Yet more apologies!

Greetings one and all, a belated Merry Christmas to you and a very Happy New Year.

As you can probably guess from the title of today's blog, I have to once again beg for your forgiveness. I have been stupidly busy for the last few weeks, and so haven't been able to update in a while. And unfortunately I still don't have time to update!

The last few weeks of school were manic - work kept materialising out of nowhere, for a while it felt like there was no end in sight! Then of course it was Christmas, which was a fantastic weekend, that I will eventually tell you all about. (The photo above is my friends and I on the streets of Daegu on Christmas Eve Eve, just about to watch The Holiday - Christmassy romantic comedy.) It was back to work on Boxing Day, the work continued until yesterday, and today I'm off on a staff ski trip, then it's New Years! So hopefully just after New Years I'll be able to update properly (hopefully before my month of English camps, or else I'll never get it updated!)

So I apologise profusely, once again, but I will eventually update.

Until then, I hope you all had a lovely lovely Christmas, with tremendous fun and joy and food glorious food! And I wish you all the happiest of New Years, hoping that 2007 will bring happiness and success to each and every one of you.

Sending you festive cheer wherever you are in the world,
Jen xx

O Tannenbaum!

Ha ha, it works! Finally managed to get a photo of my Christmas tree uploaded. Ain't she pretty? I'm very proud of my tree, and the students love it. And it passes the ultimate test: it looks good in daylight too! The only thing missing is the presents under the tree...but there are still 11 days left 'til Christmas!!

(And I've called this post "O Tannenbaum" because Char has been singing it for the last couple of weeks, so it's stuck in my head now!)

Incidentally...

The clever ones amongst you will notice that I've changed the layout of the site a bit; I've also found out how to put links in a post - for example, I can send you to my brother's blog; and I've changed it so that you don't have to have a Blogger account to leave comments (because I know some people weren't bothering for that reason - so, no excuse now!)

I'll find out why it's not allowing me to post photos! Stupid technology. It doesn't like me.

A great big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my dearest, darlingest Mum, whose birthday it is today!!

Mum, I hope you have a fantastic day, and that everyone treats you brilliantly. The family are having a party tonight, as a joint Mum's birthday, Peter's triumphant (?!) homecoming, and Paul's 30th last month. I'm sure it will be as memorable as every other Crevenagh Road party before it. I trust Pete will be helping out with the preparations! It's not all play and good food, you know!

A bit off topic, but I found some Muppets clips on You Tube, and today I have been watching the Muppet Family Christmas, which is all at once cheering me (because it's the Muppets) and reminding me that I won't be at home for Christmas. But it's ok, Fozzie never fails to make everything all better! And hopefully, A Muppet Christmas Carol will have finished downloading by the time I get home, so that's one Christmas tradition I can fulfil this year!

Have a great day Mum. Love you. xx

All I want for Christmas is yoooooooooou!

Hello again my lovely snuggly buddies. Time for another installment in Jeni's Korean adventure. I have a few things to talk about, but I'll try and keep it all fairly short.

Last weekend was another English camp with the lovely Char and Lily. (Char has recently told me about another one in January we've been asked to do - seems we do a good English camp!) We weren't starting until Saturday, but I headed up on Friday, and Char and I had a lovely night of binge eating, with lots of pizza and chicken. Lots. Mmmmm. Has to be done every now and then. The English camp itself was similar to the weekend before - the same plan, similar number of students, except these kids, however, were a lot quieter. But it was all fun, and I tired out myself, and my voice, once again with all my singing and dancing.

The bizarre highlight of the weekend was when we ended up in an Adidas store downloading endless Christmas songs onto the shop computer and blaring them through the speakers. We were dancing round the shop and singing away, having ourselves a right good time. The Adidas shop, if you remember, is where Char's friend works. He was talking to Lily in Korean while Char and I were dancing, and Lily told us later that he was amazed that we felt so comfortable to sing and dance like that in front of near strangers, that it's something that Koreans just wouldn't do. To be honest, I don't think most "normal" people would do it! Back at Char's, we helped her brighten up her apartment with some Christmas decorations that she had been sent, as we sang more Christmas songs!

Monday rolled around....and Monday was not a happy day. To remind you, this week was finals, so I had no classes. Easy week, you would think. HA! No such thing. I had a lot of my own work to be getting on with - some of you will know that I'm applying for a Masters, so I had applications and essays and letters to complete all week. And it took a lot longer than I thought (finally got it all finished yesterday). On Monday, on top of this, I was presented with a mammoth, near impossible task: in January, I will be doing two days of elementary school teacher training. This week I was told that I have to write a 30 page manuscript for this training...by Christmas. When asked what needs to go into it, I was told, "classroom English". Given that this is the first time I have ever taught, and that I teach mainly top level high school students, and I have been given somewhat vague instructions, this has me a teeny bit stressed. I only started looking at it today, so some serious work will have to be done in the next few weeks. But then I'm good at writing about things I know nothing about!

To add to the stress I was already feeling, my fellow foreign teacher had decided to take the whole week off without telling me. I knew he was planning on going on holiday - it was my idea! - but he failed to tell me when exactly he was leaving. And I had planned to take a day off, just to rest a bit. So I ended up somewhat annoyed with him! (It's ok though, he got back this evening and gave me a call to apologise for leaving without saying and to thank me profusely and to tell me he's bought me something. Presents, yay!)

However, on the way home after work that day, for a brief moment in time, all my troubles were gathered up in a little bubble and lifted away. Every day on my way to work I pass a shop that sells beautiful Korean tea sets. I decide to stop in, and as soon as I walked through the door, I was handed a cup of steaming tea - heaven sent on as cold a winter's day as that was. The shop has some incredibly stunning pieces, they're works of art. I picked something to buy, and when I went to pay, they sat me down and made me some tea. But made me tea in the traditional way, which involves lots of pouring and rinsing and infusing. The process itself takes quite some time. I drank from the most delicate of cups, and they kept refilling it while we had some conversation in broken English and Korean. This relaxing ceremony cost me nothing, but I left with a smile on a face and my headache slightly eased.

The next day I had another uniquely Korean experience. I went to Daegu in the evening, to do some Christmas shopping, and I also had to get some passport photos taken. So I found one of the many photo studios, sat down, had my photo taken, getting directions to tilt my head this way, then that way. Usually the next step would simply be choosing the best photo and waiting for it to print. In no way was I expecting the 10 minutes of photo-shopping that followed!

With her magic computer software, the lady airbrushed out my blemishes, the blotchiness and the lines; she softened up the edges, and got rid of flyaway hairs; she lightened the shading on my neck and she thinned my cheeks. I think the photo still looks like me, but believe me, I will be holding on to at least one copy as possibly the most perfect passport photo ever taken of me! And this service cost no extra: 12 photos cost me about £2.50. I had heard of this before, photos being airbrushed; I've heard of someone whose photo was refused for an official ID because it was too different from her actual appearance!

The rest of the week trundled on, lost in a whirlwind of applications and Christmas stuff. Then today arrived, the last day of finals. I haven't seen many of the students all week, and any I have seen have obviously been in an exam-induced zombified state. From today, they were actually starting to say hello again, and seem back to normal. Exams were over by lunchtime, and in the afternoon, the whole school went to the cinema. And I mean the whole school. My office cleared out, the hallways were empty, the place was eerily quiet. The film I chose to see (The Departed - very good) wasn't until 6pm, but in the meantime, I had something else planned. My co-teacher kindly drove me to Homeplus (big supermarket) so that I could buy.......my Christmas tree!

Well, when I say, my Christmas tree, I mean the tree I was buying for school. Artificial, obviously - a lot of things in Korea are, so it's only to be expected that the Chrissy trees would be too. So I picked my tree, went a bit mad on the decorations, and headed back to school, where I slapped on my MP3 player, loaded with Christmas songs, and set to work creating a masterpiece. Which, to be honest, I think I did. As much as possible with a 4 foot artificial tree! I'd love to put a photo up here for you to see, but for some reason, this stupid site isn't letting me! So it'll go up on Flickr soon, or I'll get this sorted. But believe me, it's pretty!

When I finally did get to the cinema, by the way, I got lost. Yep. Jeni got lost in a cinema. But I was in a good mood, so I just laughed at myself. Had to ask a nice little cleaner lady for directions.

That just about brings you up to date. Oh, except I forgot to tell you about the shark fin I had on Monday. Didn't have much taste, just a funny texture - like a thin gelatinous fat. If that makes sense!

I'm off to Daegu this weekend for some fun and chillaxing, after the last few weekends of work. Might catch another film! Who knows. Easy going, just the way I like it!