Zip zip zip!

So I don't know about all you furry bunnies out there, but I had a great weekend :) And no, I don't know why furry bunnies...

Haha^^

Anyway, so Saturday was ziplining with Christy, Cali Amy, Edithe, Edithe's friend Joyce and Michelle. Michelle sadly didn't quite make it, being quite severely hungover and unable to even answer her phone until 11 (we were catching a bus at 11.25 and it takes 20 minutes+ alone to get to the bus terminal from our place). The ziplining people were amazingly confused that there were only 5 of us instead of 6 - you would have thought it would be an easy concept to grasp - probably because we were foreigners, but quite understanding once I explained that our friend was MEH (missing and extremely hungover ㅋㅋㅋ). The rest of us got to Jeomchon safe and sound, quite a bit earlier than expected, and one ice-cream cake (just to kill the time of course :D) later, were picked up by the company and arrived at the site.

Joyce, Christy, some idiot, Edithe and Cali Amy

We filled out our information forms and got strapped into our gear and all piled into a truck with four Korean ladies in their thirties and set off. I was a bit worried because as we got in the guy who'd helped me with my gear very solemnly wished me 'good luck' (in English) as he helped me into the truck, and then kept an entirely straight and serious face as I panicked and demanded to know why I needed good luck. On the way up, the guides were a bit nervous that there were so many foreigners, and thought it was funny that we were all talking and joking around quite noisily while the Koreans just sat there silently. 20 minutes of nervous banter, a safety lecture and a climb up some steep stairs later and we were at the first launch platform. Cali Amy being the brave experienced one went first and debuted her specialty ziplining pose in what we would later dub 'the upside down starfish'.

Waiting to go to our deaths

Now those of you who know me will know that I'm not good with things that involve the possibility of falling suddenly to my death, such as rollercoasters. Even though I always think that I can do them and have no problems up until it actually starts, once things kick off and the drops and falls start, I completely lose my head and start screaming and hyperventilating. As well as various rollercoasters, I've had panic attacks on a Viking ship swinging ride, inside a car that my so-called friends once drove to the top of the steepest hill in Wollongong and threatened to roll down (I screamed blue murder at them and then got out and walked down), really big ferris wheels and so on (missed the entire view of Osaka from their gigantic ferris wheel because I was sitting with my hands over my face, crying... later found out that its had the most deaths and accidents of any ferris wheel in the world so that was probably justified), shocking friends and family who thought I was being melodramatic until I screamed their eardrums out and gripped their hands until they lost circulation. I even freak out a little on those 4D simulated rollercoaster things (terrible 'surprise' first date idea by the way) and at take-off or during turbulence on planes. It's a bit weird really since I used to love rollercoasters up until the age of around 11, and I've been flying in planes pretty much every year since I was a baby so there's definitely no reason for that. I also only freak out on things that I don't feel safe on, so I usually can't tell if I'm going to have a panic attack until I'm actually there and doing it - for example, I went parasailing when I was in Malaysia once and was perfectly calm. So knowing the risk, why, you might ask, would I volunteer to do this. Well, apart from being an idiot, I am also determined to conquer this phobia eventually (and it IS a phobia because most of the time it's completely unreasonable), regardless of how much experience I have that tells me that it's not going to happen. Worst reassurance (but good attempt) of the day from Christy by the way - "don't worry, you'll be fine. You'll be wearing a helmet!"

Luckily, once the shock of the first one was mastered, ziplining proved to feel safe enough that I loved it! Edithe was also scared at first, possibly by her own lurid description of ziplining as dropping from a great height at great speed suspended by a thin cable, but by the end of it we were both going for it - no hands, spinning around, upside down, bouncing on the line, and I even managed a 'self-photo' from a few. The last one was the best because it was REALLY high above a valley and you got a great view of the area at the end. I think Little Miss Adrenalin Junkie Joyce was slightly disappointed though - she was complaining that the first few weren't fast or high enough! Although they sure as hell were for those of us trying not to concentrate on thoughts of incipient mortality as we bounced and swung through and over the trees and sharp jagged rocks below us.

Unfortunately, getting back to Cheongju was a bit harder. Even though it wasn't far (about an hour and a half away), there was only one direct bus in each direction each day (11.25 from Cheongju to Jeomchon, 2.50pm from Jeomchon to Cheongju). Christy and I had planned to spend the night in Mungyeong (the nearest big city, or so we thought) and party it up, but since the city appeared to have one intersection and little else, we decided to hit up Daejeon since I would have had to go through there or Chungju to get back anyway, and if we went to Daejeon, Christy could get a train back to Busan the next day. So we and Edithe said goodbye to the others and headed off to Daejeon for some Mexican food, wine and the worst ukelele playing we'd ever heard. Not that most ukelele playing isn't bad, but these guys appeared to only know about three or four chords, only one of them could sing vaguely correctly, they had awful facial hair and frankly seemed to be high. This didn't stop them from murdering their way through half an hour of terrible covers of everything from Sublime's 'Loving Is What I've Got' to 'Let It Be' by the Beatles, until we'd finished our food and drinks and left as quickly as possible for a bottle of wine at a much nicer and very chilled shisha bar around the corner.

The next day more than made up for this however! Edithe had left early to get to an appointment in Seoul, but Christy and I had plenty of time to laze around and catch up with lots of gossip... at a cake cafe. It. Was. DELICIOUS!!! Both of our respective KBFFs Nat and Lara would have loved it, I'm sure! We only tackled three slices - a very healthy breakfast, yes? ㅋㅋㅋ - a four seasons friand-y tart thing with fruit, a maraschino chocolate and rum mousse cake and a crepe tartine that was actually made with layered crepes and a sort of sweet custard filling on a tart base. Each slice was between w5300 - w6400 and the tartlet was about w4500 I think, so it's a bit pricey, but well worth it, and definitely the best cake I've had since Dobinson's in Canberra. Yummy!

So all in all, a good weekend - ziplining, cake, and catching up with Christy, who lives far too far away for my liking! Although, granted, it's awesome that she lives in Busan and so I have somewhere to crash when I visit ^_^ If you're ever looking for something to do on a weekend, I definitely recommend the ziplining, although you'll need a Korean speaker to help you make the booking who can go with you too if possible. And if you're ever in Daejeon, I also recommend that you go to Dunsan-dong and look for the Cafe Cremes cafe near the Galleria Time-World Department store. I will definitely be going back there next time I'm in Daejeon!

bleargh

It's one of those days. I was feeling a lot better over the weekend (despite Australia's embarrassing loss to Ireland in the Rugby Union World Cup) but then my allergies went haywire yesterday and I couldn't stop coughing and sneezing. Last time this happened a week or so ago, I had some horrific sneezing bouts where I couldn't stop for something like 15 or 16 sneezes, making me feel nauseous. Just to be clear, these aren't little ladylike sneezes - these are those huge convulsive "ACHOOO!"s that feel like a light punch to the stomach every time it rips through your body and makes every nerve in your nose and tear ducts tingle, one after the other with no break. It was so painful I actually thought that I was going to burst a blood vessel in my nose and start spraying blood everywhere. Luckily it only happened twice in one day, and then not again until yesterday, and then not so bad - just a sneeze every couple of minutes, enough to thoroughly annoy the person sitting next to me in the cinema who moved away (possibly from fear of contagion too). What with that and the coughing though, which continued all night, every time I tried to lie down, interrupted by my nose filling with mucus, it's hardly surprising that I got a grand total of 3 hours of sleep, nor that as a result, I was late to school and had to take two naps at my desk before lunch time. I ate about a quarter of my lunch and peaced out. A nap this afternoon before bellydancing (I just started last week and love it!) might be in order.

I guess that's the one good (?) thing about Korea though - they have very different attitudes to sickness here, so I haven't had anyone actively trying to avoid me yet. The kids don't really care, whereas at home I'd have had a "ewwww!" by now. Even with the facemask thing, most people only wear that to stop other people infecting THEM, not to stop them infecting YOU. It's annoying most of the time when you're healthy, as it also means that people have no qualms about coughing directly on you, and don't cover their mouths or noses when they cough/sneeze, a fact to which I'm attributing at least part of this most recent illness. To be fair though, I think it's also the air-conditioning that's set this one off, as well as the schizophrenic weather we've been having lately. (It's raining and cold right now but it was boiling hot last week.) At any rate, I've been sick with it for two weeks and all of the medicine I've tried has either made me feel worse, or only made me feel better for a few days, so I'm not keen to go back to the doctor so I think I'm just going to have to hack it out.

Luckily I had Min-Seok's class today.. wow, never thought I'd put 'lucky' and 'Min-Seok' in the same sentence. Min-Seok is one of my ADHD boys who has in the past blown me kisses, asked me out on a date, tried to get out of class by hiding in the girls' bathrooms (apparently he forgot that as both a girl and a teacher I have no problems going in there to pull him out), pretended to be me and start a lesson, taken his shirt off in class numerous times and thrown a worksheet out of the window because he didn't want to do it. He's very cheeky, and normally a handful, so I guess I'm lucky that he quite likes me and so will normally actually be quiet when I tell him to (albeit for less than 5 minutes), just because he's happy that I know his name. Today's performance involved him walking in, striking a 'sexy' pose with one hand on his hip, winking, sticking his butt out and yelling "TEACHER! I AM SEXY, YES?". If I could find a picture to show you without having to trawl through soft porn I would, as it truly made my otherwise bleary morning. If you want to try and fix the mental image, he's 11, with the usual bowl haircut, thick tortoiseshell glasses and freckles. Haha, thanks Min-Seok^^


In other news, things that I found interesting today - an article on Korean adoption which I think is interesting because it hints at how Koreans see adoptees, as 'international Koreans' rather than as 'real' foreigners, regardless of how the adoptees see themselves. If I were to do a masters in Anthropology or Korean studies, I think there's an interesting thesis in there on racism, nationalism and perception of nationality in Korea. Which has probably already been done and is circulating on the internet, but anyway. Something else less serious and more silly that I liked was the All K-Pop website for my daily dose of all things K-Pop and gossipy. Although to be honest, I just go to the 'eye candy', 'lol/wtf', 'rumours' and 'scandals' sections... obviously in that order of importance ^_^

Haha, anyway, that's it for today. Just for you visual people, here's a photo from the match on Saturday, just because I liked this guy (Kurtley Beale) and I like seeing photos of the dumb faces sportspeople pull when they play.

Happy Monday everyone! I hope yours is doing better than mine.