It's been a while...

Well, I haven't blogged for a while. I guess nothing exciting has happened in the last while. We had some issues with our heating in our house for a while (still do to some degree). We cranked our heat to the max and it got us up to a whopping 14 degrees celcius. Apparently this is normal for old korean style homes. I still don't believe that completely. Apparently we use one tank of oil for heating in about 4-5 months in the spring and summer, but we use 2 tanks a month in the winter for 3 months. Kinda crazy eh? So your winter bills go up 4-5 times the amount of spring, summer and fall. Spring, summer, and fall are cheap though so it evens out to fairly low utilities as compared to Canada. Apartments are the way to go if you are thinking of teaching in Korea. They are always warm and you don't have to turn the heat on too high to keep it that way. Often it is too hot in an apartment because the neighbors floor heating heats some of your floor too. We have lots of windows for the summer months though. We can keep a decent airflow that way. Of course, there are mosquitoes in the warm months.
Anyway, not too much has been going on here in the winter months. Christine has been sick with chest congestion and a cough that won't go away. So that has been a pain for the last 3 weeks or so. She got a shot in the butt from a doctor today so hopefully whatever that was will help. Colds aren't the same here, they won't go away unless you go to the doctor and get some pills. It's weird.
We did have a visit from one of Christine's highschool friends last weekend. I'll write about that when I get a chance. She is teaching in another city nearby ours. She came up with her boyfriend and we made a trip to Daewangam Park at the south-eastern tip if Ulsan. It was good times. Really windy though.
Other than that. We're trying to keep active at the gym and meeting lots of different people. Especially Christine! It pays to be a woman here. The women are so nice and friendly and always want to help out foreign women. The guys are hooped in that area. Christine gets a lot of women approaching her. She has a lot more friends than I do. It just seems to be that way here. The guys are a bit more proud and worried about their english skills so they aren't as eager to talk with us. So it seems. But I've made a few friends here. I guess I could meet some more if I was into going out for sam-gyop-sal (beef strips) and Soju (alcohol..like Rum?). That's the guy thing to do here. Hang out in a restaurant with the guys, eat, and drink lots of Soju. Getting drunk together is like a sign of friendship for men here. Then you go out to a norabang (karioke room) and continue drinking Soju and singing karioke! Personally, although it seems interesting, I'm not too much into that. That's one part of the culture that isn't so appealing to me. Norabang's are fun though, we've done that a couple times so far.
Now I am just rambling things.
I got a scooter buddy now. I convinced a friend of mine to purchase a scooter. He ended up finding the same scooter as me, except his is 2 years older and not quite as good, but he got a decent deal on it and now we can go riding. I'm looking forward to some trips in the warmer climate. Scooter trips are fun! The coast is beautiful here.
Hopefully I'll have some more blogs up in the near future. We have a long weekend coming up and then later on in February I'll be having a visitor from Ontario....(suspenseful.....!!!)