I have been quite ill with the flu lately. I had three days of switching between being cold and then sweating - it wasn't fun. I am starting to feel better today.

I have lost about 5 pounds though.

Great gluten free cookies: Sunstart Chocolate Chip Cookies

Great gluten free pasta: TruRoots ancient grain pasta (available at Costco)

Milestone's has gluten free items on their menu. I had the burger today and it is quite good. They even have a gluten free dessert - I haven't tried it yet.

Longo's food items in their deli have allergy alerts and state what items them contain re:allergies. I love their packaged salads - the pear and blue cheese one is great.

New Year - Healthy Living

I am attempting to get healthy this year. I have stopped taking one medication that I was on and I am feeling pretty good. I do have a bit of light headedness at times but I think things are going well.

I have started a gluten free diet and am finding some great products!

I am hoping to start working out and to start meditation. I will keep you posted on how things go. I am really posting for my own benefit but you are welcome to enjoy/benefit/offer advice as you see fit.

Korea Day 28

last full teaching day - busy, crazy, bad guy butting in line with students - 45minute lunch line wait

beer at second

wander around olympic park and pretzel and smoothy

many drunk men on subway - do not make eye contact

Korea Day 27

Myeong-dong for the Chinese visas, more skin food, jimdak for dinner, wandered around Gwangwhamun - sculpture, fountains with children playing, design display for 2010

Korea Day 26

Tuesday

Indian food and drinks at 2nd

bad day, Katy and I were annoyed

Korea Day 25

It's the start of our final week and we are feeling that the end is coming quickly and we haven't seen enough of Seoul yet.

I actually stopped for a Starbuck's coffee on the way to work. The day went smoothly and we were actually given a period off to write the comments for the final report. I was able to finish all but one of mine in this hour.

We went to see the auditorium where the final day presentations will be done and the place is quite massive. We are a bit worried that the students will be really intimidated. At least they get to do a rehearsal there in the next few days.

Joann and I stopped for ice cream on the way home and then did a bit of work, comments and reports and schedules. I then created a few handouts for my classes while Joann got caught up on her journal.

It was late by the time I was finished so we had a bagel and drink and had a short walk before going home for the night.

Korea Day 24 - the last day off

Joann and I were up just after 10am and had breakfast in our kitchen. We left home at 11:30am and headed back to Insadong. We are getting to know this area and continue to love it. We looked in a few jewellry stores but nothing caught our eyes.

We ventured into Tapgol Park (Pagoda Park) as the gates were open. We had wanted to go in before but the gates were closed. It is a lovely little park in Insadong. The park is where the Korean Independence movement of 1919 started.

Here is the pagoda for which the park is named. It is very old (1400's) and it is contained in a glass room - we speculated that it was to prevent further erosion of the engraving on it.

This reminded me a bit of Central Park, a lovely park with skyscrapers in the background.

I love these pinky red flowering trees. I am holding my bag of "Skin Food" products. This is the Korean body shop and the products are great. They are very clever. When you enter the store, they give you a sample of their products. When you buy something, they give you a few more products. This seems so generous - the problem is the products are fabulous and whenever we try one of the samples, we want to go back and buy the product.

Joann is conspicuously also sporting a "Skin Food" bag.

Here is the lady who sold us our pottery. She didn't notice me taking her picture as she is busy watching her TV.

I wanted to go to a traditional tea house and Joann humoured me. This is actually the Tea Museum! There must have been 100 different teas on the menu. Each one had different flavours and promised to heal different things. Joann ordered a persimmon tea. She was given the instructions to let her tea steep for 2 minutes. Joann's tea had a nice mild flavour.

I ordered lotus leaf tea ($7). This is not to be confused with the lotus tea ($50) that contains an actual lotus flower that opens when the hot water is poured over it. My tea needed only 1 minute of steeping. My tea was quite mild but very good.

It was 3:30pm and we hadn't had lunch so we decided to order this green tea waffle with bananas and blueberry jam. It was accompanied by real Canadian maple syrup! Yes, the waffle is great and it was delicious.

Here is the man who makes designs out of clothepin wires!

Joann and I thought this place looked so nice. We were very thirsty and dropped in for a drink. We were desperate for a cold beer. They wouldn't serve us if we didn't order food and we were still full from the waffle so we left. Later, we were told that it is common here to refuse service without food - Joann and I had not experienced this. We went across the road to a nice bar and had a cold beer!

I find the streets here very interesting. There will be some stores, a few restaurants, and then there will be a small door with a small garage-like setting that must be someone's private space. This is very intriguing to me.

Joann and I saw these sculptures in a small green space as we were walking. I have seen some wonderful sculptures that I would love to bring home. Joann suggested that we could probably buy big hunks of rock back home and make something like this ourselves. I will keep you posted on our progress.

At about 7:30pm, we decided to come back to our place and eat and do laundry. We went to the neighbourhood chicken place. We had spicy chicken. We had eaten here before and I found the chicken to be quite spicy then. Today it didn't seem very spicy and we speculated as to whether the chicken was less spicy or I was getting used to the spicy food here.

We came back and put in two loads of laundry. We then used some skin food products including facial masks - I will spare you the photos! Once our faces were clean and feeling fabulous, we went to check the laundry. We are not sure what happened, one load was still dry and the other load had washed but not spun dry so it was sopping wet. Not being able to read the dirctions on the machine (in Korean only), we decided to start the machines over again. The wash cycle takes 125 minutes so we set the alarms to get up at midnight to get the laundry and went to bed. All went well at midnight and we have clean clothes.