subtropical snow!

Now, I'm not being funny but coming to a "subtropical" island I wasn't exactly expecting snow blizzards! Huh?!! I'm not really disappointed, because I know it'll be amazing in the spring/summer, I'm just surprised! And Wikipedia's backing me up - it says  "In subtropical climates the winters are relatively warm, but not as hot as the summer season. These climates rarely—if ever—see frost or snow..." - oh really?! Don't believe everything you read on Wikipedia boys and girls! I've heard it's going to be like this till about March too so I guess I'd better just grow and pair and buy a couple more jumpers!

Anyway, this morning Vicky picked me up and we went to the school to talk about the curriculum and the timetable etc. There's another new teacher starting on Monday too, Steve, a Canadian man who's now living here with his Korean wife and kids. It was good to look over everything together and get our heads around the workbooks and stuff.

I'm going to be teaching the "Branch" class, with seven students aged about five (six in Korean strange-age), in the morning and part of the afternoon. The kindergarten classes go in the order of Sprout, Branch, Flower and Fruit. Cute! Then I'll have two elementary classes of eight kids aged between seven and 12. I'm so excited, I can't wait to start on Monday! Our social studies topic for the next couple of months is Planets and apparently we're teaching them, "Which planet do we live? We live in the earth" - haha, might need to re-phrase that!

This afternoon I was determined to get out and explore a bit so I wrapped up and braved a bit of a walk around. It was so cold and windy and then it started snowing loads! I actually love the snow though, it was really pretty. Odd seeing it swirling around the palm trees!

I found a cute place that sold bread, which you don't seem to see much. The Koreans just love their rice, they can't get enough of it, they even have it for breakfast! And I found some green tea ice cream in there too which made my day! Out of all the things I love in this world, ice cream's got to be in my top ten. Definitely. I used to eat it by the litre before I started worrying about my figure! And my friend Nellia and I used to have green tea ice cream when I was living in San Diego and I'd been missing it in England so Liz is a happy lady.

When I found my way back to my apartment block I thought I was lost because there was a 7/11 shop there, then I realised it had appeared in my absence! It's actually connected to the building so I won't even have to go out in the snow to get bread and ice cream now, haha, brilliant!

Since then I've just been keeping warm in my dinky flat with cups of Earl Grey tea (thanks Lucie!). Did my pilates DVD which I brought with me! Felt so good to stretch and do a bit of exercise (and hopefully burn off some ice cream-induced calories!). It's been a while. Planning on joining a gym soon though.

Forecast for tomorrow: sleet shower

Word of the day: still learning thank you

xx

• South Korea