korea time baby

2009-01-27T05:31:00.000-08:00

ps. Mama, I didn't forget about you. I just got back from Mountain Trip tonight. Will call you in the morning. Love you.

The first responsible financial decision of my life.

2009-01-27T05:27:00.000-08:00

I just accepted the place offered to me by Canterbury University for their law school in 2009.

So I'll see everyone in March!

Vietnam Photos

2009-01-09T23:50:00.001-08:00

I put some photos up on facebook. This link should work.

Photos

snow

2008-12-13T17:38:00.001-08:00

Last weekend was the second leg of the Korean soccer championships final, which saw The Samsung Suwon Bluewings up against FC Samsung Seoul. The first leg played in Seoul was 1-1 so the 2nd leg in Suwon was pretty exciting. The match started in cold conditions and true to Korean style soccer was played with a lot of running in circles, defensive bombs and dreadful slide tackles. But in actual fact it turned out to be quite a good game which the mighty Samsung Suwon Bluewings took out 2-1. Mid way through the second half it started snowing pretty heavily and the sun disappeared leaving us pretty cold. It didn't deter the mainly topless Suwon supporters club, named, for unknown reasons, The Skull Crew, who were throwing toilet paper like crazy.

The Suwon bench storms the field amidst a snow flurry after the victory.

Our balcony after the snow fall, not quite enough for a snowman unfortunately

Christmas preparations have begun, with no arguments this year over who got to put the star on top.

Just some photos

2008-11-18T07:15:00.000-08:00

That dog was delicious!

traditional Korean folk village

2008-11-18T06:56:00.000-08:00

Traditional Korean tight rope bouncing man. Apparently he was quite the comedian in addition to being able to bounce on a rope, not that we understood, but the crowd were lapping it up.

Traditional Korean Lord and Lady.

Traditional Korean go-kart, poorly constructed. None of the wheels are equal size and it was pretty slow down the hill.

Traditional Korean Bathtub. Actually proved faster down the slope than the previously mentioned Traditional Korean go-kart.

DMZzzz

2008-11-10T06:12:00.000-08:00

A while back we went to the DMZ and found our flag for supporting Korean during the Korean War. It appeared to have been sabotaged by some Australians and was instead showing their flag. The North Korean tunnel showed us about how short North Koreans are, which was confirmed by the nurse I tutor who went to North Korea for work and said the women are more pretty than us, and the men are more shorter than Korean men. This probably succeeds in making them even sneakier.

This is me with a North Korean beer.

Communists make beers just as poorly as regular Koreans.

The New Zealand national Beer Pong team warms up for the biweekly beer pong cup.

Halloween

2008-11-08T22:51:00.000-08:00

Halloween was an excellent excuse to wear highly risque spiderman suits to school and be applauded for it. Spiderman did however have to deal with a fair amount of abuse due to the fact he had been indulging in a little too much beer and was a little out of shape in the stomach and the man breast area. Also the buttock was targeted because no one could remember Toby McGuire's being as prominent in the film as mine appeared to be. But all this aside, Spiderman was adored by most and spent most of his morning fighting off various other superheroes, all of whom were no match.

Another tendency of Korean children when they see large, rounded, blue objects is to smack them with such fervor that is remarkable for a 6 year old. Unfortunately my previously mentioned buttock in combination with the spidey suit became such an object, that, was so loved to be smacked that in the afternoon I was forced to wear pants overtop of the suit and stand during my lectures. In addition to this affliction, my groin area, while no where near as prominent as the buttock also received undue attention in the form of children's palms and fists. It was at just all too perfect height unfortunately, and let me tell you, no matter how cute a little Korean in halloween dress is, it is hard not to punch them in the teeth after removing their fist from your spandexed package.

Penny was dressed as the far safer option of the bumblebee. We were easily the best dressed people there and out of the four Spidermen I saw, my suit was the tightest, so I'm going to say the best. We made a jack-0'-lantern, which was quite successful and now rotten, to take to school with us, which amused my children, especially the game where they blow out the candle and then I relight the candle and the game repeats until finally spiderman is forced to unleash some strangulation. We played group games in the auditorium, where I was almost as confused at what to do as the 100 kids were, the highlight being a highly confusing pigeon english ghost story, that no one except possibly the reader understood.

Back row:

Bee, Batman, Korean Cartoon, Dracula, Harry Potter, Dracula, Red Power Ranger, Witch.

Front row:

Princess, Princess, Princess, Princess, Butterfly Princess.

The Jack-o-lantern!

economic CRISIS!

2008-11-07T19:08:00.000-08:00

Wall street jockeys on the way to a roundtable meeting. "PAC-MAN DEFENSE!"

a little on the side

2008-10-14T05:47:00.000-07:00

Just a little tidbit I don't think I've ever mentioned.

In Korea (and quite a bit in Argentina also) people think Cameron is a girls name because the only Cameron they know of is Cameron Diaz. Well, while we were at Noribang (karaoke) for our work party, the head of kindergarten confessed to me that when she got the information sheet about Cameron and I before we got to SLP she thought, based on the names, that we were a lesbian couple. She also confessed she thought that was a bit weird but was willing to accept it.

old man visit

2008-10-06T04:24:00.000-07:00

Turns out I didn't take many photos from when Gerry was here. It was lucky he had his camera on him all the time to catch beauties like the Japanese Kite Flying Team in all their glory.

This is us at Chicken Galbi (BBQ). They gave us aprons/bibs to wear. We were the only ones in the half-full restaurant wearing them.. but hey, they saved our clothes.

Cam's just drinking coke, because it's inappropriate to drink beer at lunch when you teach children afterwards. Gerry's drinking beer because he's on holiday.

After lunch we had a go at the batting cages. Cam and Gerry had a competition. Cam tells me now that he hit every ball but Gerry failed to do the same. Though I thought I heard Gerry telling a different story, so I'm not too sure..

We also played some more virtual golf in our building that night. They let you play double the number of shots that the par for the whole is. For example, hole 1 was a par 4 so you can have a max of 8 shots. I maxed for the 9holes. On every hole.

In the end Gerry bet Cam by 1 hit. It's all rather contentious though, something about out of bounds and the F11 key on the computer.

When I was batting some Korean girl challenged me to a game where we tried to hit more balls than the other. I made contact with 9 balls of 15 or so, she made contact with only 4. This meant I got to flick her in the head 5 times once we were finished.

I'm not sure why she wasn't at school or something at 1pm on a Tuesday.

This photo is actually after Gerry had left, but we're enjoying the wine and cheese he bought us before he went.

Beijingaling

2008-09-18T02:54:00.000-07:00

These are some Beijing photos from our recent travels. It was nice to Dad and Kate and receive everything that Mum had packed for us. I increased my luggage weight from 6kgs to 26kgs in the short trip, mainly because of what Dad had bought us, which caused him to complain almost non-stop. It kind of went like this: Cam "I'm so sleepy" Dad "I'm way sleepier, I got up at ...... [10 minute long discourse]... and I had to carry all that weight....". But we were very grateful.

The photos are of us in a rickshaw, at some peoples house, at the forbidden city, at Tiananmen square, dressed as the emperor and his favourite concubine and the great wall. In most of the group photos some chinese people also took a photo on their own cameras to sell or keep in their photo albums. I learnt so many facts about China over the weekend but have now forgot most of them, except that Penny and I were perhaps a little off in our estimates of the length of the Great Wall (200kms).

I don't feel as if I need to go into great detail with regards the rest of the trip because most of the people who read this were either with us, have already been telephoned or are in the process of being e-mailed. Both Penny and I are very sad that we only get one visa to visit China because we would both like to return, now with my Chinese knowledge rivaling and in my opinion surpassing Dad's, as I have Hello and Thankyou pretty much 100%. For Penny's dinner last night she 'enjoyed' reduced cream and onion dip and looking like thats on the menu again this evening so thats gone pretty quick. I look very sporting in my new baby blue pajamas from mum so perhaps I will put some posts of me in various poses with them on at some point.

Keep commenting, it certainly helps the moral on those grey Suwon afternoons. I recently received James's postcard and you can expect a reply in the near future as I found a beauty to send to you.

Love Cameron and Penny.

Revised address

2008-09-12T07:02:00.000-07:00

Everyone who seems to post us stuff (which isn't that many people actually..) sends to a slightly wrong address. I guess I wrote it wrong when I first typed it. Here is the revision. Alteration will (hopefully) be in bold.

1126 Jung Yeon Major Building 877-4
Jungja-dong
Jangan-gu
Suwon
Kyunggi-do
440-841
KOREA

Sorry!

Chusok Festival

2008-09-11T04:35:00.001-07:00

This weekend is the Korean national holiday Chusok, so today all of our kindergartners were dressed in Korean traditional attire and we played traditional games and made traditional food, which despite the chief ingredient being bogeys was actually quite delicious. We played games and sung songs in the hall and it was just general chaos. There was some kind of Korean wrestling, that the photo is trying to capture, tug of war, arm wrestles and the hokey pokey dance, my personal favourite. In a huge upset Dolphin class (my class) beat Shark class in the tug of war and by using their bottle noses to bruise the sharks' ribs. Because of the general level of excitement and sugar coated treats getting children to pose for a photo post-game was unsuccessful as you can see by me being mobbed by my adoring fans. Looking forward to going to China now and hopefully you can see some intertextual antagonism in Kate's and our blog.

Chusok Festival

2008-09-11T04:14:00.000-07:00

Chusok

2008-09-10T21:03:00.000-07:00

Sara - this is for you. Sorry I didn't post last night.

Love Penny.

Thailand - part 2

2008-08-17T04:52:00.001-07:00

Elephant trekking

On Wednesday we went on an elephant trek. It was pretty neat. The top picture is our elephant and our driver. While we were on it we sat on that seat and our driver straddled the elephants neck.

This is what Cam and I look like when we're on an elephant.

Part way through we got off the elephants and walked. We went to a cave, saw a snake and a spider and some bats, then walked to this waterfall. It's not really that impressive compared to some other waterfalls I've seen, but it's pretty.

Then we got back on our elephant and rode back to their house. We were probably on the elephant for 20minutes at a time. So not heaps. But definately enough. Plus I felt a bit sad for them because they had those big chairs strapped to them.

We could pay $5 to feed our elephant after the trek. We got a basket full of bananas and a pineapple.

The elephant took the food out of our hands with his trunk, just like in cartoons. It was so cool. And he took the whole pineapple, held the green bit, put the rest in his mouth and ripped off the green part so he didn't have to eat it. So smart.

Back at Camp

Wednesday night was our last night on Ko Lanta so we had some dinner and drinks with our friends and said goodbye.

From left to right is Steve (the English guy), Andrea (one of the Itallians) and Michael and Rachel, the Irish couple.

And this is Javi, the Spanish guy who had just spent 5months working in New Zealand.

Javi and Steve were our first friends and our favourties.

On Thursday we went to Ko Phi Phi and I forgot to take any photos with my camera because we bought and underwater camera that we played with instead. On Friday morning we went on a 1/2 day snorkelling trip and went to the beach where The Beach was filmed. It was fun. Then Friday afternoon we took the ferry back to Krabi, stayed in Krabi for a night and flew back to Bangkok Saturday morning.

This is Kieth, you may remember him from our first 2 weeks in Korea. He moved to Thailand to teach english after we'd been there about 3 weeks. He's the only person we knew in all of Thailand and we ran into him at Bangkok airport. Unbelievable. And the girl is his friend from LA who had come to visit.

He showed us how to bus for 34baht from the airport to the city, our first night in Bangkok we paid 800baht to get to the same place.

We spent Saturday shopping, eating and watching the new Batman movie on Imax. We stumbled across some fortune tellers. This one spoke english. This is what he said (after asking for Cam's birth date) -

1. He was born in the year of the Tiger
2. He was born on a Friday
3. He has a very good education
4. He currently has very good work with very good money
5. He will have a good wife in the future
6. His life and money got better on July 17th
7. In his life love, money and happiness will all be very good.
8. He will have a management position in his career.

Then he looked at his palm and said -
1. He has a lucky and happiness hand
2. He will have a happy and long life
3. There will be no great problems in his life
4. He will own good property
5. He is very clever
6. He will have good work with good money
7. He will always have strong health

In November 2009 he will become lucky in money and love. He will have a good wife and good children.

Then Saturday night we flew back to Korea, and got back to our apartment by midday Sunday. We had an amazing trip.

Thailand - part 1

2008-08-10T03:22:00.001-07:00

We arrived in Bangkok Saturday evening, had some food and a bit of a walk and then went to bed.

Sunday we went to the Weekend Market. It was pretty big, heaps of stuff. We bought some clothes and stuff. Didn't really purchase much though, seeing as it was our first day and we were coming back to Bangkok.

This is Cam eating some chicken noodle soup. It was delicious and cost 60baht - $2.

This is us in a Tuk-tuk. It was pretty fun being in one but they're out soley to rip you off. They charged us way too much and didn't take us where we wanted to go. Put a bit of a dampener on it.

When we left the market we asked a Tuk-tuk driver to take us to food. This was the convo -
Driver: ok ok, seafood?
Us: no. no seafood.
Driver: no seafood? ok ok ok... seafood?
Us: no seafood
Driver: no seafood, ok ok. mc donalds?
Us: no, no mc donalds.
Driver: ok ok.
(drives for 20 minutes, pulls up to a seafood restaurant and points at it)
Us: no no, no seafood.
Driver: This no seafood.
(there were tanks with fish and crabs outside)
Us: yes, seafood.
Driver: no. no seafood. here good.
(so we look at the menu. not a single dish with no seafood. so we walk away, the driver drives away quickly and that was 200baht wasted)

On Monday morning we flew to Krabi, then took a 2.5hr minivan to Ko Lanta. This is the view from our hotel outdoor. The beach you can see was so amazing. The weather was better than it looks and the water was bluer.

There was a max of 10people on the beach at a time so it was really nice and really relaxing.

On Monday night we drank at a bar of another hotel on the beach front with some friends we made on the minivan over. An American couple, one of whom was teaching in Seoul, an Irish couple who had been backpaking for 5months, a Spanish guy who had just flewn out of Christchurch, he'd been working in NZ for 5 months, an English guy who had just finished backpacking in India for 4 months and 2 Italian guys who had been away from home for 11 months and were really excited about going home soon.

This photo is me with some German guy named Richard. He was a connect four enthusiast and played it as seriously as one plays chess. He beat the English guy Steve, then beat Cam. This is me beating him.

On Tuesday we did a Thai cooking course. We got to wear chefs hats, which was my favourite part apart from the food.

I think I already wrote about it, this is us with our red curry and massaman curry.

Island Hopping

2008-07-30T05:32:00.000-07:00

Ko Lanta has been amazing. We're staying in a private bungalow about 20 metres above the beach with amazing views, and we're paying about $25NZ a night.

The weather has been amazing. No rain yet. And finally blue sky, stars, and grass.

On Tuesday we took a Thai cooking course. Learnt to make coconut milk chicken soup, thai beef salad, red curry, massaman curry pasta and then a massaman curry.

Today we went on an elephant trek.

Tomorrow we leave for Ko Phi Phi, the most famous and most touristy of the islands where we plan to do some sort of snorkelling tour around the islands we haven't made it to yet. Then we think we'll have to stay Friday night in Krabi, and Saturday morning we fly back to Bangkok for a day of shopping or something. Then late Saturday night we fly back to Korea.

Thai time

2008-07-26T19:40:00.000-07:00

We're in Thailand. Got in last night around 10pm, had some green thai curry and some panang and went to bed.

Today we're off to explore Bangkok.

Tomorrow we head to Krabi, from where we have access to all the islands.

I didn't bring my camera plug thing so no photos until we're back in Korea.

Nami cont.

2008-06-30T21:33:00.001-07:00

No explanation necessary.

Namirama

2008-06-30T21:03:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we went to an island in a river, somewhere in Korea, west of Seoul. It was nice to get into some water and still have your clothes on. The night prior we stayed in some strange cabin located on guys farm. We had a nice evening of soju, beer and sausages with co-workers.

Cabins in Korea don't actually come with beds so you have to sleep on the floor. We didn't mind too much, the soju helped I think.

This is me demonstrating the 'point-and-pivot' dance move. The key is to point as the name suggests and keep a strong base of the

pivot leg and sway about with the other. The results are good and so long as the pivot doesn't get too tired you don't fall over.

Here is an example of some students of the point and pivot who tried to move two legs at once. The results, as you can see, were disastrous. For best results be holding at least 2 litres of beer and be wearing a singlet.

The island also gave me the opportunity to show off some poses I have been working on for the fall catalogue.

This is the same pose I used for my Kindergarten graduation back in 1990, and as you can tell it hasn't aged and I am once again able to pull it off.

2008-06-13T03:41:00.000-07:00

so i got my camera back from the shop yesterday and the battery catch is all fixed. BUT now when i turn it on all that happens is the lens comes out, goes in, comes out, goes in, comes out, goes in, pauses, comes out, goes in and then nothing.

so i'll take it back tomorrow, and see what can happen.

El's Parents

2008-06-09T05:34:00.000-07:00

Well, my camera is off being fixed at the moment. All that is broken is the little catch that keeps my battery in. It's costing me $50 to get fixed. Annoying. But anyway, it should be here by Wednesday, and it has some good photos we hadn't gotten around to putting up yet. So there might be a bit of blogging to come.

In the meantime, I got some photo's from some of our friends here. These ones are of our Korean co-worker El's parents. She's real wicked and we've been hanging out with her heaps in the last month. Her parents live in a place called Okcheon, which is about 2hrs south of us. We took a train there and a bus back.

I'm getting quite used to the frequency with which self-taken photos are shot. I didn't take this one, I'm not pro enough to get everyone in the shot yet. But I'm sure I will be by the time I leave this camera-happy country.

This was part of the lunch they served us. There's homemade kimchi (and another plate of homemade kimchi with the spice washed off), lettuce, green peppers, pork, this dish of cold potato noodles, various dipping sauces, donuts, kimbap (sushi) and more. As we were eating this they also cooked us pork strips on the bbq, and then made us some delicious fried rice.

Us girls got to drink wine or beer or coke, but the boys had to drink straight soju and nothing else. Suckers.

This is their outside bit where we ate. It was real cool, El's dad had built it himself and it had like, fans at stuff all over the ceiling. And he'd built all the tables and stuff too. This house is their retirement house so they've got a real nice garden, and they've done all the renovations on the house, and Dad just makes everything. It's pretty cool.

And this is all of us. Adam (from Colorado, friends with the new teacher at our school), El's dad, Nate (new teacher from Colorado at our school), El, me, Cam, El's mum (she's so small. she told us that her house was very small, but it's ok because she's very small.), and Atrina (she's Canadian but Iraqi parents, real pretty)

broken camera

2008-05-23T19:44:00.000-07:00

yesterday i broke my camera!

not seriously (i hope) but the little catch that keeps the battery in pinged off into oblivion and now it can't be used. even for uploading the photos onto the computer.

we think (again, hope) it should be pretty easy for someone to fix. and we have some pretty good birthday weekend photos and another kindy field trip so hopefully it'll get sorted soon.

but we're good! haven't done anything too exciting lately. but maybe we'll post a photo-free blog sometime.

haircut

2008-05-05T04:08:00.001-07:00

Today was Children's Day in Korea, so we had no school. Instead I tried my luck at getting a hair cut in another language. It was pretty weird. I had approximately 7 seconds to pick a photo out of a magazine they gave me, and my first choice was vetoed by my rather sullen hair dresser. I ended up with this.

It's not too bad, especially after I got home a re-styled it (original styling involved the longest layer being flicked out at close to 90degrees). Pretty good price too, $20 000 won.

Long weekend

2008-05-04T06:38:00.000-07:00

Being a long weekend, there was lots of activity in Seoul. We went to Gyeongbok Palace, where the King and Queen used to live before Japan invaded, with Nick and his parents who had been in Korea for the past 10 or so days. They had a reenactment of the coronation which was packed out, which didn't bother me because I was around a foot taller than everyone anyways, so I just gave shoulder rides to those who needed them. It was a pretty hot day walking around the palace, which was massive.

I found my long lost Japanese sister on the streets of Hongdae. At first I think she thought I was trying to mug her or something, but as soon as you show an asian a camera, they know what to do.

These kids on the subway made friends with us, because the little boy's english was spectacular. Much better than that of anyone else we had met in Korea, and he was 10.

Here's part of the palace, beside a pond. We just somehow, by accident became part of a tour group we didn't pay for and Nick impressed our tour guide by answering questions often and sometimes even being right.

GUNS

2008-04-29T07:31:00.000-07:00

After all that worry about getting beaten by Tibetan monks we naturally went and inquired about getting some home defense. This came in the form of a .357 Magnum. It was a very strange feeling firing a gun, almost impossible to describe, but certainly gets the heart pumping.

Not quite as impressive as the hide of a bear or narcotics dealer, but not bad. 83% success rate, and who ever said Die Hard Trilogy on Playstation never helped anyone in real life. If I am ever in Nakatomi Plaza I firstly will not be in barefoot, and secondly have around an 83% chance of exploding an East-German terrorist skull. I like those odds.

Oh yeah look at that grouping of shots, happy trails Hans.

Penny went for the slightly more sophisticated Glock17, preference of the Euroterrorist, or at least Die Hard tells us so. If it ever came down to a duel our accuracy unfortunately is both exactly the same, although I'm not sure if the Glock has the power to take me.

However, Penny does has the distinct advantage of being able to DUEL WIELD.

These photos are taken off the tvnz website under heading: Gang violence in Hamilton South reaches all time high.

Rioting.. finally!!

2008-04-29T06:44:00.000-07:00

NEW ZEALAND ROCKS!!
Here are some rocks from New Zealand, mainly graywacke, but a little of pumice and some ponamu. They were bought to Korea for the Olympics in 1988, and were put in this little area of other countries rocks. They are at the olympic stadium, where we went on Sunday, because being out of Dunedin for such a long time, we needed to get our riot fix.

The New Zealand flag actually has a mechanism in it, that works in reverse to the American flag on the moon and causes it never to wave, while all the other flags wave about. It just shows how humble New Zealanders are I guess, or something about kiwi ingenuity maybe, whatever the case our flag sure dominated the Australian flag, in some cruel mistake by the Korean government, or perhaps on Australian himself raised the Cook Island flag in its place. This is all for the '88 games.

Here's some rude Korean lady who was just flipping the bird furiously at passers-by. It just happens everyday.

At Seoul national park. Good day for a pro China rally.

They were so happy to have foreigners support China that they give you flags, in exchange for all of your information, so if you ever speak harm of China they can hunt you down and make you return the flags I suppose. After we got these babies (flags) we were like celebrities, everyone was getting photos with us and talking about how great China is.

The Olympic gate, where the eternal flame burns, is where the torch relay started in Seoul. Wasn't too much violence going on here, and if there was, I think we chose the right side, numbers wise at least, to be on.

The guy with the torch. Probably some one famous. Maybe Helen Clarke.

Bear Farm?..

2008-04-28T05:30:00.000-07:00

On Thursday we had our kindy field trip - we have one once a month. April's trip was to a bear farm. We were originally concerned as to what exactly we'd be seeing there, but it turned out to be pretty much just a big playground.

This was probably the coolest part, a sled ride down the side of a hill. The kids loved it, and so did Cam. He wasn't very good, though, one of my kindy kids Brian is totally outstripping him.

There were 3 bears at this bear farm. They were in a pretty small concrete enclosure, probably about the size of our apartment but a lot deeper. Though I doubt the depth helped them much because there wasn't really anything for them to climb. We stood over them and threw biscuits to them.

Apparently the biscuits were fit for human consumption too, or at least the kids in Cam's class thought so.

This is my kindy class and my Korean partner Chris. I take one half of the class and she takes the second half. This outfit they're wearing is their SLP tracksuit and they look so amazing in it.

They also have a school uniform they wear sometimes, and on other days they all dress in mufti. I have no idea how they know which day is which because there doesn't seem to be a pattern but my class are always dressed the same.

One of the toys was a giant ball pit with slides and stuff coming into it. This is Cam, again being dominated by a student. His own this time, Julia. She seems pretty sweet, she spent most of the bus ride challenging Cam to Gawi Bawi Bo (Rock Paper Scissors).

Almost blossoms

2008-04-21T07:12:00.000-07:00

On Sunday we went to some park somewhere to look at the cherry blossoms, which of course were finished blossoming. Penny made me take some shots for mum's, in the blossoms.

Very beautiful.

This is Penny with a statue of the guy who invented the Korean writing system. He is on the money too, Korea's own Apirana Ngata, except people actually know what this guy did.

The Korean road workers union came up with an

elaborate scheme to maximize their smoko breaks, by dressing a mannequin up in workers uniform and have him stand there looking busy, or at least as busy as workmen normally appear to be. This was all right under the noses of the government and police buildings. The government officials were sitting there discussing the best communist jokes they had, meanwhile a gang of workers were screwing the system eating all the green tea and biscuits they wanted, laughing their blue collar asses off about their ingenious plan. They were probably doing overtime too, suckers.

On a park bench somewhere in Seoul, I slowly but surely make my move.

Pay Day

2008-04-19T19:33:00.000-07:00

Getting paid during the week was lovely. We once again could blow money on awesome clothes that say slam dunk on them more than is normal. We went to Seoul and because it is really trendy to wear caps (every Korean guy our age does it + most americans) we got in on the action. The idea is you get a baseball cap or some american team you know nothing about. So I was a Padres man.

This is us just standing around fitting into main stream society. Caps at night time?? I would have thought that this is defying social conventions, but evidently not as everyone's doing it.

This is about 9am, having just left a chicken restaurant. I was feeling rather gangsta at the time.

This candy floss guy had a huge dog that I wanted to pat, but he started telling me I couldn't pat his dog unless I bought some candy floss, which I didn't really want. But the dog was pretty cool so I said "how much?". It was seriously overpriced, so I said "yeah" and then when he was getting me my floss I got in some free patting and ran off. Let me tell you, once you have had illegal patting you won't go back to that regular way. No way man. I have started my life of patting crime!

Hwaseong

2008-04-10T02:49:00.001-07:00

On Sunday we went to the Hwaseong Fortress in Suwon. The fortress itself is 5.8km long, and the city inside is called Hwaseong. This picture is of the south gate Paldalmum. This is a bad picture of it, it's actually really amazing looking but I should have taken a photo from another angle.

Where I'm standing is the start of the Namun market, it's quite popular in Suwon.

From there we walked about 10minutes with no real idea where we should go until we found a sign pointing us towards a Buddist temple. There we found this huge golden Budda. I'm not sure if you click on the picture if it gets bigger, down near the bottom at the top of the stairs are Nick and Cam. That might give you a sense of the size.

The Budda wasn't a part of the fortress, just a temple of the city. From here we could see where we (probably) wanted to go.

We walked up a bank (a steep bank!) and found this. It's called Seojangdae (I think?) and is the western command post. They've got a guard who stands there, but I'm pretty sure he's just there for tourists because he let some kids play with his sword and when he wasn't posing in photos he was mainly texting.

We're up this little viewing tower to take this photo. You called see all of Suwon - and it all looked the same. Buildings.

From here we walked along the fortress wall for about 1/2 a kilometre. It was pretty cool, mainly because we were heading down hill. There were a lot of very sweaty Americans coming the other way.

We got off the fortress wall to go see King Jeongjo's Bronze Statue. I'm pretty sure the King is the one who built the fortress, and he had this built in honour of either his father or son.. I'm pretty sure.. It's pretty sweet anyway. Didn't look real bronze though.

From here we could hear noises of like, some kind of event. So we walked towards the sound and found Hwaseong Haenggung which is the Palace of Hweaseong. It's pretty cool, it's set up as the Queen's birthday party. You pay 1500w to get in and you just look around and play with some stuff.

This is the boys trying to throw arrows into little pots. It's pretty weird. We thought this was the Korean archery the lonely planet guide promised us, but to our delight, we were mistaken.

This is some kind of ancient sea-saw. It was pretty sweet, and the ladies you can see in the background were real awesome at it. Pretty much what you had to do was bounce the other person real high, then when they came down they had to bounce you real high. It was way harder than it sounds. And pretty hard on the knees too.

In the palace we found these guys. The boys quickly made friends, Nick took a special liking to the lovely lady. We thing she probably liked him too.

After this we walked about a kilometre through the middle of the town, seeing no more of the fortress, to Yeonmudae in order to find Korean archery. We found it, paid another 1500W and got 5 arrows to shoot at some pig targets. We didn't get a chance to take photos because we all had to shoot at the same time, but Nick got told off for shooting at the kids target. He hit it though.

So all in all we estimate that we saw less than a kilometre of fortress. But we'll go again, probably without Nick, who's not real big on sight seeing.

Chicken Hof

2008-04-09T04:48:00.000-07:00

Due to still not having been paid, we took it easy in the weekend and spent it in Suwon. Nick came round and stayed on Saturday night and took us out for Buldalk (literal translation: fire chicken) and beer at the local Hof, only 30seconds down the road.

This was the owner. He was so friendly and kind to us. People seem genuinely really happy to meet foreigners in Korea, which makes going out a lot better.

He showed me where the toilet was because each food place doesn't have their own, just the building toilets. I was impressed he knew the english words "left" and "right". He was unimpressed I didn't even know the word for bathroom.

This is Cam and Nick and some Korean english teacher we met at our Hof. He was there with a class of about 8 korean girls he had taken out for chicken at around 10.30 on a Saturday night. Sound weird? We thought so too.

He was friendly though, and seemed real bashful so we forgave him.

This is Nick pouring Cam beer from a HUGE jug. It's 3 litres and they put it inside a protective jug due to the quantity.

What you have to do is ask for a pitcher of beer, and we they show you one say "bigger" and make international hand gesture for bigger, and then when they show you the next size up repeat again until you get the monster.

On Sunday we went to the Suwon Fortress (a minimal amount of it, however). We'll post another blog of that when we can work out how to rotate our photos on Cam's mac (stupid things).

Tuesday nights

2008-04-01T06:24:00.000-07:00

There was plenty of debate in the best order to do it in. On account I wanted to get as pumped up as humanly possibly; the pepsi warm up, followed by the mountain dew pump up, and the gatorade chase to keep your pumpedupness at a high level for several days, was decided to be the best. Once you find yourself in a bad come down a smooth pepsi robo for a finish to a great few days is a great idea or maybe another dew to hump the feeling for another couple of hours. Backing up on gatorade isn't recommended, even by seasoned robo-ers.

a day in the life

2008-03-24T21:15:00.000-07:00

We haven't really been up to much lately, so I thought I would just post a schedule of our standard work day.

9.50am: Start work

Generally we would arrive at work and get told by our Korean Kindergarton partner what we had to do for kindergarton that morning.

10am: Kindergarton

Kindergarton lasts around 80-90 minutes. Pretty much you get there, take attendance, ask all the students how they are today (answers : i am happy, i am angry, i am so so). Then story time, it takes 10minutes to read 4 pages of a story with them repeating after you. The hardest part is probably getting them to sit still on the mat.

Then maybe you would have some language activity (for example : "what is it" "it is a scissors") and then it's time for a toilet break. Toilet break is kind of weird because you can't close the doors to the toilets and my girls always look at the wee boys using the urinal and giggle.

Then game time. Then math time. This is less math and more learn to write the number 4 etc (down, across and down again - that makes number 4!) and then colouring. Or coloring, as we're now bound to spell.

At 11.15 it's snack time. My favourite part. Generally consists of a drink or some sort and some food. Today was a muffin and some orange juice (in Korea muffins go straight up). Yesterday was a cookie and a little yoghurt drink.

At 11.30 we go back to our desks and usually write lesson plans etc until 12.50.

12.50: Lunch

We go home. Cam checks the cricket score, then cooks us lunch. Sometimes we go to FusionChina for some Ja Jung Myon.

2.00: Back to school, for more sitting around/lesson plans.

2.40: Class 1, first half.

We take 3 classes a day, each have 2 parts. We spend one part with one class, and then move to another, swapping with a Korean teacher.

The first class is usually the younger (and dumber) students. You spend half the lesson making sure they've done their homework and assigning them new stuff.

3.20: Class 1 second half

Generally similar to first half except you don't have to check homework and instead play games for most of it.

4.10: Class 2 first half

Similar to above but slighty better at english

4.50: Class 2 second half

See above.

5.40: Class 3 first half

These are the funner classes because they're still kids, but they're a bit older and more fun. And they're almost fluent in English, they can pretty much find some way of explaining anything to you, which is cool.

6.20: Class 3 second half

My second half class are so amazing. And they had a surprise birthday party for me where they all brought chips and candy and fanta, and someone's mum (mom) brought us 2 pizzas (on both the topping was potato). It was really fun.

7.00: Home time

is anybody out there?

2008-03-23T21:38:00.001-07:00

hello? is anybody reading this blog?

some comments might be nice.

Major building, busy road.

2008-03-22T01:47:00.000-07:00

Due to pay day still being a good 3 weeks away we decided to have a quiet weekend and explore Suwon a bit. First stop, our apartment building.

Floor 1 (aka ground floor) has a lot. A book store (misleadingly named "Candy House"), a stationary store, a burger joint, a japanese place, a pizza place, a dairy, a chemist and several over the counter fast food joints.

It also has Tekken 2. This is Cam and his new friend.

Floor 2 has about 3 korean bbq restaurants and the upstairs of the burger joint. We went to one of the korean bbq restaurants the other night, you get like, hunks of fatty pork and a whole lot of side dishes. Take a piece of lettuce, put a bit of meat and a few side dishes (ie. garlic, onion, kimchi, some spicy sauce and some meat salt) on it, wrap it up and eat. Yummo.

Floor 3 had a some english schools.

Floor F (4 - but they don't use the number for buildings. something about death.. I can't remember) had 2 dentists, and a pharmacy.

Floor 5 had more english schools (3 of them)

Floor 6 more english schools.

Floor 7 we hit the jackpot. Ping pong world for starters. We were going to play but were unsure whether there was a tournament going on, or if just all Asians actually are amazing at ping pong. Across from that is a yoga studio. And down the hall was virtual golf!

Floors 8, 9 and 10 were all more english schools. We live on Floor 11 which along with Floor 12 is only apartments.

This was happening in our apartment

Bath Time

2008-03-21T20:03:00.001-07:00

We went to some korean bath house in the gym the other night where everyone gets all nakie. I got plenty of stares, probably for a number of reasons. Unfortunately for you there were no pictures taken. My highlight came from the sauna with some real fat guy, who keep looking at me inappropriately and then smiling and nodding. After that we went to the cold pool and he did a bomb. Also I saw my boss from the school. It was all really weird.

Birthday

2008-03-20T04:31:00.000-07:00

On Penny's birthday we went shopping and found the bestest of all birthday treats, candy floss on a stick. None of that crap you get in a bag. STICK.

Some crazy shop. I was trying pretty hard I guess.

CONTACT US

2008-03-18T04:54:00.000-07:00

Last time we posted the wrong phone number. Here are some real contact details.

To call us from New Zealand (and China)

00 82 31 243 1408

To call us from Korea, outside of Suwon

031 243 1408

To call us from Suwon

243 1408

To post us letters/postcards

1126, Jun Yeon Major Building 877-4,

Jungia-dong, Jagan-gu,

Suwon,

Kyunggi-do,

440-841

Korea

To post us parcels/valuables

SLP-Buk Suwon,

5F Sogang Plaza Building,

876-6 Jungia-dong, Jagan-gu,

Suwon,

Kyunggi-do,

440-841

Korea

Saturday

2008-03-18T03:13:00.000-07:00

On Saturday night we went to some bar down this alleyway up this elevator and down this tunnel. You had to take off your shoes and then lay around and take time delay photos to make capture the feeling of the place. The vibe.

There were some areas to lounge around on.

This is expert lounging position that I am demonstrating. My heart rate dropped to 3.

And just to show it wasn't all relaxing in sipping green tea frappa's, here's me doing some boogying. WOAH SLOW DOWN, everyone was saying.

ZOMG!?

friday

2008-03-18T02:44:00.000-07:00

So on the weekend there was some sort of celebration about some guy ridding Ireland of snacks. The rules were that you had to wear green, have orange hair, drink heavily, look depressed (poetry optional) and have some english guy with you whose jovial spirits worsen yours.

Here's me covering all of those with Penny's (and mine to a degree) friend Alex, from Liverpool or Manchester or some god awful place.

VICTORY!

Just round the corner from this photo Penny almost got ran down by a rogue on a rogue motorcycle and meanwhile I was setting all kinds of records on this game where you have to boot a ball as hard as you can. 610. Emails have been sent to Mehrts challenging him.

International drinking rules are just that. Penny closely abides by them. I'm sure if St Pat saw us drinking that horrible CASS instead of Guinness he would have rolled over in his grave, or where ever Saints are buried.

Watches!

2008-03-11T06:11:00.000-07:00

On the street round where we live there are these games, like you see at movie theatres in New Zealand with a claw that comes down and grabs prizes. Its like 10c a turn so we were playing and we won some totally sweet watches. This is us blinging out.

Mine says cowboy and has some dudes rustling cattle or something on it. The pants I got for one buck at some place nearby.

Dunedin or Suwon?

2008-03-11T03:34:00.000-07:00

MINCE!!

our phone number is: 82 031 243 1408

our address is: 1126 Jung Yeon Major Building 877-4, Jungja-dong Jungan-gu, Suwon, Kyunggi-do, 440-841 Korea

The school address is: SLP-Buk Suwon, 5F Sogang Plaza Building, 876-6 Jungja-dong, Jangan-gu, Suwon, Kyunggi-do, 400-841 Korea

Party time.

2008-03-10T05:11:00.000-07:00

So we went out to Hongdai on Friday night and met up with my friend Nick Brown from unicol and some of his friends.

Here is Nick dressed up as a korean. We are at a place called the Ho Bar, and according to this asian guy I was talking to Korean Ho is good to go.

This is us with Dave, this guy from Sligo prison or something. Penny couldn't understand him and whispered to me "is english Dave's first language?", but unfortunatly for her at that stage her whispers were rather loud and Dave overheard.

This is Me with The Han, which roughly translates as 'The One'. He was a pretty cool guy, and taught me some korean and gave me advice on how to approach korean babes, all of

which I have thankfully forgotten.

24 hour KFC. Wicked!

This is Nick, Keith and Penny (twins in matching white skivvies) and me, the bar we were at actually ran out of the cheapest beer so we had to drink the dreaded CASS (next cheapest) then they ran out of that (no doubt largely due to us) so we had to drink bud. People don't come to Korea for the beer, although the price is pleasing.

Nick and Dave went to Thailand and saw Transformers. Dave got a t-shirt and Nick got a tattoo.. One guess which is more pleasing to the ladies.

After any good night there is the train and bus ride home at 8am, this is how we felt.

I am so happy. The flash of that photo made me feel really nice.

BBQ'in it up

2008-03-10T04:35:00.000-07:00

This is some korean barbeque action shots. We are with some other teachers from our school. This place is just round the road from where we live and is highly recommended by all concerned, but when we arrived there were no spare tables. Seeing us being 7 and a couple who had just seated being 2 they were promptly removed and we took their spot. Much to everyones embarrassment and confusion, but I think they eventually found a seat for everyone.

You cook the food yourself on a hotplate situated in the centre of the table. Normally a korean guy in your group will cook for everyone but seeing as we were asian free we got the closest coloured guy to cook. Closely coloured to koreans, not a coloured guy that was just around close to us. He was both. The beer in the foreground is korean beer called CASS. I put that in bold so you remember to keep well away from it.

Here's a close up of the action. The other stuff in shot is kimchi soup, which compared to kimchi is really good, which shocked Penny. There were assorted spicey dipping sauces and veges to help remove the CASS taste from your mouth. Oh yeah and Penny trying to grip meat and garlic with chopsticks is worth the price of admission.

VIDEO. (beyond 2000)

2008-03-09T04:56:00.000-07:00

So this is a video tour of our apartment for those of you who care about that.

2008-03-06T03:00:00.000-08:00

ok, blog time.

this is cam, knitting on our bed. it's about the size of a king double in width, and about 1.8m long. so not huge.

this is us on monday before school. it's like, 10.45am. we're pretty jet-lagged, and i have the flu. but we're still pretty excited i guess.

we used that bottle tripod. it's so sweet.

this is blake and i sleeping on the plane. blake wears those masks like a total pansy.

atleast i drool like a man.

my other photos won't load. but maybe cam will be able to post them later. plus we're going out for some korean bbq tonight so maybe there'll be photos of that.

so far korea's been pretty amazing. it's insane because there are just really tall buildings everywhere, and they have real brightly coloured ads all over them. and the buildings are weird because like, our apartment building is not just apartments. it has 12 floors, and only 11 and 12 are apartments. the basement is a grocery store (smells weird), first floor has tonnes of stuff, like a pizza place, a hamburger joint, a waffle place, somewhere to buy cell phones, somewhere to buy rubbish bags.. and probably heaps more. floor 2 has a bank, and other stuff. uhm floor 9 has a gym, but not an apartment gym but one that you pay for, floor 3 has 2 beauty parlours (they're real big on skin peels over here). i don't even know what else yet. it's insane anyway. and all buildings are like this.

we haven't done heaps yet. we've been jet lagged and real busy and i've had the flu. but we went to a supermarket that was like 4 floors. it sold like bikes, and rabbits (pets) and pet birds in bird cages. it had like, literally 100 different taste testers going on. it sold clothes. it had a 1 2 3 dollar shop inside it. real amazing.

visa time

2008-02-26T03:55:00.000-08:00

this is a practice post and mini-update.

we have our visas. and our flights. we depart 12.15pm on sunday march 2nd.

15 days before my birthday.

and this is how handsome we are.