Last week I had the Tuesday off for Buddha's Birthday.Unfortunately it rained, so we went to a local Pool Hall.Graham goes here quite often with our friend who finishes work earlier than me, but this was my first time.It's pretty much like any Pool Hall you would get in England, except it is brighter and you can take your own beer in.The other difference is that there is only one pool table with pockets!The Koreans play 'Sagu' which means 'Four Balls' on tables with no pockets.Basically (courtesy of Wikipedia)

"the game is played with two red object balls, one white cue ball and one yellow cue ball (or sometimes both cue balls are white, one having a red spot). Each of the two players is assigned his or her own cue ball. A point is scored when the shooter caroms on both red balls. The shooter is penalized a point for failure to carom on either red ball or if the shooter causes his cue ball to carom off the opponent's cue ball. Thus, the shooter must avoid any carom or kiss off of the opponent's ball while striving to carom on the two red object balls. A carom on only one red ball results in no points but ends the shooter's inning."

The Koreans call our Pool 'Pocket Pool' or 'Lady Pool' and you will rarely see any Korean men playing it.Most of them wear a special glove to play Sagu, and they even have arm covers for the business men to use, so they don't get the sleeves of their jackets covered in chalk.The Pool Hall was very busy, and my Australian friend and I were the only females in there.That night we went with some friends to one of our favourite local restaurants called Dasarang.This serves fantastic pizzas and fried chicken (not traditionally Korean, but very popular over here).

On Friday night I went out with some of the other teachers from my school.It was great to be able to get to know some more of the Korean teachers better, as in school time we are all so busy that there is only time for a quick 'hello' in passing.I hope there will be many more nights like this in the future, as I really enjoy learning more about Korean culture and being able to tell them about British culture.

On Saturday the sun was shining again, so Graham went off to work on his bike whilst I went to my friends to sunbath on the roof.Unfortunately we don't have roof access, but Shannon lives nearby, and has a perfect rooftop for sunbathing, so a few of us spent the day lazing in the sun, chatting and drinking wine!Whilst up there we witnessed the family across the street having a huge argument out in the street.We were then disturbed by the sound of Graham's motorbike turning down the street.He has been working on this broken bike for a few weeks now, and has finally got it going after much hard work and taking the engine apart.He has also painted it black, so it is looking pretty cool.Saturday was the first time he brought it home, so he was very excited!

That evening we went over to a different area to the 'Ice Pub' again, as it was our friend's leaving do.We had a great evening chatting with both western and Korean friends, and I found that one of our Korean friends majored in Dance, and has a similar Master's degree to me!She knows much about Korean Dance, so I hope to learn more about this from her in the future and hopefully go to see some performances.

On Sunday Graham went with our friend to Suwon (near to Seoul) to help him move all of his stuff, as this is where his new job is, so I had a relaxing day on my own.We shall be both going there next weekend to visit him, and then continuing up to Seoul, where I am hoping to go and see Cirque du Soleil, so we should have a lot to tell you about in next week's blog entry!This week we also booked a holiday to China for September, so we are very excited about this, as neither of us has ever been to China before.

Take care everyone

Maggie x