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Thursday 10 October 2013

Korean Grand Prix


Waygooks on tour.
Last weekend I joined up with the Waygook Travel company and headed south to Gwangju and onto Mokpo for the 4th Korean Grand Prix. I’ve been a fan of F1 since I was 13 so this was massively exciting – my first Grand Prix!! And yes, Jen.. I know you’re reading this and loling… You can skip this first part if you like. F1 isn’t for everyone...

The trip was great. It took about 4 hours to drive from Seoul to Gwangju including a pick-up in Daejeon and a couple of rest breaks. Not bad at all. We went straight to the track so only checked into the Love Motel later Saturday night. Qualifying on Saturday was pretty much what we had expected with Vettel on pole followed by Hamilton and Webber. Webber had his 10 place penalty for hitching a lift back to the pits on Alonso’s car at the Singapore GP a couple of weeks ago so that dropped him to 13 and shuffled the rest of the pack up one space.
From 9 up to 10. Good overtaking.
Between turn 8 and 9

After qualifying we headed to the motel and 40+ of us then went for Korean BBQ – delicious. I got talking to a Hawaiian couple who were in Korea on holiday and a British guy in his 20s called Kieran who was on vacation from China where he works as an IT Project Manager…
Pre-race Korean dancing
Black Eagles

The race on Sunday was full of everything I wanted. Overtaking, spins, a car on fire, safety cars, battling for position… I loved it. In fact the least entertaining aspect of the race was Vettel who just paraded around the track in the lead without anyone seriously challenging to take it from him. The drive of the day for me was from Nico Hulkenberg who had to work hard to fight off challenges from Hamilton, Alonso and Rosberg to secure that career best 4th place finish. As well as the racing there was a K-Pop concert and an air display by the Black Eagles.  

I got back to my apartment in Seoul just after midnight knowing that Monday would be a struggle (it was) but happy to have my first Grand Prix under my belt. I’ll certainly be going to more!!

Tuesday was Open Class.
I think this is the closest Korea gets to Parents Evening. The parents can come into your lesson and sit at the back whilst you teach. Most parents will go to their child’s homeroom class so they can talk to the teacher afterwards about how they’re doing in school generally. But for those parents who’re particularly interested in their child learning English, they will come to my lesson. 
Oh, as well as the school principal..


So, I made special effort… I brushed my hair (rather than the roll-out-of-bed mental patient look I usually have going on) and dressed smarter than usual. I got to school and did my best to keep Seunghee as calm as possible until the lesson started at 1pm. I've never seen her so stressed before. She’s usually very calm…to the point where she often naps the afternoons away.

I made a short video (above) with Seunghee and some of the students to use at the start of the lesson. I also made a Car Race game and a Spy game with animations and music. Everything went great! We had picked our best behaved Grade 4 class and they seemed to really enjoy the lesson.

Seunghee promptly fell asleep immediately after the class – I think it was the stress!!

Biking update:
I’ve cycled. A lot.


Sunny day for cycling
Crossing the Han









1) My first route was… a mistake. I had unintentionally cycled 13 miles in the wrong direction before I stopped and checked the map. I cycled back pretty pissed off with legs (and arse) FULL of pain.

2) A few days later I cycled a circular route, about 12 miles, to check out where I’d gone wrong. It was an easy mistake to make.. The bridge I should have crossed the stream at was much, much smaller than expected and pretty overgrown with trees and bushes… Excuses.

3) The third route was a monster. Mainly because Katie and I had decided it was a good idea to cycle to a 2 hour football session that was about 12.5 miles away…and back again. Unfortunately, during the session I pulled off a save by doing the splits – not a natural position I find myself in – and I did some damage to my right hamstring. In my infinite wisdom I thought it was OK to cycle the 12.5 miles home, rather than get on the subway, just to “stretch it out a bit”. A mile would have been OK. 12 miles was ridiculous. And that last 0.5 nearly made me cry.
Football Session

A week on and I’m still giving my leg time to recuperate a bit but yesterday was (another) national holiday “Alphabet Appreciation Day”, and a group of us headed back to the bike shops where two more people bought bikes. Got a little bike gang forming!


Crimson and Blue
Other sporty things I've done since I last blogged include attending a huge varsity game between Korea University and Yonsei University - two of the top 3 universities in South Korea. Every year these two universities play a series of matches - football, baseball, basketball, rugby and ice hockey - and the winner of 3 of the 5 games is crowed champion that year. I was there supporting Yonsei (purely because Yonsei's colour is Royal Blue and KU wears crimson - I don't own any crimson clothing) who were eventually crowned the 2013 champions! Huzzah. I saw the rugby and the football but to be honest, most of the crowd weren't there for the sport... they were there to sing and dance and chant along to there school songs. It was the weirdest and most bonkers sports atmosphere I've ever been in!...Short video here to illustrate my point. This singing and dancing was none stop through both games. 3+ hours. And everyone (except the foreigners) was sober. Incredible!


In other news: I'm off to Global Gathering on Saturday – a dance music festival. Sunday I will recover.

Until next time,

Bren.

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