Rakhi: Yes, Joel and I have had some decisions to make in the past week and a half. Firstly, we've decided not to go to Japan. There are too many extra costs and all in all, for five days it's going to work at about 500 quid each even though we have a place to stay. That amount is just too extravagant considering we could spend a month in SE Asia with the same amount once our contracts have finished. Speaking of which, we've not come to an absolute final decision about definitely leaving Korea but we both agree that we should strongly consider moving on. Both of us are having such a great time here and we haven't experienced any negativity despite ignorant foreigners warning us we will. Actually, the only negativity I've experienced is from the ignorant foreigners. This is a really tough decision for us to make because there are so many pros to staying and only a handful of cons for leaving. At the same time though, both of us would really like to explore another country now that we have gained some more teaching experience. Aaaargh! I think I'm going to have to consult a magic eight ball on this one!

One thing that I did find out on Friday that has made the cons list that little bit larger, is that my school is planning to become a 'model school.' Schools can appeal to The Education Department to become model schools representing a chosen subject area. Other schools then look to these model schools for inspiration and to imitate. My school is hoping to become a model school for after-school lessons in various disciplines including English. From what I gather from other teachers, it's just a title and doesn't mean that these schools excel in any way. Quite the opposite, more responsibility comes with the title, as model schools are continually checked by the Government. Teachers have more pointless paperwork to do for The Office of Education and less time to concentrate on teaching the students. This seems like a massive contradiction to me.

On Friday night my head was well and truly pickled after two hours of Korean. Our current teacher of "Beginners Korean" hasn't slowed down at all. Bearing in mind that Joel and I have now only had 5 or so formal Korean lessons, we thought it a bit much that this week our teacher covered the present tense, past tense and future tense in the space of about 10 minutes. As an English teacher, grammar points and tenses are approached in a slowly, slowly manner and all three tenses certainly aren't introduced in one go; same when I think back to learning French. Our teacher is being too ambitious and the boring handouts we get are very uninspiring. I understand that the emphasis should be on autonomous learning and as we have a test this Friday, I'm going to study extra hard for it. The test is to see whether we can advance to the next level but I've already decided that moving up isn't going to benefit me so I'm happy to stay down until I get to grips with the tenses.

On Saturday, Joel and I went to the Olympic Park which was built to host the 1988 Olympics in Seoul. The first thing that you see when you come out of the station is The Peace Gate, symbolising a desire for world peace (kind of self explanatory really!). In the middle of the gate sits the Olympic flame above The Seoul Peace Declaration. The park was more interesting and beautiful than I expected it to be. Our main reason for visiting was to see the 'Papertainer Gallery,' a temporary museum designed by a Japanese architect. The museum structure itself is a work of art consisting of 373 paper tubes (some are 10 meters tall) and 166 cargo containers. Within the paper gallery, the main exhibition was photographic and painted portrayals of famous female figures in Korean folklore and history. It was very interesting to see although I couldn't quite understand some of the artists visions. There is also a permanent gallery, 'Soma,' in the park dedicated to contemporary art. A lot of the work here was utter tripe like bog standard rubbish displayed on shelves, rubbish hanging on clothes driers and clothes made out of plastic bags. Complete pretentious rubbish!

The Peace Gate














Papertainer Gallery

Besides the stadiums, galleries and an Olympic Museum, in the park there are also over 200 sculptures which were donated to Korea by participating countries of the '88 games. I'm sure we didn't even see half of the sculptures. Many of them are conspicuous but many lurk in the background within leaves and trees. Our favourite sculpture was 'The Thumb' which was presented to Seoul by France. We had hours of fun setting up artistic and creative photo's, we could easily rival any of the preposterous 'art' in the Soma gallery!

This week, the challenge to get super fit and marathon-ready begins! We completed the application form and paid the fee yesterday. There's no backing out!