Birthday in SK - 8 Sep 2010

Another day but another two years older! Although I arrived in Korea just 3-4 weeks ago aged 25, I am now officially 27. Sucks!

It turns out that the day you are born you are considered 1 years old. Then every New Year or birthday (depending on how traditional you are) you add another year on. I'm not sure I'm keen to be this close to 30 just that quickly.

My birthday was on the Monday and so we went to Seoul for the weekend. It was totally amazing and I was a little dumb founded to start off with. The scale of the city is just crazy. For example, according to Wiki the Big Smoke has a population of around 7 mill and a density of 4761 per square kilometre. Seoul on the other hand has over 10 million but 24.5 million if you include the surrounding overspill within Incheon and Gyeonggi (population density 17,288 per square kilometre). It's definately the biggest city I've ever been to.

I can't post pictures until we get the internet at home (which should be soon as we now are officially registered aliens - quite a relief) but the temples were awe inspiring, the river beautiful and the views from Namsan Seoul Tower just incredible.

Just after dark (it was 32 degrees in the day) we started climbing the steep steps up to Seoul Tower which is an observation tower located on Namsan mountain right in the middle of Seoul. It is 1574ft above sea level and has a staircase of more than 800 steps. Yes - I did almost die but it was absolutely worth it. I can't wait to show you some photos - the river is lit up and there are amazing skyscrapers in all directions.

On Monday night, two of the Korean English teachers that I have made friends with took us to dinner as a birthday treat. The food was fabulous (indoor pork BBQ) and it's nice that they make such an effort with us.

The following day we met up with a gang of other foreigners within Hongseong (South Africans and Americans) and went bowling. I put in a spectactually bad performance peaking at 27 points when everyone was getting more like 100 but it was good fun anyway.

All in all, I really missed everyone but there is so much to see and do here and everyone tries so hard with us that I had a great birthday

- despite my sudden advance in years.

Typhoon Rusa - 8 Sep 2010

The Rusa typhoon that hit our area last week was the worst typhoon that anyone here can remember (and worse since 1959 according to the news reports). It's sort of been predicted because of the changes in South Korea due to climate change. Another example is that the amount of Malaria in the country has very recently increased because mosquitos thrive now that it's hotter and more humid.

Over the area, predictions have risen to a death toll of 200 and the amount of damage done to roads, bridges, windows and houses near to rivers was quite drastic.

Our apartment was absolutely fine as we have a kind of triple glazing that slides sideways so it couldn't rattle too much but there was no chance of sleeping through it. Some of my students windows were blown in around the early hours of the morning as everyone lives in high rise blocks but we don't know anyone that was hurt. Friends in Seoul slept in their basements. The river in Hongseong burst it's banks and flooded the adjacent carpark which contained cars and a tractor. Trees and traffic lights were flattened.

In true tenacious and resilent Korean style, there is now no trace that there was ever any bad weather. But check out how Seoul looked on the 2nd of September:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/22230215.stm

The reaction to this natural disaster has been heartfelt community spirit and everyone pulling together. I came down in the morning to find someone from our street cleaning up other peoples spilt rubbish quite happily, for example. The schools were very concerned for us and made us feel so welcome with their genuine enquiries. It has given us such a good impression of Hongseong.