Super Girly Italian Food

In Korea, Italian food is really popular, much more popular than it is in New Zealand. Korean's seem to really love pizza and pasta which is great for us - because when we need a break from kimchi and rice we can always rely on Italian places for western style food.

Our city Uijeongbu seems to have quite a few Italian places, but the strange thing is a lot of them seem to have super girly decor. I guess this is because they are the kinds of places couples or groups of girls would go for dinner. But I have to admit the girly-ness at these places is really off the scale. Usually the restaurant will have an area decorated in a pastel shade of pink, purple, yellow, blue or pink - each of these areas will have a number of super girly nick naks which usually include everything from small pot plants to cutesy little ceramic animals.

I quite like these places as the food is great and the decor is amusing to say the least - the restaurant owners obviously go to a lot of effort to perfect the super girly look.

Last Monday night Rich and I went to our favourite super girly restaurant before meeting a friend for coffee and here are some of the photos - the food was great and the added bonus about this place is that we always get free cake.

Seoul National Museum

Last weekend Rich and I finally made it to the Seoul National Museum, this is of course a HUGE museum and we didn't really even see half of what they had at the museum before we had brains that were overloaded with new information. But I will say it is a very amazing place and I am looking forward to going back again soon.

The museum also has an amazing garden surrounding it, this time of year the gardens still look a little bleak. But I still managed to take some great photo's of the gardens and I am looking forward to returning again in the spring time when everything is a little bit brighter.

Films 14, 15 & 16

Here's a few more films I've seen recently to add to my total for 110 films for 2010.

First up is a classic Hammer Film - "Frankenstein must be destroyed". I love Peter Cushing and I love old school Hammer films like this one - Cushing plays the deranged Dr Frankenstein who blackmails a young couple to get what he wants whilst he works towards his ultimate goal of transplanting a brain from one body to another. It's creepy cool.

The second film I watched was "The man who shot Liberty Valance". It's no secret that I generally don't like western films but this is one of the great classics so I thought I'd watch it and see how it was and it is pretty amazing, the story has really stood up over time and the characters were really amazing. I really loved this film - strange but true! I saw both these films at a film festival at cinemateque - one of my favourite cinema's in the whole world! Our friend Joseph introduced us to cinemateque and keeps us up to date with all the amazing film festivals they have - it's so great to see old classics on the big screen.

The third movie I watched wasn't quite in the same league as the other two but I have a soft spot for b-grade horror films - especially when they star Robert Englund.

The movie basically involved a whole bunch of genetically engineered super wasps that invade small town America, as always, the poster is much more awesome than the actual movie.

Felt Birthday Cake

When I was back home in New Zealand I used to bake a lot, in fact baking was one of my favourite things. But now I live in Korea I don't have and oven, and even if I did have an oven I'm not sure where to buy essential baking goods such as baking powder and coconut.

Due to this fact, I can't make my friends birthday cakes but I can felt them birthday cakes.

Here's a felted birthday cake I made recently for my friend Joseph, I started with a basic pattern but I mostly just made it up as I went along. It's kind of cute I think and the best thing is zero calories!

Fun times in Busan

A couple of weekends ago Rich and I headed down to Busan which is at the bottom of the Korean Peninsula - it's a port city and it reminds me a little of Wellington. Sure it's a little bigger and it has many more Russian sailors than Wellington (does Wellington have any Russian Sailors?) but it's kind of hilly with a big harbour - it's so nice to smell the sea air after all this time living inland. Here's so pictures of the things we got up to.

1. Street for foreigners



2. Busan Tower (I can never resist a tower)


3. Haeundae Beach



4. Busan Aquarium



5. Jagalchi Market



6. Busan International Film Festival Square


7. General Busan awesome-ness