The Haircut

With a mere THREE votes, Ben decided that it was time. Here's the play-by-play of "Haircut Day":






TA DAAAA!

You be the judge.

Mister I-cut-my-hair-every-other-Saturday-so-it-feels-long-by-day-ten hasn't had a haircut since the end of OCTOBER. Can you believe it? He claims that it is all coming off on Friday morning (Thursday night back at home). What do you think? Should it stay around for awhile, or should it all come off in a couple of days?

Multi-cultural?

A couple of weekends ago, we met with our South Bend friends, Derrick and Lavon Null. They let us come along to a birthday party for one of their friends, which was going to be at a Mexican place in one of the famous areas of Seoul. We both love Mexican food, so we jumped at the chance to go. We didn't realize we were also jumping at the chance to wear these:


At home, they usually only make the birthday-boy (or-girl) wear the sombrero. Apparently, that is not the proper Mexican tradition...in Korea. The Birthday couple were given panchos to wear, along with the stylish hats. Here are our friends Derrick and Lavon:

The food was worth it all!

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!