Valentine's Dinner

Our Valentine's dinner was spent at our apartment with some friends from school. Last week, we were pleasantly surprise with a couple of packages from home, filled with spices, dressings, and delicious warm drinks (and every kind of baking chip available at Meijer, thank you, Nikki!). With those treats, we were able to make an Italian-style meal for six, a real challenge with just a toaster oven and two small burners. Nonetheless, it was pretty tasty. Our Korean guests were very kind, bringing with them some...interesting...gifts. One of them was this: the "Poop stick". Yes, that is what I said.

It is actually a personal massager, much like a wooden back-scratcher. Instead of scratching your back, you gently pound your back with the fuzzy, brown blob at the end of the stick.

Of course, no Valentine's would be complete without Tom climbing onto the shelves and drawing a giant heart on our giant windows.

Quickly followed by KyungMin, who gave us a friendly bi-lingual window Valentine message.


KyungMin also brought us a traditional Korean game, called Go/Stop. We tried to learn, but had to look up the instructions in English the next day. We taught them a fun game called "No Thanks". Can you guess who won?


YoungUn, me, and KyungMin on my favorite steps.

Small Surprises

One of Ben's students spends some time with us every week outside of class. He just so happens to have many, many uncles, SIX of whom are all strawberry farmers. That's great news for us! He brought us a bag of sweet, delicious, perfectly ripe strawberries.

Now, the strawberries were absolutely delectable on their own. But, I did also happen to have a can of whipped cream that I was saving for a special occasion. What a better place to use it than on top of strawberries?!? So, after making my own version of bisquick, or at least trying, we had a nice treat: Strawberry Shortcake.


Some people were wondering if we would be able to watch the SuperBowl. We didn't think so. Of course, we were missing the usual festivities of snacks, friends, and commercials, and we were only expecting to watch highlights on the internet the next day. Well, to our surprise and delight, we turned on our TV on our Monday morning and went to one of the sports channels. Sure enough, there it was--the game was there, and it was LIVE!



We are on week one out of six with no breaks (except for the weekend), so small surprises like this are a real joy.

Let us know how you are doing! We'd love to hear what is happening back at home!

In Sickness and in Health...

Sometime around Tuesday, we began our THIRD year of marriage. Can you belive it? It doesn't seem that long ago that Ben convinced me that he needed to learn how to use his new camera. I fell for it--it was a disposable. Needless to say, two years after our beautiful wedding, we are still going strong.

Well, sort of. We've actually been quite sick this week, which put a bit of a damper on our anniversary. On Sunday, before we felt too bad to do anything but sleep and work, Ben took me out for dinner to celebrate. We were both in for a delicious treat!

We went to a fancy Italian restaurant, where we almost forgot that we were in Korea. The meal was delicious...

all five courses of it!


The only thing that seemed Korean was the portions of some of the dishes. Koreans usually have a lot of food, but it is mostly small side dishes. Perhaps it was the gourmet look they were going for with this spaghetti.

But, they made up for it with the STEAK...yum!

So, we had a 'real' Italian meal, with 'real' coffee and something like Tirimisu at the end.

It was great...and then we went home and got some much needed sleep.
After having some peanut M&Ms sent from home.


The good news: we FINALLY went to the doctor on Saturday, after a week of teaching with a sore throat and, for Ben, with no voice. If we would have known that the price of going to the doctor's office was going to cost us about $3 each, we would have gone a lot sooner. And, we each got medicine (15 pills a day for 5 days) that cost $5 each. Yes, that is right, we paid about $16 for walking right in to a doctor's office to see an English-speaking doctor, who gave us a prescription all within a half hour. I am now a believer in good National Healthcare Systems--wow!

The Holidays

Here is a quick glance at the last month...

We had a fun and exciting Christmas party with our students. They played games, decorated cupcakes (which were actually cups that had cake in them...), and watched a Christmas Disney cartoon.


Here are some of our great students!


One of Ben's students usually comes to class wearing this:


Ben reviewing Christmas words. The hat added to Ben's likeness to Santa. The kids think that because he has a beard, he is, or should at least be called, Santa.



We had a staff Christmas Party just before our New Year's Eve break.
With gifts...


Games...
The person to our right had to draw us for a 'contest'. Though Ben and I were at opposite ends of the table, we each had the honor of being drawn by the owner of our school and his wife. The owner apparently thinks I look like one famous character from Charlie Brown...

Peppermint Patty, anyone???

And the wife, along with every other Japanese teacher at our school, thinks that Ben looks like the Japanese baseball player named Ichiro Suzuki. Thus, the baseball bat.

Do you see the...resemblance?


And, of course, Karaoke.



The ladies of LMC School had a cooking and baking extravaganza. While the boss was out of town, our director's wife, Miya, had us over to her very nice, and big, apartment for a delicious meal. It was amazing food! This fish was absolutely delightful!




I taught some of the girls how to bake muffins and cookies. This is Xhen Ju making muffins...


And Noriko mashing the Bananas for the muffins...


And Noriko and I showing off the finished product!


Delicious!

Happy New Year!

Christmas was a bit different for us this year. We really missed being with our families, and things aren't quite as "Christmasy" here as they are back at home. We knew it wasn't going to be a traditional celebration, so we decided to take a trip to keep our mind off of missing home. For our Christmas celebration, we left behind the city life and pursued a mountainous adventure. What a great idea it was!

We got home from work at 11 p.m. on Christmas eve, which is sure to be a day we'll always remember. We talked to our parents and then slept as long as we could. We made it to the subway station by around 8 a.m. on Christmas morning, and man, did we look tired. Thankfully, we live at the last stop of our subway line, which means we could sit down during the the 70 minute trip.




From the subway, we hopped onto the Bus, which took about 3 hours.



The views were beautiful, though, as we got to see both the countryside of Korea and the eastern coastline, both were covered with a blanket of white snow. From the bus, we called a taxi, which couldn't find our hotel. When we finally arrived at the hotel, the owners were shoveling snow and speaking to us in Korean, saying something about the hotel being closed or something. Great. One of the people beckoned us into his small car, our backpacks on our laps, and we drove around the block to a new hotel. Somehow, even though we called ahead, no one seemed to explain that the hotel was changing buildings. Or something. Anyway, we were in for a nice surprise. This was our view from outside the hotel.









This was our cozy room, which had the traditional Korean heated floors, perfect for a winter trip.






We decided to make it Christmas, so we each opened gifts from the other. I got Ben some mints, and he found Home Alone for me. Not only is it my favorite movie, but it really brings some Christmas joy to any occasion.







We ventured into the city of Sokcho, which is a summer haven for beach-goers, and an all-season delight for mountain hikers. We enjoyed Korean Tak-kal-bi for dinner. It was delicious!









Friday was reserved for hiking, movie-watching, and hot-chocolate drinking. What a perfect combination! We hiked at Seoraksan National Park, which is quite beautiful. Despite the wintry dead of the trees and surrounding nature, the thick layer of snow from the previous days made the scenery just gorgeous.






We decided to take the hiking trail that led to the Ulsan Bawi, which meant some kind of big rock. It looked to be an intermediate trail, and the distance seemed to be just right for what we wanted. There were more people than we expected, but the higher up we went, the more fun it became. There is nothing like being in nature, with the crunching of the snow beneath your feet being the only sound you hear.



We went higher...


And higher...


And we got closer...


To the TOP!!! What a view!!! We could see the surrounding mountains, the city of Sokcho, and the ocean. Just awesome!





By the end, we needed to thaw out a bit.







The next day, before we returned back to the city, we decided to take a sunrise hike (we missed the sunrise, but it was a great morning trip!)



To a waterfall...that was mostly frozen!





The view on the way back to the park was just incredible. Ben took these!







After a wonderful couple of days, we boarded the bus and headed back to Seoul. Hungry, Ben got a snack at the rest stop. Our jaws were sore from eating beef jerky sent from home while on the hiking trail, so he opted instead for the package of dried fish. Much to his surprise, it wasn't fish. It was dried squid. Mmm...It looked dry and flat and Ben said it tasted chewy and fishy down to the last bite...big surprise.



We enjoyed the scenery on the bus, and I was particularly impressed with the snowy mountains that faded into the ocean. Not something you see everyday in the midwest!




So, this was our Christmas. It was one to remember, for sure!

We hope that you enjoyed the holiday celebration with your loved ones, and wish you a wonderful start to 2009! Happy New Year!