Hello....I'm greeting you very sheepishly as I'm well aware of how slack I've been.
I going to upload a ridiculous number of photos and put comments beside each of them and hope that I've caught you up a bit...
I love how much korea likes to take something and totally rip it off. This is one of the hairdressers in my town with a ripped off Puma sign that they added a perm to.
After the kids had their speech competition, some of them got prizes. The kids had to do a demonstration with this little thing so I knew what it was for. They call rubber shavings that you get after you have rubbed something out, larvae, and this is a wee vacuum cleaner for those little shavings. Totally and utterly unnecessary, but very cute all the same.
So random engrish for you all from the stair a my favourite cafe in town.
Pizza here comes wrapped up in a wee ribbon for you. It's like getting a cute little present!
We have a cool, but very tacky, magician come to school a few weeks ago and he did a little show for us. He had a dove which was cool, but I think it was trapped in the stand with the purple scarf over it for about 45 minutes before that particular trick came up.... :( not so great. He also had the most amazing music. Very Gob-esqe (Arrested Development for those that don't know what I'm talking about)!
This and the next few photos are from a girls day that we had a wee while ago. Started with getting out nails done....
Followed by some organic homemade icecreams....
This flavour was wine and strawberry. Highly recommended!
We spent a bit of time shopping in Hongdae with about a million other people.
Our 'service' treat for after dinner. Korea has this thing called 'service' where when you buy a lot of food or order a bunch of stuff online or basically spend more than $100 you get some freebies as 'service'. Often you will get extra things in you packages when you buy online or extra treats in restaurants. It's really cool. These were coffee pannacottas that we had after some really good pasta and pizza. This dinner was followed by an international party. you pay to go to the party and usually the drinks are free however this one was a self serve and self pay. On the bright-side, being a foreigner girl in Korea can get you some perks, I was given a VIP card at this party so that I could attend the next months worth for free. I'm worried about going back to western countries...my over-inflated ego is going to be unceremoniously burst.
After the international parties, you usually end up with free entrace into a club. this is good because the entrance can sometimes be up to $40 which really sucks balls. There are a few Club Naked's around. I will never find the name unamusing personally. And no, no naked people are in there unfortunately.
Food!!! I'm still not used to how much awesome food is here. So after you have dakgalbi (bbq boneless chick with spicy sauce and cabbage) you can have the leftovers mixer with rice and served with melted cheese. SO FRIGGEN GOOD.
So, this one night after my Korean lessons, Hanneke and I were having dinner and a random guys askes if he can sit down with us and have a chat. Being the friendly foreigners that we are, we sad yes and started talking to him. He was a nice guy and then his boss came over and sat down too. We were sitting in a booth only designed for 2 people so it was a bit squishy and they suggested he join their table where their other friend had been sitting on his own for the last 45 minutes. More beer and soju later, we ended up at Noraebang. Bad idea. But, great food! Had make your own sundaes! Great when you're really drunk.
Shabu Shabu is another amazing dish. Shabu Shabu is a type of japanese food that has become popular in Korea and this particular one had veitnamese fusion as well with the make your own rice paper rolls. Basically, you have some broth in a pit in front of you and you add veges and different meats to the broth as you please. you take things out and put things in over the course of the meal and the broth becomes really good. Usually you just eat the thing out of the broth with a bit of soy sauce and wasabi but here you wrap it up with some fresh salad in a rice paper roll. So amazing.
Another night out for Fiona and Lisa's birthdays starting off with Chimaek - Chicken and Beer (maekju). The statue behind Johnny was strangely life-like and creeped me out by staring at me for most of the dinner.
Johnny decided to try on Fiona's shoes. He's going to hate me for posting this but I thought it was hilarious.
Fiona back at Monkey Beach!!!
Me and Jess :)
I have recently christened Hanneke as Funneke. You can probably see why with this photo :)
Birthday girls!
Harry, his girlfriend Sun Joo and me!
So as you have probably seen from numerous updates, I decided to get a new tattoo!! These are the photos from the start to the end of the 5 session process. Ridiculous I know but apparently I have very fragile skin. Poor guy only thought it would take two sessions.
Finished line work
Second session shading
Third session...
Fourth session....
Finally finished!!!!
This little cutie kept me company for my last session.
So this is a real problem here. Couple dressing. Seriously. WTF. WHY??? But honestly they will wear the same shoes, same pants, same tops and jackets, same hats, same backpacks or sometimes handbags EVEN THE SAME DAM SUNGLASSES. Take your happy couplely selves and FUK OFF! They also celebrate every potential anniversary possible. 1 week, 1 month, 100 days, 3 months, 6 months, 200 days etc. Well fuk you guys. I'm at 1947 days bitches!
So these are songpyeon. You make them for Chuseok which is the Korean thanksgiving. If you can make them pretty, it means that you are going to have a beautiful daughter. I, clearly, and am going to have fugly children. They are rice cake on the outside with a range of fillings but mostly have sugar and seaseme seeds in the middle and then are steamed. When made properly they are quite nice.
These are a little better but following are what you are actually supposed to make them look like...
I made these awful songpyeon at the place where I take Korean lessons and we all came and had beer and ate together to celebrate thanksgiving. It was a lot of fun and quite hilarious watching the koreans eat our songpyeon and try and say something nice about it.
We had a Chuseok celebration at school as well and all the kids came to school in traditional hanbok. SO FRIGGEN CUTE!!!
One of the activities for the day was to have Korean wrestling - Ssirseum. Below are Paul and Kevin play by play in wrestling.
This is Ellie and Lynn. So cute!!!
Then we made songpyeon again. Even the kids songpyeon were better than mine....
Chuseok is also a bit of gift giving time as well. Above is some super expensive beef that one of my kids mum's gave me. Below is a 5kg box of apples. I also got a big box of ginseng tea which I should really try sometime soon. I totally regifted the meat and apple to the family because it was WAY to much for me and my tiny fridge and freezer.
The night before Chuseok was Eric's birthday and we had dinner followed by a trip to Bundang to the local Monkey Beach!!! We all tried to climb the pole and ring the bell at the top to win a bottle of vodka, but we failed miserably. THEN...they brought out the basket ball hoop and it was all on!!! The ball was super bouncy and only just fit through the hole but BAM! I won myself a bottle of vodka. After I shared my vodka with almost everyone in the bar (I knew i would get hammered if I started drinking it on my own..) I still got really drunk and I lost everyone and then my passport. That night was the first time I really felt homesick and overwhelmed but the gravity of my decision to move to a country where they didn't speak my language and I didn't have my person (Jae) with me to help me. So I drunkenly cried and it wasn't pretty. lol.
Family Chuseok time! This is the wee altar thing with the food etc to offer to the ancestors and pray from them. We all bow to the food and what not. It was interesting but I pretty much had no idea what was going on. I was quite honoured to be a part of it.
Then we went to the the family burial place and gave offerings of food etc to Apa's parents (buried under the mound).
This is a sweet drink with puffed rice in it. Sounds sounds gross but is actually really refreshing.
This is something that I have found really interesting here. There are often big abandoned apartment projects that have just stopped in the middle of construction due to going bankrupt. This is not something I have seen very often at all in New Zealand so when I see these massive structures just abandoned it really intrigues me.
So this is a rack at Uniqlo in the girls section. Almost all the tops in Uniqlo already have built in boobs. It's quite frustrating. I do not need bigger boobs.
Hanneke and I found Meat Kingdom Bar in Bundang one night after our lesson. Great find as it's all you can eat BBQ!!!! mostly pork but I found beef too!!!
Spent a productive day in Incheon at the Korea Tattoo Festival. I came away with a new gem on my tooth which fell off only a few days later :(, a replacement piercing for the one in the back of my neck that has also fallen out :( and an Harry Potter tattoo!!! Thankfully that one hasn't fallen off though!
Always fun finding rip off things in Korea. This is wolverine advertising what I can only imagine is a skewer restaurant??? My friend translated the speech bubble as "I will poke everything".....
Another set of interest spelling, Photato. Those Photatos were pretty good though.
This is the local expensive bar in Gwangju. It's also really nice though. come with the fun painting below. Surprisingly, doesn't appear to be a gay bar.
Went to the Killers with Jess, Hanneke and Fiona and it was such a good concert. We were so close even though we were in the back row. Something that I've noticed here is that concert tend to be more intimate which I think is really cool and you feel far more involved.
Cute kids writing! "Happy as a clam"
This was a gift from one of my kindergarten kids, Ellie. She's adorable and I get 'I love you' notes most days now :) so adorable.
Field Trip Day!!! Went to the agricultural park in Yongin. It was freezing cold and it rained. But the lunch was amazing!!! Made by the parents and there was SO much of it! And some of it was so cute!
These were in the museum part of the park. they are pictures and patterns made with bugs pinned to a board. I'm not sure if pretty of weird...
Frozen beer!!!
See Jae's post for more info about this restaurant we went to. It was so much fun being a food snob again!
I'm getting pretty good at eating some strange things but the look of the texture on this piece of stomach just about made me gag. I just couldn't do it...
Field trip to the fire station!!!
This was a kid from a different school but I loved his outfit. Full on tiger stripe adidas tracksuit!
Halloween costume! I made children cry. It was awesome. The parents loved it.
Most of the kids were dressed up but this wee man was the cutest. A little boy fairy!
This was the day I saw Jae off at the airport so I took of all my makeup from the day and went to the airport, then got on the train and went to Hongdae to check into my hostel and redid all my makeup and Hannekes as well before heading to Itaewon to wander around and check out the different costumes. This guy is dressed as a character from the popular messaging service in Korea called kakao talk. Yes it's a bum for a head. Weird I know but it was so awesome. The people on the street kept stopping me and Hanneke for photos which made me feel so good about how well I had done our make up :)
Anderson Cooper and a Soju Bottle. These two guys were awesome.
Right, so if you made it to the end of my crazy long blog post, I would like to apologise for my absence. I will make a more concerted effort to put up posts more frequently.
Much love!!!
Ally
