We start at 10:30 for a month

Hell0 everyone,

We are doing great. We will be going to Jeju-si for the week-end and will celebrate at the foreigner bar in Jeju-si. We hope to party all night and ketch the sunrise in the morning at the beach and have a fire. It should be interresting. Then we will go and sleep until 2pm and wake up to call are family and friends at home.

School is fun. They have changed the schedule for the month of January since our students do not have school at the moment . Instead of starting at 3 pm, we start at 10:30 am. It was nice this morning, we got to hear the birds this morning and the sun was shining off the ocean. A beautiful morning. It is really nice today, around 10 degres celsius. It will change our schedule a bit but it will be nice for a month. The other big change is that we will teach one other class 5 days a week. It will be nice to have the same students everyday. Last month, we saw our students every other day.

We are enjoying ourselves. It is really beautiful here. It's nice to be in a warmer country for the winter.

Have a good new years.

Miss you all

Christian and Karina

The Temples - X-mas eve

Helle everyone,

On X-mas eve, we wanted to go up the mountain and try our snowshoes but the roads were closed off due to all the snow we got the week before. We tried them out in a field near by. I think they will work although I have a few adjustments to make on the stapping mechanisme.

So instead of going up to the mountain, Karina, John and I decided to go visit two buddist temples near Seogwipo. The first temple was under construction and they have completed a building. They are planning to build an open yard surrounded by some buildings. You can see in the pics a building that is not painted yet. This is new and you could smell the fresh would. In the other pics, you see the existing temple. They are about 300 meters away from each other. The court yard will be in between this two buildings. The colors on the temple are amazing. It was really beautiful. There were paintings on every wall and there was a big budda inside. It was really cool.

Then we decided to go to the other temple. This temple is the biggest in Asia. It must have six floors in it. The first floor is housing. You walk past this housing and then climb up to a terrase where there is an open courtyard. In this court yard, you have the top four floors of the temple. In this temple, you see a three story budda carved all out of wood. It was amazing, we were able to go to the third and seond floor. There were millions of little statues on each floor. It was really spectucular. THERE ARE MORE PICS ON THE OTHER SITE. So we walk around everywhere and enjoyed everything. There was a huge drum and bell on the site. They have a orange plantation and a pond in front of the the temple. It is an amazing site.

I want to go there on the buddas birthday and see all the monks and people praying to there god. It will be amazing to see it all. There was a monk playing music in the temple when we visited it. We will go back. It was amazing.

We are so lucky to be here.

Talk to you all soon.

Karina and Christian

Merry Christmas!!!

Hey everyone!

Well Christmas has past, and we are back to school! Our first Christmas together was different without having our families around, but we still had a wonderful time.

On Christmas Eve we had some friends ove for a pork BBQ. We got this great little BBQ from one of our friends here, so we set it up in our laudry room/ sun room/ breakfast nook/ balcony area and Christian went to work! The meal was great! We played cards, listened to Christmas music, and feasted on cheesecake...a definite rarity here. The 25th was spent rather lazily. Christian and I exchanged gifts and munched on tangerines and chocolate all morning. I can tell you buying Christmas gifts, particularly clothing, for Christian here was near to impossible...but I managed to find a nice big wooly hoodie for him! And of course he spoiled me. I have the most gorgeous bouquet of roses, lilies and these huge white flowers in my kitchen.

Anyways, we ended up venturing to the Hyatt beach in the afternoon of the 25th. With the sun still high in the sky we threw the disk around, built a fire, and then Christian and Matt ventured into the ocean! Those crazy men! After 15 minutes in the water they came out ather blue, but with huge smiles! How many people can say they went swimming in the Pacific Ocean on Christmas Day?

Though we are back to the good ol' schedule at work we had a fantastic relaxing weekend! We hope you all had great holidays.

We love you and miss you!
Karina and Christian

Joyeux Noel

Bonjour tout le monde,

Nous avons reparer le blog et maintenant vous pouvez faire des commentaires.

Aujourd'hui, nous sommes aller a la plage et avons faites un feu. De plus, nous avons lance le disc pour un bout de tant. De plus, je suis alle jouer dans l'eau.

Au revoir

Hello everyone,

We have fixed the blog and know you can make comments.

Merry Christmas.

As for Christmas, we went to the beach and had a fire. It was amazing. We even went for a swim. We will put a few pics up this week.

Later

Christian and Kartina

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR

JOYEUX NOEL ET BONNE ANNEE

On vous manque tous. We miss you all.

The round-about

Hello everyone,

This is a pic of the rotary in the middle of Seogwipo. The way people drive on this thing is incredible. It is pretty much the person with most guts that goes first. There are lights before the rotary but once your in it's everyone for themselved. Skooters fly around this place at incredible speeds. There is an incredible amount of cars that travel through this intersection in the day. The ocean is to the south of this place and we must cross the round-about if we want to go to the daily market.

Talk to you all soon.

Christian and Karina

The Snow Storm

Hello everyone,

So last night, a snow storm hit all of Korea. I heard on the news that in some spots they got 50 cm of snow. It was so bad that our school decide to close early. So we finished at 6pm instead of 8:30 pm. Us and some of our fellow teachers were so happy that we decided to celebrate and went our to eat. There was an inch of snow on the streets and really windy. We went to a restaurant and shared a hugh plate of food and had drinks till 9pm. Then we went home and watch a movie. It was weird to get all this done in one day. Usually, we rush home and have dinner then maybe watch a movie. We had so much time. It was really nice.

Today, I walked around a bit and it was really wet. The cars still have there chains on. I put a picture up showing the chains. When I got to school, the kindergarden students where singing x-mas caroles to everyone. It was really cute.

Finally, I have completed the snowshoes. I hope they work. If the weather is nice, we are going to go up to Mount Halla and try them out on the week-end. I hope the PVC is stiff enough to hold up my weight. We hope to go with our friend John, the New Zealander.

Bye

Christian and Karina

This week

Hello everyone,

We are having a great time here. We are having a snow storm today but I heard you guys were hit with a massive snow storm around Ottawa in the past few days. Here the snow melts in a day. Yesterday, it was so nice, the sun was shinning and it felt like the fall in Ottawa.

The snow is falling and we are getting ready for Christmas. We have Friday off and are hopefully if the weather is nice, we will go back up to Mount Halla. We have completed some snowshoes to go and explore the top of the mountain. The shoes are very similar to the originals made by the Native Indians. They are made of PVC plastic and rope. I hope they work. I will put some pics up of our little experiment. It should be fun.

As for Christmas, we hope to go to the beach and have a fire and maybe go for a swim. We are having friends over from Christmas Eve and hopefully have a few games and enjoy each others compagny. On x-mas, we will take it easy in the morning and await or make phone calls home. We will have breakfast and open some presents. We have a Christmas tree to put the presents under. It will be nice. Then in the afternoon, I want to go to the beach. I hope it will be nice.

These next two days, we will be celebrating x-mas with kids at school. It should be interresting. Korea celebrates x-mas since in the past 30 years, 35 % have converted to Christianity and of course capitalisme has had its toll. This is the first x-mas from our friends and family. We will miss you all.

JOYEUX NOEL MERRY CHRISTMAS

Talk to you all soon,

Christian and Karina

The week-end

Hello everyone,

As stated in my last post, we went to Jeju city on Saturday. It was a little rough since we were out till 3 am the night before having drinks at this club called Havana. The club is pretty small and serves beer, some whisky and some tequila. We had a few rounds and made our way home early saturday morning. After a good eight hours sleep, we got in our friends car and drove to Jeju.

The drive to Jeju was a little scary a times because there were drift white outs on the road. We took it slow. The buses were flying in the snow. The cars would take it a little slower. There were cars stranded on the side of the main road. It was scary but at the same time really beautiful with all the snow. I wish I had my camera to take a few pics of the country side but we forgot it before leaving. We made it to Jeju without any problems and went shopping for a few things. We went to this big store that sold everything and were able to find a bunch of things that we needed for the house. I did a bunch of x-mas shopping and then we went to get a bite to eat. There was a McD's by the store but we skipped that and went for some chinese.

We were going to leave but on our way out, the roads were crazy busy. It had snowed and the roads were full of black ice everywhere. We had difficulty going up slight inclines. Car were spinning everywhere. They don't have winter tires here. They use chains. So there were cars sliding everywhere and the others where travelling slow due to their chains. After taking 40 minutes to try and get out of the city and looking at a hugh hill in front of us, we decided to turn back and head to a hotel. We had at least a 40 minute drive and the roads were full of black ice. Cars would try to stop on a hill and slide half way down. Plus the Koreans on Jeju don't know how to drive. There was this truck that was fishtaling everywhere. He was not going anywhere but his wheels were travelling at 50 km/h. %&$(* dangerous. He had the peddle to the metal. If he would have hit a dry patch, he could have killed someone. With all these crazy koreans on the road and the weather, we decided to stay in our rooms all night and have a few drinks and play cards. We got a really cheap room and it was a lot warmer then our own house. It was worth it.

Sunday, after taking a nice hot shower and watching a movie, we drove home. There were cars stuck everywhere on the highway. Some places had cars that were stuck in four feet high drifts. We were glad we decided to stay at a hotel. We heard that the whole island had got this freak storm but by the time we got to Seogwipo most of the snow was melting and the ice was almost gone.

Once we got home, we put up our Christmas tree and walked around the market for a bit. Then that night, we went to sing Christmas caroles with some friends. It was interresting to say the least. You must remember that I can't sing at all. The good thing is that there were Christmas treats after all the singing. It was fun and we had some friends in the band.

Now, we are back at school for four days. We have friday off so it is a for day week. Sweet

This week, we are going to try and build snow shoes to go and play on the mountain on friday. We want to get up the hill and build a quincy for the day. We are thinking of bringing plastic saucers and going sliding down a few parts of the mountain. It shold be interresting.

We will let you know how it goes.

Sunday is Christmas. We are going to take it easy and hopefully go to the beach for a bit and have a fire.

Talk to you soon.

Christian and Karina

Apartment - Teal and Pink

Hello,

Here are a few pics of our apartment. The complexe where you find our building is called Minu Aparte and we are on the 5th floor of this building. There are no elevators but the steps are good exercise. As you can see, I have put up a picture of our kitchen, the bathroom and the doorway to the bedrooms. The coordination of colors is pretty horrible but the apartment is bigger then our apartment on Daly. We are lucky to have a bathtub, it's uncommon to have one. We love the teal trime with pink wallpaper and fake wood floors. It's linolium. The good thing is that there is a balcony and a washing machine. There is no stove but there are gas burners for cooking and a microwave. The apartment has windows on both side so it will be good during the summer but during the winter it is a little drafty. We do have a view of the ocean and we can see the mountain from the roof.

The apartment is heated with hot water under the floor. It does not work too well but there is a propane heater in the apartment to keep us warm. We are not using the radiant floor heating to keep the cost down during the winter so we are always dressed in layers.

We also have a TV with VCR and the fridge is in the living room. There is plenty of furniture. We have a second bedroom for our guests. That's really nice. So we will but up more pics of our apartment when we have put up all our pics around the apartment and it becomes more like home.

As for this week-end, we are going to Jeju-si on Saturday. Jeju-si is the biggest city on the island and the commercial hub on the island. We are going to get a few things for Christmas and visit the big city(350 000). Sunday, hopefully we will go up the mountain again. There is a 10 km hike up the other side of the mountain. It all depends on the weather. It has been cold all week and snowing too. There must be a bunch of snow on the mountain now.

Talk to you soon,

Christian and Karina

The Market

Today, we went to the 5-day market. The market come through town on the 4,9,14,19,24,29 of every month. At this market, you can buy pretty much anything. We bought pillows for our apartment and our friends bought curtains. We also got a cool looking cactus. I
There are different sections all over the market. There are the fruit, vegetable, clothes, shoes, fish, pet, furniture and snack bar sections. These are pics mostly of the food section. There are old women selling all types of vegies like carrots, broc, onions, lettuce, etc. The fish section is very smelly and you can get all kind of fish and seafood. It was really busy today. It was a lot of fun. Some day, we will buy some fish and try it at home.

Can someone tell me what to do with dried beans. We can only get beans at the market and want to make a chili but don't know what to do with them when they are dried. Please send us an email.

Their is also a daily market in the center of town. We can also go there to get food if need be. It's cheaper to get food at the 5-day market. We love to go to this market and see everything.

Talk to you soon,

Christian and Karina

My students

So these are a few of my students. They are very smart. I enjoy teaching them as well as trying to keep them under control. We are having a lot of fun and they are learning more english every day. Sometimes they can be a pain but they have been at school all day and then come to english class. I would be a pain too if I had to go through school from 8 to 7 at night.

Secondly, I put more PICTURES up on the other site.

Later

Christian

Sunday - The falls and the ocean

So Sunday, we went to see these falls by the ocean. It was really beautiful to see them in the sun. It was a little chilly by the water but we stayed there for an hour and watch the ships and women fishing. The women dive everyday for albalone. They make a living in their wetsuits. They are amazing. They can dive very deep with no oxygen. It is a dying profession. They were amazing. They filled their nets and then sold the catch to tourists or at the market. We hope to goo swimming there in the summer.

One day at the ocean, the other at the top of the mountain. What a beautiful place, full of extraordinary landscape. Please come and visit, we will show you all the different beaches.

Bye

Christian an Karina

Mount Halla

Hello everyone,

We climbed Mount Halla on the week-end. It was a lot of fun. There was two feet of snow at 1700 meters. The top is at an elevation of 1950m. We will be going up another trail next time to make it to the top. As you can see, there was a lot of snow. We were not the only ones going up to the top of the mountain. The Koreans where hiking the mountain in the thousands. It was incredible. We hope to go the top next week as well. At the top, there is a shack were you can get hot water, coffee and soup with noodles. On the way down, we were sliding all the way down. We took one path up and another down and then took a bus to get back to John's car. It was amazing. Next week, we are going up another trail.

Later

Christian

This is the mountain

Hello,

This is the mountain we hope to hike on the week-end. We hope to have some nice picks for you guys next week.

See you guys soon, we are always thinking about you.

Later

Christian

Having fun so far

Hello everyone,

First of all, for some reason the comments on this blog are not working. We can't fix it because the blog only comes up in Korean and I don't understand anything. We will try to get it fixed in the next few days if we can get a hold of an english CPU. Please send us emails at our email addresses. We will let you know when we have made the changes.

As for life on the island, we are really enjoyed it so far. We have been eating a bunch of tangerines. The city of Seogwipo and the island of Jeju are famous for their tangerines and they have just come into season. It's awesome, we will have fresh tangerines till january and maybe february.

Teaching is fun too, the kids are nice and for some reason they are scared of me and listen. Who knows how long that will last. I have some very smart kids in class and it is very fun to be with them for an hour. I'm starting to know everyones name and it helps to keep control. The one class that I am having trouble with is my adult class. It is a very beginner class and I have not taught before so I hope they are learning a few things. It's hard to get them talking in class. They are afraid of making mistakes.

One thing, which is fun, at times, is giving the kids english names. I have named one kid Bob and another Joe. So by the end, they'll be abunch of korean kids named after my buddies. I think it's funny. I have this kid named Double Oh in one of my classes. He is very smart. They all pick up english very quick.

We hope to go up the mountain this week-end. It should be fun.

Talk to you soon.

Christian and Karina