Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes...

I have a new bicycle! I walked up to a small bicycle shop in Jincheon and met Jefa on Saturday morning after a month of waiting. I was looking for a cream and tan fold away bike, with a basket of course. But I completely fell in love with a dark red one with cream wheel covers and tan handles and seat. It really is beautiful. The man in the shop was so lovely and cute and explained every feature of the bike in Hangul bless him. Luckily, Jefa is a hell of a lot better at korean than I am so we just about got by and managed to upgrade my basket to a more useful sized one. Thanks to a suggestion from my friend Fiona, I named the bike Penny (hence the completely illogical Beatles lyrics in the title!). The Penny is actually taken from Penny Farthing...a nice reference I feel. On the body of the bike it says...'Link up your heart with mine'. Quite appropriate considering how obsessed I am with this bike. In all fairness, I have not owned a bike for many many years and have been yearning for one for a while! Happy days :-)

Temples galore...

Although I do LOVE a good temple, I think I may be a bit templed out after my first few months in Korea. Most are reconstructed but they are almost always in beautiful locations.

A few of us got the bus out of Daegu on a lovely day to visit Haein-sa. 

A sort of maze which actually takes a long time to walk around. We copied others a bowed three times at the pagoda in the centre. Hopefully this is for good luck!

The part of the temple in the photo above felt very 'Secret Garden'. Beautiful. Although made me crave some time at the parks near my home in Manchester.

After several months of walking blindly past these stone towers, I finally found out their purpose. For every three stones you get good luck or can make a wish...ok maybe I still don't exactly know their purpose!

The next temple I visited was Umsan-sa with a woman from my after school parents class. It took two hours to drive there but it was very scenic and different to my usual view of korea.

Finally, after a mammoth hike (22km and two mountains Biseulsan and Apsan) I wandered into a temple at the bottom of Apsan to get a drink and met a really awesome monk who gave me this fab buddhist bracelet. Great reward for 8 hours of hiking!

Sports Day (or should we say cheering and cute costumes day!)

A few weeks ago Wolsoe Middle School had their annual Sports Day. Unlike England, where this day is usually a rain sodden half hearted event, Korean Sports Day is whimsical, visual and completely over the top! It was a scorching hot day which I was happy about but all the koreans were NOT happy about. Cue lots of fans and girls crowded together in a tiny bit of shade. The perimeter of the sports field was filled with gazebos for each home room. Lots of people crammed into a small space= chaos! My ultimate favourite part was the costumes. June gave me some braces and invited me to cheer for her 3rd grade girls so I joined them- turned out to be a good move as they were very enthusiastic and energetic and actually came 1st in the school.  They were dressed as bunnies, complete with pink braces, pink shorts and dicky bows. So cute. other costumes included hula girls, cats, pjs, shrek and many more. Even the homeroom teachers dressed up!

Flying the flag for Manchester! (or My Chemical Romance as everyone- foreigners and Koreans seem to think MCR stands for)

one of my favourtie 1st grade girls from my after school club and the crazy good signs they had been making all week (sometimes in class grrrrrrr)

Too cool AND wearing a Manchester United shirt! Home from home!

Me and Sydney taking part in the infamous sport...kick a slipper into a ring to win boxes of tissues. Not heard of it?? Apart from some running the sports were pretty hilarious...tug of war and lines of students climbing over each others backs were some great events. But the biggest 'event' was cheering which was undertaken with much preparation and effort. Lyrics to songs copied out on large pads and rehearsed schedule for the cheering with a team leader+loud speaker  So much fun!