Ho hum

Hello dear readers! Profuse apologies for being so lax of late and essentially being so lazy as to not post for a very long time. There is not really a very good reason for doing so, merely that I have been enjoying being home so much that I've rather put my blog on the backburner for a while. Henceforth however, I will probably be posting with more regularity as I return to icy Korea and my even icier school and many hours of deskwarming (although contrary to what the name suggests, really my desk is freezing). For you see, this will be my last post from Australia for a good while, possibly for 13 months until I finish my contract on February 26th, 2012. Unless of course North Korea does actually decide they have nothing left to lose (having already said goodbye to their last shred of sanity) and decide to go out guns (or nuclear missiles) blazing, or something else equally calamitous happens that brings me back early, or that I really do just get completely sick of being there, in which case I might be back a little earlier, but at present I'm trying to steel my resolve and aim to stick it out for the year, irregardless of personal feelings on the matter.

Which is not to say that I am not looking forward to going back to Korea! Although I'm dreading having to go back to the cold and the insularity of Korean society and the lack of multiculturalism (ok, the lack of multicultural food options really) and of course, having to go back to work, I'm also looking forward to lots of things - Korean food, shopping, the convenience of Korean life, and of course, my friends. Actually, to be honest, I feel a bit ambiguous about seeing many of them, because for quite a few who have been important people in my life last year, it's not just about looking forward to seeing them again. Many of them will be leaving now that they have completed their year of teaching, and although this is thing I hate to believe is true and can never quite bring myself to say, it may very well be the last time I'll see them again, so for many, it's a goodbye too. Now those of you who are either Australian or are acquainted with Australians (which you should all be since you know me and to channel a Westie I know, you can't get much better than what's already awesome! :D) know that we are a nation of long distance travellers. We have to be if we want to go anywhere outside of the country. So there is a fairly large likelihood that of the many friends I have been lucky enough to make this year, I will see them again. In the words of someone well-meaning who probably ended up with a long line of Australian couch-surfers: "never invite an Aussie to stay with you if they're ever in the country unless you actually mean it, because they'll actually take you up on it." Nevertheless, depressing thoughts and accomodation-cadging aside, it will be good to go back and spend my last week of school-less freedom seeing everyone again, just in case. And frankly, also because some of them would also be likely to send me long abusive emails about my moral deficiencies as a friend if I did not see them at least once before they go and this is something I wish to avoid :)

Which brings me back to my original point (kind of) about my last day in Oz. The weather has actually cleared up a little and turned out semi-nice, so a swim with Fran later on in the (hopefully) less burny time of day is definitely on the cards. I'm also baking sticky-date pudding with butterscotch sauce (two actually, one for our grandparents and one for us), if we have any room for it after dinner with mum, dad, Fran, Edna and Allen (some family friends visiting from Wales) at Altitude 1146 perched on Bulli Tops, which according to a friend with an inside scoop on the owners (....) does some mean curries since they actually have a curry chef. I'm hoping the sticky date pudding will also make me less sentimental when I go to say goodbye to my grandparents for yet another year - a kind of Trojan horse I guess - but I'm glad that we at least have the miracle of Skype to keep in touch. I also have the last of my packing to do, or rather, re-packing, now that I've gathered all of these things that I somehow managed without for a whole year but have now decided I can't, and also all of my shopping for stuff I can't get in Korea, like Dilmah tea, peppermint tea, herbs and a decent stain remover which you'd think would be a cinch for a country that uses as much chilli as Korea.

Anyway, rather than writing about it and sitting on my butt enjoying the campness of Peter on Ready Steady Cook, I should probably get onto actually doing some of that stuff. My second sticky-date pudding is almost done so I should check on it too, and of course the crickets and cicadas chirruping outside in the sunshine are reminding me of my 'one last swim' resolution with Fran. Here are a few of my favourite photos from my trip to tide you over until my next post (I'll probably be whingeing about how cold I am). Bon voyage!





With Miss Lucy and Jini

With Lyss and Tracey

With the 2009 Wollongong OPSM girls :)

MC multi-tasking her way to fabulousness as usual

Kookie sitting on the proverbial wire

Strewth it's hot! Apparently it's only 35 degrees (celsius) with 30% humidity, but it feels hotter than that - high 30's at least. A well-chilled beer earlier today and now a refreshing gin and tonic are definitely helping though :)

By now, I'm almost at the halfway mark of my holiday home, so not quite close enough to have to think about returning to the frigid ice-box that is Cheongju in winter, but close enough to be realising that I should be getting on to doing a whole bunch of things that I wanted to or need to do before I head back. Looking back at my bucket list, I've managed a fair bit already - at least 27 of the 40 or so things on it (you can see my to do list here if you need a refresher) and another 8 or 9 of those schedhuled in before I go. I also managed to find my absolutely delicious vanilla coke (which has become very scarce for some reason) which should have been there, and drink an enormous amount of it, some of it while watching "The Biggest Loser" and cackling, yes, CACKLING at the hapless contestants. Unsympathetic, yes, perhaps, but also because it was the premiere episode of the 2011 season, in which they made the trainers go live with the families that they'll be training and eat what they eat for a week. Watching the teeth-bleached, hair-bleached blonde barbie doll Tiffany (the name says it all don't it?) being forced to eat a huge plateful of creamy pasta (made with a jar of Alfredo sauce, a pack of sour cream, a pack of thickened cream and three types of cheese) was as ironic as it was disgusting. By the way, I have to say here, I love the Commando's no-bull attitude, especially in the face of the fact that his team are all women (much to his horror) and quite giggly and likely to drive him up the wall. I'm betting his 'surprise twist' this year (or whatever his tagline was) is that he smiles :p And of course, Michelle and Shannon are as awesomely hardcore as ever (although it looks lie Shannon had his tatts re-inked for the show), but really, I like my crazy, and The Commando is just the right amount of crazy to be awesome.

Well, shamefully crass commerical television aside, it has been BRILLIANT being at home. Here are some of my favourite pictures so far.

Pamela, Georgie and Maria (b), Mum and Fran (f).

Catching up over some yummy goodies! We are well-versed in the Georgie = delicious food equation :) 

To the right are some of Georgie's biscuits and some that the girls made. Luckily these came out after the cheesecake and the girls' cheese triangles, so there were enough left to take a decent photo of them :)

Authentic seefood! The barbequed octopus Fran and I couldn't bring ourselves to eat, as it appeared to be eye-balling us throughout dinner at a local Thai restaurant.



With Naomi at the Lunar New Year Festival in Hyde Park in Sydney. Although I don't look it, I was actually quite happy here, as at this point we hadn't yet been approached by the dodgy bogan derro trying to bum a light and calling me 'sis' so he could nick my handbag. 

Dad feeding the Eastern Rosellas on the balcony one morning.  Fran actually took this as it was at the ungodly hour of 8.30am, so I was still dead to the world.

Mum's pav - a fruit and cream topped meringue base. Mum was actually very sneaky and mixed fruche (a very creamy yoghurt) in with the cream on this one, but Grandy didn't notice (or perhaps mind) so it was all good.

Having brunch with Nadia, aka the smilingest woman on earth, and my personal favourite mood-lifter :)

Anyway, that's about it for now. I should get back to my TESOL coursework - I have 25 days left (well, less really if you consider travelling and visitors etc) to complete 48 units, but I managed to do 5 last week in less than 5 days so I think I can manage it!) if I want the pay rise next year. You'd think my study habits would be better now that I'm a teacher, but it's really not the case :p Wish me luck!

HOME!

Yes, it is true. The eagle has landed, and Amy has come home. And good lord does it feel GRRRRRREEEEEAAAT! Although I'm used to travelling, it's always a little weird for me when I'm overseas for a long time somewhere where the climate is diametrically different to what I'm used to, especially over holiday periods like Christmas and the New Year and it's really different to my memories and habits of how I usually spend that time at home. It makes me slightly homesick and very mopey (not to say anti-snow) to look outside (having first had to defrost my window) and see frost and people wrapped up in six layers of clothing inching across icy pavements when everything is telling me that this is the time of year when people should be walking around in the blazing sunshine in summer dresses, thongs, sunnies and a tan, drinking cold beer or a refreshing gin and tonic on the verandah and listening to the crickets and cicadas chirping. So needless to say, coming home and having a sense of everything being set right again has been absolute BLISS. I haven't worn socks since I got off the plane (I immediately put my thongs on as soon as we landed) or even closed shoes, and I've been gradually crisping my feet and legs every morning by propping them up on the railing in the sunshine as I sit out on the verandah doing the crossword with my dad (who has now also become a sudoku nut but unfortunately with much the same "guess and hope and then blame the paper for making mistakes when it's wrong" technique as he used to have with crosswords).

Speaking of planes, I should mention some highlights of my flight(s) home here. The first leg of the trip from Seoul to Shanghai was pretty good, mainly thanks to my plane neighbours Brady and Jihye, also teachers, who were on their way to Singapore and then Malaysia. I was still exhausted from a busy weekend and the anticipation of coming home, but we got chatting over a beer.. and then another.. and then another.. I actually think the stewardess was getting a bit annoyed as Jihye asked for more beer for all of us, as she kept telling us to wait for the drinks cart, but she eventually gave up and gave in. So it was a pretty entertaining flight. Until we got to Shanghai. Our flight had been delayed by about half an hour, which was fine for me with my 7 hour stopover, but it meant that Brady and Jihye now only had about an hour and fifteen minutes to make their connecting flight. 75 minutes? Fine, no worries... in a normal airport. So we said goodbye and off they rushed while I proceeded at a more sedate pace. And then China confirmed my worst misgivings about going through there. Luckily, I didn't contract anything nasty (as far as I know) like I did last time, despite being surrounded by hordes of people with the usual and very charming Chinese habit of hacking, snorting, clearing your throat, coughing and sneezing with no attempt to cover up and all sorts, but that was probably due to my own paranoia rather than luck.

So first of all, the gate we'd come in was a ridiculously long way away from the rest of the terminal - fair enough, it's a big airport. After a nice 15 or 20 minute walk, I reached the "transfer lounge"... which was either non-existent or synonymous with "immigration" because we had to fill in an arrivals card and be processed and photographed before we could go through. I spotted Jihye and Brady in the line ahead of me, and wondered if they'd be rushed through as they would now have less than an hour to get to their next plane once they got through. When it was my turn and I asked where I should go, I was told "third floor" with a hand vaguely waved in a random direction, so I hopefully set off that way and then roamed around looking for a way up, finally spying a "transfers" sign over an escalator. Coming out onto the third floor, it had actually come out into arrivals, which I wandered around until I found someone to tell me where to go. Luckily I didn't have to check in again, but I DID have to fill out a departure card and go through immigration and security AGAIN. And guess who else I ran into with less than 15 minutes to make their flight? I wished them luck (again!) and set off in search of my gate, determined never to fly through China again unless I had absolutely no chance and no money to do otherwise. Waiting wasn't too eventful, although the 7 hours did give me a chance to become intimately acquainted with the swine flu information video being shown on a 15 minute loop. It was very cute and very funny - have a gander! (Unfortunately, I missed the first bit which said "Pay attention! Swine flu comes from America. It's other name is H1N1. What a shame!")

After boarding my plane and finding myself sitting across from a slack-lipped germ factory who kept sneezing and spraying gross yuk everywhere but into a tissue and coughing loudly, and thanks to the lovely H1N1 video making me even more of a hypochondriac than normal, I immediately covered my face with my scarf as a make-shift face-mask, which I wore for most of the 11 hour journey. The woman sitting next to me seemed perfectly healthy though, and as a bonus, was also fairly lightly built (this sounds prejudiced, but experienced flyers will know the discomfort of having someone three times your weight trying to squeeze past you and most likely over you to get to the toilet multiple times and be as relieved as I was that I didn't have to experience it again). We exchanged smiles and then settled down to wait for dinner. Unfortunately, the people in the row in front of us (the first row) weren't content to simply sit for the announced 15 minutes it would take to serve it. So, being hungry, they decided to have a picnic. The menu? A whole marinated roast goose, vacuum packed in foil. The four of them ripped into it with much gusto while I and the other three women sitting next to me in my row had a fit of giggles at their antics. Luckily the rest of the journey was pretty uneventful as most people crashed out right after dinner, and I didn't have the misfortune to be stuck across from someone with horrific and constant gas issues like I was coming back from America, so it was all good, and a huge relief to finally be home and step off the plane into that familiar mix of Australian summer before the terminal's air-conditioning hits you. It was pretty funny coming through customs and seeing the inevitable crowds of disappointed tourists thronged around the quarantine bins and hurriedly scarfing whatever they could because despite the many signs and warnings on the plane, they only just realised that the (probably very expensive) foodstuffs they brought with them to see them through the wilderness that is non-whatever their own country's cuisine is won't be allowed through Customs. (NB to people who've never been here before - Australia has really strict Customs and Quarantine laws because, duh, we are an island. A big one yes, but an island nonetheless, so you aren't allowed to bring seeds, dirt, shoes that have dirt in them, most animals, fresh food, food not sealed to commercial standards, wood, wood products, plants, tea, grains ... a lot of stuff. If you forget this, you may end up wasting a lot of money on food presents). Immigration was chaos - someone obviously decided that to make their own hellish day slightly less godawful, they were going to pass the bollocks around by making EVERYONE confused and pissy, so none of the signs made any sense, and the officers arbitrarily changed their minds about who could go where and which nationalities and types of passports were allowed in which lanes. But at last I got through and was home! Absolute bliss ^_^

Also, I've already managed to eat my way through a goodly number of things on my wishlist! Baked ham dinner, roast lamb with gravy and perfectly roasted potatoes, trifle (and a chocolate one at that!), nectarines (sadly, or perhaps luckily, due to the rain they are scarce, so I haven't eaten myself silly on them yet), chocolate gelato in Circular Quay with my sister, home-made muesli, smoked salmon bagels, my sister's mince pies - MANY things! And tomorrow I'm making home-made banana ice-cream for my grandad, and then next week my mum's making a pavlova for Australia Day so the gorging is good to continue. Fran thinks she's put on 2 kgs already in the three days that I've been home, and the dogs are overjoyed to have yet another person to scab from.

Ooh and also more importantly!! ...
... Okay, male readers (if any), you should probably skip this part, because I'm about to launch into a shopping story. Yes, it's about underwear, but not in any kind of alluring way - I stress, it's about underwear, NOT lingerie. So sorry in advance, but this stuff is important to women, so proceed at your own risk!

So, ALSO! Something that makes me incredibly happy - UNDERWEAR! I went shopping in Sydney yesterday with my sissy poo, and there was still plenty of stuff on sale from the Christmas/New Year's sales, so I had a field day! For those of you unaware of this fact, comfortable, well-fitting underwear is extremely hard to find in Korea, especially as most knickers are a kind of 'one size fits no-one' (for the most part, Koreans have no butts) and the only place you can reliably buy anything bigger than a B-cup is at American chain stores in Seoul, and even then they don't usually fit that well. Seriously, C-cups are usually advertised as "large sizes!", and everything has the hell padded out of it anyway, so if you are planning to go to Korea and wear underwear ladies, it is a given that you should stock up on it before you go, unless you want to spend the year with some very unflattering bulges and your bosom twice the size you want and perched right up under your chin. So anyway, Christmas money in hand from many people in a very generous family, and having gotten home to realise that contrary to my expectations, I'd actually taken ALL of my non-lingerie underwear with me to Korea and so had not one pair of practical (and comfortable) knickers left at home, I hit up Myers underwear department like there was no tomorrow. $150 later, I was much happier. And then of course, we couldn't go past the clothes floor... ^_^ I was very happy to discover that there were still lots of bargains to be had in the Princess Highway section, one of my favourite brands.

It's good to be home ^_^