Korea Day 22 - Friday, August 7

Today at work we took the kids skating. There has been a typhoon warning so the staff organized buses to take the kids as torrential rains were possible. The rink was on campus but it was quite a hike from our building so the bus was great. There were a few small delays but we eventually arrived at the rink. The skate rental place was unbelievable efficient and the kids were on the ice in record time.

Here are some shots of my class. Michelle is in white and Christina is in pink. They are beginner skaters so they are in a class.



Here is Christina again and to her left is Sally.



Here is my CC, Ashley, and one of my students, Isabell.



Here is most of my class. From left to right, Tim, Isabell, Brian, Ashley, Richard, Justin, Tom, Batista, me, Michael. The students always call me teacher in class but, today, at the ice rink, they called me Ginger. I think it was too hard to take me seriously with the helmet!



Here I am with Isabell.

Today we were told that we did not have to do final reports so that was a relief. Joann and I came home from work and booked everything for China!! We are flying to Beijing on Saturday, August 15 and will spend 5 days there. We have what looks like a nice hotel within 1 kilometre of the Forbidden City. We will then fly to Xian on August 20 (I'll be thinking of you, Leah) and spend two days there to see the Terracotta soldiers. We fly back to Beijing the night of August 22 and spend the night in a airport hotel. We fly to Seoul at noon and fly back to Canada at about 9:30pm. There is a sauna and bath house in the airport (really) so we plan to spend the nine hours in the airport relaxing. We arrive back home at about the same time that we leave, due to the time change. We were both very excited.

We decided to go out to celebrate and I suggested the Olympic park. My guidebook gave us instructions so we were off to the subway. When we arrived at City Hall station, we coulfn't find the Olympic park and a police officer told us that we were very far away. He showed us the subway station that we should have gone to and it was no where near the city hall. We decided to wander around this neighbourhood and stumbled on a free outdoor concert in Seoul Plaza, a nice green park area surrounded by busy roads. There were three performing groups, a set of 5 flautists and then 5 women who played interesting modern music on traditional Korean instruments. We both loved them. The final act was, according to me, the Korean answer to Frank Sinatra. He even sang "My Way". It was a great show and it felt wonderful to be sitting outside watching it.

Unfortunately, some drunk older Korean man harrassed me a bit when we passed him to go to the park. He was still there after the concert and followed us for a bit. Joann actually got rid of him. It was not enjoyable as he was persistent. He wanted to go for a drink with him.

There do seem to be some pretty drunk Korean men out later in the evening. It was not a big deal and we got home safely.