson plan should take about 2 hours to do, and we only have 45 minutes!!
In order to relax, and escape the craziness of the lesson planning, we decided to have a weekend in Daejeon (about 1.5 hours from Jeonju) and visit a spa, in the town of Youseong, on the outskirts of Daejeon. We stayed in the cool area of Daejeon, called Dunsan-dong, in a Love Motel called, ‘Kiss Motel’, it was fab! It had glittery pink rose wallpaper and was massive! I was very impressed, the area was lively and had lots of shops and restaurants as well!
Back to Youseong - the hotel the spa was in looked fancy, so we assumed it was a Western Spa – the photos on the website made it look like a western spa too (the difference between Korean and Western Spas are; Korean spas are segregated, and you have to wander around completely naked while an old Korean scrubs you down! It’s not something I have any desire to do, although I’m sure some people love it, so I was looking forward to having a lovely Jacuzzi and steam and hanging out with Greg).....obviously loveliness did not happen! I don’t know what I expected, since I left for Korea, my luck has just been completely BAD! I swear if something good doesn’t happen soon I don’t know what I’ll do!! Anyway, we traipsed over to Youseoung and it was a Korean spa, so we went back to our motel and hung out for the afternoon! I got to relax and have a bath and it was actually really enjoyable!
I tried to buy a coat as well, in Dunsan-dong; I bought one – a Korean puffa jacket! They look bad but are insanely warm, and as the temperature in Ancheon had plummeted rapidly over the last 2 weeks, it was definitely essential to get a warm winter coat! Apparently it’s going to hit -10 in the real winter, so I need to be prepared!! Anyway, the coat I bought was really snug but when I got it home it had a broken zip! We took it back to the shop, but they were all dodgy, so I got my money back. Luckily, Koreans are very honest, as I didn’t have a receipt or anything, they just remembered me and refunded my money, so at least that aspect of it was good! Greg bought me a cool ladybird pillow from the same shop as well (for our journeys on planes) and it’s really cute! I will treasure it I’m sure! After coat shopping (unsuccessfully), we treated ourselves to a really nice Outback Steak; I also had 2 glasses of wine and a beer, so was of course massively drunk! It was fun though, and nice to let my hair down, I don’t drink a lot in Korea, so it’s nice to do it for a change – I didn’t like the hangover though! After tea we went to the cinema and watched RED. I really enjoyed it but Greg thought the plot was, ‘full of holes’...I think that wasn’t an essential thought when they were making it!.... Bruce Willis was fun, but we both thought he was getting OLD!! I had a fab evening though, so really do like Daejeon now, and it was good to have a more relaxing weekend for once!!
On Sunday, we went to Tesco Homeplus (still one of the best things about Korea!), where we found a stack of coats identical to the one I had bought the night before, but that were 10,000 won more expensive! Clearly, the ones in the other shop had been a faulty batch that they were trying to flog on the cheap! L Anyway, I found a much better coat and decided to buy that instead – even though I loved massively puffy in it!! In this Homeplus, the coats were outside, so I took the coat inside, where I would buy it with the rest of my shopping. When we got downstairs in the homeplus, one of the greeter people (they have greeters in Korean supermarkets who bow to you, it’s great) started talking to us in Korean about the coat! We worked out he wanted us to pay for it straight away, so we took it to a till. Unfortunately, the till woman couldn’t work out the price of the coat (so we thought) and got this other woman to search the whole store looking for the price! Obviously, the coats were outside, so when I told the woman this she rushed us upstairs! Apparently I had stolen the coat! Oops!! You were meant to pay for it in a separate till next to the outside of the store! In my defence, I didn’t know, plus it’s a silly system – British Tesco is much more sensible!! Luckily, they knew I wasn’t really stealing so didn’t throw me in jail or anything, it was pretty embarrassing though!
After the Tesco incident, I came home to my non interneted shack and decided that it was a pretty nice weekend, plus I had only had one ‘I hate Korea’ trauma, which is a pretty low amount for me! Go Daejeon!
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