It's nearly time to say goodbye!

On Monday I'm giving some of the teachers I've worked closely with bottles of wine as a farewell. Instead of trying to wrap the wine bottles (let's face it - that never really works) I decided to use these adorable gift tags I got in a swap my friend Tille organised on her blog - She waits for whispers.

I think they look pretty cute - although I'm sure the female teachers will appreciate the cuteness more than the male teachers.

International Snack Swap

A while ago, I did an international snack swap on craftster. The swap was a pretty simple one - you needed to send your partner some snacks from your country and also craft them a small item to keep snacks in.

I talked to my partner about the crafted items and she said she was happy for me to take my own spin on it - so I decided to make these kawaii cakes with a mix of Japanese and Korean craft supplies I had.

Japanese Scrapbook Part II

Rich and I have now finally finished the scrapbook of our Japanese trip! Here's the final pages of the book.

1. Maid Cafe - A rather strange and Japanese concept! Japanese "maids" (girls dressed in anime style outfits) serve you cake and coffee in a super cutesy cafe.

2.Akihabara - This is an area of Toyko famous for it's anime stores and gaming. You can even visit the "Toyko Anime Centre". 3. Mejei Shrine - This is a beautiful shrine in Harajuku - even though we visited on a Wednesday afternoon it was still incredibly busy! 4. Harujuku - It's an amazing place - but it would have been even better to visit there if I had more spending money!
5. Asakusa - An era of Tokyo which is trying to preserve the Edo period history of Japan. It's an incredible place!
6. Tokyo River Cruise and Tokyo Tower - It's all great cheesy tourist fun!
7. Travelling on the Shinkansen (Bullet Train) and eating bento - the perfect way to travel! 8. Visiting the Japanese Snow Monkey - This was the most amazing day of our trip. 10. Visiting Kyoto tower - mostly because if I see a tower I have to visit! 11. The beautiful streets of Gion in Kyoto at night.12. Our final day in Kyoto - visiting temples and palaces.
13. Back in Tokyo and spending time hanging out at our capsule hotel.14. Our last day in Tokyo - it's back to Harujuku again!15. Visiting the Imperial Palace.16 - Goodbye Japan - everything was just super!

Possibly the last weekend in Seoul

This weekend was quite possibly our last weekend in Seoul, I really love Seoul and will be really sad to say goodbye!

On Saturday we decided to visit some of our favourite places in Seoul for possibly the last time.

1. Gwanghwamun Plaza - This time when we visited Gwanghwamun Plaza there were all sort of crazy "animals" nearby as part of an art exhibition.








2. Samcheong Dong - This is a suburb in Seoul - famous for it's art galleries, cafe's and traditional style buildings. Everyone loves to come here to take pictures.





3. Insadong - Famous for it's tea houses and markets.


Just for fun - here's a cheesy picture of me with my polariod camera!

Jecheon International Music Film Festival

Last weekend Rich and I went to what is likely to be our last film festival in Korea (which is a little sad). The film festival was approximately 2 hours from Seoul and is called the Jecheon International film festival - as the name suggests - all the films at the festival were music related. They also had some concerts at the festival but we were only there for two days and one night so we couldn't attend any of these.





The films that we saw were as follows:

1) Alien Band - This is a fairly small budget Korean movie (so small in fact I couldn't find a movie poster on the internet!) - it's the story of a group of international students at a Korean university (from Japan, Malaysia and Paraguay) who have lost their club room at their university. In order to get the club room back they decide to enter a battle of the bands contest along with a reluctant French/Korean guy named Duk-Su.

This movie is VERY Korean - I think that if I had watched this film at home in New Zealand with no knowledge of Korea I would be very confused as to what was happening at times.

But that said it is a fun movie and it does touch on some difficult issues, like racism in Korea.

I liked it, but I can't say that everybody would.

2) One Man Beatles - This documentary was about Emitt Rhodes, a lost pop star from the 1960's/1970's. He was hugely popular during this time - but has since totally faded into obscurity. This movie is based around a guy who finds an Emitt Rhodes Album and falls in love with it - he seeks down all of Emitt's other album's but there's not a lot of work. He wants to find out what happens the Emitt desperately and travels to the USA to find him.

3) Stones in Exile - This movie is all about the making of the Rolling Stones Album - "Exile on Main St". During this time the Stones left England (due to tax woes) and lived in the south of France to record their album. I'm not a huge fan of the Rolling Stones but I thought this movie was good insight to the band and the time in general.

4) Oil City Confidential - My favourite film at the festival would have to be Oil City Confidential, about the English Band "Dr Feelgood" - I knew pretty much nothing about this band before I went to the movie, but now I think they are pretty amazing.

The film was made by Julian Temple, who made one of my favourite music films of all time - The Filth and the Fury.

The film is the story of the band, their backgrounds, where they came from and their huge success (again I can't believe I don't know this band!) and the fallout from that success.

Here's a link to a Dr Feelgood song - Roxette. You should listen to it because Dr Feelgood are awesome.

We also watched a couple of short documentaries - about the making of "Dark Side of the moon" and "The Doors". I can't really count these as movies though as they were both really short.

So with one festival - I have now increased my movie viewing quota to 56! I still need to watch a lot more movies.