Happy New Year 2010

Greetings from a chilly Daejeon. We've had some very cold days, as I know has also been the case in Ireland. But today we're hovering around zero, and with sunshine and blue skies it seems pretty nice.

The pic of the week is some 'garden sculpture' from Clara's garden, taken in the fall of snow on St. Stephen's day. 

Christmas

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I went up to Seoul for Christmas. Taking the train on Christmas Eve. We checked around to see if there were people interested in meeting up for dinner, but most people had gone home or had made plans. So we booked dinner in the Irish bar, The Wolfhound. It's open on Christmas day, and they have a big Christmas dinner laid on. You need to buy tickets in advance. They have a full Christmas dinner buffet, with some asian options also available. The only problem was that there was a bit of a queue for the buffet. I had decided that I wasn't queuing for a second trip, so I ended up with a massively piled plate. But I enjoyed every bit of it.

It was just Clara and I that booked, and we were put sitting at a table with a two other people. They were a couple, from South Africa and the UK. We got on like a house on fire, and continued into the evening with board games that they had in the bar.

Highlight of the evening was when the snow started to fall and swirled around the first floor windows and the crowd broke into spontaneous applause because it was so Christmassy.

Work

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I had quite a busy end to the semester, because I had a lot of exams to set and mark, and then update the files and system in a process we call archiving. At the same time I had my two weeks between the end of semester and Christmas scheduled for intensive classes, and with everything I was really busy.

But now I've a much lighter workload. I'm back tomorrow, Monday, to a week of just one class a day, a total of 7.5 hours for the week. The following week is something similar, and there's just 1 hour a day the following week. Of course, all of this is subject to change at any time.

Holidays

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I had requested my holidays for Christmas, because my friends Chris and Tash were getting married, and I was invited to their wedding in South Africa. However, with the intensive classes I couldn't get the time off.

So I have 2 weeks off, the last week in January, and the first in February, so I'm heading off to Malaysia, to meet up for a week with my friend Justin, who'll be travelling there at that time. I'll then have a week on my own after he heads to a wedding in Sri Lanka. So I'm really looking forward to that time away.

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Well, that's it for this week. I'm putting this mail also in Google Wave, so if you know what that is and are looking for an invite just let me know. If you don't know what it is, don't worry, because nothing is going to change with the emails.

Well, that's it for now. So until time,

Annyeong-hi kaseyo,

Éamon

Today's headline in Donga Ilbo: N. Korea hints at easing stance toward S. Korea, emphasizes overcoming economic hardships in New Year message