Fastest Week Everrrr

Wow the days are just flying by these days, it's crazy. I honestly feel as though I just posted something on here yesterday or the day before but I guess it has been a week or so. Not that anyone will have been too distraught, I'm sure! My most time-consuming class finished on Monday night past and I completed all the marking and so on for it today, so things will be much more relaxed for me for the next week-and-a-half or so. Ji is always reminding me how I hate being idle (when I whine about being too busy), but I looooooove having a bit of free time after a busy period. Cycling about in the nice autumn weather, catching up with friends and emails, actually cleaning my room and sorting out my desk at work so I might actually be able to find things when I'm looking for them! The small pleasures...

The reason it has been so busy is that when I'm not busy working, I'm busy playing! Last Friday night we took our homeroom students out for a couple of drinks to mark the end of our session teaching them. I have to say, I was VERY uncomfortable with the idea of taking them out to a bar. The image of one foreign guy in his late-twenties (eugh...) walking in with fourteen female students in their early twenties (or even one of them in her late teens!) just didn't sit well with me. In the end, I decided it would be counter-productive for me to be the only teacher not to take my class out. And, in fairness, it was a pretty civilized night with my lovely homeroom that ended at a sensible time and never got out of hand or uncomfortable in any way. Unlike one or two of the other teachers that stayed out until the wee hours.... Playing with fire... I'll miss that class. I got them all little thank-you cards with notes about their progress and they wrote me a nice little letter full of compliments. A damn sight different to teaching back in England...

We had an epic, monster, triumph of a band practice for four hours on Saturday. In fact, it was a big day all round for us on the band front. Songs are coming together, sounding great, gig dates are being discussed, new members are starting to understand us and each other, and we got a lot out of Cheon and how he sees things over drinks later that night. The fact that Jeff is in about a million other bands is still going to be a problem (we had to go back on plans for a gig penciled in for Friday night because he's already playing twice), but at least Jim and I can see the end (or beginning) in sight. We even have a couple of possible band names in mind. We had 75% agreement on 'For Our Souls' last Saturday, but Jeff was not impressed, to say the least. A blessing in disguise I'm beginning to think.

Football has also been taking up a fair bit of my time. I got up in the wee hours last Friday and again on Tuesday to watch Ireland's European Championship qualifiers at home to Russia (3-2 defeat) and away at Slovakia (1-1). We aren't looking great and will probably now have to set our sights on making the play-off (second place in our group) but at least we're still in it. I still always love the buzz of watching the games live, sometimes even on RTE (Irish TV), even though I'm living so far away. Someday I might even be able to do the same with Derry City FC, who got their title charge back on track last Saturday with a 3-0 home win against old rivals Shelbourne.

We were also at Sangam World Cup Stadium twice in the past week. First for FC Seoul's brilliant, battling 3-2 victory over Gyeongnam FC (highlights here) and again on Tuesday night for the international friendly match between South Korea and Japan, if such a fixture can ever be considered 'friendly'. It was a fairly scrappy 0-0 draw but an amazing atmosphere and the biggest crowd I've seen in my many visits there; I'd guess maybe 65,000. Incredibly, a lot of the seats in our zone appeared to have been sold twice, causing a lot of confusion and aggro, as you'd expect. I also had some dude in front of me telling me to "sssshhhh!" a couple of times, which is fairly incredible when you consider the amount of noise throughout the game. I believe my crime was reading through the squad list with Jimbo, trying to put names to the players on show who we didn't know. We did get a bit of pleasure from shushing him anytime he made a noise, which was usually just booing a Japanese corner-kick or something equally constructive. As Jim noted at the time, I guess he was just a grumpy old git. Being singled out for being foreign (let's face it) does get a bit annoying. Seeing some drunk guy have his head stomped on three times by another old drunk guy last night, and the ignoring/avoiding by passers-by which then ensued (aside from Ji, who called an ambulance, as the guy was flat out and not moving) are all adding to my excitement at getting home for a couple of weeks at Christmas and away from it all. Just for a bit.

Yet again, another day of life has slipped away (not to sound glum or anything...) and it's time to go meet Ji in Suyu for dinner. I don't have a terribly busy day tomorrow so I'll try to catch up on the rest of the week and some other things. Hope everyone's week has been going well. Get your weekly K-League update from "The Outside View" here and I'll chat to you all tomorrow, in the form of a blog...