Writing at the moment seems like such a chore. Hence the recent silence. Apologies. Here is the last installment for 2010! Can you believe this year is disappearing, there is only one day left. Still too much to do before it ends. hmmmmmm. resolutions. yikes.

I am going to be all over the place with this update as I have not been awake for very long and as most of you should know I am not the best morning person. And there is no coffee in this room that I am in. This room is in a hotel in a small poky town called Asan, which is well known for its hot springs and giant spa - the town is built around the spa. A little like Aliwal North no? Anyway 5 of us girls decided that this would be a good get away spot for us to relax on our week off. It is an hour and a half train ride which is super, and we travelled through Korea while it snowed and snowed which made the landscape beautiful and bright. Snow is bright. I didn't bring sunglasses, yesterday was the pits and all that squinting has given me more wrinkles for sure.

It is gorgeous here, remote and snow covered, not to mention the hot springs in our hotel! we sat in a hot pool outside last night and chatted with snow covered rocks and icicles around us seen through the steam coming off the water. I felt a little like we were in Narnia or a secret glade in the Lord of the Rings. If a magical creature had emerged from the rock face I would only have been mildly surprised. Today is a full day at the spa, going to get a scrub and have serious sauna time. I am excited.

Christmas was wonderful here, no snow sadly, but friend filled and delicious. We had to work on Christmas Eve, it was test day for my afternoon students so it was actually chilled despite the test part - which gets finished soon soon and then we eat food and watch movies, so much fun. My one class brought an ice-cream cake for us to eat - which we did, with relish. My last class of the day is always fun and while I was setting up my laptop to watch a movie I saw that a couple of my mates were online, so we skyped home and Nats and Lungz met Jong Yung and Sao Young...they got stage fright though and after a lot of prompting from me to ask questions and answer the ones asked of them, I abandoned the idea and just chatted as though they weren't there. hahahah. that was fun, will try and do it more often so more of you can meet my students. Christmas Eve night was spent at Jamie's apartment, which is a gorgeous double storey place, and we all ate food and sang 90s songs. wonderful.

Christmas day dawned cold and bright. I emerged bundled up and ready to go. Christine and I had plans to meet at the Seoul Arts Centre to view a Picasso exhibition that is on at the moment. Well, I was mistaken, the exhibition we actually wanted is at an entirely different venue many many minutes away from where we were. So we decided to see the Versaille exhibit that is on. My My. It was glorious and a bit opulent for us, we chatted away about the history of France and the texture of the paintings and such interesting things. You know how you can be anywhere and there is an obnoxious American couple talking at what seems like the top of their lungs? Well in Korea that's not just Americans, it's all foreigners. We are loud without meaning to be. So Christine and I were reprimanded by an usher. We blushed and proceeded on stealth mode throughout the rest of the exhibit. Sheesh, it would make me sick being surrounded by so much gold and velvet everyday. Good thing I was born in Africa.

From being shushed we headed over too another area of Seoul and got lost looking for a sushi restaurant that Christine had been too one night. Places look very different at night. So we settled for another sushi place, which was fabulous. With full tummies and smiles on our faces we headed on back to my area and on to Jamie's for Christmas dinner. We stopped on the way and bought Nederburg, strawberries and cherries. We made a big South African entrance and had a merry old time with all the North Americans there. After dinner we had a little dance off in the kitchen and then took the party to a Norae bang - which, as I am sure I have explained before, is a room that you rent that has a big tv in it with 100's of kareoake songs to choose from. We sang the night away. It was rad.

All in all it has been a good festive season so far. Plans for welcoming the New Year are a formal dinner and then Norae Bang!! Or I may head into Seoul and jam it up with Christine. Will let you know which one next year;)

love you all

Z

I'm still alive!

Hello all!

Contrary to what you may have been thinking, I am still alive, but have merely been lazy about typing stuff. So here is an update from my life...

Last week was pretty busy with work and end of year functions – where I learned things like that Guido's on a Monday is pensioners night...consider yourselves warned!

But Friday was an exciting day, we had our year-end function at Mpongo Park, it was a lunch, so there was the mad rush to finish everything by 12. The actual lunch was nice and we got awesome Christmas party packs. Afterwards we had a wander about the park, trying to avoid the goats that kept trying to eat our clothes and bugging the baby giraffe (very cute!)

The evening was interesting. I was exhausted from the week andwould have loved to have done nothing, but I had friends from Cape Town doing an insane roadtrip who were staying the night. I'm not even sure if it can be called a road-trip in the traditional sense, although they did spend most of their time on the road. Staying only one night in each place, they went Cape Twon – Kimberely, Kimberley – Johannesburg, Johannesburg – Durban, Durban – East London, East London – Mossel Bay and Mossel Bay – Cape Town. Insane!

So they had ignored my warnings about the joys of Mthatha and Butterworth on a Friday and so only arrived after 7pm and were p[lanning to leave by 7am the next day. SO I took them off to Cafe Neo, where the one girl Megan (whom I had never met before), spent a good portion of the eveing complaining about the general suckiness of the restaurant. She did not endear herself to me at all.

Now, since they were leaving early the next day, going to bed at around midnight seemed a good idea. Wasn't going to happen. One of my housemates was having a huge braai and at about the time we went to bed, the volume of the music went up. And the drunken singing started. Now, usually I wouldn't have minded too, but it was about the time that I started to feel the reverbarations of Coldplay's 'Yellow' boring into my skull, along with the aforementioned awful sing-along, that I was convinced that I would either go completely insane, or be forced to kill myself. Instead I took option 3 and trying to muster as much dignity as one can while wearing pajamas, went to turn the music down.

By some cruel trick of fate, I woke up just before 5am on Monday moring. I mean seriously! And so had one other person, so we took a mosey down to the beach and marvelled at the number of people being athletic so early on a Saturday morning. When they finally left, I went back to bed for a early morning nap. It was great.

The rest of the day involved me doing very little, with a braai in the eveing and then Spud with Chericles in the evening. I really enjoyed the movie and thought it did justice to the book. And I'm still not entirely sure why people buy movie tickets and then spend the entire movie walking in and out of the cinema. Was it something they ate? Being called out to negotiate peace in the Middle East?

I stupidly signed up to do a swim on Sunday out at the Wriggleswade Dam. A week of training is not enough time. Thankfully the field was small, so I came 2^nd in my category. The fact that were only two of us competing in that category is completely irrelevant. Mister Bread Millers was one of the sponsers, so I now have enough to last me until the end of the year, assuming I only ate bread. It's taking up lots of space in the freezer at the moment. Suggestions for 'things to do with bread' are most welcome.

So that's me for the moment. Holiday is in a week and then it's Cape Town until early January. Exciting times!

oh, and freshpics.blogspot.com is the business

it's my life

wow, quite a bit has happened lately. firstly I am at home at the mo, originally I was here to discuss my MSc topic with my parents, this has changed tho and now I am considering moving to Queenstown for next year - insane I know. My topic was always going to be on something about rural municipalities etc here in the EC. So when I got home last week my parents were like "why are you studying a municipality in the EC from CT, why not work for them and gain 1st hand experience?" - i hate it when they're so logical. Seriously tho, why didn't I think of that??? So now I'm applying to the Queenstown Municipality and will se how that goes. 
I'm going back to CT tomoro and the Tanj is coming for the weekend and we're planning a serious whale :)

But I digress : this past weekend was a serious whale. On Sat I went for a walk with my Dad, St and the dogs in the morning at Nahoon Reef, everything was going fine and we were meandering along the rocks cos it was low tide until i stepped on some super slippery green algea and went down into the water! less whaleish more whale-like! hahaha. my dad and st laughed and laughed and then asked if i was ok - typical. this didn't deter us from continuing the walk tho, i just had to do it soaking wet. we hiked up and over the back of the sand dunes (Cathy knows this route) and by the time we got back to the bakkie i was almost dry!!

My Dad's bought himself a deep sea fishing boat for Christmas and after the meander while i was still wet we decided to put the boat in the Buffalo and check that it doesn't sink, it's second hand and looks a bit worse for wear. So my dad, st, line and i whaled down there and zooted around on the boat for a while, it was really fun.

After all the excitement I needed a nap.
Then I went to watch Spud with Cat and her friends that evening at the Hem -so busy and so many children!
the movie wasn't as good as the book but it wasn't bad. i was semi shocked by the lack of tolerance by everyone there tho. On the way in I saw someone accidently knock the lady in front of her with her handbag and the guy she was with was so rude causing a scene about lack of manners etc. I understand that getting bumped can be annoying but it's really not that serious! Then during the movie there was a baby making a bit of noise, also mildly annoying but NOT THAT SERIOUS! And every time the baby whimpered a whole lot of ppl would go 'ssshhhhh'!! seriously? wtf??? I felt like getting on my soap box and delivering a sermon on tolerance! 

Anyway that was Sat, on sun I went swimming with tarryn at the Joan. wow the joan's gone down. the water was so gross and had so much other stuff in it...so gross. and the tiles were broken and the plaster coming off the walls - seriously different from back in the day when everything was shiney and new.

Then the Tanj met us and we went to play tennis at Hams...Tanj talks a big talk about being a serious sports person back in the day so i assumed she knew how to play tennis - WRONG! she's terrible, realy really bad. kept missing the ball like there was a hole in her racket!! hahaha but it was hysterical and a pretty good work out so all was not lost.
after we played singles for a while we played doubles with tarryn and her madhatter friend natalie...what a hoot!

After tennis we went shopping for a bit and to the indian expo - too much of bling, my eyes hurt by the end of it!  

Shoe what an essay, i'm bored of writing now and am gonna get back to my cv, cheerio chommies :)

GIANT FAIL.

So this week end marked the first year anniversary of Natasha's death and I was fine. Totally fine...until Friday night arrived and my night all to myself turned into me skyping Nat's in London and sobbing my tiny heart out. Which is distressing for someone to listen to. Which made me feel worse. aarararaggghhghg. So when Danielle suggested we go and have a quiet dinner just us girls I thought it was probably best.

One should always be suspicious of the term 'quiet night' as it very rarely sticks to that quiet part.

Needless to say we had dinner, which involved minimal tears and loads of laughing and rice wine, mokkoli. Then we moved onto a bar called Happidus, that is not a typo. This is basically a bar when the local foreign population hangs in, so in general I don't like it as it sometimes feels like people trying to forget they are in a foreign place. But it was super fun on Friday night. Too much fun possibly. We met 2 New Zealander's and it was a downward spiral from there. Gin and tonic was my stapel...with Jack Daniels and Tequila shots as the side show.

I was conned into playing pool with the one kiwi (I would insert a name if I knew it) and miraculously got the first solid in! (which is a miracle for anyone who has seen me play pool - Tania can confirm this). It was a short lived miracle, when it was my turn again I managed to miss the white ball about 3 times before someone took the cue away from me, a kind act really. That was when I decided to leave.

So normally I would have taken a taxi home, but I had no cash on me and the ATM's here close at 23:00, such a nightmare! So I couldn't get into a taxi, which meant walking home. It's a 30min walk. Which when the world is spinning annoyingly around you feels like 5 hours. Half way home I was too tired to move any further and in true Rhodent fashion I simply stepped into a row of soft looking bushes at the side of the pavement and slept for a while. Like a true hobo. The best part is that I thought that was just a dream, until I tried to brush my hair and all these leaves and twigs came out. My boots are muddy and my clothes are covered in twigs and leaves. I amaze even myself.

The next part I have no recollection of. All I know is, I woke up at 11:30 in a semi coma like state and stared at the clock - groaned audibly and went back to sleep. Only to bolt up again 10 minutes later in the horrible realisation that Dusty had waited for me in vain 2 hours ago. fuck. I felt terrible so I emailed him straight away saying things like I am so sorry, don't hate me and I think I might be dying. All true. He has forgiven me and we are watching a movie tonight. I am a terrible person.

I spent the day in a special kind of hung over hell. I was sick all day and everything caused me pain. I am never drinking like that again.

Here is a pic of Dusty, so you have a vague idea of what he looks like. And I think that is his real name, you win some you lose some hey.