Ahn-nyung-haseyo

Hello from Korea!

It took us a very long time (7 hr flight to Dubai, 3 hr stop-over, 8 hr flight to Korea) and we were all tired by the time we got here. Fortunately, we were met by two lovely Korean lads with a sign (as you can see) - they even pushed our luggage trolley for us. It was hot and humid, so we waited inside until the bus arrived to take us to the hotel.

There were some hassles with check-in - we'd been put into twin rooms so Lea was sharing with a spanish woman we'd not met. Unfortunately, we'd been put into smoking rooms, so they STANK!! peeeewwwwwww!! We asked to change rooms - Becs and I were moved straight away, but because Lea was sharing with someone, they said she needed to ask her "room-mate". No one had her number, we'd not met her and it was all becoming a bit much for us to deal with - especially after no sleep for 24hrs, so I asked if we could get a triple room. After much to-ing and fro-ing between the hotel and the organisers, they put an extra bed in with Becs and I and we're all sharing. Gareth is still sharing with a spanish man who doesn't speak english, but he said it's all fine. :-)

I've got more to tell about the Korea Science Festival, but I'll leave that until next time - hopefully I'll be able to get online again while I'm here. I'll just say that I'm keeping busy - not much time for sight-seeing yet, but we're going on a tour tonight. :-)

Hope everyone is well.
*hugz*
-d-

Photos photos everywhere, and all the boards did shrink

For those of you who have been waiting patiently for the photographic evidence of our trip to sunny (actually quite freezing cold) Bendigo, here they are in all their glory. We took a lot more, but trust me, these are the best ;)

Happy Birthday Cheryl

Happy birthday beautiful!

I would have posted this yesterday but we were in transit.

And so ends the triumvirate of birthdays ;)

Happy Birthday Mum!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MUM
aka Mother-dear aka Mummy aka Nanny aka Ann aka Lady Ada aka Ann Of Green Gables aka The Dread-Pirate's Wife!

Hope you have a lovely day! On behalf of all of us, thank-you!!

Have a drink on us.

I can stay in the country, huzzah!

About 2 months ago my entry/work VISA for the UK expired; two weeks prior I sent it away for an extension. Today I got my passport back and breathed a sigh of relief!

It's hard to believe it takes so long! I mean, they certainly took my money quick enough -- that was taken out of my account before the first biometrics interview. Worse, the application form warns that it can take up to 90 days, and that if you need your passport back before then they will cancel the processing altogether. Luckily for me, I was entitled to stay (and work) for as long as they had it, but with our next holiday coming up I was really quite worried I wouldn't be able to leave the country -- after Wales, we realise it will actually be cheaper to fly and stay in Europe than to drive around Britain. Which is of course ridiculous in and of itself, but what can you do?

I'm still not home-and-hosed yet, as the biometric ID card (which replaces a rubber-stamp in my passport and must be carried along with the passport) is being delivered separately, but at least I can leave and re-enter the country now.

We're "last minuting" our next holiday, as Dee's brother will be with us and we want something cheap and fun -- suggestions? So far I'd like to see Morocco or Greece, Dee is talking about Ireland (although I've already been there!) and Chris (her brother) will take whatever he gets *grin*. Especially since he's doing a 'round-the-world trip in Business Class thanks to about a billion frequent-flyer points.

This has me reinvigorated about a big trip next year, too -- Budapest, Poland, Russia, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Singapore.

Happy Birthday Daria!

Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday dear Dariaaaaaaa,
Ha-appy birthday to yooooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuu!!


*big hugz* from Aunty Dayna

Bendigo and birthdays and baby

Only a few weeks until we head over to Bendigo. Can't wait! :) It will be Oscar's first big trip and we're hoping he'll be alright with sitting in the car for a while. We're doing the trip over two days as we usually do and are prepared to do as many stops as Os needs. We're slowly getting organised... have made a list of things to take and will book accommodation very soon. Os may be eating some solids by the time we go, so we have to pack for that as well as pack everything he needs for his formula.
(I'm reading this out to Oscar as i type to keep him entertained, and he's just staring. Creepy!)
The trip to Bendigo is part of my brithday present from Damien. The other part is this laptop! It was a really nice surprise when Damien gave it to me. I was a bit confused at first because I thought that the "happy birthday cheryl" message on the screen was the present :) Oscar spends most of his awake time in the loungeroom, and now that he is moving around much more it's so good to be able to watch him and check out facebook at the same time ;) It has also been handy to do things like look up information for our trip etc and Damien has also put some shows and movies on there.
Apart from all of that Oscar has been doing well recently. He did a bit of a commando crawl the other night and tends to move around a fair bit when he's on the floor. He has also been sleeping much better this past week. We thought it might have been because of his immunisations, but he's stilll sleeping well so we'll see.
(PS Oscar was staring because he was tired. I put him to bed and he slept for an hour and a half!)

Holidays

Well these school holidays i have calisthenics because the saturday after that we have our mid-year concert and we now have 8 girls so we need lots of practice.
I also have math homework and pathways home work so no getting out of it.

Relaxing in Wales - yn llacio i mewn Cymru

It's day four of our holiday out of the city, and we're sitting in the Hawk and Buckle Inn reading historical fiction, sketching architecture and writing weblog posts. It's been incredibly relaxing.

The town we are staying in, Llannefydd, is too small for even a general store. Apart from a handful of houses, there is the Hawk And Buckle Inn (where we are staying), a church and a primary school -- such a cute wee school it is too! Strangely enough, the Inn gets busy of an evening! I think everyone in town drops in at some point during the night, although the combination of enormous amounts of good food, a bar that has Australian wine (especially after we spoke to Stuart, the owner's son and wine-buff) and the peace and quiet means we've been toddling off to bed any time from 9pm ... and never later than 10:30!

Our room is nice: cosy, comfortable, tastefully decorated and with a large double-jacuzzi. The owners are lovely, quirky and friendly, and the chef seems gruff but creates delicious meals: sausages, potato and leek soup, chicken with Welsh cheese and bacon, lamb burgers with just a hint of mint. Good, honest food -- and today we might have a Sunday roast! Breakfast has been similarly delicious-and-epic. On our first morning here we opted for the Full Welsh breakfast which included sausages, eggs, tomato, mushrooms ... I even suspended any analytical-thought long enough to try black-pudding (it's yummy, just don't think about what goes into it -- kind of like haggis in that way then!).

The GPS has had inestimable value, although we suspect it has a dark sense of humour with some of the roads it's taken us down -- tiny winding lanes which look more like someone's drive-way than a main thoroughfare but go on for miles at a time. With "navi"'s help we visited the castle at Conwy (Conway) on the bay, explored the local streets and sat on the shore for a spell. It's incredible just how much effort went into building an enormous stone citadel that once housed lords and ladies, only for it to become a giant birdhouse for pidgeons and gulls...

After Conwy we drove to Caernarfon (seems to be pronounced "Carnarvon" -- like the Aussie one!). Caernarfon would be beautiful -- the centre of town is entirely within the castle walls -- but inexplicably it is more "bogan" than touristy, complete with dodgy little shops filled with the cheapest of plastic tat, pubs that a sailor would be wary of entering and pregnant teens arguing loudly and in Welsh in the street. I'm exaggerating a little there, but it's still hard to understand why such a place is not filled with tiny cottage cafes and tearooms, hand-stitched red dragons, tea-towels, tiny wrapped soaps and the friendly bustle of tourists, loud Americans, timid English-folk.

On the following day we saw Llannerwst, a beautiful little town with an brilliant tea-house accessible over an ancient stone bridge and all covered in green vines. We ate (and ate and ate) lunch there: a ploughman's lunch of ham and turkey and salad, and Welsh rarebit (toasted cheese and mustard), washed down with strong, rich tea. (The water tastes better out here, even when we filter the London water.) Then more: scones with jam and cream and too many slices of bara brith -- a fruitcake with butter that I'm sure Nanna has made before! We waddled out of the cottage and prayed that the stone bridge would hold us, then walked at least some of it off around the town.

Today we're staying "home" -- Dee gets a rest from driving, I can upload the photos (see the Cymru set on Flickr) and we can both read, write, draw, play chess, argue, plan, laugh, doze. I think we're both recharging nicely, so are feeling much more positive about the rest of the year and living (and working) in London for just a little while longer. Chris (Dee's brother) is visiting shortly, so we'll be off to Istanbul and who-knows-where (last-minute travel plans are great!), and in the meantime we can hopefully find some fun things on weekends and public holidays. Before too long we'll be winging our way (er, railing our way?) back home to see you all!

Geekin' it up on the way to Wales. I'm sitting in our hire-car -- a little Vauxhall Corsa, or as we all know it, a beep-beep Barina (the car that can go-go-go!) -- writing a 'blog entry on Dee's netbook ("noodle") whilst connected to the 'net via a 3G mobile phone. Meanwhile, Dee is navigating with our new GPS unit (a Garmin Nuvi) and listening to MP3s. Ain't tech grand?

Seriously tho', we've wanted a GPS thingy for a while, and when I couldn't get a USB one for noodle we decided to hire one from the car-hire place ... but they didn't have any! Apparently they go missing, who'da thunk?! The car-hire man was kind enough to point us towards a Curry's Electrical outside the congestion zone (who wants to pay just to drive through London?) so we got ourselves there (just barely) and geared-up. (Actually, we didn't end up buying the ol' sat-nav from Curry's, as the staff were by all appearances apathetic morons to a man. We went next door to Halfords. It still took longer to part with our hard-earned cash than we liked, but at least they actually had stuff in stock.)

Anyway, I'm using this as a test -- can we post from the road with mobile Internet? Can we keep in touch with people when we have no fixed address? Can we connect with you guys from a hut in Thailand, a caravan-park in Western Australia?

Let's see if it actually posts, eh?

Oscar's day on the farm

Hi everyone!

Yesterday we took Oscar to the miniature farm barn for a friend's 2-years-old birthday party. We dressed Os in some cold weather gear and he met a lot of animals for the very first time. The first part of the party was a bit of a tour and feed then it was pony ride time. All of the kids were too scared! Apart from Oscar, who sat on one for a little while. They were really cute ponies (I know what I want for my birthday!) and if they could have held my weight I would have been up there in no time as well! ;) Some of the little girls ended up putting hair clips into the pony's mane and leading it around the yard. Next was farm equipment time. I think Os enjoyed the tractor ride the most :) Then all of the kids went inside for some morning tea and cake. Oscar had his milk and then sat next to his little friend while he played with a serviette. It was a very cute party and it tired the little guy out. He fell asleep on the way home, so instead of trying to get him into the house without waking him we drove to the local shopping centre and Damien and I took turns going in to get lunch and eating in the car while Oscar slept (sneaky! :) We took heaps of photos, of course :)

Today we've had a quieter day. We went to the shopping centre for lunch and spent the rest of the day at home. Not sure what we'll do tomorrow. Probably enjoy the public holiday indoors with the heater on :)

Nantes

Hello from France!

We arrived in Nantes at around lunch time on Tuesday and spent the afternoon wandering around the city - just to see what was where and to get our bearings a little. Wednesday we decided to head to Le Machine de l'Ile - The Island of Machines. It's on l'Ile de Nantes and has only been open since 2007. It's a workshop/gallery working towards a major interactive attraction - a carousel/merry-go-round with three levels and lots of creatures that visitors can interact with and 'run'.

We saw eight of the creatures. They're a strange combination of Leonardo Da Vinci's mechanical creations and Jules Verne's imagination - my favourite is the squid, but I think Bruce's favourite is the crab (because he got to control it for a bit). The combination of wood and metal looks really cool and there's so much articulation in the moving bits via pulleys and levers - what a good use of physics!

Thursday we headed over to the Chateau des ducs de Bretagne (The Castle of the Dukes of Britanny). We'd walked to it on Tuesday, but decided to use the Bicloo rental bicycles (pay £1 for the day and the first half-hour of each rental is free). There are docking stations all around the city centre, so it's easy to keep your trips under half-an-hour. The Castle was amazing - it's only recently been restored. The Nantes History Museum is housed in the Castle, so we spent the day discovering the history of the Mermaid city (with strong ties to the land and to its port). We also wandered through the special exhibition - I found some hammocks. Dad, I'll join your pirate ship if I get to sleep in a hammock! ;-)

Friday we headed away from town and went to the Planetarium. The show went for about an hour and the graphics were fantastic. It started as a simple night-sky - what stars you can see at night. They then took us on a journey to each of the planets. It was a very entertaining show and it would have been even better if I understood French.

After lunch (and watching some French guys play boules in the park) we headed to the Musee Jules Verne. It was cool to learn more about him and to see some of his old manuscripts and sketches. Although one of my favourite bits were the moon-related toys from all over the world. Wish I knew where to get the TinTin game! It looked fun.

The food while we were away was pretty tasty. The only problem was that there weren't a great many vege options. In fact, I think I had more cheese in this week than I have had since the start of the year! Crepes were my favourite, especially the ones made from black corn with potatoes gratin as filling. Yummo.

We headed back to England on Saturday morning and found the lovely weather was there too. We had a BBQ for lunch because the sunshine was so good. In fact, the good weather lasted until a couple of days ago (I got saturated walking to the bus from work yesterday). So it's back to grey Manchester weather but at least I had a week of fun and frivolity in France (photos here).

*big hugz* to all.

Ken's birthday pub hike

Last weekend was a long weekend, and also friend's birthday, so on Monday we high-tailed it onto the tube and down towards Hampstead Heath. His name is Ken, and (strangely!) he went to primary school with Dee. Now, I hope at this point you're thinking something like, "Wow, they stayed in touch for that long!", but the truth is much more serendipitous ( may have already told this story) -- Ken was a student at Swinburne when Mark, a Uni buddy of mine, was tutoring. Mark recently moved to London and "dossed" at Ken's for a while. So at Glenda's birthday -- Mark's girl -- both Ken and Dee knew fewer people than everyone, so started chatting. So. Very. Bizzare!

Anyhoo, it was his birthday last weekend so we headed out of our precious safety-zone ("the city") to a suburb. Turns out they've got sun, people,  cafes, greenery! So we arrived at the beer garden and met some of Ken's friends, then I supped a wee dram of uisge whilst Dee enjoyed the red wine. We chatted, ate little nibbly things (calamari, salmon fish-fingers, lamb koftas) and generally enjoyed the sun -- although as the afternoon wore on it threatened rain.

After lunch (and a delicious chocolate cake courtesy of Glenda --  thanks!) we all decided to walk off the meal in Hampstead Green, a nearby park -- although it's bigger than any park I've seen in Aus, just like Hyde Park in London central. We wandered across field and dell and came across a fair! Ferris-wheels, skill games, spinny-aroundy and upside-downy rides! Dee, Ken and I all tried the archery. None of us won a prize, but Dee did have the dubious achievement of almost hitting a "carny" (i.e. fair worker) with an arrow! Remember kids: wine and bow & arrows don't mix. (I kid, I kid, we wouldn't want to get rolling drunk on a school/work day/night -- really, the carny almost got himself shot by ducking out in front of us to retrieve some arrows from the targets. I mean, come on! He was asking for one in the behind!)

It was weird being in the middle of a green space and looking back towards the "urban jungle". It was also getting muggy -- the rain was on its way but taking its sweet time about it. We got to the edge of the park, grabbed some drinks from the supermarket and had an impromptu picnic in a field, while around us people threw frisbees and kicked soccer balls. Decided we'd come back another weekend and play tennis and/or lawn bowls! How sophisticated!

When the rain started, we bid adieu to Ken and company, boarded a bus and headed back home. As always, more photos here. (And I'm not if you need to be on Facebook, but Glenda put some photos up too.)

We're going to the zoo zoo zoo...

It was a vaguely sunny Sunday, the middle of a long weekend - no better time to take a trip to the Zoo. Vicki, Steven, Bruce and I all jumped into Bruce's (mostly) shiny new car and off we went. About an hour later, we arrived and parked on the grass (?!) as directed.


It was fairly cold and windy for the first part of the day - but that didn't stop us enjoying watching the elephants! They were so funny! Initially they were messing about in a little pool. It had a small waterpipe and they were stepping on it to make the water spray everywhere (clever things). Next thing, two of the elephants ran into the pool by the waterfall. One moment they were there, the next they disappeared - they didn't teleport somewhere, it was just the pool was a LOT deeper than it looked! It was fantastic to watch them playing.


We didn't follow any particular plan - we just wandered around the zoo, watched random animals and took lots of photos. Well, I took photos until my batteries went flat. :-( My photoset is here. And since Vicki's batteries didn't go flat, her photoset is here. Sometimes it's sad to see animals in cages but it's obvious that Chester Zoo looks after the welfare of the animals - they have inside and outside spaces, there are toys to play with (even HUGE toys for the elephants) and at least some of the habitats are designed for the animals. It's been ages since I'd been to the zoo - think I might not wait so long until the next visit (probably to another zoo). :-)

We're going to the zoo zoo zoo
You can come too too too...

Leamington Spa at Easter time

Oops, forgot I hadn't linked to this -- our Easter weekend away in Leamington!

Update: Some photos from "Lem".



We also popped over to Coventry, since Dee's Dad was originally from there.