Gygeonbokgong Palace Round Two

The day after Christmas we successfully made it to Gyeonbokgong Palace. To see more pictures of the palace please see our previous visit there. It's in the October section.

For the love of her father Mama stood by the guard and get her picture taken. =) I was shocked because I asked her, "Do you want your picture with the guard?" I did not actually expect her to do it, but without hesitation she said, "Sure." And later explained that she did it because she knew Granddaddy would like it. =)

These pictures are much clearer than our other ones, I hope you can see that the water if partially frozen.

It was bitter cold that day. You may not be able to tell but we were freezing. Still it was really interesting to hear the history of the palace again.

Even though it was cold we had time for a little bit of fun! But we were freezing so we went to warm up inside the museum.

It's the year of the ox so at the museum they had a whole exhibit on the ox. Mama is the year of the ox so she smiled nicely in the photo-op place.

It was a fun time but really cold.

The following are some pictures Mama took while she was here that help show some of the things of our daily life. Since we've been here it just seems normal.

These are street vendors. The red one is near the school. They sell snack foods, but they deep fried eel and squid aren't our favorite. But they have "hoat-duck" which is a fried dessert. It's good but bad for you.

This is a school bus. They all look like this: a yellow van.

This is a fruit truck but the trucks have different items on them depending on the owner. What happens is that it drives around and then will park in one area for a few minutes and then keep driving. It has a loudspeaker on the front which blares out what it is selling and how much it costs. We have never bought anything from these trucks, but find them slightly annoying when we're trying to take a nap in the afternoon and it's speakers are going off. =P

This is on the same street as our fruit lady. These are open bins of some type of seed or bean. The birds also take advantage of the open containers... May things are sold this way, and when the place is properly kept then it's really convinient but many times its not very clean.

This is a rice cake store on the same street as the picture above. All the things you see are made from rice. And honestly...they all taste about the same. We've had a few different kinds but to us the taste doesn't vary, only the texture.

We still prefer ice cream =)

Christmas Day

Christmas Day arrived with happy hearts that we were not stuck on a subway with a million other people.



This is our beautiful Christmas tree and presents. The abundance you see is from all our loving family and friends who sent things with Mama and made our Christmas extra special! There were also presents under there that had been sent in the mail and we saved to open on Christmas, so thank you to all of you!!

Isn't it a cute tree? So we opened our presents and enjoyed a Christmas breakfast.

Then it was time to prepare for lunch! We had invited Debbie and Paul & Mary over for Christmas lunch, so there was a lot to do. This was my first time to be the "lady of the house" and be preparing a meal for a group of people on a special occasion, so I was a bit nervous, but Mama and Matthew were a big help.



Here is a picture of the group: Matthew, me, Mama, Debbie, Mary & Paul.

With the group came cakes...

This cake came with Debbie. Blueberry. It was delicious. Except the wreath, all that you see was edible.

This came with Paul & Mary. Strawberry cake....mmmm. All that you see was edible.

The cakes were beautiful and delicious. And I felt happy because I cooked all veggie food and everyone liked it, even though they weren't vegetarian. Mary did put sugar on her mashed potatoes...but she said she liked it that way...

Then I got a lovely surprise! Daddy sent me a Christmas present =)



Gorgeous roses (my Daddy always sends me flowers *heart*)



And...cake! This one was a sweet bean cake. It's actually not that bad, but it's always surprising to see beans on top of a cake.

So as you can see, we now had not one, not two, not three, but FOUR cakes. Luckily we ate part of most of the cakes that day with the big group and then brought some to the All Day Club the next day so that helped. Korean cakes really are the best cakes (besides our wedding cake) but we definately had our fill.

We spend the rest of the afternoon playing games and then we watched "Horton Hears a Who". It was a lot of fun.

We were blessed to be with part of our family in person that day, and the rest of them via Skype. (Don't you love Skype?) But God has blessed us with good friends in Korea that we have had a great time with.

Christmas Eve

I think Christmas Eve is wonderful. It feels like Friday nights do. A time to be quiet and do something special.

Before Mama came I had asked one of my students Simba and then later Paul to help me get a special surprise for Christmas Eve. For those of you who know me, I love surprises. I love planning things and planning a surprise is even better!

So the day started out that we were going to go back to Insa-dong for a little bit to pick some stuff up, and then continue on our way to the final destination. But before we left, we wanted to give our Fruit Lady a Christmas present.



She is so friendly and nice. Plus her shop is clean and full of fresh fruit. So we got her a box of cookies and a Steps to Christ in English and Korean. She was really happy to get them, plus we were able to finally get a picture with her (thanks to Mama!).

Doesn't she look adorable?


In Insa-dong we ate lunch in Starbucks and got a hot chocolate so that we could sit in there, it had been drizzling and we didn't want to eat our lunch outside. Then we traveled to the Performing Arts Center to see....The Nutcracker!!!!!!!




When I was in elementary school, for a surprise Mama took me to The Nutcracker on Christmas Eve, so this was a special reminder of that even. But this time the surprise was for her!



Inside was dazzling.



But I couldn't relax yet, because our student Paul had to get the tickets under his name and so we had a paper from him explaining it. I held my breath, hoping everything would be okay.



I wanted this picture taken to remind me of the relief it felt to have those in our hand. I have a series of events that I've been to where getting our reserved tickets hadn't work, and so being in a foreign country I was extra nervous.

They had little set up areas for photo ops, and we took advantage of them, even though we aren't children.

It was still fun to sit in there and feel the excitement of seeing a ballet in Korea! After all, what could be a better surprise than a ballet?! (At least in my opinion)

Before we were told we couldn't take pictures, Mama got this great picture of the curtain. It was a beautiful tapestry and so unique to us.

The ballet was beautiful. For the snowflake dance, they had fake snowflakes falling and it was gorgeous. The sets were fantastic as well as the dancing. There was a mix of Korean and Western dancers. Clara was Korea and the Nutcracker was white. It was a really special and fun evening together.

As we left we were excited and planned to go out to eat to celebrate the wonderful evening.

Then...we got on the subway. Now, Matthew and I have ridden very packed subways before, but this was a totally new experience.

This picture does not do it justice, so I will explain to you that when we were trying to get off at a stop, there were so many people trying to push in that we could not push out and had to go to the next stop.

I'm not prone to claustrophobia but if you had any bit of it then this would be terrible. As it was, we were smashed into our neighbor and boiling hot, even though it was freezing outside. We longed for the doors to open and fresh air to come through.

Finally, after getting lost and being pushed in and off the train we made it home. We decided not to go out to eat and just to go home and relax there.

For a surprise we wanted Mama to try a Korean cake. Cakes here are different than ours in America. They are much much better. The cakes here are lighter, the whole thing is lighter feeling. The cake and frosting aren't as sugar filled so you don't feel terrible after eating it. Plus they are really cute! So Matthew went and picked up some pizza for us and this cake...

He got it because he said it reminded him of Frodo, Mama's Newfie at home.

Isn't it a cute cake?

And so that was our adventures for Christmas Eve. We hope your Christmas Eve was as memorable as ours =)

Closed on Tuesdays

So for day two of Mama's stay in Korea I wanted to take her to the Gyeongbokgong Palace (where we'd gone before). So we got up early and took the subway and hour and half into Seoul. We got there and it felt strange that no one was around the palace. It looked deserted. It had snowed that day, but I didn't think it would close because of the snow! So Matthew went to the ticket booth and came back with the sad news: It's closed on Tuesdays. Tuesdays! We had planned out this day to see the palace and Insa-dong and to come back another day just for the palace was frusterating to think about. But we decided to make the most of it and head off the Insa-dong.

But first we grabbed a picture in front of the palace. The sky was clear and the snow was so pretty. Plus we're pretty awesome looking =)

As we made our way to Insa-dong we posed by this sign. It showed how far different famous cities were from that point. Now Matthew's jacket makes it look as if it wasn't very cold, but by the middle of the day he was wishing he had Mama's jacket! She was definately the only one who stayed warm. =)

This picture was not taken by us, because for some reason we didn't take any pictures of it. But it is Insa-dong none-the-less. We shopped for gifts and different souvenirs. This is a place where you can buy more traditional Korean items. Many of my students tell me how expensive it is, but when we shopped, we were impressed at the bargains we were able to get.

But shopping can only happen so long before hunger sets in... Then we had the task of finding a restaurant that tasted good. We saw an Italian restaurant and went in. As always we ask for a menu... It was expensive. Very expensive. So, we left.

Seeing another Italian restaurant we went toward it. Also expensive. We paused in disappointment, hunger, and cold.

The world seemed against us, but we posed by this No Parking sign to show that our spirits were still up! Even if we weren't eating yet. And then we looked up and saw this sign..

Look at the last line in the sign. The web address reads: ilovesda.org We thought it was really funny and so looked around and saw an SDA building of some sort. Then Matthew noticed a sign, "Vegetarian Buffet"!!! We were very happy but unsure if it was open or how it worked. So we went inside. Matthew, again, saw the sign pointing down toward the buffet so we walked down.

It was a cafeteria looking place and sure enough it was SDA run and it was vegetarian. We asked the lady how much it was. She said 8,000 won. It didn't sound too bad, but Matthew wanted to check out the selection first. While he went to do that I tried to make small talk with the lady. I showed her my SDA backpack and said that we worked for SDA. I just wanted to form a friendly relationship, but then she said, "Okay 7,000 won".

So we decided to eat there =) Mama got to try traditional Korea food without being afraid of octopus or squid being in there and it was pretty good food! They had some veggie meat and thta was especially good.

Afterwards we posed by the sign (the lower one) to express our happiness!

We shopped a little more and then had to head back to meet up with my 7am, level three students. They had wanted to meet and go out to eat. They took us to Ashley's because it is a buffet and has a greater variety for vegetarians. We had fun eating with them.

Felix, Bart, Eric, Me, Ana, Austin, Torres, and Grace.

After eating, they asked us what we wanted to do. Of course we didn't know, so they decided to take us to a No-ray-bong. (Sounds like: Nur-ri-bong). It's a singing room. While we might just say this is karoke, it is not. The whole group, rents a booth and you go in, with just your friends, and then sing along to songs. Personally this is much better, than having everyone look at you! Plus here in Korea most singing rooms don't allow alcohol.

We sang a few songs, but we were not very good. They did have English songs, but trying to sing Elvis is not a good idea.

This is what it looked like. There were videos that went with the different songs, but sometimes they didn't match. It was interesting to watch them though.

Our students are really fun to hang out with. We were excited to experience the singing room because our students talk about it a lot.

And that was the end of day number 2.

When Mama came to Korea

When Mama came to visit us in Korea it was definately the happiest day we've had since being here. She arrived on Sunday December 21st around 8pm.




This is us on the way into the airport...




After traveling around the world, she safely made it to Incheon! This was our happiest moment *smiles*

The first day, we expected her to sleep in, but she was up with us and ready for school. It was our party day at school so that was good.



These are Matthew and my 7am classes. Usually there are a lot more students but because it was party day (and there was a little miscommunication) hardly anyone showed up. The students were thrilled to have my mom there!



In the afternoon she came to some of my junior classes. This is my favorite junior class. I've been blessed to have them for all the three terms I've taught in Korea so far.



This is Steven, Tommy, and Lily. They are so bright and will do very well in life.

This is the whole class. The junior teacher is Wendy and she is fantastic to teach with.

Front row: Lily, Nana, Sarah, Alice. Back row: Steven, Tommy, Poohti, Willy, Peter, and Jack.

Later on we had our junior and adult graduation ceremonies. I was able to teach the juniors who graduated, and the one adult student who graduated- Paul.

Paul's graduation speech was amazing. We were so proud of him! Paul and his girlfriend Mary are some of our good friends here in Korea and we are blessed to know them.

So this was Mama's first day in Korea! It was a busy one to be sure, but she really enjoyed getting to meet the students and teachers. Plus, everyone was shocked that she was my mom and not my sister! One of the junior teachers asked me if I was sure that it was my mom because she looked so young. hehe. It was funny.