It's been quite a while, and I apologise to those who do read this - things to do, other things to write and before you know it, two or three years have slipped away.
The reason to post again is that quite a lot of things have been happening on the Korean education front, most notable the cut-back on NETs. Native English Teachers. Despite the millions Korean's still spend on English education, the programs such as GEPIK and EPIK seem to have run their course, and are winding down.
To some, this was nothing if not inevitable. To others, 'tis a pity. To me it's meant that I now teach at two schools instead of just one.
And I feel that if money was wasted before, servng two schools really is a waste - the students don't get enough exposure to English as a means of communication as it is, let alone when I am there for only a single period, or two, maybe three at most, in their week.
And if that period is largely taken up by my Korean co-teachers (I now have four) to either explain what I've just said in English in Korean, or to teach the grammar in Korean.
In the excellent TV series, the Big Bang Theory, Sheldon often makes pronouncements about what he'd do if he was king of the world. Well, if I was queen of the world, I'd drastically recast the whole education thing.
How? Think Ken Robinson meets Summerhills meets Montesorri, with a dash of game theory thrown in, and you're getting close.
And if you know none of those, google them and think about it.

Summer and weddings!

Recently I was invited to attend the wedding of one of the teachers who also work at the middle school where I'm teaching, and since I just love Korean weddings I accepted happily. We all piled into a bus which took us to Gwacheon, where we stopped at the building shown above - one of the weirdest pieces of architecture I've seen in Korea.
It contains several wedding halls and a huge buffet area.

Here is a shot of my colleague on her way to the wedding hall. Didn't she make a lovely bride?

This shot of the building is taken from the courtyard outside the buffet hall, and shows just why I think this is a very weird design - is it supposed to be a crystal, a space alien or simply an exercise in shapes?

This shot shows the lake next to which the wedding hall is situated, and on which the swan boats ply their trade. Truly an unique settting for a wedding, and they make sure that no-one need feel left out - with three wedding halls and an hour per wedding, they coin it!

New premises

I moved to Hyundae building, wonrum tower in Seoshin on the 24th of February, and here are some photos to share the epxerience with you.
Above is a view of the living room of my new apartment in the process of being set up. I am always amazed at how much stuff I have that has no clear purpose beyond being there. I'm not talking about the books and CD's and TV and bed and such, no, it's stuff like pillows that are there simply to fill space on the bed, or the stuffed animals, or the pictures - stuff that is simply there as a reminder of an event or a person who gave them to you.


This is one of my new animal neighbours - a male ostrich who shares his pen with a rooster and duck of indeterminate gender.


A view of the tower in front of the building. This straddles a fountain and gives the whole place a very surreal air.
My flat is on the third floor, and in this photo you can see the window of my kitchen just above the blue lettering.


And here is the galbi restaurant that is right next door - we share the parking lot with them. I was a bit worried, knowing that this is also the local noraebang (karaoke song bar), that the noise would be a problem, but luckily the building is wonderfully soundproofed and so far, the only sounds that do filter in are distant thuds when someone slams a door.

As I'm typing this, sitting in the kitchen, the setting sun is shining on the laundry hanging on the balcony. The flats are oriented on a north-south axis, which means the morning sun warms the kitchen and the afternoon sun the balcony.

It's great being in a new environment, but the stress of getting there is a problem. I've been thinking that my next move should be to a mobile home - that way I never have to pack when I want to move!

Some more food

I love eating, and Korea is certainly very food friendly in that just about any large shopping centre will have a food court. like the one shown above. The food ranges in price from 3000 to 15000 won, and covers quite a range of flavours, with the emphasis on those Korean staples such as bibimbap, kimchi stews, ramen noodles or buckwheat noodles. The food is prepared once you order, and is really fresh and tasty, as long as you like hot pepper spiced food!

This is what I ordered from the food court shown above - beef on rice with vegetables, or sobibimbap. It cost 5000 won and came with the two little kimchi side dishes and some bean sprout soup. The cast iron pot is sizzling hot, and as you mix the food it still cooks a bit more. On a cold winter day, it is a really great meal.

Finally, I have to share my latest bread baking - an attempt to recreate the Cape Seed bread, a rich and tasty health loaf. It started when I cleaned up my kitchen cupboard and discovered a whole lot of flax, sunflower, pumpkin and poppy seeds, as well as a small pack of raisins and dried apricots.
The recipe used two cups of rye flour and one cup wheat flour (white), about two spoons of each seed, all the raisins (about 100g) and the five apricots chopped up into pieces, and enough hot water with yeast, two spoons of sugar and one spoon of salt to make a soft sticky dough. This then got placed in a buttered tin and left to rise for the night, and baked for two hours at 180 degrees Celsius in the morning. It was every bit as tasty at it looks!

Snow!

The first snow fell in Korea way back in November, and early in November as well. In fact, we had snow for my birthday, 19 November. And, it was the usual snowfall - and inch or two - that I had been experiencing since coming to Korea in 2007.

However, yesterday evening and the whole of today, the 4th of January, snow has been falling almost non-stop and an estimated 12 inches have fallen so far. Not a blizzard by any standard, but heavy enough to make me say that I've never seen so much snow in all my life! The photo above is an example of how wonderfully snow transforms the landscape - this is the trash dump behind an abandoned restaurant that is now a fairy landscape.

The place where I live has a rich variety of dogs, and here you see one of them next to drift about two foot high. I know that dogs have the fur to cope with the weather, but it still pains me to see the callous disregard the Koreans have for them - the doghouse in the back is not for this dog, who has no shelter beyond the overhang of the puppy coop behind him.

A shot of the pines all decked with snow - a recent article has provoked much scorn from the English community for claiming that the Christmas tree originated in Korea and that they will be seeking compensation from commercial growers of these in the west.

This is the tree they are talking about!

And finally, a shot that I lucked in to - the snow and the branch combined to form an artistic composition that is well worth preserving.

Festive cooking and its aftermath.

With the snow lying on the ground outside, I thought it the ideal time to try my hand at making apple and strawberry jelly, seen here in the pot, boiling away merrily. The kitchen was soon filled with a fragrant, sticky steam. And, as I skimmed the foam and thought of having home made jelly on my toast, I thought of a Christmas quite a time ago, when my family visited a family that had been our closest neighbours many years previously, who had moved away to a farm. The daughter, Netta, and I were close friends, being the same age, and I must credit her with my acquisition of English - she taught me my first swearword! We grew up next to each other, saw each other through teenage tears and then moved into the world of grown-ups and drifted apart.
On this particular Christmas, however, back in 1973, our firstborn children were only a year old, and we were renewing our friendship that had been conducted via mail for about four years.
My parents, myself, my daughter and my sisters duly arrived on the farm, where we were promptly put to work peeling and processing the crop from a whole orchard of apricot trees into jam. That experience lasted me until now, when I finally felt the urge to preserve something again!


Back to the beginning of this urge - left-over strawberries from the Christmas trifle (more about that soon), and some apples that were just at the point of losing that crisp bite an apple needs to be eaten with pleasure.
Here you can see the chopped apples (four), the strawberries and a bottle of corn syrup which were the ingredients used, ready to go into my copper jam pot!
I chopped the apples with their peels, core an all so that the pectin will set the jelly, since I was going to discard the pulp anyway.


Here we have the final result after about an hour of cooking and skimming off foam, and testing for setting on a cold metal spoon. A beautiful, clear, pink jelly that is going to be heavenly with pork chops or on toast.
So the recipe roughly reads as follows: Wash and chop four medium apples, discarding only stems but keeping peels and pips. Clean and cut about 200 gr strawberries and add to apples in jam pan, adding 500ml of corn syrup or 500 gr sugar. If using sugar, add 1/2 a cup of water.
Boil, skimming off foam until a couple of drops of the liquid sets within 30 seconds of being dropped on a cold spoon.
Drain the liquid from the pulp using a clean cloth, squeezing out as much liquid as possible. Bottle in clean, sterilized glass jars. Allow to cool to room temperature, then place in the fridge. For my American friends, jelly in this case is a clear jam, with no fruit pulp, not jello!


And this is the trifle that started it all. I made this for the Christmas lunch my daughter and I had - a real South African meal of lamb chops, rice, minted peas and glazed carrots. The trifle, a cold pudding made from layers of stale cake, jello, custard and cream, with fruit added for a festive touch, is eaten in the hot December sun of a sunny Christmas with much enjoyment. And even though we had a wet and cold Christmas in Korea, this added a touch of sun and Africa for while!

Last gasp of autumn

Walking home a couple of weeks ago, I snapped these pictures, not knowing that I was actually capturing the last of autumn. There was just enough green and browns to offset the grey that was to come, and the sky was a lovely clear blue.
If I do move to Seoul next year, this will be the aspect I'll miss - nature decking herself in all her costumes through the year.

Here you can see the last of the grasses in seed, and a verge that is still green, even if a dusty green.

But the mists were rolling in, and the warning of the snow which came two days later was implicit in their presence.

One last look at the hills in their autumn splendor, and we will next see this in grey and white when the snow comes down!