things I like about Korea

If you have read my blog for awhile you have probably realized that I don't especially love it here. I never thought that I wouldn't like it here, I thought I would fit in anywhere in the world, but there is just something about it here that doesn't feel like home. Even though I don't always like living here, there are some things that I really do like about Korea.

I love that they have a subway system in Seoul! You are always within a couple of blocks of a subway stop and you just have to walk down a couple... more like a lot... of flights of stairs, hop on the subway and away you go. It only costs about $1.00 to go anywhere in the city and depending on where you want to go it can take anywhere from 2 minutes to 30 minutes to get to your destination. It totally beats paying a ton of cash for a taxi and sitting in traffic for hours trying to get somewhere.

Talking about transportation, I love how much public transportation they have here. Even in small towns, like Yongmun where we live, they will have taxi's, buses, and trains. It makes getting anywhere very easy and it's pretty cheap too. You can just go to the next town or all the way to Busan (far down in the south of Korea) or to Seoul, it's great!

I love that many times, if you buy things like body wash, bathroom cleaners, laundry detergent ect. that you get a refill with your purchase. They give you the bottle already full and then a refill bag that you can pour into the bottle when it's empty. It's not like you don't pay for it, you do, but it's still cheaper and healthier for the environment. Unfortunately they do not do this with shampoo, which is sad because it already costs $10 for one bottle, I think they should throw in a refill for that much money!

I have a love/hate relationship with not having a clothes dryer. I love that Koreans are willing to take the time and effort into drying their clothes the good old fashion way and it also saves a ton of money and energy. I hate that on rainy days my clothes have to sit inside and don't really dry. I have that on humid days my clothes never dry and it can be damp for two days straight and start to smell a little and I don't know what I will think about it in the winter... it's a love/hate sort of thing. 

Even though I have made fun to Korean women being completely impractical with how they dress, I do like that Koreans take care of themselves and care about their appearance. If you walk down the streets in Korea people look good, you don't see people in pajama's or in sweat pants (most of the time).

I like that musical instruments are cheaper.

I like that you can get a tailored suit for a man for a lot cheaper then the States.

I love that Korea is very beautiful! There are mountains everywhere and they are very lush and green. I have been told that Korea used to look rather ugly and that all of the mountains where just brown dirt, but then after the wars they decided to plant trees all over all the mountains and now it looks beautiful.

I like that we had a summer this year (unlike all you people in Minnesota, wink wink).

I like how even though I think my skin is too pale, the Koreans think it's pretty and if I get a tan then I'm considered 'dirty'. Many Korean women walk around with umbrella's to shade themselves because they want to keep their skin clean and prevent being 'dirty'.

Another love/hate relationship. I like how Koreans don't always feel the need to say sorry. In the States, if you bump into somebody walking down the street you always say 'sorry'. If you walk between two people while they are talking you say 'excuse me' or 'sorry'. In Korea they don't do that. They do what they do and they don't think about you. I hate it though because sometimes you get body slammed walking down the streets and nobody cares and I hate that they can just push you aside or in front of you and think nothing of it. I like my personal bubble... Koreans don't believe in bubbles:)

I love that Koreans can just make me laugh! It's not always the best thing, but impracticality can crack me up sometimes. 

Those are some of the things I like about Korea! 

Birthday Bash

Today we had Gabriel's birthday party! 

I can't believe our little Gabriel is going to be 1 years old on Wednesday! 

Just to warn you, there are LOTS of pictures! 

I couldn't help myself, we had so much fun and I wanted to share the pictures with you! 

So, first we found a sign in English and hung it up for all to see...

... and we decorated with balloons EVERYWHERE! 

They were on windows, doors, ceiling, walls... everywhere! 

We got cute plates and napkins...

... and Gabriel was very excited while he waited for his party to begin...

... and he couldn't keep his hands off of the food table! 

I think he thought it was all for him to eat! 

Then our awesome guests showed up and munched on some yummy food and had fun talking...

... and Gabe played with his friends...

... and then he opened presents!

He got this set of Thomas the Train dinner ware and it was his favorite thing! He couldn't keep his hands off of the bowl! He didn't even care about the other gifts, he would just look at them and maybe hold them but always went back to the bowl!

Below is the toy turtle Mommy got him. 

Even when we made it make noise he still wouldn't let go of the bowl! It was super cute!

Time for cake!

Mommy singing happy birthday to the birthday boy!

Starting into the cake...

... thinking this might be fun...

... oh yes, now this is good!

Get in my BELLY!!!

Mmmm!

Oh yeah, even in the hair...

... and the ear!

Daddy and Mommy with the birthday boy! 

He wasn't as happy anymore because he ended up getting cake in his eyes:(

The birthday boys hat!

Didn't last long though, he hates having things on his head.

After Mommy attempted to clean him up, we got him ready for a bath.

And then he played with his new toys while all the guests conversed 

around him and ate our own cakes and snacks!  

Then it was on to clean up! Though, during clean up Gabriel decided to get ahold of the chip bowl and dump it's entire contents onto the floor and then proceeded to shove as many chip in his mouth as he could before Mommy could clean them up! It was so funny! 

It was like he knew I was going to clean them so he shoved his face full of them like he was starving or something and then ran away! LOL! 

Happy Birthday Gabriel! 

(almost, you're still a baby for 3 more days!)

ah, grass

You know what I miss about America? Something that I have missed for the past 3-4 months now... GRASS! Ah, the sweet smell of lushes lawns, the soft blades underneath your feet, the beautiful green lawns and fields... *Sigh... I miss it.

I have seen very few lawns in South Korea and at English Village we have none. Some places do have grass but it is very rough and unkept and I've been told there is snakes in it so no sitting in it for us. 

I have just spent the last two hours sitting outside of our apartment with some of our friends because it was a beautiful night out. What did we talk about? Well wanting to sit on grass of course! But no, we had to sit on the brick and now my butt and back hurt. Darn. Oh well. 

Off to bed though. Have to get up, feed the babe, Skype with family, clean, clean, clean, and maybe clean some more for Gabriel's birthday party on Sunday... I can't believe Gabriel is going to be 1 year old on Wednesday! 

Gabe Walking

Josh was video taping Gabriel and I having fun and we were able to catch him walking a tiny bit so we tried to make it into a message for everybody... really just Gabe and I saying 'Hi'! Anyway, thought we would share it with you!

Gabe being Gabe

So these pictures were from a little while ago but I came across them again and Gabriel just makes me laugh! Josh took Gabriel out to play and snapped all off these pictures of all of Gabe's different facial expressions! 

'quarantine'

Apparently 2 people in Korea have died of Swine Flu. Yes, it is very sad, but to me that is not a huge number compared to the number of people who die every year from the common cold/flu. Anyway, call me cruel but I don't see the big fuss over Swine Flu. Koreans on the other hand are making a VERY big fuss about it! I think they are paranoid... anyway.

So there are about 12 other English Villages (EV) throughout South Korea. I guess at one of the other EV's, six of their teachers got the Swine Flu. From what we were told they were all Korean teachers and were sent home so they didn't spread the flu. Sending them home, I can understand, the fuss the our EV is now making... not so much. 

So, because one EV had people that got Swine Flu they seem to assume that now all EV's have people that have Swine Flu! Some EV's are canceling classes/camps, our school is trying to quarantine us in their own little way. EV has asked us not to leave the campus unless it is absolutely needed and if we do leave they want us to stay away from very public places. Also, upon returning to EV they will stop us at the gate and make us do a little test where they take our temp, wash out hands, and something else, before we are allowed back into EV. Now they haven't said what would happen if someone did have a fever... maybe they would send us home like they did at the other school!!! Oh if that's the case, Swine Flu please! I will take a free ticket back to the States! I won't complain or anything about that, I'll deal with Swine Flu if that's the case! A girl can dream, can't she? They are also doing this same procedure to all the kids and any visitors... I wonder if they will do it to the taxi drivers since all they do is drop us off at our 'door' (which is really the driveway up to particular apartments).... gotta wonder about that one...

The reason why I find their method completely stupid is because if you are exposed to Swine Flu, you are not going to have a temperature within' the first hour or even day, so why take the temperature? As far as trying to keep us here, well we do need to buy food and escape the torturous walls of EV every once in awhile! I do find the washing of the hands part practical... but I think that they could just ask people to remember to do that when they got home. Also, I just find it a bit much even if this was for the normal flu which is way worse then the Swine Flu... I think it's just the name that has people freaked out... after all, who wants something from a pig? 

Anyway, the final thing that they are doing... which they have actually been doing for the past two months, is quarantining teachers after traveling to another country. According to EV we are supposed to stay in our apartment for a week upon returning if we have gone out of the country. Even the new teachers that come from the States are being quarantined! They have been rather lax about it since they made the rule... and most times nobody listened to them anyway, they just look at it as a couple more days of vacation! So I guess when we come back from Japan in a couple of weeks, Josh may be forced to take a couple extra days off... oh well! 

Latest on N. Korea and S. Korea

Hmmm... maybe if Josh and I are daring we'll venture across the border! I don't know if Josh would go for it, maybe we'll wait and see how things go safety wise for awhile before we consider it...

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea said on Monday it had agreed to reopen the border to South Korea its neighbor and allow tourism and family reunions to start again.

But in a reminder that tensions still run high on the peninsula, North Korea's KCNA news agency immediately followed the report with one warning of a "merciless and prompt annihilating strike," including nuclear weapons, if upcoming U.S. and South Korean military drills commit even the slightest infringement on its sovereignty.

The agreement to ease restrictions on the border follows a meeting between the reclusive state's leader Kim Jong-il and the head of the South Korean Hyundai Group who had gone to Pyongyang to seek the release of a detained worker.

The visit followed hot on the heels of one earlier in the month by former U.S. President Bill Clinton, who also met Kim, to win the release of two jailed American journalists.

The visits come after months of military grandstanding by the North, including a second nuclear test, that has led to tightened U.N. economic sanctions which some analysts say may be starting to hurt what is already an almost broken economy.

North Korea has portrayed both visits as paying tribute to leader Kim, 67, whose health is the subject of speculation. He is believed to be trying to ensure his youngest son becomes the third generation in the family to head the destitute communist dynasty, its coffers drained by heavy military spending, poor economic management and years of U.N. sanctions.

KCNA said Kim on Friday "granted a long audience to and had a cordial talk with Hyon Jong Un, chairperson of the Hyundai Group, and her party on a visit to Pyongyang, and complied with all her requests."

The giant Hyundai Group runs tourism to the North and operates the Kaesong industrial park just across the border and a lucrative source of income for Pyongyang's leadership.

COLD WAR FRONTIER

Tours across the Cold War's last frontier have ground to a halt and the industrial park itself has looked under threat as relations between the two, technically at war for more than half a century, have worsened.

The freeze was triggered after South Korea's conservative President Lee Myung-bak took office 18 months ago ending a free flow of aid unless his neighbor gave up its nuclear weapons program -- something the North says it cannot do while U.S. troops remain in the South.

Under the latest agreement, land passage across their heavily armed border which was all but blocked late last year will be resumed, allowing the normal traffic to the Kaesong factory park.

It will also allow the restart of tourism to the scenic Mt Kumgang resort, halted a year ago after a North Korean soldier shot dead a tourist from the South who had wandered into a military area.

And Hyundai will launch long-planned tours to the Mt Paektu, a sacred mountain in Korea and, according to official North Korean history, where Kim Jong-il was born. He is widely thought to have in fact been born in the Soviet Union where his father was being trained during World War Two.

North Korea will also allow the resumption in October of the emotionally charged reunion of families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War. 

There was no word on whether Hyundai, as part of the latest deal, had buckled to recent demands by North Korea for hefty increases in payments for operating the Kaesong industrial park which offers cheap labor to South Korean companies.

The agreement will reopen crucial sources of income for the North as it grapples with the impact of U.N. sanctions, aimed at cutting off its weapons trade that has long been an important source of income.

Ambassador Philip Goldberg, the U.S. coordinator for implementation of the U.N. resolutions, is expected to travel to Asia this week to strengthen the measures.

Last week, he said efforts to inspect North Korean vessels for illegal weapons and curb financial transactions by Pyongyang entities suspected of proliferation were winning wide backing.

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSSEO26716720090816

heaven?

Have you ever wondered if animals go to heaven? I've wondered many many times. I know, it's kind of childish, I admit, but still... I still wonder! I'm pretty sure the evil ones, like snakes, mosquitos, crickets, ticks... you know the creepy crawly ones, yeah, I'm pretty sure those ones go to hell... as for the pretty ones, well I wonder if they go to heaven... hmmm....

school lies

Did you know that this is my 100th post? Cool beans for me! Anywho...

So today I am a little frustrated. This school can drive me bonkers some days! To give you a little background, I was looking for a job at the school. So about a month ago I went and talked to Brian, the "manager" of English Village and talked about my options. The reason I wanted a job was just to give me a little something to do that I could take Gabriel along with and since living here is so expensive we won't be saving as much (if any it seems) as we thought, so me taking a job would help out tremendously in that department. So anyway, in my conversation with Brian he told me that I would have one of two jobs. The first job was going to be working in the kindergarten with 4 or 5 year olds as a teacher. The second job was going to be a teacher just like Josh and have different kids each week. He couldn't give me an answer at the time because he said that first he needed to talk with the head of scheduling and see if that had their 15 required teachers for the fall, if they didn't then I would be the filler and be put in the 15th position and be a teacher like Josh. If that didn't work then I was supposed to be the teacher in the kindergarten.  Anyway, so Brian said that he would get back to me in a couple of weeks and let me know what they decided but he did tell me that I would be getting one of the two jobs. So I have been waiting for my answer ever since. 

Sooo... today I was talking to another lady who works in the kindergarten and she informs me that a lady from the USA is going to be flying in next week and is going to sign a 1 year contract and will be taking the place in the kindergarten. Then I also find out that we just received a new teacher this last week that filled up the 15th stop for the teacher for the winter/fall! Ugh! So now both of the jobs that I was supposed to have had were given to other people. It's just so frustrating! 

This school has lied to us about a lot of things, especially Brian, but about something that is important like this you would think that they would have a little bit more tact! I guess I should have known when I went to talk to him in the beginning but still, he is supposed to be running this place, you would think he would have a little more common curtsey (am I spelling that right?). I mean heck, if you don't want me as a teacher, then fine, tell me! Don't lie and tell me that I will be hired and then give the jobs to other people and then not have the curtsey (sp?)to come and tell me about it! 

Oh, and since I'm talking about the school... did you know that they are going to be cutting off our hot water for a month? Yep! Sucks to be us sometimes! Oh, and I asked Brian (though I don't know why) if the snakes here were poisonous and he wouldn't even give me a straight answer, just more lies, like he's afraid we'll leave or something if he gives us the wrong answer... FYI dude, be honest and we won't leave, lie and we will! He's also the same guy who has said 'oh yeah, I will help you' and then we sit around for hours sometimes waiting for him and he never shows up! Also, this stupid place keeps turning off my A/C in the middle of the day when it is roasting hot just because they feel like it and sometimes turn on the loud speaker in the middle of my living room and decide to play music for 15 minutes which always happens to be in the middle of Gabe's nap resulting in waking him up! I could go on and on! Josh has way more frustrations then I do because he actually has to work with these people. I can't wait for my vacation to Japan in 3 weeks and I cannot wait for the next 7.5 months to be over with so we can leave this place! Ugh!

cricket hunting

So last night, as I was peacefully lying in bed with my husband and was in the very beginning stages of my very blissful, precious sleep when I hear a cricket! No, not a cricket outside of my house, but one inside! The noise of the chirping cricket had me fully awake. So Josh and I made some noise to see if it would stop because last time we had a cricket thats all we had to do to go back to sleep and then I found the cricket the next morning when it jumped at me from my laundry pile! But noise did not work! It did quiet down the darn thing for 15 minutes, enough for me to start to fall asleep again, but then it woke me up with its ever so annoying chirping! 

So about an hour after Josh and I had gone to bed we both got up and were sneaking around our apartment to find this damn cricket! Ugh! We ended up finding it close to out bathroom snugged up between the wall and a shoe, so Josh just pushed the shoe up against the wall in hopes to kill the thing... but it did not work! No, the darn cricket had to jump away into our bedroom. Ugh. So my hubby takes another shoe and throws it at the bug but again it did not work. So I was annoyed, I wanted to go back to sleep, so I took the shoe and got nice and close to the evil bug and gave it three good whacks on the head. R.I.P. damn cricket! 

Ah... back to my peaceful sweet slumber... 

Not quite. No, not at all. I got woken up again at 4:30AM by another damn cricket! Ugh! This time it did not wake up my husband so I had to go cricket huntin' all by myself. This time the bug was in our entry way and this one was not so easy to kill... it kept jumping around and freaking me out! But alas... R.I.P. damn cricket #2.

and he's off!

Today Gabriel took his very first independent steps and started walking! YAY!!!! We were so excited and had a big commotion when it happened! Gabriel had been very daring all day long, so when Josh came home I said lets try this walking thing again. So I held onto Gabriel until his got his balance and off he walked over to where Josh was! It was so cute! 

I knew this day was close. Gabriel has been wanting to walk for awhile. He would push off of things and see how long he could stand without holding on to anything. He also has been looking at things that he wants that are out of his reach and you could tell that he was just contemplating how to get there! So now he's walking!

Unfortunately we didn't get it on camera and Gabriel was too crabby to do it too many times (he's teething AGAIN)! But we're working on it, we're going to try again before bedtime! 

Video's

These two video's are just a few minutes of our every day lives! One of them is just when Josh took Gabriel out and the other is when both of us took him out! We didn't do much but this is our little test run. If you can actually watch these then I'll probably be putting more up over time!Enjoy!

Book Review: A Thousand Splendid Suns

So I recently bought the book A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. 

The book is about two women born and raised in Afghanistan and it goes through their lives over a period of 30 years. I have to say that the book is rather depressing. If you want a book that gives you a true look into what some women go through in Afghanistan and in the Muslim world then this is a good book. If you want a book that will give you a brief overview of the history of Afghanistan over the past thirty years and what the people had to go through with all the invasions, then this is a good book. If you don't want to be slightly depressed and you don't want to sit there and yell at some of the characters then this is not your book. The writer also has a very unique style of writing. I've never read a book quite like his before. He does make it work for him but a lot of his writing is almost like he is stating facts instead of telling a story. The first 2/3 of the book he was able to state facts in a story telling way, but the last 1/3 of the book I felt like he just wanted to be finished and was throwing stuff on the page.

Overall I think that it is a good book, but I don't think that it is for everybody. It was good enough for me to finish in two days and I still think about the characters and the things that they went through... but I personally wouldn't go buy it again. It might be one of those books that you borrow from the library, but not to spend $20 on. 

Sunday

I almost forgot to tell you what we did on Sunday! We went to Seoul! 

Gabriel and I woke up on Sunday morning and ate our breakfast and got going. We let Josh sleep in a bit as it was his day off. I ended up putting Gabriel down for his morning nap early because we wanted to take the 10:30 train and I knew there was a chance that Gabriel wouldn't sleep very well while we were out so I wanted him to get as much as he could before we left! I did end up having to wake Josh up and we both got ready to leave for Seoul. Poor little Gabriel had to be woken up from his nap before we left and get his diaper and clothes changed before we threw him in the backpack and headed out the door.

We were cutting it close when we left the house and hoped that we wouldn't be late catching the train. We had to wait for our taxi as usual and then the driver drove us to the train and told us that we had two minutes to catch the train. We were freaking out a little and when I ran up to the ticket booth I heard the faint sound of the train and the announcer stating that the train was now approaching. I told Josh to run for the train while I finished paying for the ticket. It's kind of a long way to run for the train. They are doing construction at our train station so the place that we have to hop on the train is down a long path way, over some wooden planks serving as floor boards, over three train tracks, and down the long platform. We ended up hopping on the very last train car just before the train pulled away and then we walked from car to car before we found our seats and relaxed (as much as you can with a baby) the rest of the way to Seoul.

When we got to Seoul we had to hop on the subway and made our way to Samseong so we could check out a place called COEX Mall. The subway can be very crowded sometimes, to the point of where you are standing shoulder to shoulder, face to face and it can be very hot, other times it's like this and you actually have a chance to sit down or at least have something to hold on too. If you ever forget which subway ling you are on, all you have to do is look at the floor and see what color the line is that runs through, this is the green line #2! Oh, and if you looks closely you can see what I was talking about when I said Koreans can sleep anywhere, there is a few in this picture!

We had never been to COEX before but we had heard about it from a few different people and we were told it was a good place to shop. Before we went shopping though we had to get a bite to eat so we could feed Gabriel. We stopped at the first food place we saw which happened to be KFC and sat down. They didn't have high chairs so Gabriel got to sit on one of the cushioned seats next to the wall and got his own table, he thought it was pretty fun and was happy as a peach!

We then went into COEX. It was just like any other really big mall. They had a lot of stores with nice clothes but we found most of it to be really expensive. We did find a HUGE bookstore though! We were pretty excited about that! It was bigger then any Barnes and Nobles that I've ever seen! They had a huge foreign children's section where we got Gabriel a few books for his birthday and a rather large foreign adult section too where I was able to get a book for myself! I think I could have spent a couple of hours in there but I forced myself to leave after picking out my book.

We then made our way to Gangnam station where there is an underground shopping center. They had much cheaper clothes there and I was able to get a cute dress and a shirt/dress (Koreans would probably where it as a dress, I wear it as a shirt). Underground shopping is kind of weird because most places don't have a place for you to try stuff on and it's just kind of subway tunnels with people setting up shops on the side. Next time I'll have to take a picture, I forgot this time. But they did sell shoes, clothes, food, purses, earrings, really anything you wanted. 

After we went to Gangnam we were pretty tired and decided to head home. When we got back to the train station we found out that we had to run down to catch that train as well. It wasn't cutting it as close as the first time, I think we had five minutes to catch that train but it was also a lot further to walk then the station in Yongmun! Oh well!

Gabriel never ended up taking a nap that day except the morning one. He found looking around far more interesting... but he did look like this most of the day...

... aimlessly staring off into space because he was tired. I have to say that he did pretty well even without an afternoon nap. He did get crabby after we got home, he found a lot of stuff to cry about. If he dropped his toy, he cried. If he fell over, he cried. If mama said 'no', he cried. It was kind of sad! Usually he does sleep when we go out, even if it's just in the backpack, but for some reason he did not feel the need for it on Sunday. Poor little guy!

Anyway, that was our Sunday! We're hoping that Josh doesn't have to work this weekend but we think he may have to. If he does then that means that I have to go into Seoul by myself with some people at the school and go to Costco by myself since we are in need of a few things... it's not a very fun trip with Gabriel! I did it once before and said I would never do it again... we'll see about that I guess, I hope I don't have to! 

random facts

random facts about us... 

We got asked if we were terrorists once by a lady who was dead serious, then she snuck us into the NBC Tower in Chicago... she ended up being one of the main ladies for the news and we had no idea!

One of Josh and I's funniest memories is when I accidently flicked him in the eye...

I almost died once... well kind of twice... sort of. Anyway, one time was when I was overseas in Romania and I had an asthma attack and my (genius) leaders decided not to call the ambulance until I was turning blue and my eyes wouldn't stay open and then it took the ambulance another 20 minutes to show up where they then stuck me with needles in three different places and opened my shirt wide open with the door still open so a lot of people got to see me in my bra! The other time nothing really happened to me but I could have been seriously hurt or dead if I hadn't moved seats 30 seconds earlier...

I like plants... I get attached to plants like people get attached to pets!

I've been in countries before where I was interrogated just because I was close to a border that was closed and they asked for all of my families information including how many siblings I had, their names, my mothers maiden name and everybody's middle names!

I've been in countries that I've had to cover my hair, just because it was wet!

I can say 'thank you' in 8 languages!

I'm hopelessly addicted to chapstick and my husband finds it a little pathetic! I don't blame him cause I do too!

My husband has an IQ score of a genius! Seriously, it's like 140 and the average is (I think) 100! 

Gabriel likes to try things 500 times before he will actually decide that it's a good thing (or a bad thing). 

My hubby has never been to Canada even though he only lived 4 hours away from it the majority of his life... we're going to make a trip up there when we go back to America.

My hubby has been to Mexico though and now Korea.

I've been to 11 (soon 12) different countries and have lived in 2 of them (besides the US).

Some people think my name is a mans name.

My voice sounds like a dying high pitched chipmunk when I'm sick! hahaha! I sound like Mickey Mouse normally;) Not quite but none the less most people will remember my voice after only meeting me once... it's kind of nice because I've gone to look at apartments or called businesses or something and sometimes I don't even have to say my name they will say 'oh I remember you, you're the girl the the high voice!' I had a friend that I would call and though I never met her mom, when she would tell her daughter who was calling she would refer to me as 'the girl with the funny voice'.

Josh and I really want to adopt. It's something that I have wanted to do since I was very young.

News stories make me cry sometimes.

My husband finds it annoying that I sing theme songs from commercials... when I was in the states one of my most common was the Stanley Steamer song... now that we're in Korea I just mimic what the Korean's say! Hehehe! 

I love history and my husband loves math! My husband finds things like figuring out equations fun and I will look up countries histories and read pages and pages of it just because I find it interesting! 

Gabriel has 7 teeth.

I've been to countries where I wasn't supposed to tell anybody I was going there because it was apparently too dangerous!

Josh used to stick his cat in his toy kitchen cupboards... I saw this pictures where he was standing there smiling ear to ear and the cat was in the cupboard hissing because it was mad!

This is what I do when I'm a little bored!!!! 

Saturday

So, I told my mom, when I talked to her on Monday morning, that I was going to write a post that day because apparently she thought I died or something because I hadn't written on here for a few days... but I didn't! Bad me! I got wrapped up in a book and never got around to putting anything on here! BUT in my defense I did put a post on here this morning and technically it was still Monday in the States so really I'm all good... right? Right.

So this last weekend Josh and I decided to get away from English Village for a much needed break. On Saturday we decided to go into the little town that we live by and just get some snacks and do a little bit of shopping. 

As always we had to wait for our taxi to come get us... I do have to say that I miss the days when we had a car and could just hop in and drive wherever we wanted whenever we wanted!

We have a this little bakery in town called Paris Baguette, it is our all time favorite place to buy bread! They have yummy pastries, cakes and ice cream... all sorts of good stuff!

We also went to our favorite nick-nack store in Yongmun. I swear this store has a little bit of everything! Everything but food and clothes... and cleaning supplies! I got some very cute slippers there, a sketch book, and some stationary, Josh got a leather bound note book and a bag. It's just a little fun store, but packed full of stuff. It may be small but you could spend an hour or more in there just going through everything! 

We also went out to eat at a little traditional Korean restaurant by the school. I had never been before to this particular restaurant before but Josh had been once before. They led us to the back of the restaurant where it was an open balcony that over looked the river. 

Traditionally Koreans will sit on pillows next to very short tables when they eat. 

This made for a very interesting time with Gabriel. The table was low enough for him to crawl on top of and also reach all the food... and when you're eating with chopsticks and having a difficult time as it is trying to get food in your mouth, having to pull a wiggly, adventurous 11 month old off the table every three minutes makes it even more challenging! 

First they gave us an appetizer... not really sure what it was but it was yummy! It was a batter that had some veggies in it and was fried, then you dipped it in some sauce and there you go! Yummy! I didn't have a problem eating that with my chopsticks, I was actually getting kind of good at it!

Then they brought us the main course. We ordered this chicken soup that was interesting. It was a whole chicken to begin with and then one of the ladies came by and cut it into pieces for us. I'm not sure what the green stuff was... or anything else in the pot! Hahaha! It was good though, you were supposed to take the chicken and dip it in a salt mixture before you ate it. 

Unfortunately ripping apart chicken legs/thighs/breast with chopsticks proved rather difficult for me... impossible really! The people who owned the restaurant noticed my difficulty and soon they came along offering me a fork... I was rather embarrassed that I was so bad with chopsticks they hunted down a fork for me, but I was grateful none the less! Oh and the background stuff in this picture is all the other side dishes that they give you with any meal. There was raw onion, a corn salad, pickles, kimchi, and other stuff... we usually don't eat too much of it because it's usually rather 'special'! 

So that was our Saturday... maybe tomorrow I will tell you what we did on Sunday!