March and Civil Defence

Well it's been a good month since I last posted, largely due to tiredness, laziness and not having enough time to complete my work in work hours.

Last year I spent my first spring here and I found that March just seemed to drag on forever. It's cold, but not cold enough to snow, it's spring but not a sign of grass or new flowers (until the very end of the month). It's been a cold March compared to last year with the temperature hitting -4 this weekend. Supposed to get warmer from today so hopefully that'll wake up some of the trees from their winter sleep.

There were a couple of events that happened worth noting, one being the Korean president's trip to NZ. I happened to catch some footage of this last night,  which showed him looking curiously at NZ fruit while they talked about it to him. He then proceeded onto Australia and then to Indonesia. While the president was in NZ a Korean international student stabbed my old high-school Japanese teacher in the back in front of two of my family members and the rest of the class. He is currently being held in custody until his trial. There has been a lot of gossip spread around by students and NZ media regarding the injured teacher who is still in hospital. This has really pissed me off as there is no excuse for stabbing a teacher and putting two of my family members and a class of kids in danger.

Anyhow apart from that,we had one week at work with no students. It was nice and quiet and we got a lot of much needed work done. Now the year has started again and our students will be coming through week by week.

Civil Defence Drill

The 15th of every month in South Korea is civil defence day and on this day drills are carried out by the military forces, public emergency services and sometimes the general public. Often in the month of March there is a nation wide civil defence drill where everything and everyone in the whole country comes to a stand still for 20 minutes while a siren wails out through the streets. Sometimes fighter jets fly overhead and emergency services can often be seen roaming the empty streets. They don't do it in the weekends so there is a nationwide drill scheduled for tomorrow at 2pm. I'll be working when it happens but hopefully I'll be able to hear the siren since I'm near the army hospital and airforce base. Here's a video of what it's kinda like.