Lasagna Chips and Borocay!

I guess it has been a while since our last post!

Before we get started on telling you about our warm and delicious trip to the Philippines, we would like to share with you the first taste of "XL, Non-Frying, Lasagna chips".

Okay. So there are two packages inside the actual chip container. Everything is extra packaged here.

Brendan is opening the chips. Our first observations:
They look like thick ruffles.
They smell like stinky, cheese chips.
They taste like crackers. Hmm. I guess that's the Non-Frying part.

I like them!
Brendan says they're pretty good.

They don't taste like lasagna though. Well, maybe a little, you know the cheese part. And lasagna isn't fried.

Alright, alright. Onto the fun stuff.

We arrived early at the airport, and the really nice lady at the Korean Air desk moved our seats up from economy to first class! Woo Hoo!! We were pleasantly surprised when the flight attendant directed us to go up the stairs. Here are some photos of the likely once in a lifetime experience.

Hooray for ice cream and leg room!









After our 5 hour flight to Manilla, we spent the next 9 hours sleepiong on various benches in the airport. Luckily, the weather was warm, because all of the benches are outside. They weren't very comfortable.










Our one hour flight to Kalibo was pleasant. We had exit seats on the plane! Horay for leg room! Kalibo airport is a tiny place in the middle of nowhere. We got to actually walk off the plane like you see in the movies. It was warm and we were happy to change out of our runing shoes and into our sandals! We were ready for the beach, but we had to endure a 2 hour, CRAZY van ride. We thought the drivers were terrifying in Korea! It was like a rollercoaster ride, without safety bars. The driver was also listening to techno music the whole time, making it a lot more stressful.


After the van ride, we took a small ferry over to Borocay Island. It was great! It was only 20 minutes, but I felt safe. Well, except for getting on and off the boat. We had to balance on a small plank of wood from the dock to the boat, but there were lots of porters ready to hold your hand and pull you over to the boat. They thought our lack of balance was funny. I'm glad we could provide a little laughter in their day!





After the ferry ride we took a short tricycle ride to our hostel. A tricycle is a motorcycle with a pretty big side car attached. Our hostel was a pleasant surprise! It was called, Surfer's Home. It's on the windy side of the island so it is favoured by kite surfers.









Most of the week we spent swimming in the ocean, relaxing on the beach, drinking San Miguel Beer, or fruity cocktails. We did some Kayaking one day for a couple of hours. That was fun. I think we did well. We also took a sailboat ride. It was a small bodied sailboat. Okay, picture this:

A narrow boat, about 2 feet across and 20 feet long.
There are 2 wings on each side, connected by a bridge from the centre.
Between the bridge and the centre is a netting. We sat on the netting, while the boat soared through the water! It was scary sometimes, because if the wind caught the wing, it would lift one side of the boat into the air.

Okay. So our description isn't very good. Here is a picture of the kind of boat we are talking about.






Mmm Food. Sandwiches. Thai! Salad! Fruit! Oh, the fruit. Fresh mango, papaya, bananas, pineapple....everyday! You could find almost any kind of restaurant you wanted to. There was this one, "Irish Place," called The Hobbit House. There were pictures from Lord of the Rings, and all the wait staff were little people. It was kind of strange, but Brendan says, "They had Guiness, and live music!" They didn't have any Irish food though.













There were lots of stray animals everywhere. Dogs, cats, roosters. Soooooo many roosters. Cock fighting is big there. It's on TV and they sell key chains that boast it. Roosters were numbered and tethered everywhere. I think there were lots of fleas too. I woke up one morning with a number of, I'm sure, flea bites. There were also lots of lizards and frogs. Big beetles and spiders. And lots of palm trees.

The water in the ocean was so warm sometimes. It felt like a bath! It was pretty amazing. We were so buoyant, and the salt was really therapeutic, though it could really sting the eyes!

By the end of the week we were ready to fly on home. It was a nice place, but strange in that it really is a resort island. You know, pampered, rich visitors everywhere. It was hard to watch the small children working, or picking through garbage when there was so much gluttony at the same time. But, it was a vacation, and an exciting one!

Photos of our Work Dinner with our Delicious New Camera!

Well, hello there!

So, we found ourselves a beautiful new camera at Yongsan this past weekend! (Thanks mom and dad, and Sonya!) It's a Nikon, D40. You should look it up on google. Its a digital SLR! I can use old Nikon lenses on it, too! Holy cow. It feels really nice to take photos with.

When we were buying it, we kept saying no to the sales guy. He really wanted to make the sale, so he kept knocking money off and giving us free stuff. So, we ended up with a great deal!

Mmm. Tonight, the owner of the school took the teachers out for a Christmas dinner, at a traditional Korean restaurant. They ordered a traditional, "southern region" meal. Mmm. Lot's of fish, oysters, jiggae, side dishes galore, and the best kimchi ever. All of our co workers appreciate that we like to try new Korean foods. They say most foreign teachers they work with don't like it at all. It's delicious!

Here are some photos of the meal and the restaurant. I am sure they will tell a better story than what I write about it.


This is one half of the table!








Here is the other half of the table!





Look at all the dishes after we're done eating. It was a feast. I feel a little guilty, actually. There was so much wasted food. Apparently the Government here has been trying to slowly phase out traditional Korean meals because of all the wasted food, but the people here love their food too much!

Haircuts, mold, and moving!!

So, we've done a few things today that we've been putting off. This afternoon, we both got the courage up to get ourselves some haircuts. Whoo, yeah!

It was a little daunting, knowing that they wouldn't really understand anything we said (and they really, really didn't), and that we would be in the same boat. However, we simply couldn't put it off any longer.

Brendan: we made a plan that I would get one first, while Tara tried to find a picture to show them. She was more worried than I about ending up with a terrible haircut, and I didn't mind being the guinea pig. The salon is hilariously enough on the top floor of our most favourite place, E-mart. It's a pretty fancy place, on the floor housing the "culture center" of E-Mart which also includes a book store. I walked in, indicated awkwardly that I'd like a haircut, and then just followed the lead of the equally confused and uncertain employees. They washed my hair, and my ears for some weird reason, then took me to a chair and got the only male hair-dresser, a guy with crazy spiky hair that spoke a very small amount of English. It was probably the longest haircut I've ever had, but he took his time and made sure he did a good job. My only problem is that he was a little aggressive with the comb, and made my scalp hurt a little (when he was trimming the back with an electric trimmer, it kind of felt like he was scrubbing pots and pans or something), but it's a minor issue. It only cost 10 000 won, and this seemed like a pretty high end place. I then waited for Tara while enjoying some coffee and reading a Korean Cosmo Men magazine.

Tara: When I finally found a simple haircut I liked, I put down my complimentary coffee and asked if I could please have a haircut too. Everyone in the salon ran around like crazy after I asked. I have no idea why, I just stood there looking awkward. Three ladies asked me if I needed a shampoo, by rubbing their heads a lot and saying "shampoo." I said sure, and was led into a dark room with 3 sinks. The lady did a really nice shampooing job! The scalp massage was totally worth the 15 000 won I paid for the whole experience! After the shampoo, I was brought over to the salon chair where 2 women started to blow dry my hair. I had to control my laughter, I had never experienced 2 hairdressers at once. (That kind of sounds perverse.) Anyway, they cut my hair really quickly, and then straightened it too! All of this took about a half hour! Crazy. It was the best haircut ever.

So what else is new? Well, as we probably mentioned, there was (and likely still is) a mold problem in the apartment. It started around the condensation soaked windows, then spread to the corner behind where our clothes rack was in the bedroom. They finally came in to see it, and then blamed us for sealing up the windows with plastic and not ventilating the apartment enough (as though it's our fault that there is no insulation and no exhaust fans except a crappy one in the kitchen over the stove). They said they'd start work on thursday, to get rid of the moldy wallpaper, insulate the wall with some wooden boards (???), and put more wallpaper up, but they couldn't do it until Friday.

On top of this, we're STILL having trouble with paying utilities, as the water bill is paid by the landlord and divided up between the entire building based on how many people live in each apartment (so conservation is next to useless), and we're supposed to pay the landlord who doesn't speak English and who keeps trying to speak to us in Korean. It's really annoying, and we told the school how upset we were with everything so they found us a new apartment the same freaking day! It was amazing, and kind of crazy. We haven't seen it, and it's only a studio, but we'll have our own utility bills, and it should be a lot warmer, cheaper, more efficient, and closer to work (possible within walking distance). Wooohooo! No more life-threatening bus rides everyday!

Oh, and I (Brendan) saw a dermatologist for the second time again about some red sores on my fingers and toes. He believes it's chilblains, something basically like frostbite caused by cold and humidity (hmm...), and told me to keep my extremities warm and dry, and to apply some ointment a few times per day. We'll see what happens. Maybe a tropical vacation is the answer? I think so...

Here are some more pictures of our apartment. It was a nice, cozy little place when it was warm outside.

Happy Suwon

Yesterday we went to Suwon! "Happy a harmonious city" as the tourism signs repetitively informed us. We went to see the Hwaseong Fortress, a rather large complex in the heart of the city. Most all of the original fortress wall is still there, and the entire city used to be enclosed within the walls. There's also a palace at the foot of Mt. Paldalsan, which we enjoyed exploring before heading on the tour around the fortress walls via a dragon-shaped trolley, which took us through the city on a path around about half of the remaining wall.

The fortress and palace were built in the 18th century, and today are one of Korea's 5 UNESCO World Heritage sights. We'll have to go back, as there wasn't nearly enough time to take in everything. Good thing it's so damn cheap: seeing the wall is free, as it just runs through the city, and the palace is only 15oo won. The trolley ride was an extra 1500 won, meaning that with the train ride there and back from Suwon, and the bus to the fortress area, the whole day minus dinner was just over 5ooo won! With dinner and a McDonald's Ice Cream cone (oh so traditional), it was around 9000 won each. Crazy!!!

We were joined by our friends, Tom and Jess, and some American friends of theirs named Doug and Annie. All in all, it was a good day, and a nice change from sitting inside watching Six Feet Under (although that's how we spent this afternoon).

Only 13 days until Paradise! Here are some pictures. Enjoy!

I want a sandwich!

A nice, juicy, big sandwich with tomato, bacon, lettuce, and mounds of delicious mozzarella cheese, with a huge greek salad on the side, teaming with feta cheese and black olives, served with a lemon wedge...

Dear god, why do we torture ourselves?

You'd think it would be a simple matter of finding the ingredients and making the damn thing, but alas, it's not so simple after all.

If any of you science-type people want to work on sending us a few perfectly preserved meals, we'd be eternally grateful.

For now, we'll settle on .... something else.

Cooking.

Hey Everybody!

So Friday was the cooking day we were totally looking forward to (not). It was exactly how we imagined; we were totally in charge of babysitting all day while our supervisor fucked off early. Oh, and what made it worse, was they made the teacher they fired the week before, train the new teacher! The morning meeting was a disaster. To make a long story short, I (Tara) told the principal that it was offensive that her hired supervisor never listened to me and it was totally offensive that they want me to "try harder" in the classroom because two kindergartens (the brattiest of brats) dropped out. Personally, I'm relieved that I don't have to deal with the bullshit of those two spoiled kids and their parents. I will not reward bad behaviour, especially when I am not allowed to discipline the kids. I am somehow expected to control the class by making them sing songs they don't care about. All I can say is the glass of cheap beer I had last night made it all better. Oh, and thoughts of the Philippines!

Perhaps I was a little bitter because a man on the street was chasing some high school boys, telling them to go stand by the "yongo" people. (english). He ran to hit one of the boys but hit me instead. He kept yelling at us and made big X's in the air infront of us. This kind of thing is scary.

Today has been a good day so far. Brendan and I went for a nice long walk on a mountain this morning. It's quiet there now. Nobody here likes the "cold." It's been pretty nice out. No snow. No cold winds, like we are used to. The leaves are all brown now, and there are still some attached to the trees on the hills. They actually hire people to take the leaves off of the trees on the streets. There are a lot of strange jobs around here. Whenever I see it, I call it "job creation," because there are so many people here. It's probably how they keep the unemployment rate so low, having so many random jobs. What are these random jobs, you ask? Well, sweeping all the roads in the morning with a very small, plastic broom, holding signs for hours, bowing at the doors of stores, and women all dressed up wearing sashes walking around for hours.


Hmm. Here are some pictures from cooking day. The kids are cute. That's what made it all okay. We made, dok-po-ki. It's really easy to make. You just add rice cake (big pieces of rice gluten), fishcake, cabbage, onions, carrots, chili powder, chili sauce, and starch syrup to boiling anchovy broth. Its okay to eat. Its a little heavy, so it is good as a side dish.