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.