It was a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Jamie and I travelled to the beautiful and unforgetable Koh Chang island in the Gulf of Thailand. Our adventure started on Christmas Eve. We stayed at a resort in Trat, swam in the pool, got a Thai massage and ate some great classic Thai cuisine.


Our new friends from Berlin, they stayed in the bungalow next to ours. We played hearts with them on our last night and they had a lot of new and interesting perspectives about life and marriage.

















Jamie and I opened our present on the 23 of December (no room in our bags for gifts). We had wine and thourouly enjoyed our very first Christmas together as a family. We packed our stocking stuffers with us (thanks mom and dad Graham) and opened them in Thailand (Jamie's socks made a makeshift stocking).


Me and Jamie at the crack of dawn on our bus via the airport. It was an 18 hour day ahead of us.




Christmas Day we caught the ferry to Koh Chang and checked into our resort in a tiny fishing village on the island. We ended up meeting an American family that permanently lives on the island. We chatted with them and they invited us to eat dinner with them. I had to leave early because of my fever and cough.







We went snorkling on a tiny unpopulated island close to our resort. Never saw so many colors and shapes of fish and sea creatures and coral.




We also took our rented motorbike around the island and expolored other beaches, waterfalls and scenery. It was on this journey that we discovered the White Sands Beach Resort. We booked a beach bungalo for 2 nights and cancelled our reservation for Koh Kod island. Sometimes you just have to go with your gut feeling. There were mostly Europeans on that beach and resort. How could you tell? The women were topless. But I sure wasn't.







Smoothies. These were one of our daily amenidies on the island. Funny story about my desperation for smoothies. In Chiang Mai I really wanted a smoothie and i saw what looked like a fruit smoothie stand. We had to take of our shoes to get into the "smoothie" area and there was sort of a culture performance, insence burning and people bowing. No big deal, until I realized that the fruit was not meant for smoothies, but for offeries to the gods. That's right, it was an offering ceremony, not a smoothie stand.








Sunsets. Unforgetable. Breathtaking. Wow.





The last 2 days of our trip were spent in Chiang Mai. We stayed with our aquaintances who live in a beautiful Teek mansion. We visited the orphanage I volunteered at 2 years ago. The kids all remembered me and they still had pictures of me on their walls. We had a great time painting nails, making art, playing soccer and catching up. I also witnessed the slaughtering of a pig--a tradition for them especially since they hardly ever eat meat because it's so expensive. Thanks to those of you who donated money to the orphange. At the moment they are wanting to fix their kitchen floor as it's wrecked from the recent floods.






For New Years Eve we went into the city to watch the fireworks and shop our brains out. I bought a shirt at the stroke of midnight.



Now we're back in Korea (our home until July). Our skin is peeling and we're getting into the habit of wearing more clothing and putting the flip flops to rest for now.

The Christmas package has arrived......

Package from mom and dad Suttie arrived at 18:00 at Herald Language Institute. We considered ripping open the beast there, but we knew that some of the contents inside might offend some people.......So here i am at home, happy to see what's inside.





Reeces, pants that fit, candy dinosaurs and sweetish berries, pictures and letters from home. Oh, Christmas is so special.

Wine, cheese, T.K. & friends and North Korea

Only 18 days until the promised land.....

We're currently anxiously waiting for Christmas eve to come soon. We arrive in Bankok on Saturday afternoon, decmeber 24th. We're spending the night in Trat at a sea resort. Trat is a coastal city, in relatively close proximity to the Vietnam border. The next day we'll hop on a boat and spend a few days on Koh Chang, then maybe Koh Kut island. On December 20th we're heading to Chiang Mai to visit the orphange I volunteered at 2 years ago.

Here are some pictures of Koh Chang island:

One day in the snow (how I miss you Charlie Brown...)

I was reminicing the other day about Christmas and how much I loved my Charlie Brown CD, but then I remembered that the theives in Victoria stole this CD along with my entire CD collection this past summer. Sad. Thaznk goodness for Limewire and free downloads though.


As you can see, snow took over our streets and our country. Some snow turned to ice and some just melted. Seriously though, it's really cold in Seoul, yesterday it was -8. As soon as we hit the streets for our morning walk we promptly entered the corner store to buy some hot chocolate and coffee.

The Christmas tree in front of our mega-department store-Lotte. It's very festive and we love to spend time looking at it and thinking about Christmas.


Jamie spent the latter part of the afternoon watching Harry Potter with one of our students. Later that night we saw Just Like Heaven. It was such a great movie-I loved how it was a nice, clean, pure movie. I cryed when i watched the movie and jamie laughed (because Nypolian Dynamite was in the movie too).

The video you've all been waiting for........

Over the past 4 months we've been compiling material to make a video for friends and family. Don't worry, the video clip is only 6 minutes long. This video is really riveting. This is the stuff dreams are made of........

(give the video about one minute to load properly, depending on how fast your computer is....then press play)


Just copy and paste this link to your browser:

http://ia300817.eu.archive.org/2/items/
JamesEdwardGrahamLifeinSeoul/JJ_in_Korea_2_November.mp4

The heart of Seoul is in the homes

Last tuesday night we had the pleasure of being invited to eat a traditional Korean meal in a Korean house. The venue was Flora's place-she is one of Lydia's adult students. We ate delecioius bulgolgi, kim chi, margaritas, korean pancakes and cake. We were also constantly entertained by the many many children in the house (there were at least 10 kids in the apartment at one point). A highlight was watching Sarah's (Lydia's ESL student who is also Flora's daughtor) sister doing many rigerous monologues of "Beauty and the Beast".







This past Saturday the art show put on by Jamie, Lydia, Nathan and myself was a big sucess. The event, held in our apartment, show cased the talents of blooming photographers, creative film makers, fantastic painters, and ingenious song writers

Here are some common bottles, mostly Soju (the Korean drink of choice) taken by Jamie.





Trees at Soreksan National Park in the East Coast--looks like they're trying to say something............(I think Jennica took this one)




There were 25 people who attended the art show.


Esther, Gina, June and Lydia.

June's title for her very special piece was "Cute Couples from Canada".


And there was plenty of food and wine to go around.............



Our friend and neighbor Dave (ask him to show you his new jacket!!!!!!!!!)









Can you believe it has been 6 months?!!! We love any reason to celebrate. For our anniversary we went to a nice Italian place and we explored the beautiful Chun-gae-chung stream in downtown Seoul.

Me, Jamie and some friends in Heywah at a Bulgolgi restaurant. Mmmmmm, meat is good.

Next we unexpectedly ran into Rachel and Brandon on the street and went with them to a palce nearby. This time of year is the best time to explore the outdoors because the leaves are beautiful and changing (also falling spontaneously).

The new me

Yesterday I took the plunge and got my haircut in a foreign country. Not too scary and I like the new look very much.

Halloween at Herald

Pictures are coming..................The Skulsteds and the Grahams decided to make this Halloween a memorable one for the kids at herald language institute. We took the initiative of created a haunted house for all the kids at Herald. It's amazing what you can do with such limited resources. But the kids were spooked, we screamed our heads off, made the kids touch monster brains, guts, and eyeballs with the eery tones of halloween sounds and dreadful screaming. Most of the kids didn't even know what a haunted house was, so the whole concept blew them out of the water. More to come..........