Joel: It's Friday morning and I'm a little tired after watching England's laboured victory over Trinidad last night. The game finished at almost 3am and I was up again at 7:15. Luckily for me, I have a quiet day today. My timetable is such that every week I have a quiet day on either Thursday or Friday. Today, I have only one class this morning and one later this afternoon. It's pretty much the weekend again already.

So yes, we finally had the cable fitted yesterday - just in the nick of time. The cable guy was originally booked in for Tuesday but no-one came. We've since been told the cable companies had their busiest day of the year with people desperate to watch Korea's first game against Togo on Tuesday night in the comfort of their own homes. On Wednesday they couldn't come out because once again the heavens opened. When it rains here it truly rains! And bizarrely, yesterday we woke up to a gorgeous sunny day. There seems to be little rhyme or reason to the weather patterns in Korea - only that it's always an extreme of some sort. So finally yesterday the great man arrived. Of course, the World Cup games were the main reason for signing up, but I'd hoped as well that the would be lots of good programs on the other sixty or so channels. A quick flick last night left me a little disappointed. Amongst the Korean news and quiz show channels, the best English language programs on offer were a collection of Steven Segal and Jean-Claude van Damme films, a VERY old episode of Friends and some Sex in the City from season 2. Still, there's a cinema over the road.

On Tuesday I started teaching the Teachers' classes. It's all female teachers (the men are all too afraid of "losing face". This is clearly a big issue in Korea. I think they should all just chill out a bit) and I have two classes of six teachers per week. I was told there would be one class of beginners and one of intermediate level but it turns out both classes are of the same level and they all speak English very well. All of them are very intelligent (as I expected) and have remembered most of the English they learnt at school - but are a little rusty. I planned a lesson for them on body language but they wanted to spend the first half of the class finding out about me. One brought me a box of drinks in as a present and another has invited me over to dinner next week. I hadn't given it much thought but I suppose it's just as big a novelty for the Korean teachers to have an English English teacher in their school as it for the students. I think it will be a good challenge designing lessons that will continue to interest and stretch them.

On Wednesday evening we took Yeon-hi and Debbie out for dinner after school to thank them for all the help the have given us. Debbie has been a great help in so many ways. Whenever we have had a problem or have needed to know or do something she has done her best to sort us out straight away. She's a pretty busy woman - she works full time (including alternate Saturday mornings) at the school as well as studying a University course so it's been greatly appreciated how she's helped us. She told me this week that when she found out there would be a native English teacher coming to the school she took an intensive English conversation course because she was so nervous. What a sweetie. We took them out to a traditional Korean restaurant on the high street near our place and had kimchi pancake with noodle soup. We let them order because we didn't have much of a clue and it was lovely. Then we moved on to a hof called BOX on the 9th floor of a building near Yeokgok station. The decor there's not great but the music was okay and from the window you get a great view over the area where we live. You can see our flat and my school - which is quite high up on the distant hillside. They recommended we drink lemon Soju so we shared a pitcher. It was a dead nice evening despite the terrible weather outside.

On Wednesday night I hunted down and killed the mosquito that had been preying on us for two nights. Little b******. Between us we must have ten or more bites on our bodies. I was scratching constantly all Wednesday. It's been a relief to be able to sleep undisturbed once again.

Tomorrow we're planning to go up Seoul tower - they latest in our series of famous towers we've been up after scaling the Stratosphere in Las Vegas and the TV tower in East Berlin last year. Like those others, there is a revolving restaurant at the top so if we can get a table we might have dinner at sunset. I'm really loving it here.


One small footnote: I can't believe I've not yet mentioned the kids' English nicknames. All the kids in grades three and four were asked to choose English nicknames for themselves and make name badges. I'm not sure if this was for my benefit or simply for novelty value but once they started coming in I couldn't quite believe it. Maybe no-one properly explained the concept to them, or perhaps no-one really cares, but very few are really English sounding names. First come the terrible mispellings, like Matu and Jeniper. But this I can cope with. Then, there are a group of quite hippy sounding names that I think are interesting - these include Season, Star, Sky, Thunder (surely a horses name) and Zen. Then there are those that just sound odd, like Tablo, Medic and Bobo and Bingo. In one class I have kids called Puma, Nike, Reebok and Adidas but they know they're being silly. Beyond these there lies another group - those whose names I can't say without smiling, those that are utterly bizarre. How can you call a kid Milk with a straight face? How about Pig, or perhaps Dog? Sometimes I can't contain it. Especially with one class, whenever one kid puts his hand up. The boy who I give first prize to, and I think he makes a worthy winner, is Brain Buddy. Brain Buddy! Where did he get it from? I say no more.