1. Gugok Pokpo

18^C

Overcast and still a little chilly

A few things that happened last week:

Here are some pictures of the beer garden that Brett found with his co-teachers. He found it in Winter, but only just remembered it now. It’s a great place to sit and they serve imported beers!! Its high up on the side of a mountain, overlooking Yeongwol. While we were sitting there having a few laughs, I hear Aleks (the Russian) say: “Ass Man!!” Here’s what he was referring to..

The next pictures here are of Mr Joo (the fifth and sixth grade teacher). He took me fishing on Thursday. Fishing here is a lot more technical than just throwing in a line. He actually set up another rod to prop up my rod so that we can sit there without touching anything and just concentrating on the bobber (floater). All we caught were tiny fish, about 10-14cm long.. then I caught this big one that Mr Joo didn’t even know existed in the small valley river! It was funny; I actually caught him by the belly. He must’ve been swimming overhead and when I pulled up he got caught on it!

The rest of the pictures are of this place in Chuncheon that we went to over the weekend. The place is called Gugok Waterfalls, and it has a hiking path that leads up into, and to the peak of the mountain. We were only looking for the waterfall, which in the brochure stated it was a 20 minute leisurely walk to; but we walked for about 50mins straight UP and found nothing. What actually happened was.. I finally asked a guy coming down how much farther we had to go. His response was 2.5km. So when we asked about the waterfall, they said it was way back down. We actually walked right past it! So we had a picnic up in the mountain, it was so scenic up there! Nothing but the sound of the running water and the birds, and the smell of freshly rain-soaked earth and pine trees! Oh and the fish that you see in the stream; that’s from a restaurant located about 20mins into the walk. They must’ve lugged everything up there by hand and built it on the mountain-side itself then the fish are kept alive in the water (from the waterfall) and when someone wants to eat it they catch it and cook it. As you can see by the last picture, there is also a Buddhist temple up there with a giant Buddha.

Here are my grades 1's and 2's playing: Whats the time Mr Wolf?

I found that they all wanted to be the wolf, so they had to be punished for being caught. The flick on the forehead is what the kids do when they lose at Scissors, paper, rock (Gawi, Bawi, Bo) which is a huge game over here.