Last Tuesday Graham's eye surgeon invited us to a concert being held by the dentists of Gwangju. Not wanting to miss out on the free tickets, and this great opportunity, I managed to swap some hours around at work so that we could attend. The eye surgeon's wife is a dentist, and she was the host/ MC at the event - hence the free tickets. We also had a couple of spare tickets, so some other friends came along too, making us the only four foreigners at the concert. It was a varied programme of a string ensemble, a cello quartet, a saxophone band, a guitar trio, and a male choir, who all performed two or three, acts each. However, there were a couple of surprises, the first being about half way through. We soon realised that they had cleared the stage for a dance performance, but what we didn't expect was something so sexy in the middle of this predominantly classical concert. And what was even more shocking was the upbeat loud music, which was full of profanities in English! Of course the lyrics were so fast that even the most fluent English speakers would struggle to notice, and luckily the Korean audience seemed completely oblivious.

The other surprise came at the end when a Korean guy, maybe in his late 30's or early 40's came on stage and the crowd went crazy! We had no idea who he was, but he was dressed like a rock star, and acted like one too. He spoke to audience, and the women all swooned and screamed, and everyone sang along and swayed to his songs. There were cameras everywhere, and being the only foreigners there, they were keen to catch us on camera - so we did our best to look like we knew who he was, and were of course huge fans!! After several songs he went off stage, and the crowd shouted for more, so back he came, performing one last song and throwing bottled water over himself at the end, at which point the women screamed even louder. We later found out that his name is Ahn Chi Hwan and he is a famous Korean singer from a few years ago, particularly known for singing political songs. It was a fantastic experience and great to see the Koreans enjoying themselves so much.

Graham took a trip down to the baseball stadium last week, as now baseball season is over they are going to demolish the old stadium and build a new, bigger one. I had luckily read an article the night before about this happening, so Graham went to the ceremony to get some pictures and see the new plans. The new stadium won't be complete for a couple of years, so we won't get to see it, but the plans look great. In the outfield they are going to create a grassy bank for families to set up picnics. I think this is a great idea, and wish sporting events could be more like this back home.

On Saturday we went to a dinner party and had some fantastic Thai curries, followed by a night down town. We had not been down town at a weekend for a long time and had forgotten how busy it gets, and just how many foreigners there are in Gwangju. It was good to see many friends but also made me appreciate nights like the concert when I get to see more of the 'real' Korea and experience Korean culture.

On Sunday I had another taste of Korean culture as I went to visit Songgwangsa Temple. The lady who had organised our temple stay wanted to take us to see this temple, as it is one of top three temples in Korea and has many monks living there. Every evening they perform a drum ceremony, which she thought we would like to see. She picked us up and drove us to the temple in the afternoon, so we had time to walk around the large complex, visit the museum and gift shop, and take a hike up to the house of a very famous monk who died a couple of years ago. After exploring, we had dinner at the temple and then went to see the drum ceremony. About 7 monks took turns to play the huge drum very skilfully, and after they had finished we joined in their evening worship to Buddha in which they bow and chant (so more bowing for me) to say that they tried hard to follow his teaching today, but if they failed they will try harder tomorrow. It was great to see this huge temple with many monks compared with the small temple where we did our temple stay last weekend, with only two monks. Afterwards the head monk from last weekend invited us to drop by at his temple for tea, so we did. He made us lotus flower tea, which is harvested and filled with green tea. The flower is carefully folded and wrapped up, then frozen for use all year round. The monk has a whole freezer full ready for when he has guests! It was very interesting to see the process of unwrapping the flower and making the tea, and it tasted fantastic. After a couple of hours of chatting and drinking tea he drove us home. I had never before thought about that fact that monks might drive, and he also has an I phone, which rang a couple of times during tea! On the journey home he had the TV on (most Korean cars have a TV screen in the middle of the window) and was watching a K drama (Korean soap opera) followed by a gag show which is popular with the students. It was a very surreal drive home, but something I will add to the long list of unique experiences I have had since living in Korea.

Maggie x