It's a Small World After All

In the midst of the busy-ness of work, it's always fun to have new experiences whenever we get the chance, and this weekend was certainly unique.

It turns out that not long after we came to Korea, Shannon had a cousin (whom she'd never met before) who came over and was teaching in Seoul. So after a few emails all over the family tree, Shannon and her cousin Chelsea got in contact with each other, and it turned out she was looking for another job. Fortunately, we happen to be friends with a recruiter, so we got them in contact with each other.

Our friend Sky was able to find her a job teaching an English cooking class for kids, which was great for Chelsea, since her degree is in food chemistry, so she was quite excited about that, and the best part from our perspective is that said job is right here in Daejeon!

Long story short, Chelsea moved to Daejeon on Saturday, and we met her for the first time at the train station to help her move into her new apartment here in the city.

Today after church, we took Chelsea on a little orientation tour of her part of the city, showing her some of the important landmarks (like the subway), and going with her to pick up some things for her apartment. We had a great afternoon, and really enjoyed getting to know her. It looks like she's really going to enjoy her time in Daejeon, and we're really glad that we were able to play a part in bringing her here.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPod touch]

Darrell's 25th Birthday!

Hello All,

Last Feb 17th we had the chance to celebrate Darrell's birthday. Of course, I would ask him many times before the date asking him "so...what do you want to do?" and him always answering back with "whatever you want." Haha...it made it interesting to plan :P I wanted to plan a surprise party, but I couldn't find the right supplies. Thankfully though, someone else had the same idea. We came to work on Tuesday (17th) and Linda told Darrell he had to leave...haha...he looked her very confused, but he did what she said. She closed the door and told me she picked up all kinds of supplies to make a fantasic surprise party. She is sooo wonderful & sweet!! We started decorating Darrell's class with banners and balloons. As we were decorating our boss Iris came in and started to help...then she turned to me and asked "What is Darrell's favorite cake?". As soon as I said "chocolate" she ran off like a shot, grabbing her purse on the way out :P We had just finished decorating when Iris returned with a lovely chocolate cake. They called Darrell back into the building and he was quite surprised...haha...despite him kinda suspecting what we were doing. We all sang Happy Birthday thinking we were then going to eat cake, but the surprise was not over. Linda and Iris had bought Darrell gifts...wonderful gifts. Linda got him a beautiful keychain with Korean carvings and Iris got his fantastic greenish clay mugs. She then turns to him and says "now everytime you drink coffee or tea you can think of me." It was sooo sweet!

It was quite a different birthday, since we were usually always tight with money. This year has been amazing, but we have not had to worry about that which was a wonderful first :) He got from me more silly things - snacks, orange earmuffs (which in the end did not fit...Koreans' heads are a bit smaller) & a solar powered bobble head sitting on the toilet...teehee...you heard me right. Finally, being able to say "also, after work you can buy whatever you want at Comma" (one of our favorite Korean stores that has everything). He bought new pens, lighter and wallet...haha...plus, also part of his gift was me ordering everything in Korean at restaurants, which made Darrell very happy. I have to say it was a freeing experience :P It was a great day!!!

The Semi-obligatory Valentine's Day Post

We just celebrated our third month being in Korea, and I really can't believe that it's been three months already! I still feel like we've only just arrived, but at the same time, I feel like we're finally getting settled into a groove where our schedule is pretty well set.

We're definitely not wanting for things to do, as we do have a pretty busy schedule between work and school, and it almost makes me wonder where we're going to find time to do all of the adventuring that we want to do. All of the other foreigners that we've talked to are shocked that we've been here three months and haven't been to Seoul yet, but in the midst of everything else we're doing, we just haven't gotten around to it yet (but when we DO get a chance to go, you'll definitely hear about it!).

I won't bore you with our mushy-gushy Valentine's day plans of worship team practice, grocery shopping and house-cleaning; suffice it to say that our first V-day in another country probably won't be as romantic as you might expect, but if I have time today to plan anything outrageous, I'll try to post about it before YOUR Valentine's Day comes and goes.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPod touch]

Anyone Wanna Come To Korea?

So tonight we had another first for our adventure: we got to be interviewed over Skype about our experience in Korea. The audience was one of ABU's small groups whose topic of discussion is figuring out what you want to do with your life after university.

Because of the distinctive lag on the skype network (I suspect it has something more to do with the ABU network than with skype, but skype is always an easy target), we were provided with a list of questions in advance and had about 15 minutes to share a little about our experience while answering the questions, leaving time for additional q&a at the end. It was quite fun, and wouldn't you know it but an old friend was in the crowd, too!

We left the group with an open invitation to email us with any questions they might have about Korea, and hopefully we'll get some replies back because we'd love to see more people come over and take part in this wonderful experience with us.

Of course, if any of you have other questions that we might not have answered yet, please feel free to email us or simply post your question(s) in the comments section of this post (with your email address so we can reply directly to you). If a lot of questions come in, then we'll do a Q&A-style post, and put all the anawers in one place.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPod touch]

Aftermath

Well, we successfully made it to Hong Seong, and we're now on our way home, happy to have been able to visit somewhere new and to see Lorie for the first time since we first arrived in Korea.

An unexpected side effect of the bus ride was that Shan got a little motion sick on the way up, so we stopped by the pharmacy on our way back to the bus station to get her an anti-nauseant. We'll see how it works, and hopefully she'll have a more pleasant trip home.

Our day was really exciting, though, as Lorie showed us around her hometown, introduced us to some more new food (and I'm a horrible person for not remembering the name of it), and just generally showing us a great time. Hong Seong is much smaller than Daejeon (at a mere 35,000 or so, compared to Daejeon's 1.5 million), but there was still lots to fill up the afternoon. We went hiking around the mountain near Lorie's place and checked out the temple there, then she took us to the remains of the old Hong Seong fortress (we'll have pictures up on Facebook or Flickr once we're back at a computer and have time to sort through the hundreds that I took). It was really cool to see these buildings that are so old and then see how much of that heritage is in many modern buildings (like the pagoda-style roofs that you see modern iterations of in many places, to name just one example). Now I'm not much of a history buff (I leave such things to Shannon), but I can definitely appreciate being able to see (or more appropriately, 'take pictures of') things that have real historical significance.

All in all, I really enjoyed the day, and I can't wait to go on another adventure like this one where we get to see some of this rich history that exists throughout Asia.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPod touch]

Finally, our first trip out of the city!

And to answer your first question: no, we're not going to Seoul. We're on the bus heading out to a little town called Hong Seong, where our friend Lorie lives. She was so kind as to come and visit us on our first weekend in Korea, so we're off to visit her.

(As a bit of a sidebar, I will admit that blogging on a bus is a little bit more difficult than on the subway, mainly because the bumpy roads make my little iPod bounce around a fair bit.)

We're quite excited to be going on our first inter-city adventure, although we're a little scared that we're on the wrong bus. We bought our tickets assuming we were leaving 20 minutes later, but the girl at the ticket window said there was a bus leaving right away! So we go to the bus that's in the process of pulling out of the lot, tap on the door, and ask the driver, "Hong Seong?" and without a word, he takes our tickets and we get on the bus. So, here's hoping we actually make it to Hong Seong...I guess we'll find out in a couple hours!

(I'll post again with the results of our trip on the way back)

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPod touch]