Happy 2012 everyone!

새해 복 많이 보내세요! (Much good luck/many happy wishes for the New Year!) ^_^

How was everyone's NYE? If you were lucky, I'm sure it was full of love and hope, spent with those dear to you. If you were super-lucky, I hope it was also full of fireworks! And possibly also at least a little alcohol. Because let's face it, that's what NYE is all about, right? Or maybe that's just the Australian in me talking... hehe^^

So I had quite a lovely weekend! Even lovelier because I took Thursday and Friday off so it was actually a four day weekend, and I got to pack some things to start sending home, Skype my parents, and (even better! Sorry Mum and Dad!) Skype my favourite Busan ladies, Nat and Christy! Even though Nat isn't actually there any more, I hold out hope that she'll be back before too long ^_^ This was a big thing because many failed attempts to navigate time differences and personal schedhules meant that Skyping opportunities have been few and far between. Oh and I also went to the boardgame cafe and actually WON a game of Settlers of Catan against Carey-Ann, aka Grand Catan-Master, and two others.

And then on Friday the real weekend started - Ryan and I set off for Deoksan, Resom Spaland and Moong Pension. I don't know if you know this about me, but I actually really like road trips, especially when they are to somewhere new. I love seeing the landscape change and looking for interesting buildings and natural formations, as well as having the chance to talk and listen to music and just chill productively with someone I like. Sound boring? Haha, maybe a little^^ Simple mind, simple pleasures I guess. The upshot was that the drive seemed to go pretty quickly, since it was only about an hour and a half away anyway, and we found our accomodation pretty easily too. It was a really nice place! Except for the fact that there was a distinct smell of gas in the kitchen (five minutes with everything open and some tissue stuffed up the gas nozzle later that night cured this) and we hadn't thought to bring any sauces or condiments for cooking (a good excuse to eat out!), it was lovely and very homey. There was plenty of space, and since it was an ondol style pension, the heating was fine and I think even the bathroom floor was heated a little too. Sadly we didn't have the time to really try the jacuzzi in the bathroom, but since we went to the Spa Castle anyway this wasn't such a big thing.
And OMG was the Spa Castle amazing! By the time we got there, it was getting a bit crowded since it was a Friday afternoon, and you could see why! We only really wanted to try the different spas, for which you pay the base rate of w24000 (our tickets were included in the cost of the pension), but if you want to go on any of the rides like the Tube Ride or the Wave Pool Ride, you have to pay extra for that - around w1000 or w2000 on average - as well as to rent the life jackets, so the cost can go up pretty quickly.
Oh and you have to wear those weird little Korean swimming caps, but you can wear a normal cap over it and frankly it wasn't a very heavily policed policy. But if you just want to kick back like us and relax in the many spas, there are plenty to try, inside and out. Warm water gets piped over the floor and stairs between levels outside so it's not so bad, but you can also just use the ones indoors if you want which are like big communal swimming pools.

Outside, as well as the various 'special water' ones like the blueberry and bokbunja (raspberry vinegar) ones, a hinoki spa (to help with skin irritations apparently) an 'alcohol' spa, and a green tea spa, there were 'themed' ones like the massage pool, the classic pool, the jazz pool, the gayageum pool and such, most of which just meant spas of various temperatures in some sort of special setting, like having classical or gayageum music played. There was also the 'romantic' spa, which could only fit about three couples in it, a really hot spa, a lukewarm spa, a spa-cafe (yes, the cafe is IN the spa), a dry sauna room, a 'health road' foot bath where you walk with one foot in the hot water and one in the cold (or if you do what we and most people did, you just want to sit in the hot water you can just about squeeze yourself in) and the most interesting one, a doctor fish spa!

It was only w5000 for half an hour or until the doctor fish ajumma kicked you out, and a full body thing, so we gave it a whirl. If you're like me and extremely ticklish, and also easily freaked out by things nibbling at you, it may take a while to get used to it, as the fish get spooked when you start giggling and will all swim away, but if you're like Ryan and quite calm, then you'll probably really get your money's worth and the only thing you'll have to worry about is fish swimming up your shorts. Some of the fish were quite big and not so cute (big as in maybe 5cms long) to have nibbling all the dead skin off you, but after we got used to it it wasn't too bad. Ryan even took the dare to put his face under for 30 seconds, but the fish were a) too scared or b) too smart to come near ^_^

So we spent a good few hours there. We might have tried some of the rides but it was getting late and had already gone dark and the temperatures were dropping - the attendants had actually started salting the walkways to stop them freezing over - so we went in search of dinner and had some delicious smoked samgyopsal and kalbi. The next day, we made good use of our kitchenette before we headed out and had a semi-English breakfast of baked beans, bacon, fried bread (no toaster) and fried tomatoes but since there were no knives or forks, or flat plates come to that, it was with a slightly Korean twist :) Ryan then headed off to his parent's place and I to Busan for NYE with Christy.

You know what I realised? I think that this is the first and only time I've stayed up to watch the sunrise for NYE. I stayed up all night last year, but that was just so we could catch the first bus back from Seoul and I was in a nightclub in Seoul anyway so the rising sun could have been the Teletubbies baby for all I knew. At any rate, it's also definitely my last, at least my last in any Northern Hemisphere country where you risk freezing various parts of your anatomy off to wait for the bloody sun to take it's sweet time to haul itself over the horizon at 7.34am. Unfortunately it was a bit of a disappointment, and we never actually saw the sun or any kind of sun-coloured glow in all the fog. The only reason we knew it was sunrise (apart from the lightening sky) was when they let off all the golden wish balloons people had written their wishes on, which is supposed to co-incide. Apparently it's a little foggy every year, but this year was particularly bad.

And no, I was not wearing a skirt that said "skirt" too :p

Anyway, at least we had a fun night waiting for the non-sunrise. We had some yummy tacos for dinner, played Apples and Apples (a word association game), let off fireworks at midnight on the beach (freezing our arses off), went to a hole-in-the-wall makkolli place that did particularly yummy bacon-wrapped ggochi (꼬치 - snacks on sticks; I don't even know what everything was, besides wrapped in bacon!), and, of course, noraebang. I think all of us bar the superstrong Christy and Jessica micro-napped at some point in the night, and Tom and Bailey headed off home around 3am (now that they're an old married couple and all we could excuse them^^) but the rest of us more or less made it in one piece!

Midnight at Haeundae beach with Bailey, Danielle, Tom, Val, Dan, Jess, Christy

Christy showing off her incredibly long limbs - "It's like you're not even a real person - you're a cartoon character!!" (Jessica)

Rockin' it out at the noraebang!

Trying to use breakfast at Breezeburns to stay awake... ㅠㅠ~~~~~~*

So all in all it was a good NYE, and although there was no actual sunrise to see, it was fun seeing in the New Year together and a good start to 2012 to spend the last night of 2011 in such good company.

Which I suppose brings up New Year's resolutions - old hat I know, but it seems to be expected, going from everyone else's blogs. Let's see how many I can write with a straight face, haha :p

1. Ok, this sounds a tad bitchy, but it's one I've made every NYE for the last three years and the only one I've actually managed to keep and find useful. Don't waste time on people who aren't worth it. Conversely, spend more time with those who are and who appreciate it. I know I don't seem like it at times, but I'm kind of sentimental and an old-fashioned romantic about some things, and one of those things is about believing in people and friendships. So up until I made this, I found myself committing a lot of myself to certain people and certain friendships that ended up being a waste of time and energy, and finding myself ultimately disappointed when I should have been more realistic. People are sometimes unreliable, or two faced, or use other people to get what they want, or just plain jerks. It happens, move on, appreciate the ones who aren't.

2. Be more health conscious. Now I like to think that I do fairly well on this in general - I'm not and never will be an exercise junkie, or a gym person, so making a resolution to go to the gym every day is just unrealistic, but there are other ways I can keep fit and that are more than feasible, like resolving to exercise at least three or four times a week, even if it's just taking an hour long walk or going to a bellydancing class, which by the way I am keen to continue when I get back! This also involves being better about keeping to a low-GI diet (which I pretty much gave up on when I came to Korea, a.k.a. white-rice kingdom) to keep my IR in check, and making sure I get enough vitamin D, folate and zinc to help keep my immune system up. I haven't made much effort with those last three either lately, which may or may not have made any difference since I'm exposed on a daily basis to those little germ hotbeds known as 'children' and have had bronchitis three times this year, tonsilitis/throat infections twice, numerous colds, hayfever and gastro-enteritis. I've actually got bronchitis again now, which makes it twice in three months, and had an awful, nauseous, painful and very disgustingly mucousy two days when I ran out of medicine on Monday night until Ryan took me to see an ear nose and throat doctor yesterday who gave me some sort of nasal spray and bronchial steam thing, as well as more drugs. I don't know what the spray was but it was incredibly painful, so I'm glad it at least helped. Anyway, sorry for the digression! Upshot, be healthier, avoid germy children when possible.


3. Spend more time with my loved ones while I can. Good lord that sounds awful - ever since reading Evelyn Waugh's "The Loved One", those words make me think "corpse". But don't worry, I don't have a stack of corpses I keep and dress up and have tea parties with, I just mean close friends and family, especially in light of the fact that I've spent the last two years away from home, even though it's been great and I've made many new friends that are just as dear to me :)

4. Travel to at least one new country. Haha, there's always a selfish resolution in there somewhere, right? What's the New Year without a bit of self-indulgence? ^_^

Ok, done. I'm not going to ask for your ideas about anything I've missed, since I'm sure there are many things I need to improve about myself. But any constructive feedback is always welcome :)

Happy New Year y'all!

Saying goodbye to November and my sanity

Just had class with one of the terrible first year boys' classes - the one where there was almost murder once if you remember? Anyway, they're little ... idiots... in that class. In most classes, but particularly in that one because there are so many of them. Luckily there is one kid I really like in that class too, Jae-Gwan, and I love that his number is 1 and that my co-teacher for that class makes them sit by number because it means that I have him sitting right at the front with his eager beaver smile beaming up at me and it makes the rest of the class not seem so bad. Still bad, but not so very bad. And that's saying a lot because they're terrible. There are actually a few good kids in that class but they mostly get drowned out by the others. For example, one of the others, Jeong-Won, who is actually quite bright, always without fail gets sent to stand at the back (actually with that class it's pretty pointless because there are never less than five students standing as punishment and once there were as many as nine of them arrayed around the classroom which is a lot for a class of 29) and today was supposed to be kneeling quietly because the back of the room was full. I looked up at one point in the lesson and he was rolling on his back and holding his knees with his legs in the air, pulling faces and apparently trying to lick his own butt. Or he could have been trying to Marilyn Manson-esque it up. Anything's possible. Another kid that I dislike with extreme prejudice (on the grounds that he's an ADHD little meathead with no off switch) put the whole class in an uproar for five minutes by answering the question "what animal do you think this is?" with "SEX MONKEY! F***K YOU!" at the top of his voice. *sigh* Even my extremely unimpressed death glares of disapproval don't work on them and my co-teacher for that class is lovely but useless and does nothing, so it takes ages to restore order, especially since they're teenage boys and don't know how to listen. Just another reason I'll be glad to be going home in February. I've adamantly shot down the idea of having summer or winter camps for first grade this year on the grounds that they would be a waste of time and effort, and with examples like that I think you can see why.

Anyway, so that was my Monday. The rest of the day was ok though and I don't have any after school classes so that's ok. I think if I go home, get a bottle of wine (or a big cup of tea first, more likely), Skype to Franniken, watch a movie and then go to bellydancing slightly drunk, I'll feel a lot better. You are more than welcome to join me dear readers, in spirit if not in body :)

But I shouldn't be so down. I actually had quite a lovely weekend, which is perhaps why today was so sad, what with the downswing from it and all. First of all, my KBFF II, Christy (haha, don't worry Lara and Nat, you guys still retain respective KBFF 1 statuses!) came to visit pokey old Cheongju for a weekend of gossip, good food, wine, more gossip, more wine and general merriment. We discovered a new restaurant called JJ's Grill that had less opaque glass than we thought, had a Thanksgiving potluck with some friends (i.e. we all ate ourselves into a food coma) and hit up a noraebang. I miss Facebook for the photo sharing aspect so I'll just post a few choice pics.

 So it was a lovely Saturday ^_^ Sunday saw poor Christy off on her long trek home (3.5 hours on a bus and another hour or so on the subway), and me off to Seoul to do some shopping and see "In Time" with Mr Smiles (my code-name for the new boyfriend I can now mention publicly^^ - so called because he is a very smiley person). And lo and behold the movie actually turned out to be a good one! Most of the Western stuff that ends up being shown in Korea is generic Hollywood crap ("Immortals", "Columbiana" and "Skyline" anyone?) but once in a while something good gets through and luckily this one had Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried in it to pass muster as popular enough to show in Korea because it was a good movie! Well, I thought so anyway :p If you haven't heard of it before, it's about a kind of dystopia where time is currency. Humans have been engineered to live to 25, at which point they both stop physically ageing and their body clock kicks in and they have a year left of time to both live and spend, meaning millionaires can live virtually forever and buy anything, while poor people scrape through day to day existences where seconds and minutes can make precious differences. The story kicks off when a guy from the ghetto (Justin Timberlake) ends up being gifted with 110 years from a millionaire sick of living and finally manages to break free of his 'time zone'.

Anyway, if you have the time and especially if you're in Korea and the choice is this or Breaking Dawn (Mr Smiles is, sadly, a Twilight fan ... *아웅*ㅠㅠ;;) I'd definitely recommend seeing this one. Both JT and Amanda Seyfried put in some good performances, as does Cillian Murphy, who plays the 'Timekeeper' (police) hounding our protagonists.
 

Oh and lol, yes, Korean men like shopping. I have a very cute blue fluffy Totoro doll for my cousin's baby daughter (hopefully she'll love it without questioning what it actually is for years to come) as a consequence :) After the movie, we went for dinner at La Grillia and I had real gnocchi in a real gorgonzola sauce! It was chestnut gnocchi, which I've seen but never had before, and the waiter was quite surprised that I ordered it and thought I should pick something else because it was quite heavy (not to say fattening). I'm guessing he's never seen a girl eat that dish before there, and was probably even more surprised when I not only finished the whole thing but also had dessert too. Hehe^^ Pictured is our vanilla ice-cream, almond and Earl Grey pannacotta, grapefruit wine jelly and blueberry yoghurt. Delish!

So anyway, here's hoping that the rest of the week improves from today. I have most of the rowdy classes under threat of making them do more work after exams rather than letting them watch a movie so fingers crossed that they all remember me telling them that last week. How about you, my lovelies? How's life out there in the Real World?

Summer Birthdays and Summer Shenanigans

So I have no idea what 'shenanigans' means in Minnesota, but apparently it's something big enough to get into a tizzy and storm out of a bar over.

Oh and hello readers! <insert half-arsed excuse for not updating my blog more frequently to cover reality of extreme laziness here> At least this month I have a valid excuse or two to keep the lame ones company though - principally, the end of semester and the simultaneous start of summer camp, and secondarily, my birthday! (huzzah!) As a testament to my ageing faculties, and partly in defence of my long absence, it did actually take me a while and a random question from a teacher about my exact age to remember that it was in fact my birthday soon. Having failed to remember that, it was also a bit of a trial to remember exactly how old I was turning and the difference in age between 23 and 25, possibly because of afore-mentioned failure to remember exactly how old I am. (Darn math! You kids these days with your subtractions and divisions and whatchamacallits!) Celebrating a joint birthday with a borrowed KBFF (since both of our originals have left!), Christy and I had a lovely day of manicures, pedicures, Harry Potter movies and cake around Nampo-dong in Busan. Luckily, Christy doesn't seem to have been afflicted with early-onset dementia like me, and was most gentle in her mockery of my extremely blonde weekend, even when I was surprised that the cherry and almond ice-cream cake we had chosen after much discussion in the store had cherries in it. Later, we went out for Christy's birthday with her friends and had a quiet but fun night out at a nearby bar and of course noraebang, topped by the most magnificent night-club I've ever been to! Aptly named Superdome, the culmination of the evening was the roof opening to music from the Star Wars movies and being showered in fake snow. Beautiful! (I just realised that I didn't in fact get a video of this like I thought so you'll have to go there to see this wonder for yourselves!) It was also quite entertaining  - singing and dancing from the stage-shows, and an ajumma being physically dragged out of the club by five bouncers after getting mouthy, throwing beer all over people on the dance floor and then trying to take them all on and refusing to leave. Haha, Busan never fails in fun^^


The next weekend (last weekend), birthday celebrations were set to continue with a trip to Pohang, a coastal city in Gyeongsangbuk-do. Looking for a quiet weekend after a cocktail party on Friday night that had featured some particularly lethal drinking games, things didn't quite go to plan. Mostly due to the afore-mentioned drinking games and a challenge to the theme of "I don't get drunk. Drunk is for people from weak countries", a friend that I'll call Irish Pride (IP) barely made it to the bus (she had our tickets so we were very lucky that she has a conscience!) and having made it to the bus, trooper that she was held it in for 2 hours before we got to the rest stop before hurling her guts up. Off the bus at the other end and another chuck up, a run to the chemist (the fastest I've ever been able to explain a problem and buy the correct medicine for it!), another 40 minutes on a city bus, and 15 minutes walk with a stop or two along the way, and we were at the beach.

At this point, the less hungover of us wanted to get something to eat, so we continued down the beach. IP definitely needed a rest so she decided to hang back and have a nap as was. Being too hungover to take stock, the place she chose was unfortunately right in the middle of the beach with no shade. Being good friends that we are, when we'd eaten and come back to find her, the first order of business was of course photographic evidence of her solitude amongst the crowds. I'm sure at this point that the Korean tourists around were wondering what kind of people we were to be sniggering and taking photos of this poor hapless person evidently not very well that we'd apparently just stumbled on. Even after we'd woken her up and all gone off together, I'm sure they were still unimpressed, as we were also the only ones wearing bikinis (the usual Korean swimming outfit being not that much different from normal clothes, i.e. fully dressed), and after taking a dip we all promptly fell asleep on the sand, then after waking up took more photos of others still asleep.

IP on IV

Anyway, so after an otherwise relaxed afternoon on the beach where we'd all been at least a little burnt, it started getting cloudy and sprinkling, so we decided to leave and go find a motel. Getting up however, IP (at this point as red as a lobster, mostly from the walk from the bus) started getting the shakes. Protesting that she was ok, the rest of us got bossy and called a taxi to take her to a hospital. It was revealed at this point that she'd also had a bit of a cheeky chuck on the beach and buried the evidence. Which meant that she hadn't been able to keep down any water. The first taxi took us to a hospital nearby that proved to be closed, but luckily a woman (who must have been a nurse that normally works there or something) saw IP's state, called us another taxi and gave us some good advice to stop us freaking out that IP's hands were turning blue and she couldn't stand up by herself. Luckily IP was ok when sitting down, so she didn't redecorate the taxi. Whether it was to the driver's credit for understanding the urgency of the situation or just because he was afraid of that happening, he got us back to the city in under 20 minutes, where it seemed like it would normally take at least 30. Fortunately, a nurse at the hospital spoke enough English that they could figure out some treatment for IP (since the gaps in my Korean medical vocabulary are more like crevasses and the others don't really speak Korean). An injection of something miraculous for her migraine and a litre and a half of IV fluid for the dehydration later, things were looking less dire. Possibly gazing at the handsome English speaking male nurse and discussing the link between education and good looks amongst Korean medical staff for a couple of hours helped. At any rate, it was more than enough time for her sympathetic friends to take another photo. Hehe ㅋ ㅋ ㅋ


Anyway, so a steak dinner and the obligatory noraebang later, and it was a good birthday weekend where no-one died! Sadly it was drizzling that night so the fire work we tried didn't do anything and we were all to scared to go pick it up, but I did get a 'Happy Birthday' song from the staff at Outback Steakhouse and a commemorative photograph so it was all good :)


As a follow up, yesterday I went to the dermatologists with IP as her face had puffed up and started blistering quite badly - kind of like 3rd degree burns. They gave her some medicine, an injection, and some magic ointment though that seems to be doing the trick. She's sworn off the tipple but we'll have to see how long that lasts!


And that's the saga of my last two birthday-related weekends :)

Living for the weekend

Haha, really, who isn't? This past one was particularly good, as a good friend, Nat, came up from Busan (where she is also teaching English at a particularly heinous-sounding girl's middle school) for a weekend in the country (virtually). Korea isn't a very big country, and the transport networks here are excellent, but since Cheongju doesn't merit a KTX (the Korean bullet train) station yet, it's still a good 3.5 hour ride to get here, not to mention the almost one hour commute from where Nat lives in Busan to the bus station and then another 40 minutes on the bus/25 minutes in a taxi to my place from the other end. So it's a bit of a trek all in all, and made me all the happier that she'd managed to squeeze in the trip up before she leaves us in 3 weeks time for snowy Canada. Seeing that there was all that travel involved to get here, what did we have planned I hear you ask? Well, pending good weather, originally we'd decided to do a mini-hike up and around Sangdang Fortress and be all sporty and outdoorsy like, but a chance remark by Nat about how she missed watching DVDs on a real TV screen instead of her computer made us think about how nice a relaxing day of cake, makkolli and DVDs might be... only if the weather was bad of course, because it'd be a waste of a nice day otherwise. Then I mentioned this cute cafe that does a kind of mix of foods in Cheongju, including their famous Carbonara Bread - literally, a full serving of Spaghetti Carbonara served inside a hollowed out bread roll the size of a damper. We amended our plans to see if we could fit that in AND still do the hiking. We decided we could. Then Nat brought up Missha's new vibrating mascara applicator - something that OBVIOUSLY had to be investigated! Ok, we could fit that in too. We stayed up gossiping and reading trashy girly mags for a few hours, and then hit the hay, full of good resolutions about the morrow.

Saturday dawned, bright and clear, sunny if not actually warm. Perfect outdoors weather really. We discussed what we wanted to do that day - hiking, eating, shopping, cake, dvds, makkolli. Yeah, we could fit that all in. We looked at each other. We looked outside. We thought about cake and shopping. So ... hiking? Hah.

Now, upon arriving, Nat had immediately sought out a Subway store (which apparently they don't have in Busan so score one much needed point for Cheongju!) and bought a sub, which she ate out of pure relish even though she wasn't that hungry. In retrospect, this was a sign of things to come, because as well intentioned as we started out, Saturday became The Day We Ate Too Much. In all fairness, we probably did burn quite a few calories walking around downtown Cheongju. To begin with, we found the mascara, but for 25 000 won and another 11 000 for the matching eyeliner, we decided that it was a novelty best left for someone with higher eyelash priorities than us. We also found some great, and I mean GREAT shirts. OK, so most of them had a pretty good crack at English, but somehow, I think they probably didn't bother getting a native speaker to proof-read them first. Or maybe they did :p



And of course, Nat and I had to buy some and do some couple-wear! But onto the food. So to start with, we wandered down to the traditional markets (the best one in Cheongju is called yukgori shijang) and since we were a little peckish and there was this great mandu (dumpling) store, of course we had to try them out.



Eating ddokgalbi

Unfortunately, since we couldn't decide between the giant steamed ones ('King Size') and fried, we got both, and since they were only sold in 3's and 5's respectively, that was a lot of mandu. Keeping in mind that the mandu store was called "Elephant Mandu" to begin with, you can probably guess that the King Sized steamed mandu were about the size of a nashi. Next, we strolled around and back down to the main shopping area, and I remembered that there was a great ddokgalbi stall that Nat simply had to try. Ddokgalbi is usually a kind of marinated mince meat patty, but this one was special because it was wrapped around a giant rice-cake and grilled, then covered in your choice of three sweet sticky sauces, savoury, spicy and 'bomb' flavour (폭탄맛). We went for a wander past the graffiti alley and over one of the bridges over the stream, and then dropped in by Homeplus on our way back downtown for some supplies - i.e. makkolli and chips.

After a good few hours of shopping, we finished it off by going by Bonjour chocolate and cake cafe, and after drooling over how good everything looked, settled on two slices of cake... each. Believe me, this was downsizing - earlier in the day when we weren't quite as full we'd originally agreed on three. However, then Nat saw the raspberry jam-filled cookies and tarts.... well, we put it this way: how often does she come to Cheongju? And it's not like there's a Bonjour cafe in Busan! We left with a slice of yoghurt cheesecake, fresh strawberry cake, black forest cake and a slice of blueberry cheesecake, as well as a strawberry tart, an almondine tart thing, a bunch of biscuits, and some extras that the guy serving us had thrown in for good measure since we were buying up half the shop. There was one more stop on our way home - Artbox, that mecca of everything cute and artsy! Although it's mostly stationary, Artbox has lots of great stuff, including clothing and accessories, some makeup (including Chupa-Chup lip glosses that look like lollipops) and little gadgets (like a Starbucks coffee-cup shaped humidifier) and, well, everything! It also has a pick'n'mix station.

This was what we'd foraged:

Well supplied, we settled down to watch the movie we'd picked. We had no idea what it was about, but we'd wanted something light-hearted and funny, so we figured that picking an animated movie from the children's section would be just right. Wrong. We'd picked up '9'. Five minutes into it, having seen two characters attacked by a weird scary robot that looked like a kind of cat-terminator in a dystopic post-apocalyptic landscape where one of them had just stuck a lamp on a pole into the eye socket of a baby-doll, we hastily turned it off and opted for the "First Wives Club" instead. (I later watched the rest of it and I'm glad we didn't watch the whole thing then because it was one of the saddest movies I've seen this year, which should be disallowed for animations. I actually cried at the end!)

Anyway, the rest of the day/evening was pretty routine. We stuffed ourselves on our goodies, and as bloated as we then were, it was entirely worth it :) Dinner was Mongolian lamb kebabs with some friends in Chungdae (one of the university areas in Cheongju) and then Nat's first time at a booking club, but I'm going to avoid writing another saga by fobbing it off as a post for another day. All in all, it was a great weekend, eating some great food with a great friend. Sod the calories! I ♥ you Nat! ^__^

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!

Hip Hip Hooray for a Happy 2011!

So not feeling the blogness much today, but I thought I'd pop in a quick New Year's resolutions entry so that I have them written down somewhere. Happy new year to y'all by the way! Hope you've all gotten off to a good start, and have eaten some yummy ddokguk (떡국 or rice-cake soup) if you're in Korea/are Korean.

Ok, so, resolutions. Not many and hopefully all achieveable - keeping it simple is hopefully the key to actually keeping the resolutions.
1. Less procrastination. Decision making and work-doing both!
2. Finish my TESOL coursework before my new contract period starts on February 25th.
3. Go to the gym more often - Chanel and I decided that twice a week is too few, so I'm going for at least ten times a month.
4. Hmm should probably add "ignore nosey old buggers asking too many personal questions" here too. That or switch to a different gym with a less annoying ajosshi owner : p
5.  Be more patient. Accept that some things take time, and other times that decisions shouldn't be made on impulse. I have to add here, my policy still stands on repeating myself with people who have no excuse like language or genuine hearing problems - if I have to repeat something more than three times, too bad. If you didn't get it the first time, ok, maybe you didn't hear, second time, maybe it was hard to understand, more than three times, you obviously weren't paying attention which is either just plain rude or lazy. So too bad - if you want to hear it again, you're gonna have to make it worth my while and ask nicely! To a lesser degree, this applies to all of my students too - if they want me to say something again, they at least have to say 'please' and 'thankyou'. Yelling out 'one more time!' doesn't cut the mustard with Amy Teacher! Which leads me to number 6:
6. Teach all of my students the basics - "Hello", "Goodbye!", "thankyou", "no thankyou", "Please", "yes please" and whatever random idiom I decide to throw in :) (This year, for first years it was "awesome!" and "you beauty!", and for the second years it was "too bad!" and "hooroo!"... hahahahaha ㅋㅋ)
7.Stop doing favours for people who don't appreciate it. I like helping people out, and I don't expect something material for every little thing, but if you can't manage to even say 'thankyou' when someone helps you out, you need to go back to school 'cos your parents obviously didn't bring you up properly.
8. Don't waste time and effort on people who aren't worth it. This may be the wrong resolution to have if you're teaching English in a Korean public school as a native English speaker (a job that could be done by the English robots they have these days or a talking parrot), but outside of work, this has been a good resolution to have for the last couple of years so I am sticking to it.
9. Eat less sugar and try to actually stick to as low a GI diet as is possible in Korea.
10. Travel somewhere new. I'm holding out for Vietnam next winter holidays with Chanel and anyone else who's up for it!

With Chanel and Ji at Ho Bar #1 in Hongdae

Hope you all had a good NYE too by the way. I had a good evening shopping in Myeongdong (well, going around with Chanel while she went crazy over the sales at Forever 21 and H&M), then dinner, then drinks over the NYE countdown with Chanel and Ji amongst various gay couples having a romantic evening at Bricx (by the way, their Lycheebug Limonade cocktail is DISGUSTING! tastes like soju made in a sweaty boot. Seriously, it was so strong that any sugar in it vaporised), and some more drinks with other Cheongju-ites who had also flocked to Seoul, and then dancing at one of the weirdest and awfully constructed clubs in Hongdae, 'Oi'. Seriously, if there is no ventilation, everything smells of nicotine grossness, and the smoke machine is pouring out chemical fog onto the dance floor, why would you decide to add to it and smoke when you could just inhale deeply and get your hit there? Gross. But it was a fun night anyway and I got to see Addie briefly, one of my classmates from my Ewha exchange in '06!

But anyway, it was a good night, if long. We ended up giving up on the taxi scrum and getting the first subway ride back to the bus station and hopping the 6.20am bus back to Cheongju, so I then ended up passing out on my deliciously warm floor when I got home. After a much needed shower to get rid of the stink of smoke in my hair (and washing all my pillowcases and clothes and Febreezing the hell out of my jacket), I was just in time for dinner with Super Onni. She is an awesome cook! Her ddokguk was scrumptious ^_^ Sadly, the panforte I took over was not so successful (sadly because I doubt they'll actually eat much of it before they throw it out, so it was a bit of a waste of something really yummy) because Koreans don't really seem to like dried fruit very much, but it was a nice relaxing dinner anyway.

By the way, thanks for the photos I mercilessly stole Chanel :) hehe~

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE! All the best for the year ahead :)

Merry Christmas!

 ‎*★MERRY*•˚° •。•★*CHRISTMAS★ °* •。★* •。★*˚
° 。* •。˛˚˛★*˚*° 。* ★。EVERYONE!♥˚° 。 ° ˛˚*° 。˚*• °
° 。.°˛˚* _Π_____*。*˚° 。 ° ˛˚*˚° • 。 ° ˛˚*˚° • 。 ° ˛˚
˚ ˛˛•˚ */______/~＼。˚ ˚ ° 。• ° ˛˚˚° 。 ° ˛˚˛˚˚° 。 ° ˛˚˛
˚ ˛˛ ˚ *｜田田｜門｜ ˚˚˚° 。 ° ˛˚˛˚*And Happy New Year*

So we ended up having a white Christmas here after all - it started snowing around 2.30 this afternoon, and by about 7pm, everything was coated in a fine layer of powdery white icing-sugar snow. And this time I liked it!... Because I was inside and keeping warm hehe :)



 Christmas in Korea is not really much of a holiday. Actually, it's more of a couples day than a family day, like a second Valentine's Day, so people might do something special for it with whoever, but things don't really shut down like they do at home. So shops stay open (although usually for shorter hours) and traffic is predictably terrible and because of the cold weather and it being a weekend, catching a taxi was tricky.

 





With Chanel at the C.o.E. dinner



So this is a quick run-down of what I did for Christmas. First of all, we had the Chungbuk Office of Education end of year (Christmas) dinner on Friday, Christmas Eve. As my friend Lara pointed out, not everyone is Catholic or Christian, so calling it a Christmas dinner straight out might have been a little exclusive. Our co-teachers were told it was a 'workshop' however, so I guess we were just told whatever they thought would make us want to come. It was kind of fun though - an ok buffet dinner with some pretty good oysters! and an orchestra, photo slideshow and Karaoke competition which was .. interesting... :) Luckily, after the dinner ended Lara (who lives a street away from me) and I cadged a ride with one of the co-teachers and didn't have to walk home in the minus 16 degrees or whatever it was.



With Lara and Teresah

Christmas day started with a morning skype home and opening presents with mum, dad and Fran at 7am (9am Wollongong time). Floss was in her reindeer suit as usual, and looked miserable, as usual, but looked slightly happier at the prospect of her and Henry's new doggie biscuit bottle. Cute! Needless to say, I was very jealous at missing out on the traditional stewed fruit, yoghurt and bagels. Next came a call to my grandparents, and I accidentally confused my grandma by telling her that I was coming home on the morning of the 18th and making her think that I was coming home TOMORROW morning - sorry nan!



MMMMM!! or as they say here "nom nom nom!"



Then, the big thing that so many of us Cheongju-ites were looking forward to - Christmas breakfast at Chanel's! Everyone brought something delicious - we had orange juice, cheesy scrambled eggs, crispy crunchy bacon, sausages, french toast (with mandatory maple syrup), croissants, fruit salad, kiwis and strawberries, yoghurt, nougat Christmas pudding, tim tams (thanks mum, dad and fran!), bread that turned out to be cream-filled... YUM!!! It was all delicious ^_^

We also watched 'Love Actually' too while we ate - the perfect Christmas movie to watch with a group of your best girlfriends ^_^

Getting home turned out to be a bit more difficult than we thought though - I read the bus route map wrong, so the bus Lara and I caught ended up at the Eastern bus depot (동부종점) with no taxis or information on buses in sight, but luckily the driver of the bus we were on helped us out and helped hustle us onto a bus that was going our way and luckily was the only one that went right to my front door. A quick dash inside to drop off my stuff and then I was back out into the cold again and off to the Cheongju Sports Complex(Chaeyukgwon or 체육관) to see "B,Boyz and Ballerina". My co-teacher Ms Shin had an extra ticket so she was her usual awesome self and invited me to come see it with her, her son and her school friend Ms Kim. And it was awesome! I thought it was going to be a kind of stage version of one of those fancy ballerina meets tough street boy love stories with some speaking, and it was, but today it seemed like a kind of dancing pantomime because there was Christmas bit where they threw presents (candy) into the audience (I actually hid because some of it was being thrown quite forcefully). And I love pantos! Haven't seen one since I was in year 9 or something, and Ms Shin really enjoyed it too so we clapped and cheered and had a great time. Luckily we were in the centre, about ten rows back from the stage so we had a great view, and when they asked everyone in the audience who was "solo" (meaning single) to put their hands up and then picked people to come up on stage and be a couple or dance with them, we were far enough back that neither I nor Ms Shin's son got picked, even though Ms Shin tried her hardest to get them to choose me by yelling out and waving at them. It was so much fun! And completely worth going outside for on this chilly minus 14 degree day, even having to walk through falling snow dropping into my face. I was actually supposed to drop by and see Super Onni and her family today too but when I got home I ad a quick nap that ended up lasting until 10.30, so I think I kind of missed that one. Luckily they are Buddhist anyway, so I'm pretty sure it wasn't going to be anything especially Christmassy.

So that's about it. Oh, I have one more Christmas thing to look forward to! Lucy is coming to see me! Yay fo stopovers! ^_^ So hopefully in a few days time I will be adding a post about what an awesome time we'll have and the snow won't be too much of a buzzkill.

****P.S. All photos here from Lara's much higher quality collection and ability at photo-taking than mine :)