Dog Shoes

One of the teacher's brought her dog to school one day. Brad and I always laugh at the dog shoes that seem to be so popular here. This dog seemed quite happy in its shoes.

Public Holiday and weekend

Wednesday (6 June) was a public holiday which was nice, we just relaxed by the pool at Seoul Club, had lunch, read our books and generally lazed about. After all this realxation we did force ourselves to do some gym, but followed by using the sauna's and hot baths. (This is one thing that I really enjoy here.)

Storm protecting her car

Today, Saturday, we again tried to introduce Storm to another dog. She was her usual self, a little forceful, and the other dog was on its lead. Things were okay until the man and the dog sat on the back of our car, so Storm decided she had to protect the car and her territory (the back is her part), so she was quick to launch numerous attacks on the other dog. I managed to calm her down and sit with her, and as soon as the man moved away from the back, Storm was in the car, and she was happy again.

Pictures of Carla's school

After that we went on a ride on the scooter down to the Han river just to sit and relax, watch the people and see what was happening. There are always lots of people along the river, walking, running or riding. It's even busier lately as the weather has been pretty good.

We have now just got back from dinner at Thai Orchid, a really nice Thai restaurant up the road in Itaewon, where we had dinner with some friends Mike and Jennifer who are from the States. We drove up there on the scooter (which helps now, as we don't sit in traffic and finding parking is easy.)

Wine Tasting

About a month ago we went on the wine cruise, a few weeks later the friends who went with us (Lennie and Bernie) received a call that they had won a free wine tasting for 15 people. So Sunday was the day and we went over to their apartment for the tasting. They had decided to have it on the roof of their apartment block.

The wines were pretty good, especially the light white wines, however this may have been because it was one of the hottest days here, on the roof with no shade, needless to say, but it was not condusive to drinking reds.

Unfortunately Carla and I had forgotten to take the camera, so no pics this time.

We bought 6 bottles of a German Riesling, which is very nice. The price is KRW17 000 per bottle (about R132) , which is actually a really good price here, but back home an equivalent wine would have cost maybe R30 - R40.

Thankfully I brough across all my wine, as this has saved us a fortune already. The only problem is that I am starting to become more sceptical about how long it will keep over here, and how it was during the few months transpotation. The only thing is that it is mainly reds, hence the reason we bought the Riesling.

General Life

Carla has been practicing riding her scooter, I'm sure she will tell you all about it, but she is reall getting pretty good. Lately driving up to the school and back.

Work has been really hectic trying to get our integration finalised, so I am looking forward for a chance to take a few days off. Today we potted around the garden as it was looking terrible, the weeds were about a foot high. It is terrible, as we pay 400 000 won (about R3 200) a month as a levy (yes, not rent just levy) to manage our unit, including the garden maintenace, and the lawn never gets cut or weeded.


So Carla and I got into the garden to do some weeding and generally clean things up a bit, which took a fair amount of time. After the weeding, I went to ask the maintenance / security guy for their lawn mower, which is a small manual pushing mower. This was absolutely useless, so I gave up with that after a few minutes as it was not cutting anything. Eventually the maintenance / security comes along with a small electric hedge trimmer, not much large then my hair shaver. He was going to cut the grass with that...

After seeing him try this for a few minutes I felt really sorry for him and went and riffled through the stuff we brought across but not unpacked, looking for our weedeater. I brought this up and in a few minutes everything was cut. The maintenance / security / gardener just kept on pointing to the weedeater and saying "good, very good". Maybe I should donate it to the complex.



We then went to Seoul Club for a swim and a pizza which was really nice and relaxing.

Darmstadt, Geneva, Mainz

I think is the first time I am updating this blog, so sorry for the delay. I will go back and add some details to the pictures Carla posted of my trip to Zermatt.

I had to spend some time last week in Germany, and visit the offices of Serono (now Merck Serono) in Geneva for a few meetings on the integration of the businesses. The offices are really impressive, with everything made of glass. Even the roof opens up.

I didn't get to take any pictures unfortunately. At the end of the week I had another meeting in Mainz, which was really nice. Mainz is a beautiful little town, that has a history going back to the times of the Romans. Many of the buildings still have part of there structures coming from the Roman buildings.

The Friday night we went on a "champagne" tasting, or now sparkling wine. It was at a place directly opposite the hotel called Kupferberg, and is apparently quite famous. We saw the enormous wine cellars and methods of making the "sect" as they call it. The best was tasting the wines (of course...) and we only needed to walk across the road to get to the hotel. Some of the wine cellars here are dated back to Roman times.

Kupferberg

I was only flying back to Seoul on the Saturday evening, so I had the opportunity to look around during the morning. The town was / is a very Catholic town, so there are many churches and cathedrals around which are really beautiful.

The two pictures here are of the main Dome Cathedral in Mainz.

It was really nice to be in a place that wasn't crowded with people, and had some really beautiful old buildings.