Mosquito trouble... in December!

When was the last time you had a mosquito bite in December? I can't remember ever even seeing one after September, but I got one today. And stranger yet, the bastard bit me on the LIP! In the middle of the night, I woke up because I felt something tickle my bottom lip. Instinctively, I used my top teeth to scratch at whatever was there, and my lip felt really weird, not painful, but just weird. So I woke up a little more, and still felt that kind of itchy feeling. Then I realized my lip was starting to swell, and knew exactly what had happened. Even worse than that, I turned my head and saw the mosquito on the wall, but couldn't kill it! He's still out there, waiting to get my other lip.

Stranger still, this MAY be the same bug that previously took down the light cover in our foyer, smashing it on the tile floor. Okay it was actually me that did that, but I was trying to hit a mosquito on the ceiling. Somehow the impact of my hand knocked the cover right off, missing my head by inches and spraying glass everywhere! Could have been bad!

Okay this post sucks, but it's all I've got right now. Maybe we'll have an eventful New Year's Eve?...

Merry Christmas to All!

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY!

I know it's not quite Christmas where some of you are, but that's okay, it's Christmas here. And what would Christmas be without friends, family and bacon and eggs for breakfast? It has been a very nice couple of days for us. On Friday we went to Neal's for his first annual Christmas party, which was a really happenin' shindig. There was booze, and lots of people, and somehow Neal was able to turn his TV into a fireplace, complete with firy screensaver and ceiling-high chimney! How he accomplished such a feat I will never know (though I've heard rumblings that it involved cardboard and a vacuum...?!) I had my guitar there, Chad had his, and Emmanuel had his piano - you know what that means! Billie Jean is reborn! Actually we decided to go with the name Rudolph and the Red Bean Paste instead. We played lots of Christmas songs, and some requests, but nothing that Silvi or Karen suggested. HA!

Saturday night found us at Jason and Abbigail's 12th floor apartment for some martinis and Christmas cheer. We went early so that we could help set up some food, and Dawn and Abby used her new oven to bake peanut butter cookies! They were a hit. However, the real star of the evening was the cheese! Luckily for us our hosts had recently been to Costco, and so had cheese, and bagel bites and all kinds of wonderfully not-Korean food!

Sunday we decided it was Christmas, so we opened our presents. Now I know what some of you are thinking, but we had our reasons:

1. It was Christmas eve day... that's pretty much Christmas anyway, isn't it?
2. We had a really boring day and needed SOMETHING to do.
3. We have a lot to do today, so wouldn't have had time to open our presents and enjoy them.

So anyway, thanks to everyone who sent us presents, they were greatly appreciated. I especially have to say thanks to Neal and Crystal, who gave Dawn a small blowtorch and a pair of men's underwear. They also gave me an apron and women's underwear. Now this is a little joke that we started when Dawn and I gave Neal women's underwear for his birthday. Neal's underwear is better though, since it says "Pink Ladies' Delight", which matches the pink satin decor his employers picked out for him. Anyway, thanks everybody!

That brings us to today. This morning we got up early and baked the cinnamon buns that Dawn started at 1am this morning. Then we took them to Neal's for Christmas breakfast. There were 8 of us in all, and on the menu was eggs (done however you wanted them, thanks to Crystal!), bacon, toast (burned in the middle, thanks to Neal!) and Dawn's buns. There was much gift opening and fellowship, and was a very nice Christmas morning. Maura even got a call from her family! Tonight we will be heading to Richard and Shannon's for dinner, so that should warrant another post tomorrow.

One story I'd like to relate while I have your attention. On our way home from Neal's today we got into a cab, told him where wanted to go, and proceeded to have the normal conversation you have with cabbies in this country: where are you from, why are you here, school or hagwon, etc, etc, ad nauseum. However, this was not to be a normal cab ride. About 2/3 of the way home, he dialed a number on his phone, and it proceeded to ring on speaker phone. Dawn knew something was up, and said, "I don't like where this is going!" He talks with a Korean for a few seconds, while Dawn and I try to make out what he is saying. All of a sudden, the voice shouts out, "Hello! My English name is Joshua". It is at this point that I'd like to point out that this is a female we are talking to. She proceeds to explain that her father is our cab driver today, and wants to know which hagwon Dawn is teaching at. So we explain, and then she laughs and tells us she is shy and doesn't know what to say. So we say "nice to meet you" and "bye" and she does the same, and talks to her father for a few more seconds. Then she switches back to English and tells us that she would like us to leave our names and phone number with her dad and she would like to call us. Now we are weary of people taking your phone number here, as a lot of times they are either nuts or Jehova's Witnesses, or (in most cases) both. But we agree and do so. And we left two candy canes with the driver, one for him and one for Joshua. So we'll see what happens with that. We were home in time to bake the rapidly growing buns (formed at 1am), and just in time for Jen B. to call us and say Merry Christmas! We love you Jen!

Merry Christmas everybody!

Little Bit of News

Hey everybody, no news right now, it's been a pretty slow week. We did have our good friends Richard and Shannon over for supper and cards last night. The supper was pretty good, rice casserole (with chicken for Dawn and I), and our counterparts brought a Vietnamese rice wrap! Sounds weird, but is actually quite tasty! It is a clear, plastic-y feeling, round wafer which you submerge in warm water for a few seconds, drip dry a little, then fill with veggies (or whatever you want to fill it with) and wrap up. After being wet the wafers soften and almost get gooey. Thankfully they don't taste funny, in fact you can't taste the rice wafer at all. A truly unique food to be sure.

Dawn also decided to decorate the house for the holidays (and probably thereafter) with lights in our bedroom and in the room in which I currently sit. Cool LED lights that have 8 patterns, switchable right on the cord. Very cool. She also decided a while ago to blow up a few of her favourite pictures and put them on the wall. We blew them up to 11X14 and she bought some colourful paper to mount them on. Then, for some, she decided to cut them up and do sort of a mural-ly kind of thing. They look awesome, and I wish I had a picture to put up. I shall do that post-haste. We also got an oven for my baking deprived wife, and she promptly made me cookies! Score!

I also put up a couple things in our sidebar. One is a link to our Flickr page, which has lots of our pictures, and will house many more. I also put up a time counter, which is on Mokpo time, so you will know when to call us ;) And last but not least, there is a new weather widget, with current weather in Mokpo. FYI it is currently snowing the largest flakes I have ever seen. Wow. They're huge. It's like snowballs falling. Small snowballs. I'll shut up now.

Ah, homecoming. You know what I love? Delayed flights. I just LOVE sitting on a plane, for an extra 2 hours after boarding, waiting for takeoff. That's right, folks, TWO extra hours... on an 11 hour flight. Good times. Someone on the plane was unfit for travel and EMS had to come and take them and their luggage off the plane before we could take off. Then we lost our place for take off and had to wait in line, then when we finally got to Incheon, we had to wait for a gate to be open before we could get off the plane. Good times. Really. So we made it to Incheon, grabbed a bus to Central City (the place in Seoul where we catch the bus to Mokpo). Got dropped off rather far away from where we buy our tickets and catch the bus, were told to go int he opposite direction than that which we needed... ended up dragging our luggage (4 50+ pound bags plus 4 carry ons) an extra 400 meters... finally made it at about 8pm, missed that bus, the 9:00 was full, we got the second last tickets on the last bus to Mokpo, made it home at about 2:30am... and here we thought we'd be home at 10pm and get a good night's rest before teaching on Monday. HAHAHAHA.
P.S. Air Canada sucks.

CANADA

Hello all. Here we are in Canada... just over 72 hours in the country... And WOW IS IT EVER GOOD TO BE HOME. Might be better if we'd actually brought our traveller's checks with us... but hey, who really needs money right? So in the 72 hours that we've been here, we've managed about 15 hours of sleep... but today's our first day of crabbiness, and that was quickly surpassed - there's just too much to do and too many people to see to stay crabby for very long. Okay, I"m hungry - time to go find a multitude of wonderful Canadian snacks... mmmm crackers and sausage! More than 2 different kinds of chips and pop.... A&W rootbeer...so many good things.... mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
See all of you "Koreans" in a couple more weeks, and as for everybody else, you'd better be visiting:)

The Jordan Emmans Band: First Official Gig

Hello Everyone! I realize that this is a little dated, but it took me time to create this post. Hopefully it will be done before we're back from Canada. Maybe not. We'll see. Anyway, last Saturday I finally got back on stage for real. For something other than a jam session planned at the last minute. This was pro man. We even had a set list. Anyway, Matt Amond, who is an adept songwriter in his own right, was kind enough to help fill out our sound on the electric guitar. He also did a set of his own by himself before the rest of the band filed in, just to give the rabid fans some relief.



After his solo set, Dan, Jordan and I joined in to complete the Matt Amond Band. We played a few covers and some of Matt's gems (like Spin, which is a funky little tune, and Shine, which is a catchy pop/rock song).

Then started the main event of the evening, The Jordan Emmans Band. We played most of Jordan's songs that we had worked on, with both Jordan and Matt playing electric guitar, and jammed on more than one of the songs. More than once we had spontaneous little sessions, where Dan would kick out a groove, and I'd play something over top, and all of a sudden heads are bobbing along. So we went with a couple of them and just had ourselves a little jam. Very fun and quite musical, too.





So this will, with any luck, be a regular thing for us, jamming and gigging, after Dawn and I get back from the Land of the Morning Tim Horton's. And hopefully we can get something recorded to remember it by. Or to sell to the throngs of fans lining up to hear us.
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Oh, they're there...



At least Laurel is...

Money is tough to get around here!

So apparently Canadian dollars don't exist in Mokpo, South Korea. I had a HELL of a time getting the Kookmin Bank downtown to exchange my Korean money for anything at all. I thought I had them when I pulled out my piece of paper on which I had scralled the definition for "cashier's check", and they said, "Oooooooh!". Thought I was golden. Nope. What we call a cashier's check they call a traveller's check. In American dollars. Why can they not just write a cashier's check for 2000000KRW? Who knows... At any rate, now we have American dollars to exchange. Yee haw! Guess this is what we get for living out in the sticks!

Gettin' Ready...

Just getting ready to hit the road and head out to Gwangju for the weekend! What's on the schedule you ask? Shopping, and playing the official first gig of the Jordan Emmans Band. Oughta be a good time. Pics and possibly video should be forthcoming, as well as first hand analysis of the show. Wish me luck!

Homecoming

Good news everybody! We are coming home!!! We finally have an itinerary and tickets will be picked up soon! We fly from Incheon to Vancouver, Vancouver to Edmonton on November 10. We will be arriving in Edmonton at approximately 4:40 pm. Interestingly enough, it takes negative seven hours to fly from Seoul to Vancouver. We will be in Canada until the second of December when we will leave sunny Edmonton and go back to dreary old Mokpo. I guess the time catches up with you on the way back: it takes 28 hours to get back to Seoul! Happy Halloween everybody, and see you in 11 days!

edit: Alright so maybe I should add our flight number and such huh? We will be arriving in Edmonton on Air Canada flight AC242. That is all.

The Jordan Emmans Band

Hello Everybody!

Dave has taken over the blog today. I dont' know if you all know this, but I can't be in just one band. It always seems to be none or 3. Since it's been so long since I have been in a band, I decided that, obviously it was time for me to be in (more than) one again. First I joined up with two fellow Mokpo'ers, Chad and Emanuel, and formed Billie Jean and the Kidney Beans. That was a success, and all members reported much fun. And, not surprisingly, from that experience came a second band.

Unfortunately, Billie Jean didn't fare so well in the judging, and the third place act was a guy named Jordan Emmans. A songwriter and guitarist (and apparently drummer?), Jordan was playing with a drummer named Dan, but no other accompaniment. And since his songs were really cool, I offered my services. He called me a couple weeks later, and we decided to start playing. The only catch is he and Dan both live in Gwangju, about 1.5 hours from Mokpo.

So we practiced on a Friday, I learned the songs as we played them, and it went really good. Then around 5 or so, Dan told Jordan that there was an acoustic thing going on at Speakeasy, which is a bar owned by a couple Canadian guys. Jordan asked if we were up to playing with him. We decided it would be cool. So I phoned Dawn to come to Gwangju so she could see me play and be all proud and such. Plus the last bus back to Mokpo was at 11 or something, so we would've had to spend the night apart otherwise. So we get to the bar at 10:30 or so, and we find out there's a couple other acts. One of the owners played a set with Dan on drums, and another songwriter named Matt played some of his tunes and some covers. So finally at about 1am we got on stage. We played 6 songs that I had played a couple times at practice, but we also played 3 songs that I had never heard before. Tough, but doable. Jordan is a good leader, so there's really no problems there. Anyway, check out the pics. Gotta go!

Stupid HTML

Okay, so this blog isn't quite looking like I want it to. I got Brent to put up his picture where I want mine to be, so I'd know where to put it, and now I can't find where his picture is to replace it with mine. Arg. Brent! I just don't get it! Ah well, I'll figure it out one of these days. In the meantime, this page should be constantly changing as I figure out what the heck I'm doing and learn to do some really cool stuff. So don't judge me on my blogger skills for at least 10 years yet (cuz it just might take me that long to figure everything out)!

Myeongsashimri Beach

It was a dark, and stormy night... and by that I mean it was a bright sunny day, and we were on a beach. Two hours on one bus, sitting for 20 mintues, then 15 mninutes on a second bus, and we found ourselves on the beautiful beach of Myeongsashimri.


We went with about a dozen people from Mokpo, and met up with a few other 외국인s (if you can't read that word, install your Asian fonts) from sort of nearby. So we made it to the beach, went for a swim, played some frisbee and catch, got to know everybody we didn't know. Then we set up a tent on the beach, barbecued some food, ate some other food, got really full... I love pot luck barbecues! Went swimming some more. Built a big bonfire, Dave, Stu, and Chad played us some guitar, Nikola had her violin (which Chad shortly turned into a fretless mandolin) and Amy brought her bongos. More swimming, more music, s'mores and hite. When it was good and dark we got to enjoy the beautiful phosphorous in the ocean, truly a magical moment for us first-timers.

New Blog Page

Hello all, we've recently discovered blogger.com where you can put pictures and movies right into your blog, so we're going to give this a try. Hopefully we'll be a little more serious about keeping our blog in this, our soon to be second year in Korea. We can't believe that in just a few short weeks we will have been here for a whole year already. How fast time flies! But, we are looking forward to seeing you all in November, even if for only a short time.