I was reading Kit Hui 's blog about the film list (100 must see movies from the 20th century) supplied by Leonard Maltin which she described as American centric.  The list is indeed American centric though there are some good films on it.

This made me think - if you could recommend 10 films, from your own country (be as centric as you like),  as essential viewing what would they be and why.......

I had a bit of trouble picking ten from NZ but here is my ten (in no particular order)

1 - Outrageous Fortune - Christmas Movie = as cheesy as the title is, this is a great movie based on a local drama.  It is an excellent look at working class NZ and the classic NZ camping summer holiday.

2 - Once Were Warriors - dated now but still a look at the NZ you don't see in the tourist ads (I was physically shaking when I left the movie theatre after watching this, the dvd doesn't have the same effect but it is still quite powerful).

3 - Scarfies - Dunedin student culture in all it's base glory, well written story imo.

4 - Heavenly Creatures - beautifully told by Peter Jackson (before he got all famous) story of two teenage girls who murdered one of their mothers in Christchurch in the 1950s (true story).

4 - Out of the Blue - true story of NZ's first mass shooting in Aramoana in 1990, beautifully told with collaboration with the survivors.  This movie has no music soundtrack, the only music is when the characters listen to the radio, this gives the movie quite a different feel from most modern movies.

5 - Meet the Feebles - sick and twisted and a must see (I only have two Peter Jackson movies on my list, I don't consider LOTR to be NZ movies, we were just the backdrop).

6 - Grasscutter - dated 80s movie about an Irish family expatriated to NZ to hide from the IRA, oldie but a goodie.

7 - Sione's Wedding - released in the States as Samoan Wedding, not sure how much of the humour in this is cultural but it was a big hit in NZ, it is a great peek into NZ Pacific Island culture.

8 - The Man With No Head - Martin Clune stars in this cute made for TV movie about an East Coast Iwi (Maori tribe) trying to claim back a carved wooden head that is in British museum, Martin Clune is the museum representative sent to NZ to stop the repatriation.

9 - Mauri - great plot twist and also a good look into Maori culture

10 - Eagle vs Shark - for NZ nerd/geek/loser humour; Jemain Clement is a lead, if you like Flight of the Conchords you may (but I promise nothing) like this, I did anyway.

So which ten would you pick from your country, and if you have time, why?

Feeling a bit better but Kahurangi is going home.  I will change her tickets today and in three weeks she is going home.  I will stay a bit longer and look for work in Wellington.  I like Korea but my daughter is my priority.  I can always come back but maybe I will try somewhere else - who knows.

Went to an expat bbq in Miryang (about 40 minutes east of here) on Saturday.  Was a great night but I drank far too much red wine (found a nice Australian Cab Sav at Home Plus).   It was nice to speak English at a normal pace and talk to others who are here.  They were all so lovely and the couple whose bbq it was (he was Amercian, she is from Peru) put K and I up for the night as the last bus to Yeongsan was at 6pm (ah the joys of living in the sticks).

Weird dreams - okay any dream interpreters on AnD - I need your advice.

I am having a re-occuring dream.  The theme is always the same though the details differ.  Last night was the 3rd or 4th time I have had this dream in the last couple of weeks.  In my dream I live in a typical NZ wooden house.  This house is divided into two flats.  The neighbour in the other flat tells me that there is someone living in my roof and coming downstairs and stealing food and going through our stuff when I am not there or at night.   The first time I dreamed this dream, it was me who could hear footsteps upstairs.  Everytime I dream it I remember the other dreams in my dream (if that makes sense) and they seem to corroborate that somebody is living in secret in my roof.   Last night was the first time I have woken up feeling scared because of this dream. 

what the hell does it mean.....

Thanks to unwoundclock for this

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Well, let's see.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicise those you intend to read
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

so that's 27 out of 100, hmmm - hehe it would be great if seeing the film version counted, then I could mark off a lot more (i'm sure we all could).  NB I have read the Bible but not cover to cover - it's not that kind of book and I'm not a Christian.

Went to Busan again on Friday.  Kahurangi had an appointment with an orthodontist who speaks fluent English (I advertised on pusanweb (expat classifieds) and was recommened him).   It was great he went to High School in Christchurch NZ (Christ College for those Kiwi's on here) and could understand my accent, in fact he has NZ citizenship.    He was very kind and even feed us (kimbab) coz he knew we had travelled for a couple of hours to get to his clinic.  If you ever need a dentist in Busan, I recommend Dr Kwon.

Kahurangi is still very homesick and quite frankly, so am I.  I try and put a brave face on it and some days are good but mostly I am counting down the time to go home.  I actually don't want to spend a year like that.  It isn't that everything here is terrible, I like Korean food and the people are pretty much like the people in Nelson - friendly for the most part.   I just miss home, I miss food that I am used to (olives, olive oil, butter, good whole grain bread, herbs like thyme, cheese, natural unsweetened yoghurt, chickpeas, pesto, hummus, pork sausages, lean cuts of chicken, salmon, peanut butter, vegemite, freshly squeezed juice (that doesn't have a ton of sugar added), organic food...).  I miss talking at a normal pace (talking slowly all the time is actually quite exhausting).   I miss living by the ocean and swimming in it when I get hot. 

The teaching is another thing, I like teaching and working with people of all ages but I can't say I'm passionate about English and I feel like a fraud most of the time.   If I was just teaching at the High School I would probably cope a bit better but I find the Middle School quite stressful.  The classes are larger and the age group is tougher (13-15) (this is true anywhere not just Korea) but also the teachers, although very kind are a bit odd.  My co-teacher counts up and points out exactly how many students have not understood me which makes me feel inept and the vice principal when we went out to lunch corrects my faux pas loudly and by exaggerating my behaviour as to make it look oafish even by Western standards and I certainly don't behave like that.  This embarrassed me and pissed me off.  K and I are tired of being the local zoo exhibit.   I don't know how long I will be here but don't be surprised if I go sooner rather than later.

Okay whinge over, here are some photos of the trip:

 on the bus, the old and the new

  on the bus- I love the pastel colours of the apartments to the right.

 first time I have been in a backpackers that was an apartment in a highrise.  The guy on the laptop has been travelling for 7 years while working on his computer. He is going to buy an apartment in Rio de Janero.  I want his job.

 Seomyeon Subway Station - always be prepared.

 Someone catches 40 winks on multi-coloured chairs at the Sasang Bus Terminal.