5th chapter

Hey,

I am nearing my 6 month mark in Korea and I am still loving it!　For those of you who had the bets on you can deposit the money that you have now lost into my bank account

I have got used to the Korean lifestyle so much that god only knows how I will adapt when I eventually do go home. I can see myself in Sainsbury’s bowing to everyone who walks past!
I will be looking forward to normal taxi drivers though! Who knew that you could miss Carn cabs and Glen taxi’s so much! I know I was on about taxi drivers before but the taxi guy I met last weekend eclipses all of them!
The story begins, as always, with alcohol… I was heading home from a night of drinking, dancing and shots. It would be safe to say that I was feeling fairly merry and in a pretty good mood. I was even happier when I got in the taxi and he said “Hello, how are you?”
I thought great, he speaks English! I started chatting to him(was in a chatty mood) talking mainly rubbish and he seemed nice enough, he didn’t have much english but he nodded his head a lot! Anyway, I started talking about how fast they all drive and that driving through red lights was not normal. I was even telling him all about the taxi I had gotten earlier when the driver had asked if I was Russian.
We were at some traffic lights at this stage and he turns and starts pointing to me then himself whilst saying ‘six.’ Bewildered by the nice man who is old enough to be my Granpa I say “huh?” so he said it again; “six” and I think, why is he saying the number six. Couple of minutes later it finally dawned on me, it wasn’t fecking ’six’ at all, he was saying sex! I looked at him aghast and said no but he kept smiling and  pointing, I said no, no, no again but he just continued to look and said: “me and you, sex, and you no pay taxi!”
I was looking at him with disgust at this stage and mentioned a few choice words to him whilst shaking my head no. When he realised that his “six” wasn’t going to happen, he turned back around in the taxi and shouted. ” No six? Okay. Then you must pay taxi” Unbelievable! I don’t know what insulted me more though. My taxi only cost the equivalent of one pound fifty. What a cheap skate!! Surely he could have afforded more than that!!

HAPKIDO
I thought that when I came to Korea I would lose loads of weight thanks to eating rice and Korean food all the time! I was very wrong though, thanks to the late night eating and always dining out, I’m rapidly turning into Two-Ton Tessy. I haven’t even turned on my stove yet, wouldn’t even be able to work the damn thing! Never cooked a meal. Not one. Well, that’s a lie, I did make some toast one day about 4 months back! Now don’t judge me people, I have no need to cook! I start work at 1pm and get dinner served to me at 5.30pm. At the weekends I am always away somewhere so I eat out! But I decided that something had to be done about the excess weight that is building up! So that’s where my new Hapkido club comes in! I started about a month ago and so far its really good. It’s a Korean martial art that I have to go to every day! The teacher reminds me of a drill sergeant, she is this small Korean woman, who you would think by looking at her would not be able to squat a fly but after seeing her in action, I am now very much assured that she could kill one or two people with her hands tied behind her back! There is a lot of running, skipping, falling and roles involved, she shouts at me a lot which can be quite unnerving, especially when its in Korean and I don’t know if she is telling me that she is going kick my ass or not. One day she instructed us to do 50 sit ups. 50. Not 5. Not 15. 50! I looked at her with my mouth hanging open thinking, surely she is taking the piss, but no, sure enough everyone got on the floor to start. This was going to be embarrassing! After my 3rd sit up I was finding it hard, after my 7th, I was struggling and after my 12th, I couldn’t get back up. so it was back to her screaming at me to ‘Bali, bali, bali!(hurry up) Everyone else had finished by the time I was on my 25th. (I was proud when I got to 10 never mind 25) I suppose it didn’t help my cause when my breathing technique of huffing and puffing succumbed to fits of giggles. It also didn’t help my shame either when the instructer came up behind me and started pushing me up for the last 20 or so! Since then anytime we are told to do sit ups she just comes straight up to me and starts pushing me up…

NORTH KOREA
So I’m sure everyone has been hearing about North Korea trying to kill us all.. it’s not actually as bad as it sounds. I was at work when I first heard about the missile attacks and whilst I was ducking under the tables, making myself a shield out of the

near the Korean border

 children, my co workers were not panicking in the slightest. When I asked them about it over dinner(rice and octopus) they just said “Jenna, no worry, The north hurt us all the time but we do nothing, so we will be fine, no worry.” Very nonchalant way to look at it I thought but there was nothing much I could do until I got paid three days later anyway! I just hoped they were right and that they wouldn’t attack until then!
However the thought of being bombed did scare me a lot, so much so that I done something I never thought I would do, but desperate times call for desperate measures! I, Jenna Teresa Mary Catherine Canny, registered with the British Embassy! Thats how worried I was! Finally, a reason to have been born in Britain!　I had to! It was live or die and I ‘wanna live!’ There would have been no chance of the Irish embassy flying me home.. they couldn’t even buy a fecking tea bag at the moment! I think the director realised that I was worried and may have been a flight risk…  when I got my wages I was supposed to get the rest of my flight money but was told I would have to wait until next month. Now that is what I call trust!

There has been more coverage at home about the attacks and imminent war than there has been here and I am about 2 hours away from the target area so I should be safe enough!  Let’s hope they don’t decide to bomb us this weekend since I am heading to Seoul! I will try to find an army guy to protect me just incase though!

SNOW
Back in June when I heard that Korea got a lot of snow in the winter, I promised myself that no matter how homesick I got, I would at least stick it out until I got a chance to go snowboarding! Well, last weekend, I finally got my chance.. Up at the crack of dawn to head up the mountains I could hardly contain my excitement! When we arrived at the mountain, we were given snowboarding clothes and a board and told to go have fun! No lessons. No instructions. No rules. Just me and a snowboard. Couldn’t be that hard. Right? Right? WRONG! The first hint that I wasn’t going to be very good came at the top of the mountain. I had sat down at the very top to strap on the board and tried to get up.

Problem one: Couldn’t get up.

Every time I tried I slipped and fell. After 10 minutes of giggling and laughing I had to roll onto my front to get up. There was only one problem with that, now I was facing backwards and couldn’t turn without falling.

Problem 2: Staying up.

 When I finally did get up, facing the right way, I was so busy being determined not to fall again that I didn’t notice the bloody Korean behind me who was also no expert on a snowboard, until he banged into me and down I went again!

Problem 3: I don’t like pain

The first time I fell on my ass was okay. I knew before I went that I would fall once or twice but after the tenth time landing on my bum I was not having fun, or the 5th time I banged head on the ground, or the 20th time I crashed into the fencing or even the numerous times I landed on other people!

So that’s pretty much how my snowboarding experience went. Stand up, fall down, stand up, fall down, stand up, slide down about a metre, fall down! In the end though I decided enough was enough, took off the snowboard, sat on it and sleighed all the way down the mountain! Now that was fun!

Well, that’s me nearly six months in and so far I have hiked up mountains, seen some beautiful Korean temples, went to Muuido island, played on quads at the beach, got very drunk, ate lots of disgusting and wonderful food, went shark diving, attempted snowboarding, been shouted at by angry Korean people, walked the border of North Korea, partied in numerous Korean cities including Seoul, climbed out a taxi window,  used a squat toilet, been responsible for a Korean child being pulled out of school, also for making kids cry on occasion, been mistaken for a Russian

Diving with the sharks!

prostitute many times, went to a few music festivals, spent a night in a valley, experienced my first ever stalker, lied to some Koreans by telling them I worked for ITV to get free stuff(it worked!), met some very cool people and even considered eating dog!

Roll on the next six months!!

xx