This week classes are cancelled wed/thurs/fri for final exams. Wednesday I was sitting in the teachers room waiting for lunch. When I went down the cafeteria was empty. Then I went back up to wait and was told after 12.40 there will be a teachers lunch and games. As usual I'm not told anything. I went back at quarter to one and still nobody there.

I went back to the teachers room and raided my food supply. At 1.40 an announcement was made to go down. They had a buffet setup with kimbab, glass noodles, fried chicken, pajan, tomatoes, sliced watermelon, and rice cake. The tables also had side dishes, kimchi, salad leaves, drink bottles.

Drinks are rare, the cafeteria and restaurants always serve water. They had coke, orange juice, and soju, and another wine. I was told it was 19% alcohol and they drinking it down toasting each other, in the school cafeteria in the middle of the day.

After lunch we went up to the gym and there were table tennis and badminton games setup. They asked if I knew how to play table tennis or badminton? Well, they are Olympic level international games but I havent played table tennis since I was in the after school club when I was in Middle School!

They gave me a bat and told me to play the principal who was decked out in full badminton athletic gear. I was terrible as I hadnt played in over 20 years!!. I played a round of badminton and was much better, even though I hadnt played for even longer than ping pong.

After, we went back down to the caferteria. Now we were going to play Yunnori. I've seen this before and someone tried to explain the rules again. You have four sticks called yutes, and you toss them and see how they land. Depending on if they are face up or down you move your piece. The board is like a solitaire board, but there are two special spots, heaven and hell, which sends the game piece to the start or the finish.

I did a big toss and the pieces fell off the mat so they said I lost my turn. Next round I did better and was told I get to throw again. I really didnt understand how the game worked, as they kept changing colours of the game pieces, and moving them in different directions. This went on for an hour, well after 5pm, and they were all shouting madly like a day at the race track.

Friday we had a full staff lunch again. Friday was also contract renewals and we had to get a medical exam done for the renewal signing. Last year when I arrived I paid $50 to get the physical done, usual blood, urine, chest x-ray, eyes, hearing, height, weight, etc. This year we have to have a marajuana test done as well.

Apparently a group of teachers in another city Daejeon were caught smoking marajuana. In their wisdom korean immigration has decided that all teachers nationwide must now take the test. This has increased the cost from $50 to $80-$100 depending on which hospital you goto.

So I go with a teacher to one of the approved hospitals to get the test done. This was my first time in a korean hospital. I've seen many of them before near bus stops. They are not huge sprawling complexes like back home, they are an innocuous office towers all over the city. This is true also of universities which can have a campus compacted into a single office tower.

Surprisingly the inside looked like a typical hospital despite the smaller surface area. Each floor was a central reception facing different rooms on each wall, with a large open lobby on the second floor. Most of the exam was a waste of time. We had to go to a different room on each floor for each exam, so up and down lots of staris.

Each exam took barely a minute, shine a light in your eye, next room, check your teeth, next room, check your ears, next room, blood pressure, next room, and so on.. the most ridiculous was the neurological exam where I had to hold up both hands and count down from 5 to 1 on my fingers on each hand, then was told to go to the next room.... and I paid $80 for this??

100 people ended up resigning contracts from our group of 160 last august, and another 100 new teachers scheduled to arrive in August. This is in addition to the second group of teachers that started in the febuary term so we have close to 500 teachers according to the Daegu Board of Education, not counting all the private school teachers as well.

Monsoon season has also hit and the forecast is saying rain next two weeks, very heavy on same days. I've found extended weather forecasting outside 24hrs tends to be unreliable in Korea. When I took the screen print shown it said 50mm rain, but this number has changed so many times as have the precipitation amounts for each day. Now the two week forecast is saying the rain has mostly cleared.

From Friday to Sunday was supposed to be the first big wave. Friday wasnt too bad and I was able to hang out downtown and goto dinner. Saturday I managed to goto the local movie theatre to see Green Lantern and back in heavy drizzle to sit out a few hours since I was going to be housebound all weekend. Apparently there is an 8.45am show for those who want to getup early, I went for the 1pm.

I'm worried about flooding since i'm a ground floor apartment and my building is the bottom of a valley as the street slopes up in both directions with my building at the bottom. Luckily i'm four steps up from the street level so it would have to flood more than 3ft to reach my front door.

July 15 is the first day of summer holiday so I have a three day weekend before summer camp starts on the monday. I'm planning to goto Seoul for the three days. Every time I goto Seoul I seem to get hit with a massive rainfall completely soaking me before I'm stranded indoors ruining plans. I'm hoping this wont happen again on my third attempt to spend some time there.