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Hello everyone,

Here are a few picks that I took in the plane. The last ones are of the Rockies. The others are when we flew over the Pacific ocean. We fle directly over Alaska to get to Seoul. During our flight, we took a bunch if picks here and there. It was a long flight but we got to watch 3 movies. We did not sleep much put it wa all worth it. We are having so much fun know. Hope you guys are all well. I was a little happy that the Conservatives only got a minority gouvernment.

Talk to you soon.

Christian and Karina

Last week-end - More Pics are up on the other site

Hello everyone,

We are doing great. We had a nice week-end. On Saturday, we played cricket and rugby with some of the expats. It was a lot of fun and we were exhausted by the end of the day. We played cricket for two hours and then rugby for another three. That night, we met up with our friend John and went to the harbour for a few drinks. We went to this really interesting restaurant in the harbour that had two fireplaces and a tepee outside. We talked all night and enjoyed the fireplace that was right in front of our table. They were serving sweet potato cooked in the fire. It was a place with a lot of spunk. I am sure we will visited more often.

On Sunday, we went to Pyonseon. It is about a 40 minutes bus ride to the east of Seogwipo. It was 2.30 $ each for the bus ride. We then walked down to the ocean and visited the Jeju Folk Village. The village is a museum to show the traditional farming communities and way of life on the island. We sand many beautiful house made of several buildings. The houses were really small compared to what we have now. We were always hitting our heads when trying to look in side. They lived in communal houses where all the members of the household lived in the same houses. You did not leave you community unless you were a woman married to another family then you lived with your husbands family. The eldest son was very important to the people of Jeju island. It was an amazing experience and we learned a lot about the way of life on the island 100 to 200 years ago. There were around 120 buildings in the village. It was really big and we had a lot of fun although we were getting cold by the end since the wind pick up during the afternoon.

Then we went to the beach but it was little to windy to throw the disk and we were cold so we took a few pictures and headed home. We will go back there I am sure because the beach is very flat and perfect to play some beach ulty. The beach is a big inlet and it was low tide so the beach was enormous so I can not wait to go back. The bus ride was good. We were able to heat up. At night, we watched movie and were able to do some practicing of my Korean reading. I do not understand what I am reading but I am getting better.

Wish you all the luck and I am not happy with the outlook of the upcoming elections. I hope we atleast have a minority government.

Talk to you soon,

Christian and Karina

A long week

Hello everyone,

We are doing well. We have had a busy week due to two teachers quitting unexpectidely. We are now doing some overtime but he will be getting paid so it's not that bad. The kids are doing great and we are enjoying ourselves.

This weekend we are going to play some cricket with the Kiwis and then some rugby. We are going to go to a beach on Sunday and explore the east side of the island. Next weekend, we have 5 days off. We are going to go to Jeju city and look around then we will go to Udo Island for the last few days of the long week-end. It should be fun. We will explore the island, have a few hugh feasts and party it up. It should be fun, we will have a big BBQ.

Hope everything is going well. We will be doing a bit of visiting on the island. It will be nice.

Later

Christian and Karina

My cactus

Hello everyone,

Everything is going well. We are having a good time and enjoying ourselves. It is around 10 degrees taday and the sun is shinning.

We went to the market a few weeks ago and got this really cool cactus. I have never had a cactus and would like to know how to take care of it. How many times a month should it be watered? If I transplant it, will it grow and get bigger? It should be pretty easy to keep it alive. It is a cactus.

Hope everyone is doing wll and that you are all having fun.

Bye,

Christian and Karina

I am a millionnaire

Hello everyone,

We are doing very well. This week has been a little hard with the new schedule but everything is going well. It is snowing at the moment and I think it will be like this for the week-end. We will probably take it easy. The roads will be to bad to go upp to Mount Halla.

As I stated, we are millionaires. We got paid. It was nice. We get paid in millions of wons. The conversion rate is around 1000$ to 1000000 won. It was nice to get the first paycheck because know we can explore the island a little more and buy a car.

The big news in Seogwipo for the week is the opning of the Home Plus. It like a Walmart and everyone form Seogwipo and the surroundings most have been there yesterday because when we went to visit we could see people everywhere. There must have been 100 thousandspoeple who visited the store yesterday to get deals but there is only around 90 thousands in the city itself. We were told people would come from everywhere on the island to go to this place. They even have Brie cheese there. We don't really miss it but one hting we miss is pita bread or wraps. We can't find them anywhere.

Hope you had a great week in 2006. I sure did.

Talk to you soon.

Christian and Karina

New Years Eve

Hello everyone,

I hope everyone has recovered from New Years. We had a great time. We went to Jeju city to meet up with some of the fellow teachers for the night. We hopped on a bus in Jungmun for 3.50$ and took a 50 minute bus ride to the city. To know how this felt, it was kind of like taking a taxi ride in New York City at night but you are in a 50 person bus. It was a little hectic at times but we made it.

We then met up with some friends and went to eat some chicken at this restaurant. We were about 12 people. We ate some vegies, a bunch of sweet potatoes and a bunch of Chinese lettuce. It was really good. We had a few conversations with this guy from Texas and his girlfriend. The night was going so well when I hit my head on the small doorway out of the washroom. It was even bleeding.

Then we left that place and went to a bar called Kansas. Everyone had a few beers and had long conversations about leaving in Korea and enjoying the sites. Since we were pretty much the newest people to join the group, we were trying to get the most info from everyone. After finishing a few pitchers of beer, we headed off to the foreigner bar called the Blue Agave. It was an interesting place but they're a few oddballs there. We celebrated New Years 14 hours ahead of everyone in Ottawa and had a great time until some drunk guy tried to pick a fight. The fight broke out and we left in a hurry. We picked up all our friends and headed to another bar at around 1:30 or 2 am.

We left the bar and went to this amazing dance bar. They played some amazing music until we left at 3:30 am. The bars don't really have a closing time. We hopped into a cab a few blocs away and drove back to Seogwipo. It came up to a 20$ ride for around 50 minutes of driving. It is really cheap to get around on a taxi. The taxi went over the mountain and at times it was a little slow because the Koreans where all driving up the mountain to catch the first sunrise of the year at the top of Halla Mountain. I did not see a thing of this because I was sleeping but Karina said it was pretty amazing to see all these people walking up the roads at 4:30 in the morning to get to the top of the mountain. Out of 4 of us in the cab, only 2 were awake when we got home. I should say, it took the 2 sleeping people about 5 minutes before the passed out in the cab. I don't think I made it out of the city awake. Luckily for me, Karina took care of me and we did not lose anything.

The next day, we woke up around 1 or 2 in the afternoon. I took a few pain killers and tried to go back to sleep. We stayed in bed all afternoon and watched movies. We got up for supper and then went right back into bed to watch another movie. We did not leave the house that day. It was nice to relax all day.

We had a great New Years. We do miss our friends and family but it was really nice to talk to some off them at 2:00 pm(New Years in Ottawa). It was a fun experience and who knows where we will be partying it up next year. Hopefully we will be in Australia or maybe China or Thailand. It is such a long way away.

Yesterday and today, we have been back at school. As stated in the past, we have a new schedule. Everything is going very well and we are still enjoying teaching.

I WISH EVERYONE A GREAT YEAR IN 2006. Hope you all succeed in everything you do. HAVE FUN and ENJOY LIFE.

Talk to you all soon,

Christian and Karina