By Popular demand...

I have been asked to remove the BUSH. What do you mean guys, you don't like to see the BUSH when you're checking mindless blogs at work with your coffee?? hahhaha

Land of the Bush

Being in Korea for almost 6 months now I have seen my fair share of naked Korean women. In the change room at the gym, the change room at the pool and of course, the jimjilbong where everyone's free to be you and me the naked version.

I thought I should inform everyone, as I have nothing better to do, that Korean women, and men apparently, do NOT take care of their hair south of the border. These are the BIGGEST bushes I've EVER seen! It's hanging down, you could braid it, it's in this huge V shape and they don't care! And they look at all us whities with our nicely trimmed, shaved and waxed bushes in confusion. How could we possibly fuction without having all of the extra padding and warmth that the huge bush must provide.

Yet another strange encounter in Korea. Maybe I should go to Brazil.

Bored and Lonely in Mokpo

Winter vacation is upon the public school system here in Korea which means many of the waygooks are heading back home to Canada for a visit or jetting off to somewhere exciting and warm. That person is not me. Darren's time in Korea ended last friday with a tearful goodbye at the airport. IT sucked and continues to suck. So I'm here in Mokpo alone and quite bored. There is no school until Feb. 12th and then it's only for one week. We will return to normal at the beginning of March. Until then I have to find ways to keep myself busy. I am hoping to get out of Korea even if it's just for a week and would also like to go to the island of Jeju-Do, Korea's Hawaii.

Hope everyone's life is more exciting than mine is at the moment!

oxoxo

The Biggest Korean

So we're watching K-1 fighting the other night, a combo of punching the crap out of each other and kicking each other in the shins, and saw what has to be the biggest Korean man ever. He must be almost 7 feet tall and is just a beast. I think of him as the Korean Andre the Giant. We continued to watch the fight or should we just call it the big Korean kicking the shit out of the smaller guy. The smaller guy did get in a few good punches but most of the time he was just running into the big Koreans right jab. Was quite funny. It was like Rocky four and the big
Korean was Drago. Only in this story the smaller guy got his ass kicked instead of triumphing.

Merry Ukrainian Christmas!

Yesterday was Ukrainian Christmas and even though I wasn't able to make the 12 course traditional meal like last year, I invited some of my good friends over for some chili, veggies and some green slop that Darren made.

We thought that the canned asparagus we bought at Costco would be better than what it turned out to be. Mushy, soft and lacking the taste of real asparagus. Darren attempted to spice it up a little by adding some red peppers, some leafy greens, ginger root etc. Although it tasted quite good, it was visually unappetizing.

We closed the evening off with hearing everyone's travel plans and exchanging poo stories. Krista's took top spot.

Until next Ukrainian Christmas, have a great perogie filled year!

Things you DON'T do in front of your potential future Mother in law

Rip a huge FART!

Both Arlene and I are in the kitchen, she's doing dishes and I'm on the phone with mom and without hesitation I let the biggest, loudest fart go. Arlene turns and says "Oh my", shocked by what she has just heard. Apparently I had forgotten that fact that I had company and that yes Sloane, you should maybe act or at least pretend to be somewhat polite and lady like!
Guess Arlene doesn't have to worry about me NOT being myself around her but is also probably questioning her son's taste in not so lady like ladies.

Great day

Well I think it's only fair that after the gong show road trip yesterday that we deserve a nice, relaxing day. We started the day with taking the car to see my boys. My big handsome dog and the new puppy. I took them a bunch of bedding that I don't need, played, cuddled, fresh water, real dog food and cleaned their pens. I love them so much.
Then we toured around Mokpo for a bit and found a nice spot to take some photos. Next we headed East towards a town called Yeongam. There we came across a few gems that I would never have scene unless we had the car.


First we stopped at something Kim's relics. A man who was a great war hero and had some dealings with that Japanese that were actually positive. The relics were a bunch of temples and it looked as if people were there, monks perhaps, but we didn't see anyone so we felt a little intrusive snooping around. None the less it was beautiful.





We then found this massive tourist site in honor of a great scholar, Wang-In, who taught Chinese characters to the Japanese royal family and was a leader in teaching and practicing of Confucinism and well respected and followed by his peers. This is the largest memorial site I have ever scene and it was very impressive. There were temples and statues and paths and fountains everywhere. The grounds were immaculate and the playing of traditional folk music really tied everything together and made you feel like you were having a true Korean experience. Like the rug in the Big Lebowski, it tied the room together man.


Anyways, it was amazing and was definitely the highlight of the day.

Then we let the road take us wherever. It led us to a not so exciting pottery museum and through many beautiful towns and villages. We saw some lovely birds and this black goat. There were several of them, tied up of course, grazing along the road. They were making noises saying hello, or piss off to me as I took their picture.


We then headed home and headed to the all veggie restaurant for a yummy $8 dollar meal. These are small pieces of deep fried, bean goodness. They are hard to resist!




To end the day we went to the Jimjilbong and Darren and I got beaten up by Koreans with a massage while Arlene scrubbed a layer of skin off in the naked shower area.

It was a great day.

Fuck! My suitcase!

So instead of heading to the lovely island of Jeju-Do we decided to rent a car and go somewhere Darren has NEVER been before... COSTCO! So Arlene takes the train to Daejeon to meet us, not expecting to wait for 2 hours for our arrival.

Why did it take so long?

1. We missed the exit for the Xpressway to Gwangju.

2. We made a wrong turn IN Gwangju that led us about 20 minutes out of town. On the positive, the countryside was beautiful.

3. Ending up on the South side of a town that has about 3 million people when we needed to be in the city center. Come on, how hard could it be to find the Costco? I've been there before!?

4. Stopping and receiving directions from the entire staff of the Highway and Transportation department and being personally directed out of the parking lot to ensure our safe departure. Thanks buddy.
5. Where did you say that Costco was again lady?

After we got the map from Highway, Darren was in charge of leading us to the promised land that has dill pickles, chedder cheese, frozen blueberries and Kashi! oh yeah, and Darren's mom who has been waiting for 2 hours.

Once in Costco, it was smooth sailing. Got everything we needed and were in and out within an hour.

So thinking that all is well and we'll still be able to drive in daylight we were on our way back to Mokpo. After finally reaching the city limits and seeing our highway ahead of us and rush hour traffic behind us we thought we were on our way with shitty lattes in hand.

Until we heard a shriek from the backseat... FUCK! My suitcase!

WHAT!? you're joking right? do you really need that suitcase?

We pull over and Arlene says, "my suitcase, it's at Costco behind the desk". Oh my god! we all just started to laugh. We turned the car around and headed back into rush hour traffic. Little did we know that this was not the worst point of the ride home.

After some cursing and finally figuring out our way back to Costco, we were back on the road with the suitcase and the new set of flannel sheets that Arlene decided she HAD to have from her second trip to Costco. At this point we have now lost an hour of travel time and it's getting dark fast. We finally get on the highway when Darren then shouts out his nugget of information, we missed the turn off! another FUCK! No problem, we'll just turn around off this road and get back to where we need to be. Hours later we're still on the same road. Feeling like we're going in circles we finally find the road we need to be on but it is definitely NOT the xpressway. This is the scenic route! Up, down, around, back, up repeat. Top speed on this mountain road was about 60km/h. A drive that should have taken us 3 hours, ended up taking about 5.

All together, I spent about 9.5/10 hours driving in Korea. We almost saw the entire country. It was very beautiful and all in all it was a lot of fun. I'm just glad that we made it home in one piece, didn't run into any animals along the road (probably b/c they're all chained up), avoided an accident and only received honks, didn't get a speeding ticket, and best of all... there wasn't any on coming traffic coming towards us when I accidentally started driving in the wrong lane after the lanes split after a construction site!!

Frames frames frames!

On the way home from a yummy Korean dinner I dragged Darren into an eyeglass store that I've been eyeing up since I've been here. I ended up finding 3 pairs of suitable funky frames and could have found many more I'm sure given more time. I only bought 1 pair tonight and it cost me a whopping $65 bucks and they were ready instantly! right there, done, here you go! If you are NOT an eyeglass wearer at home I'll let you know that frames alone are wayyyy more than $65 dollars and I have NEVER purchased a pair of glasses for less than $200 bucks so this was a treat! Since I can't buy any clothes here I plan on coming home with multiple pairs of glasses!

Mom, I wish they could fit your prescription for so cheap! Maybe....

Nail polish/eye drops?

After waking up with a blood shot, puffy, mucus filled eye yesterday morning I decided I better get some eye drops from my pharmacy guy. When I opened the package I wasn't sure if I should paint my nails with it or drop it into my eyeball! Seems that they provide a bit of relief to the mysterious eye problem. This morning, I woke up and it was the other eye. Strange illnesses are present in Mokpo lately, mostly since Darren's arrival!

On the positive, Darren is up and at 'em again. Not 100% but almost there.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Since Darren is still quite sick, New Year's Eve was pretty mellow. Darren had to sleep all day in order to get up enough energy to make it to the movie theater so he could pack away about 5 pounds of popcorn while we watched 007.

Then we just walked around downtown and looked at all of the Korean's stumbling around drunk. This morning we were up at 6am getting our stuff together to climb Yudalsan mountain. It is a Korean tradition to climb a mountain, yell at the top, watch the sunrise and make a wish upon it. There was Korea percussion playing at the bottom of the hill, people serving tea and lots and lots of Koreans out for the hike searching for the best spot to view the rising of the sun.

It turned out to be a bit of a foggy day so it wasn't as picturesque as we hoped but it was still lovely.

We then came home, ate some kimbap (Korean sushi) for breakkie and had a nap. Prety good new year's. I hope everyone has a healthy and happy 2007!