From Marriage to F6 in South Korea

As it states above this piece will document my journey from being a single guy to a married one with a spousal visa (f6) in the space of two weeks.

On the whole it was fairly easy and there were no obstacles as such. The hardest piece of the jigsaw

It wasn't anything like this.

was probably the first, meeting somebody you'd want to spend the rest of your life with. 

The Interview

As I live in South Korea and am married to a South Korean lady I can think of nobody better to provide a critique of the said movie in a balanced and authoritative manner.

Finding Private Glass

For the past few months I’ve been meaning to visit the UN memorial cemetery in Busan and never found the time to do so. With it being on my list of things to do for so long I grasped the nettle a week or so ago and looked up how to get there on the web. What happened in the next few minutes was quite astounding, for me at least and made my visit to the UNMCK more of a personal pilgrimage.

Breaking My 찜질방 Duck.

A unique concept of the Korean lifestyle is the Jimjilbang (찜질방). Google will tell you all you need to know about these places but I’ll do my best with what I've learnt from my time in Korea and my recent visit to one.

The common sleeping area inc snack bar. 

A Jimjilbang is a bathhouse or spa where Koreans go to relax and unwind. It’s a place where you can have a sauna, a body scrub and bathe in the hot pools for health benefits. This is not unique to most countries I know, but what is different here in Korea is that once you've finished with the sauna etc. Then you can head to another area and sleep for the night or until you feel like heading home.  Think of it as a one stop shop for relaxation at a fraction of what you’d expect to pay.

War?

It's the 30th of March 2013 and I'm in my apartment in the South Korean city of Jinju. The city is located in Gyeongsangnam-do province down in the deep South of South Korea.

Today is like any other day of late, in that the spring sunshine and cherry blossoming provides a very pleasant experience to my day to day life here as an English teacher. People are going about their business as usual and there really is not a sign that anything is afoot.

Rubber Seoul

It’s December but the bright warm sun shining through my window contradicts the traditional memories I’ve accumulated about this month. The last three Decembers have been snow filled affairs with little to look forward to other than the birth of our Lord and a Christmas feast.  Here on the very southernmost tip of South Korea we don’t get snow or frost.  EDIT>>> it snowed the very day I wrote this blog post but I left it in draft. <<<<<

Seodaemun Prison

True enough it has got a bit chilly and I’ve had the under floor heating (ondol) on for a few weeks. But there is no fierce arctic wind cutting through me when I step outside or has my electricity gone off like last winter in the Caucuses.