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.

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

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

Photos

snow

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

That dog was delicious! 

traditional Korean folk village

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

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

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!

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

a little on the side

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

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

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

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

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