Happy Birthday Marcella

love Auntie Susie

I'VE BEEN TO NORTH KOREA!!!!!!!!!!!

I've had a pretty exciting weekend and no, I wasn't captured by Kim Jong Il and forced to star in his movies. Mike & I went on a tour group to visit Geumgangsan - which is the famous Diamond Mountain in North Korea. I'll tell you all about it but for now here are my photos.

Maggie & Steve's visit

In the hopes of not forgetting the last ten days adventures, I'm going to document our itinerary & food. I'm too tired for anecdotes...

27th May: Busan After lunch, picked Maggie & Steve up from Busan airport (took them 10 minutes to get their bags and go!!).
Meandered around Haeundae Beach, saw the beginnings of the Christian beach convention - mind boggling how many people were there.
Dinner: Galbi (pork) in downtown - meandered around downtown.
Hotel: love motel in Haeundae

28th May: Busan > Uljin > Gyeongju
Breakfast: Bagels at Dunkin' Donuts, then a walk along the now deserted Haeundae Beach. Hopped in the car and drove the coastal road, stopped for a seaside coffee then on to Uljin, took a few photos of the massive ship yards and stopped for;
Lunch: Kim Bap Cheon Guk - had mandu, bibimbap and udong. Back in the car, drove on to Gyeongju. Stopped at Bulguksa, heaps of school children around, Maggie & Steve were kicked out of a temple building for not wearing socks, enjoyed the rock garden.
Hotel: Tourist hotel in Gyeongju downtown Steve & I checked out the rooms - it was ok, nothing special. I was about to haggle the room rate (seeing as we wanted 2 rooms) but I realised the concierge had a plastic arm and I lost the hart to haggle.
Dinner: Beers at the downstairs brewery (very noisy), Samgyeobsal cooked on a rock :) We chose the restaurant because we found 3 together that looked good but the lady at the musical instrument shop said we should go to her sister's place. We were the only ones there but the food was very good.

29th May: Gyeongju > Daegu > Taebaek
Breakfast: McDonalds - oh the shame of it.
We drove round and round in circles trying to find anything open and maccas was one of the few places. Explored historical Gyeongju - a fort, an ice room, an observatory and a lake (I will fill in the correct names). Primary school children were everywhere - Mike got a shock when one of the girls was from Melbourne and had a great accent! I got a bit tired of having the same conversation over and over. Hi! Where are you from? What's your name? It was quite hot all day! Jumped in the car, escaped Gyeongju for the express way to Daegu.
Lunch: Express way rest stop, everyone had mandu except me - I had mystery kim bap & tentacles.
We stopped in Daegu only to buy a couple of things; we ended up buying a couple more than intended :) We finished the drive to Taebaek and started looking for somewhere appropriate for Maggie & Steve to stay. Sadly most of the accommodation options were not very good. Finally we tried the Ewha motel and it was the best of the bunch. Mike and I got to go home to our apartment - yeah! Dinner: New York Grill and Bar - Mike & Steve had massive steaks, while Maggie had the ample chicken steak and I had humungo ribs. We ran into Mike's co-teacher Mrs Yun, her children were very determined to ignore us, it was very amusing watching them march past our table a couple of times.

30th May: Taebaek & Samcheok
Breakfast: cereal oh sweet ordinary cereal!
Mike & I headed to work, while Maggie and Steve caught the bus to Samcheok. In Samcheok Maggie & Steve checked out the brown wedding cake museum, the fish markets and had a raw fish banquet lunch - for 4 people! After work we introduced Maggie & Steve to a couple of our kiddie neighbours then we went out to dinner. Dinner:

31st May: Taebaek & Gohan
Breakfast: cereal. Mike & I at work and Maggie & Steve took off with our car to Gohan to spy on the golf course: High 1. As usual they landed on their feet and were treated like royalty at both the golf course and ski resort.
Dinner: Taebaek Style Dakgalbi - chickeny noodly goodness.
We were joined by Rachael, James, Dean and Sunny, all elementary teachers in Taebaek. Also Lotu another EPIK Teacher and her son Kobe. It was a fun night with lots of Soju!

1st June: Taebaek
Breakfast: cereal.
My Principal decided to take Maggie & Steve to lunch, so Mike's and my schedules were adjusted so we could go out to a hidden restaurant in Taebaek.
Lunch: Many traditional dishes.
The meal was superb and we finished off with five flavour tea. Mike was given the afternoon off, so we headed to his school to make sure and ended up having tea with Mike's Principal. A few of Mike's students got to meet Steve and Maggie - most gave themselves whip lash trying to check out who was in Mike's office! Most of the afternoon was gone so we took some time to plan what to do for the next few days.
Dinner:

2nd June: Taebaek > Donghae > Gangneung > Samcheok > Taebaek
Breakfast: proper cookup :)
We drove to Donghae to check out the Gangwon Comphrensive Museum, which was quite an experience. We were all a bit mystified as to why the collection existed and just why so many artefacts/reproductions thereof were under this very large roof. Having said that I enjoyed the outdoor cave and the robot dinosaurs (with sound effects). By the time we were ready for a coffee break, we were all ready to move on and so we drove to Gangneung downtown for lunch.
Lunch: Terrarosa in Gangneung.
It was really nice to have some tasty Italian food and coffees. A brief walk around downtown and a touch of window shopping later, we jumped back in the car and headed to the Reunification Park. The North Korean submarine still had that burny burny smell and the land-locked South Korean warship still had plenty of buttons to push and nobs to twiddle! I might have regressed into my childhood a bit but I had fun! When we'd had our fill of nauticalness, we continued along the coastal road. This turned out to be a great idea as we found a massive sun dial and this.

We checked out the sun dial and Maggie was taken by the strange fur fashion of one ladies dog - it had pigtails on it's ears! Next we decided on checking out the bizarre site of the ships on land. When we read the sign asking for an entrance fee just to look around these motel ships, we said "Bugger that!" and hit the road again. Time was getting away from us, so we stopped at Samcheok for dinner.
Dinner: Pizza! with some very ordinary wine - what did we expect when they said there was no white, only red and then confused us about the cola situation!
For a bit of fun we checked out the Homeplus at Samcheok after dinner.
We were late getting into Taebaek and so we all went straight home to bed.

3rd June: Taebaek > Seoul
Breakfast: cereal.
We all packed up our bags and jumped on an 11am train to Seoul. It was a much quieter day due to the train trip taking almost 5 hours (it was inexplicable longer than our normal train).
Lunch: kim bap and triangles as appropriated before boarding the train.
We hit the jackpot on our arrival to downtown (Jongno 3-ga area), the very first love motel we tried gave us a fair price and agreed that we could keep the rooms for 3 days! And most importantly, Maggie & Steve felt they would be comfortable at the Samseong motel. To celebrate we all enjoyed a coffee at the marvellous café themselves and come cake :) I had the dangerous dark chocolate and it was at that! Good thing it was a tiny little square - or I'd never have finished it. Freshly refuelled, Mike led us on a walk to and through Myeongdong. On the way we organised tickets to Nanta - thanks to the lovely woman at the Information desk at the Cheonggyecheon.
Dinner:


4th June: Seoul
Breakfast: bakery delights at café themselves
Lunch: pepper rice - Mike was happy!
Dinner: Brazillian meat on swords cooked to perfection - churrasc.. (sp?)
Nanta

5th June: Seoul
tourist bus
Breakfast: bakery delights at café themselves
Lunch: gorgeous little in café Itawon - super surprising this was!!
Dinner: Todai - buffet of delicious fish things; from okonomiaki to tempura to personally sliced sashimi to sushi rolls to blazingly hot stir-frys to mountains of crab legs and cooked to order crepes.
We all enjoyed a bit or a lot of the wine which was too sweet for me but ok all the same. Ha demanded we all eat our way through 5 plates, I only just got there - you can see what Mike did with the offered crab leg!
Seeing as we all needed to stroll and some way to repay Ha for his generosity, we walked on into the Intercontinental and had an Irish whisky or a glass of champagne. There must have been a wedding there because we had a rainbow like procession of hanbok attired women with suited men. Sadly Korean men prefer to wear a suit to a formal occasion.


6th June: Seoul
Goodbye at the bus stop.

This is almost finished but I'm going to publish it and finish it on Monday! So check back soon,
love
Squeezy

The next bit in pictures

Or you can go straight to the photos at MaggieNSteveInSK

It's HOT in the city

The hottest day we have had was last Saturday when we drove from Taebaek to Busan. Some 300 kilometres later in a car with deadski air conditioning. I was not happy. In fact by the time that we had driven around and around Busan looking for Haeundae (a big beach), I would happily have bought some of the plentiful raw fish and covered myself in it. Fortunately, a raw fish Squeezy was not on the menu. I think that it would have been a bit on the nose! We managed to weave and dodge the car through the heavy traffic (hey, I'm used to 3 cars and a bus - big city driving is not much fun!) and into a parking lot.

I had to peel myself out of the car - I think Mike fell out on his side, I don't know I wasn't paying attention. Then we found the beach. Hallelujah - literally. It seems that Busan was about to have a massive Christian Revival meeting on the beach. This is somewhat a deterrent from breaking out the cossie and jumping in to the sea. I was getting enough double takes while being fully dressed.

We found a cosy love hotel with the help of the information people and Mike was thrilled when we got to the room. It had a round bed. TICK. Mike's convinced that we must stay in each kind of love hotel this year. I thought the round bed was somewhat impractical but it wasn't too bad as it turned out.

So after a rotation or two in front of the fan and air conditioner, we headed out to explore the shopping and night life of Busan. The subway was good, it took 20 minutes to get halfway across town. The strange thing on the subway was the announcement of certain stops with the lilting strains of seagulls. It turns out that they are the beach-side stops.

We meander around the downtown area and enjoy the multitudes of shops and people. It seems to be a tropical version of Seoul. If Seoul had a little less money. I guess it was totally reasonable that the only places we saw other foreigners was at the beach. If I lived there, I'd be spending my weekends at the beach.

The next day we have a quiet walk around Haeundae, which while the weather was warming up, it was nice to do. The time to drive off to the airport rolls around quickly - unlike our lunch. The slowest Thai food ever. We actually had to point out that waiting over 20 minutes for 2 simple Thai dishes was inappropriate. It was such a shame, as the quality of the thai food was excellent. The flavours were spot on and the servings weren't too large. The slow lunch adds a small amount of stress to the drive to Gimhae airport but after dodging through more traffic and enjoying the 1.7km tunnel (it was cool!!), we make it to the conveniently located parking lot.

A few minutes later we get to have a wonderful reunion but I'll tell you about that next time :)

My Birthday & catch up

Ok, I've been a bit slack - I haven't posted anything new in ages. I've been dreading writing this post as it is my post 30th birthday post.

So what's been happening? Quite a lot really! Let's start with my birthday.

Thanks to everyone who sent me cards, emails, videos & presents! It really made my birthday special this year! Particularly after my party plans fell through - we were too tired to travel as I'd planned.

The 21st of April was an interesting day, it started with a phone call from my co-teacher asking if I could come in to school (it was a Saturday & I don't work 'em!) I said sure - I'd run into a parent the night before and I thought they would buy me flowers. So we got ready in a rush and headed into school. I didn't have time to dry my hair, a small regret of mine. We walked into my staffroom and I could see 2 boys hiding (badly) behind a desk. I knew what was coming... My co-teacher, Mrs Sohn said "Now" and suddenly twenty boys jumped out from hiding and started singing happy birthday to me. Of course the only reasonable reaction to this is to cry, so I did. A little. I was sat down and Mike took photos & a little video. They gave me a big box of Ferrero Rochere, a bunch of flowers and a sweet potato cake. I was told that the sweet potato cake is a big favourite here - it had so much cream in it, I wondered where was the sweet potato??? Mrs Sohn gave me a letter, as she hadn't known it would be my birthday and I hadn't wanted to talk about it. I shared the cake with a couple of teacher's and my sweet students. It didn't take long before the cake was going on their faces instead of into their mouths!

Afterwards, we headed to Mike's school and witnessed the Wonders of Science day. There were water rocket competitions, model plane competitions, coloured water layering, bridge building, the mystery of the chicken foot (?) - all, as you guessed, a competition! Everything was competitive if it wasn't the fastest then it was the furthest or the best. The only non-competitive thing for the students to do was watch a video and I got the feeling they were doing all they could to get out of that too.
What is the Mystery of the Chicken Foot? Apparently you get a bunch of students to take a cooked chicken foot, remove all the flesh (by hand) then they glue it all back together and give it a manicure with their choice of nail polish! This was the grossest scientific endeavour of the day! So I chose to hang outside watching the water rockets - they were really cool. It was nice that I was sung Happy Birthday three more times by Mike's students and given a hair clip - Super Korean Cutey Pink Bow!

Then we had to rush off as my Principal had decided to shout us lunch. So we met most of my school's teachers at the White House - a white restaurant in Taebaek. We had Galbi Tang - beef soup. It was nice but seeing as it was such a warm day a salad would have been better. It was very sweet of all my teachers to delay their trips home to their families to celebrate my birthday. (Many teachers live apart from their families Monday to Friday or Saturday and only go home on the weekend.)

Then we dashed home to cool down and rest before trying to find the birthday party we'd promised to attend. Which was interesting because, well, we couldn't find it. So I called Mr Kim (he is the father of the birthday baby) and of course he didn't answer. I'm sure he was busy with his guests. Then after walking around for 15 minutes and feeling remarkable lost, I saw the music teacher from my school. Fortunately she put 2 + 2 together and came up with 4! So she dragged us upstairs into a fish restaurant and then we found Mr & Mrs Kim and their gorgeous children. His daughter is a hello kitty style princess and his son was very cute - even asleep.

So we were fed a second lunch of fish, sushi, mystery fish and mystery fish bits. I'm telling you some of that stuff was awful!!! Sadly while raw fish is popular here, it is served in a somewhat heavy handed style both in flavours and in cuts. So it's not sushi, it's cho bap. We chatted with some children who were dragged to us to practise their english and then there was a little boy. He came over to us and we had a conversation. He was quite amazing - given he was 7 or 8 years old! He was so fluent that when he dropped some fish he said "oops!" - which was very funny at the time.

When we got home we were feeling very fat. Mike failed to deliver on the icecream birthday cake that I'd told him I wanted. Oh well, next time we're in Seoul, he's going to get me an incredibly cute icecream cake! With a bit of luck we'll have a few friends to share it with.

What did Mike get me?? Well a pair of children's earrings, they are very cute little gold cats and apparently a place holder for my proper birthday present. Shame he wasn't feeling overly generous when I found the Tiffany's white gold and diamond earrings in Seoul...

Oh and my favourite podcast (Cool) Shite on the Tube they sent me a happy birthday message! It was really sweet of them and makes me love them more. Thanks guys!!

We've been down to Daegu mainly for shopping and seeing some culture. We've taken it easy and been to the car show in Seoul. If you follow the car show link, you'll see my comments with all the booth babes draped across the cars. We played which is the ugliest car and the prettiest booth babe. It was fun even if it was a bit surreal.

With any luck, this weekend we'll see a movie at a cinema. I had hoped to watch Spiderman 3 but now I'm thinking 300 or Teenage Mutant Turtles would be better.

have a great weekend,
Squeezy

Balloons KPop Style

This is the music video clip for Balloons, or Pung Seong, by Dong Bang Shin Ki.

I just love all the animal costumes and the I-can't-believe-they-aren't Backstreet boys moves!!

Happy Birthday to Mike

Today is Mike's Birthday. Someone told him it's unlucky to be 29, so he's made the change to using his Korean age. So here's my birthday card for Mike.

Congratulations to Georgia & Ty

I did it!!

I have finally skied an intermediate run without freaking out!! Yeah for me.
Yesterday Mike and I skied A2 or Athena 2 about four times and it was lots of fun.
I'm hoping next time we'll give Hera 1 or Hera 2 a crack.
I'm still not sure about skiing the advanced stuff - it looks awfully steep! But we'll see how I go.
Yesterday I fell over four times - twice right on the end slushy bit of Zeus the second fall was maybe 5 meters on from the first, but I got up and skied to the end and that's what matters.

I've been invited to go cross-country skiing on Thursday and downhill on the same day - so I'm not sure what will happen there. Could be an exhausting day... good for the thighs though!

Below is the map of my convenient ski resort, High 1.
So far I've skied all of Zeus and most of Athena.
Mike's skied H1, V2, all of Zeus and most of Athena.

Happy Valentines Day

Happy Valentines Day

Well Valentines Day seems to be celebrated with the gifting gusto that I am becoming accustomed to here. I've received 3 Ferrero Rochers and it sounds like Mike is being given boxes full of chocolates at school! I'm also watching a steady procession of flowers being carried into the school.

This will be a Valentines Day to remember because Mike's gift to me was to shave off the horrible 5 week beard he had grown. I seriously thought that he was not going to get rid of it. He'd even started conditioning it with MY conditioner!! He managed to surprise me. Last night he shaved off his beard but kept his sanchez-esk moustache and triangle hair thing. I thought he kept these bits just to annoy me...
Then this morning, suddenly, even the last irky hairs have been shaved away! Finally - I get my husband back!

Good thing too or he might not have received the cute "Love Chocolate" box that I got for him.

so;
Happy Valentines Day everyone

Airports, Airplanes and Layovers

Our first flight is with China Airlines from Incheon to Taipei and only takes 3 hours. The flight is packed but the service is excellent. Shame about the lunch - we ate the different options and both were terribly bland.

My first thoughts, once inside, Taipei airport are "oh crap", it was a dump! A horribly dated sevice-less dump!! But what can we do? We have 7 hours to kill and the last city tour left almost 30 minutes ago.

So we go do the transit thing; turns out it's just a security check and up an escalator and suddenly we're in departures. This dump of an airport isn't looking any better.

Determined, as we are, to get through the 7 hours with our sanity inact and to find the transit hotel, we begin walking. After 20 minutes we have found the end of the terminal and seen the tantilising view of what appears to be a much newer part of the airport. We gaze longingly through the windows, both of us transfixed by the promise of time killing diversions in a building where salmon floor tiles would be scorned...

So we keep walking, we hit more dead ends but we keep going.

After over an hour of teasing glances and depressing facilities, we happen upon a ramp with grey (!!) carpet. Mike is close to a run to see what is around the corner and up the ramp... it's salvation!! We have found the new building! Yeah!!

We pass the remainder of our time using free massage chairs (oooh yeah), free internet (and if we'd been dishonest free laptops too!), walking and then we succumb to the transit hotel. Due to the price, we just hire a room for 3 hours; we wanted the sauna but it costs just as much as the room again! The transit hotel room was $39 (US) for 3 hours and for that we had our own bathroom, TV, queen bed and floor to ceiling view of cars driving around the airport.
A bath and a Van-Damme movie and it was time to go.

On the way to our gate, we found the blind massage place and as they kindly suggested we have the 30 min upper body, we went for it. It was one of the most painful and hard massages I've ever had! Good though.

The flight to Bangkok has better food but sadly the service was abismal! (China Airlines) Considering the flight was almost empty - that's pretty bad! I watched "The Last Kiss" which while it was very good, I found it disturbing (probably because it didn't have a saccharine ending).

At last we're in Bangkok and the new airport, Suvarnabhumi, is massive ugly. Not massively ugly. Clearly the designer either has a thing for glass and steel beams or he has an interesting stock portfolio. Sadly most likely the second. Mike's been reading about the problems at this new airport and seems determined to blame anything going wrong on the airport. Granted cracks in the runway are a terrible problem. Narrow walkways are an annoyance - no wonder this airport can only handle 5,000 more people a year that good old Don Muang. We get through immigration, clear customs and find the downstairs public taxi rank quite quickly.

Mike feels its just not the same to arrive at this new airport - even the taxi ride is different. It's 2am so long as I'm in a relatively comfortable taxi, I really don't care. It feels cooler than on other visits and I am hoping that it's the night. I guess we'll see tomorrow. At least the worst travel day is over.

What I have learnt about South Korea

Everything is last minute.

Soju is good.
Beer and Soju is bad.
Makoli is an acquired taste - if you're into something that tastes like dirty water.

Ginseng has many names but it always tastes like dirt.

Banana milk is the best.

The colder the weather gets, the shorter the girl's skirts are on Saturday night.

It doesn't take much to get on TV.

People spend just as much time taking photos of a festival as they will of you at the festival.

Forget Taekwondo, shopping is the national pastime.

All TV ads must be shot in Sydney.

Department store ads should avoid having Korea people in them.

Korean people are some of the kindest and most generous people I've ever met.

Friends and family are only a phone call away but its not the same as a hug.

Frankie & Steve visit South Korea (video)

This video is a compilation of video shot by Mike & I when we were visited by Frankie & Steve.

Locations
Seoul
Cheonggye Stream, Nam San & N Seoul Tower, Gyeongbokgung (Palace) & a restaurant in Dongdaemun.
Taebaek
Coal Museum (the Snow Fight!)

Footage shot by Micro & Squeezy
All production & editting by Squeezy

2007 Movies & TV Series Watched list

So here goes my Movies and TV Series watched list - this should (could) be interesting!
I've decided to link to the imdb page for each movie.


2007

Movies

• The Hogfather
• Thunderball (007)
• You Only Live Twice (007)
• On Her Majesty's Secret Service (007)
• Diamonds Are Forever (007)
• The Devil Wears Prada
• The Man with the Golden Gun (007)
• The Last Kiss
• King Naresuan aka Tamnaan somdet phra naresuan maharat phaak ong prakan hongsaa - is this the longest movie title ever??
  
• Titan AE
• The Prestige
• Jopog Manura aka My Wife is a Gangster
  

• Eragon
• Live and Let Die (007)
• Idiocracy
  
• The Holiday
• Confetti
• Infernal Affairs aka Mou gaan dou
• Holes
• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
• For Your Eyes Only (007)
• Hot Fuzz
• Octopussy (007)
  
• Never Say Never Again (007) - the most terrible Bond movie... EVER!!! Mike likes it though??? Weirdness!!
  
• A View to a Kill (007)
• Shrek 3
• Mønti Pythøn ik den Høli Gräilen
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix
• I, Robot
• Spider-man 3 - it needed a fez
• Alex & Emma
• 300
  
• Die Hard 4.0
• The Simpsons Movie
  
• Blades of Glory
• TMNT
  
• This movie is not yet rated
• Transformers
  
• Blood diamond
• The Living Daylights (007)
• License to Kill (007)
• Ratatouille
• The Mummy Returns
  
• Flushed Away
  
• The Golden Compass
  
• Leon (the professional)

TV Series

• Heroes (Vol 1, Vol 2, Vol 3 started - cliffhanger) - love it, love it, LOVE IT!! must. not. hyperventilate...

• Prison Break (Season 1 started '06 - still haven't finished this one)
• Canada's Next Top Model
• America's Next Top Model (Cycle 7 & 8)
• Hotel Babylon (Season 2)
• Australia's Next Top Model (Cycle 3)
• Men in Trees (Season 1, 2 started - waiting for more episodes to air)
• Torchwood (Season 1)
• Firefly
• Doctor Who
  
• Bionic Woman
  

Happy New Year!!

If I don't get the chance to say this to you in person - then Happy New Year!!

I hope 2007 brings fun & laughter to you all.

love
Squeezy

Accident at work

For anyone I've spoken to lately, you'd know I've had an accident at work. I slipped with a knife while cutting paper and sliced off part of my left index finger. I now have three stiches through my fingernail - which I'm not looking forward to having removed.

So just for fun (?) I took a couple of pics of said finger while I was waiting for the doctor to look at it today. If morbid curiosity has the best of you then click on the photo below.

The Claw

Hwangji Jung School Concert

This is the video of the 2 Christmas Carols as sung by my conversation club and I. We sang "We wish you a Merry Christmas" and "Santa Claus is coming to town". Watch out for the silly dancing!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas Everyone!!

As I watch Mike skiing tomorrow, I'll be missing all my friends and family in Australia and Japan terribly! (We're going skiing then off to the casino buffet for Christmas dinner.
)

Much love to you all - I will call as many of you as I can :)

Happy Birthday Granny for today! The card is probably still in the post.

love
Squeezy

Happy Birthday Tim