Better Late than Never---NOVEMBER/Early DECEMBER

Sorry I lagged on blogging this month. I guess I got kind of lazy. A lot has been going on as you will see in all the photos. I'll do my best to remember everything!  

Here is a list of events: 

Hiking at Apsan, 

Thanksgiving, 

Movie Day, 

Deaseon Trip, 

American Football in Gumi with Cedric, 

Snowboarding, 

and Snow in Daegu!

APSAN

I took the bus to meet my friend at Apsan (Ap Mountain) to go hiking. The bus ride took over an hour!  Let's just say if I go there again it won't be by bus. The journey began at HomePlus and ended at Apsan.

The colors were beautiful. I was waiting for the bus in front of HomePlus.

Yes, it is what you think it is. A little boy just whipped it out and peed. In Korea peeing in public is common (mostly men).  I took this while I was on the bus.

Here are some pictures from the mountain.

A little hazy, but you can see much of Daegu.

A huge mound of rocks, not sure what it represents.

a temple



AMERICAN FOOTBALL IN GUMI

My friend Cedric from middle school lives in Korea and we have meet up a few times for dinner in Daegu when he comes for work. He plays on an American Football Team (only 6 teams in Korea). His team is mostly foreigners, but the other teams are mostly made up of Koreans. He was in a playoff game in a neighboring city, so Hannah, Liza and I went to watch. Here is our mini outing.

We met at Daegu train station around 9:00am for the 30 min ride to Gumi. Once we got to Gumi Station we took a taxi out to the University where the game was being held. It took about 15 mins in the taxi.

Here is Cedric's team, The Seoul Warriors.

They were playing the gold and blue team from Busan.

Cedric

Their team won!

At the end of the game the teams bow to the oppsing team.

Me and Liza

Me and Hannah (you can see her baby bump-4 mos pregnant)

We took a taxi to get some food. We asked the taxi driver to take us somewhere good to eat and he brought us to a fairly expensive restaurant. We were ok with that becasue Cedric tossed 50,000won into my purse for coming out to the game!  Super nice of him. We ended up eating beef BBQ and it was delicious. We headed to the movies after and saw Letters to Juliet. It was ok. Then we headed by to the train station. it was a fun Sunday trip!



THANKSGIVING POT LUCK AT MY PLACE

I decided to have a Thanksgiving Pot Luck at my house. I had a few friends over. It is actually funny becasue only a few of them are American, but we had a great time all the same!  Of course because I was the host I spent way too much money at Costco and made too much food, but that's the job of the host. I wanted to make as much traditional food as I possibly could. I sent an invite on Facebook and that way I knew what everyone was bringing. I filled in the gaps!  It began around 5 and lasted until about 10pm the Sunday before Thanksgiving.

Food: Precooked chicken from Costco (Murray), pasta salad from Costco (Tony), shrimp salad from Costco (Ghram), cheese dip, crackers, and veggies (Liza), squash soup (Kat and Janna), mashed potatoes (Kevin), Oreos (Patrick), Ham with brown sugar, homemade stuffing, asparagus casserole, deviled eggs, homemade gravy (ME).

Cooking in Korea is very interesting becasue most people don;t have ovens (including me). I made all my food items on the stove top! It is fun to see if you can actually make the food that is usally made in the oven on the stove. I made stove top enchiladas the other night and they were decent. Anyways, here are the photos from my First Korean Thanksgiving! Sorry I forgot to flip some before I uploaded them to the blog.



My first guest Liza.

Appetizers on the bed-Classy Service.

I downloaded a football game to get in the Turkey Day mood!

Kevin, my next guest

stuffing mixins--yes this is the floor

Cooking Korean style.

the spread

Tony brought over the stools

Murray and Gahram

Grubbin down (that's Janna between Gahram and Kevin)

Kat's really excited about the food

Patrick arrived a little late, but I was happy he made it!

Finished...or just waiting to digest a bit for the next round.

I just remembered Liza was going to make cranberry sauce from scratch, but she left the cranberries at work on Saturday. The funny thing is she had to order then from GMarket online and then she left them in the fridge at work...oh well. Maybe for Christmas dinner. What's cranberry sauce without Turkey anyways?

Happy Campers---all from Canada





On Thanksgiving Day in Korea, after work I went to Sugar Joes and they were serving dinner as well. I had some turkey and a few other yummy foods!  It was nice to have some turkey and spend the night with my friends. The following day it was Thanksgiving in the US, so I spent most of the morning before work on skype. I had a chance to chat with my cousin, Suzanne in Iraq on facebook, I talked to my Dad, sister Christine, nephew Dillon, Roland, Leah, my stepsister Jenn and her Boys on Skype in Golden Valley, AZ, and then my Aunt Lynn, Denise, Stacy, Sam, Uncle John on Skype in Camarillo, CA, also spoke to my friend Amanda and her kids in Oceanside, CA. I made a few calls to other friends and family. It was a nice way to spend the morning before work! Even though I wasn't with my blood family for the holidays I felt right at home in Korea!



LEAK IN MY CEILING

I woke up one morning in the middle of the night to a dripping sound.  There was a puddle building above my bed. I took a photo and then told Rebekah once I got to work. They called my landlord. When I got home from work it was still just a small leak, but by morning it had grown tremendously. The landlord brought over a man in the morning to take a look and then they left. When I got to work Rebekah told me that they would be fixing the leak from the apartment above over the weekend. By the next night there was actual droplets falling on the floor near my bed. Luckily it wasn't directly over my bed. By Saturday night the leaking stopped! I'm grateful my bed didn't get wet!

beginning of my leak

the pink should be at the bottom of the photo, but you can see how much bigger it got

REBEKAH AS AMELIA BEDILIA

I took a picture of my head teacher, Rebekah, when she got to work because she looked like the story book character, Amelia Bedilia.

ENCHILADA NIGHT

We got off early one Friday night and I decided to make enchiladas (by stove top). I bought some tomato paste to mix with my enchilada seasoning pack. Let's just say they were interesting. My friends said they were good, but I didn't think they were great by any means. They were what they were...enchiladas in Korea. I also made some "Mexican" rice. It was nice to cook for some friends, especially on a Friday night.

RANDOM TRIP TO DEASEON

Ok, so I'm sure you heard about the attack from North Korea on South Korea, well yes it was tragic, but really not as big of a deal as everyone overseas made it out to seem. Most people didn't feel threatened by the bombing. You know it is a little scary, but you can't live in fear.  The reason I mentioned this, was because Hannah's boyfriend is in the military  and she had a package sent to him with some preggo pants. he wasn't allowed to go more than 2 hours away from the base, so he couldn't come to Deagu to deliver the package. I decided to go with Hannah to meet him half-way to pick up the box.  

We took a train out to Deaseon about 2 hours away. We couldn't get seats on the train we wanted until the next stop which was 30 mins away so we had to stand for the first leg of the trip. There were about 45 people standing in the cafe car, some sitting on the floor and some singing in the singing room.  We wanted to sing, but they were full.  We both found a good spot to sit in the cafe car for the 30 min journey.  I played soduko on my phone. Once we arrived in Gumi we got to sit in our seats. You could really ride the train for free in Korea because they don't check tickets.  As a matter of fact, Hannah's bf never pays. even if you get caught you can pull the foreigner card.  All you have to pay is the amount of the ticket anyways, no extra fine or anything, so I may try this next time (or not because my morals won't allow for that...thanks mom and dad!).  

Well we arrived in Deaseon and met up with Antonio. We put the box in a locker, which is super cool.  No keys. It is done by fingerprint and is only $2.  Korea doesn't overcharge for the necessities! It's great.  We took a cab and got dropped off near the bridge where Antonio and I had been before for the rock concert. We tried to find some food, but the one place that was there was super expensive.  We hopped in another cab and Hannah asked him to take us to a place with lots of food options. We found a really yummy Korean BBQ place and grubbed down.  We decided to go to a movie. We saw "Due Date" and it was really funny...we had some ice cream at the Cold Stone before the movie. It was quite funny because there were like 5 employees waiting behind the counter to help.  They had really big smiles and were really welcoming. They have menus with all of the mixtures and fun stuff.  I got my usual vanilla ice cream with raspberries and chocolate chips. it was delicious.  After that we went back to the train station and headed home. I was back in my apartment by midnight.

 

Antonio and Hannah

Me, Hannah, and da baby in da belly

Cold Stone 

EVENT DAY MBC-OSS: MOVIE DAY

November's event day was movie day. They watched a movie called, "Mamma Do You Love Me?"

That's my new Director, Nick with the kids

SNOWBOARDING AT HIGH1 

I went on an overnight snow trip on the first weekend of December. There is a club in Deagu and you just sign-up and they plan the hole thing. Hannah went along this time, but I met many new snow friends. We left Deagu at 3:50am  and took a 3 hour bus to HIgh1. It is north east of Deagu.

sleepy eyes: 3:50am going to the meeting place

My new buddy Mike on the bus. This trip was cool because we had the entire bus to ourselves. There were about 12 people on the trip. It was the first trip of the season! Actually it was the very first trip they had ever gone on.

At about 7:30am we arrived at the rental clothes shop. Peeps got to choose the gear they needed.

Free coffee! There is Mike, Paul, Shawn, and Keil.

on to the mountain

Me and Hannah getting ready to hit the slopes. The peace sign is Korean for "what's up."

Good morning boys (Paul, Shawn, and Mike)

Good morning girls (Hannah, me and Justine)

This was the longest wait. Koreans take off their snowboards to ride the lift, which is illegal in the states. If a board drops it could kill someone, so we all kept our boards attached. This line was only about 15 minutes.

At the top of the top! 

I wish it was covered in white, but you get what you get.

Someone made a mini snowman

Fake snow is good snow

Here is one of the rooms we had.

The view from our room

our suite

Huge hot pool

So all of us went to this pizza place at the nearby lodge. We started off by ordering 3 large pizzas and one order of chicken wings. As the night went on we continued to order more pizza and more chicken wings. Every time we put an order in the Korean server and cook gave us funny looks. They sure enough thought we were crazy. We laughed about it, and then ate more food!  It was really fun to meet new friend and eat pizza in Korea!

I decided to a half day of boarding before we took off.

Mike and I got some powerade and headed off.

It was a good day! We went up with a few peeps and ended up loosing one of the guys. He finally made it back to the bus 15 minutes after we were supposed to leave. Luckily everything worked out. It was a great trip and I am really proud of myself for remembering everything Kris taught me last season. The slopes are not as bad as everyone made them out to seem. Yes, there are a lot of Koreans sitting on the slopes after they eat eat, but you just have to think of them as a race course and go around them. Also, if you avoid the beginners slopes there aren't many people on the others, so it is fun! I can't wait to keep going back this season and checking out other places. We ended up getting back to Deagu around 6pm Sunday. Time to watch a movie and crash out.

RANDOM WORK PICS

Lauren and Rebekah

That;s Ho on the right. He is a student who doesn't attend our school, but comes once a week to study with Rebekah and help out. He actually lies in an orphanage about an hour from our school.  It is neat that he comes to help and learn out of his own free will. he is a pretty cool kid to have around.

Sharon

Me on the elevator

FIRST AND LAST SNOW IN DEAGU

On a Wednesday it was super cold and around 6:00pm the kids told me it was snowing.  I looked outside the window at work and sure enough it was coming down pretty good. Actually i think it was slate (cold, wet, icy rain). I ran downstairs to go check it out. I got pretty wet. By the time i got off work it had stopped and then started up again. I walked to the subway to meet some friends for dinner and needed to use my umbrella. He is a pic I took in front of my place.  I was told that it probably won't snow again this winter here. I'm glad I got at least one day!!!!!