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Not quite the essential Korean dish that Kimchi is, but Dokbokki is a favourite amongst most kids in Korea, and me in particular. Essentially it is made of Dok or rice cake, onion, garlic Dried fish and Red Pepper paste in a sort of soup. It is relativly spicy (the Red Pepper paste) and i always receive admiring glances from Koreans whenever I sit down at a retaurant to consume a large plate of it’s garlic-y rice cake goodness.
So what better way to end the month and start two days (plus the weekend) of Hogwan summer vacation than teaching the kids at school the recipe in English while fellow Korean Teachers Kelly and Sophia slave over a hot plate on the hottest day of summer making the stuff to feed the kids!?
I have to commend Sophia on her introduction of doing something interesting on the last Friday of each month as it means I don’t have to do any real teaching and the Kids are always so well behaved in front of their Korean Teachers. (Trecherous little shits!)
Sophia is really mean to the kids in that she wouldn’t let them have any of the Dokbokki until they had named at least like 3 or 4 of the ingredients in English.
I’m a push over by contrast giving away reward stickers and such willy nilly - they don’t respect me honestly…
The weather has been hot this week so far and doesn’t look like it is gonna cool down any time soon. To prove the fact that the spiders here are huge look at this giant yellow one outside work:
After work I took this month’s hard earned salary and sent a vast swathe of it home, which continues to make me feel really good about myself. Pitty most of it will end up in the IRD coffers.
I received an email from the Grandparents, who reported the safe arrival of the Parents back in the country, and they really enjoyed the photos, and subsequently emailed Mum who will probably still be clearing her email as you read this after 9 weeks away from work.
So four days holiday loomed come 5 o’clock on Friday afternoon and I was fucked if I was goona sit and have to watch my crappy piece of shit TV for 4 days. So what Did I do? I went and layed down a hundred thousand (just over a hundred bucks) for a semi - new 22 inch Samsung TV. And shit have I been missing out man! Not only does the playstation look better but I have like 60 channels I had no idea I had on the shitty old one including OCN (lots and lots of English programming: CSI Vegas, Miami, NYC, Movies etc) Super Action (Your Action Movie Channel), Home CGV (More of the same) and a good - well better picture when I watch CNN. Bloody hell mate - the 2000 won I pay for cable seems even more cheap now man - 60 odd channels - for 2 bucks - can you believe it!!!!?
So Friday night I got drunk and ate chocolate cake while watching Sex in the City and went to bed.
As a result Saturday was a bit of a right off but oh well, 3 more days to go.
Sunday I woke at a reasonable hour to go to Daejon to see Korea play China in the soccer.
Awesome! I have never been to an international soccer match before and I would have to say this was a pretty good introduction. B seating cost W30000 (more than I thought) and the view was pretty good at Daejon World Cup Stadium. England has the Balmy Army, NZ has those fellas in the 70s uniform at the cricket and Korea has the Red Devils and truely amaziing to see them in person shouting screaming and singing (as well as booing at the appropriate time.) 
The game was pretty good too even for a soccer neophyte like myself. China plays pretty dirty - one player recieving a red card only 6 minutes into the first half. Both teams were goaless at half time and first blood went to China. 
Korea followed up shortly with a goal from a free kick and spent the last 10 minutes or so of the match exclusivly in the area but couldn’t get past the Chinese keeper. From what I picked up on MBC Sports there is some contention as to the strength of Korea’s offence - the number of shots they made in those last minutes really should have resulted in a goal and remember China had been restricted to 10 men for most of the game.
It was actually a double header at Daejon with Japan playing North Korea afterwards but I only stayed long enough to see the DPRK team 
and have all the blue and white unification flags come out and to hear a raucous BOOOOOOO! when the japanese team came out. heehee.
It was a son of a bitch to get from the stadium back to the bus terminal to come home to Ninsan and I ended up standing waiting for a taxi for almost an hour but got on the bus in time to meet three Pakistanis who work in a factory here in the ‘Big N’.
Got back to Nonsan in time to take a chocolate cake rouund to Ooops to give to Yunhee to apologise for my rash of no-shows at dinner time and ended up sitting with Jieun who was drinking rather than working behind the bar for a change. She is really pretty, but even in Korean I gather she is a bit of a freak and learnt (appropriately) that if you translate her nickname means ‘Bizzare Girl’. It was and will continue to be a point of immense hilarity from now on. Although I am gonna avoid Ooops for a while me thinks in the face of current morning classes and a funny feeling I’m getting there at the moment. Had a semi-run in with a (older)guy at the bar until he noticed I was wearing my buddahist beads and could communicate there meaning in Korean. So I won’t be there for a while - notwithstanding Ken’s next visit to Nonsan and Jieun’s birthday which I managed to be invited too.
As a result Monday was a bit of a right off but oh well, 1 more days to go.
Monday I tried to plug into the internerd at work but there was no power…no lights no computer, no modem no shit. There are renovations going on upstairs at Koreo E Sukool so I imagine that had something to do with it. I was faced with the same issue on Tuesday on the last day of my quote ‘vacation’ and so for only the second or so time in a year and a half (and first time in Nonsan if memory serves) I availed my self of a PC Bang - an Internet cafe. Which is always a good experience cos you can smoke, the connection is lightnening fast and they always have comfy seats. It’s a bitch you can’t plug in your laptop though.
It rained a couple of times during the (long) weekend, but not once during the day. Was woken at 4am Monday morning by a hell of a storm that had passed by a more reasonable hour and it wasn’t until Tuesday night that there was a consistant down pour. Other parts of the Penninsula have seen mammoth amounts of the wet stuff - pretty lucky here in Nonsan. And it has rained briefly here today (Wednesday).
So anyway, now that I have written this offline at home I will go into work and hope there is power to post! Also looking into downloading v2.0 firmware for my PSP - depending on what the word on the street is. I have found a wifi hotspot here in Nonsan - conveniently it’s Lotteria - as the new firmware apparently has a web browser. (no Java though apparently) So we’ll see how it goes. Until next time this is yours truely…signing off.
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