Happy Mother's Day

Well, I don't know why I'm having so much trouble keeping up with this blog thing. At any rate, here's the (now) biweekly update! Not much has really happened lately, but enough has I suppose. The weekend before last we went to a party at our friend 현중 (Hyun Joong, or Jeff as he's known to most of the waegookins)'s family house. It is in a really nice spot right on the side of a "mountain" (really just a rocky hill). There's a fairly large yard, and a gazebo on one side. The gazebo came in handy about an hour after we got there when it started to rain. Really rain. Poured, really. So we headed either inside or into the gazebo. Dawn and I spent most of our time inside the house, which was spacious enough for all of us to squeeze in. We even had room for Matt, Stu and I to break out the guitars and have a little jam session! It was nice playing with Mr. Ammond again, espcially since I've been missing the times he plays in Gwangju. The evening was also a chance to get to know some of the people who are new to Korea this month, even if most of them aren't actually new to Korea. Lots of interesting people, hopefully we'll keep getting to know them. To be sure, it was a wet, wet night. More so for some of us than others. For example, Jason, Abby and Kristen were out getting some drinks when it started to rain. So they were thouroughly soaked when they walked into the yard through the gate. Abby decided that they weren't quite dirty enough though, so she and Kristen rolled around in the mud for a bit! That's right, Mokpo's first official mud wrestle! At least as far as I remember... Most people figured Abby won, but I didn't see much of it. So I'll just call it a draw.

The Sunday after the big mess, we found ourselves on our quarterly pilgrimage to Daejeon, to shop at the infinitely great Costco! Unless you have lived in somewhere similarly isolated as Korea, you just can't imagine having to go 2.5 hours by train to the nearest block of cheese! Our good friends Abby and Jason came with us, though Abby wasn't actually with us until she woke up about half way there. Anyway, it was fairly uneventful, until Abby saw the pool. She and Dawn had been talking about having a cabana party on our roof. I don't know where we are gonna get a cabana, but we now have the pool for it. We bought this pool at Costco. It's 12 feet long, wider on the ends, and is now on our roof, full of water and bugs because we haven't found a cover for it and it rained the other day. So now we have to find a way to empty it. We have tried to syphon it, but I think we are losing a bit of pressure through a hole or two, and the hose if probably just too long for that to work. We tried using the hose through the drain on the bottom of the pool, but it wouldn't push the water down the hose. So, we're probably just gonna have to drain it onto the roof this time, and find something better for next time.

This weekend we had a games night at Crystal's place. First we had supper with Kevin, Neal and Crystal at Ha Ming (they have this curried rice with breaded chicken, it's awesome). Neal recently bought a motorbike, so now there's this idea going around that everybody should get their own so we can all go on long rides together into the sunset. But I digress. After that we went back to Crystals and played Scene It and Catchphrase, both of which are really fun, thought the former isn't much fun with a large group. Catchphrase is quickly becoming one of my favourite games though. Especially with a group. Dawn has even integrated it into some of her lessons at the hagwon, in a simpler form.

Yesterday I had to go to Gwangju for recording, and Dawn had a perogy night at Rich and Shannon's place. Kristen and Jeff also showed up to make perogies. Unfortunately, the fun was over by the time I made it home and over there, but I got a couple perogies for supper, and that made me happy. Speaking of recording, we're hoping to have the CD done by the middle of June, so that gives us a month. We've got 5 songs just about done, and 1 song started. We're thinking of starting 4 more to make 10 songs total, but we want to concentrate on getting the first 6 done well before we spread ourselves out more. Jordan also wants to tour a bunch this summer, so that might be cool. Hopefully I'll have some cool samples to post, or at least bring back to Canada to show people this summer.

And lastly, but not leastly, happy Mother's Day, Mom(s)!