December 1, 2008

I can't believe how fast this year went by! I have been here just about 5 months and wonder why it's going so fast...This month I start paying on my school loans!! woohoo! lol NOT!

Hey, this weekend was AMAZING! If you didn't know about it, I cooked thanksgiving dinner for my friends in korea. I had some help with cooking and cleaning. About 30 people ended up coming by and hanging out! It was good times! It was kind of crowded at times, but it was a lot of fun! I would do it again in a heartbeat! Thanks to all of you who came, and sorry for those of you who couldn't!

Well, I'm gonna get started watchin some shows I missed last week! Talk to ya later!!

Monday, November 17, 2008

Hey guys! today was so busy. i woke up and went to a lady's house from my bible study, on camp walker. there, me and 2 other ladies watched some little ones while the mommies were able to spend the afternoon at the korean opera (woohoo...) oh how i missed watching kids! i totally miss my nephews and niece, but especially the Newberry family back home!! It was so much fun to play with the little ones and goof off with the older ones. this wed for bible study i volunteered to help with the little ones cuz they were short handed this week. i can't wait!

after this i went to work. then after work i met RJ (nerida's son) and Nerida for dinner. tonight was RJ's last night in daegu. He's leaving tomorrow to go back to Austraila. dinner was goooood, but too exensive for my taste, but delish, nontheless...

so just for the record...i bought some really warm and comfortable shoes on base!!! there's a pic of them on here!! i'll wear them with pants once i get my pants taken in!!! i've lost 13 lbs since i've been here!!!! woohoo!! they got little brown furry spheres on the tops!!! lol CUTE!!

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Today, i woke up with my tonsils huge golfballs. my fever kicked in during bible study, which made me have chills. i went to the doctor earlier and he gave me antibiotics for tonsillitis.. we'll see if it works! who know... this is what the pack looks like..i wonder if it's really only vitamins.. lol the doctor visit only cost 3,500 Won (about 3 bucks) and then the same price for the pills...

going to get some rest. love you guys. g'night

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

When all ELSE fails and you're totally broke... one thing is always clear....MAC n CHEESE time!! payday is friday!!! i can just taste the base food i'll be purchasing soon!! yay for having gracious friends on base that will help me survive while i'm in korea!!! love you!

Nothing is new in my life. Work is fine. My sheets are amazing! (thanks mom)

I still need a jacket, but since I had to pay for my computer to be repaired, I had to wait to buy a jacket till the coming paycheck... So lookout for my new korean jacket when I get home! I'll be sporting the korean style!! ye-uh!

As you are "celebrating" Veterans Day in the States, we are "celebrating" Pepero Day in Korea. A pepero is a cookie stick dipped in chocolate (some are also dipped in chocolate AND nuts!!). On November 11 each year, young people share pepero sticks with people they like. It is a lot like Valentine's day, but just with this one kind of snack. Basically, it meant I had a room full of kids on sugar-highs from eating peperos all day. A couple of my students brought me peperos. (DALENE...i stole this from ur blog. it's exactly what I would have typed... :) love you! thanks)

I'm tired. I got Bible study in the morning! g'night

love you guys!!!

Thursday, November 6, 2008

so i thought i should tell you guys a story about what happened on my home one night. i was hanging out with jiyoung and we were taking a cab back to my apt. we paid, got out and got to my stairs. well, i reached in my purse to get my keys, but realized my purse was STILL in the cab. i immediately took off down the street to TRY to catch the cab in case there was a red light. well, i had on my huge brown flipflops and couldn't run appropriately, so i took them off while running and booked it even faster! i got around the curve and there he was at the end of the street about to pick up another passenger. i finally yelled enough for them to hear me and he had my purse already in the front seat. i don't know what i would have done if he had really left. omg. that would have been so tragic! i wouldn't have had make-up or anything! lol BUT he didn't take off and i caught him... i just thought i'd share my huffin and puffin story to brighten ur day! i bet none of you have left ur purse in a cab and got it back! lol love you guys!

Monday, Novemeber 3, 2008

I can't believe that it's already the first Monday in November! I have almost been here for four months! It has gone by slow, but fast...if that makes ANY sense! I am currently at work on break for an hour and a half. I ordered some food from across the street and waiting on them to bring it to me! it's really good. it's called cheese donkkasa, which is pretty much a cheese pork cutlet, and also comes with some macaroni salad and some rice! It's delish. When they bring it, I'll add a pic.

So as most of you know, my computer crashed recently. Macs are not that easy to buy or get repaired here. I had to go downtown to find the store and it cost me 400,000Won to get it repaired...With today's exchange rate, it was about 285 USD (they just brought my food....so i'll put up a pic!). 285USD isn't bad i guess when you get a brand new hard drive and a new cd/dvd drive. I was fortunate enough to get the NEWER hard drive. It's like i bought the new version of the Macbook for 285bucks! I can do all the stuff the new Macbooks can do! Yay! What really stinks is that ALL the files/songs/pics on my computer are gone. so i have to start from scratch. So, be patient with pics. I'll be copying friends' albums and putting them on my comp! AND I needed a new key board, cuz mine was falling apart from the same when I dropped the comp. and I now have a keyboard that has Hangul (korean characters) on it! good times!

Another addition to my life is a Bible Study on Camp Walker (an army base in daegu). It's actually called PWOC. I heard about it through a friend and thought I'd check it out. I loved it! The women there are fantastic! They love the Lord and want to bring others closer to him! We picked the books/groups in which we wanted to study and I chose the book on "Discerning the Voice of God". I really didn't want to hear the voice of God at the time and I wanted to do the Beth Moore study, but at that moment I realized I HAD to do the Discerning the voice of God because I knew I NEEDED to do it. Did I make that confusing or did you understand? lol Since I didn't want to do it, I chose it, cuz I knew I needed to do it! :D I was suppose to go help at an orphanage today, but I overslept...poo. So I'll catch it next time. Our Bible study meets every Wed morning at 930 and we stop around 1145! My friend Dalene goes with me, and we're actually in the same group, so we can keep each other accountable! (Dalene is from Oklahoma and she works accross the street from me and we met through Alpha)

Halloween was amazing! I don't have many pics cuz I wasn't ready when all my friends were snapping pics, but oh well. Maybe I'll find some more on my friends' facebook pages! I dressed up as the "baby one more time" britney spears! THAT was a lot of fun! Needless to say, I didn't look QUITE as good as britney did, but i pulled off the catholic school girl look at least! :D My friends and I went downtown and hung out with all the other foreigners dressed up! I saw: Tommy Lee, the Hulk, a toilet, a dead fairy, gum on a shoe (alpha lol), MANY angels (dalene's was the best), ladybugs, bees, and TONS of other things! WE had fun!

Some of you don't know, so I will tell you...My Uncle, Timbo, was killed Friday in a hit n run. He was walking to work (which he does everyday), and someone hit him and they didn't find his body till after midnight. He had nothing but a phone # in his pocket so the police called it. It was his son's #. My cousin went down to see if he could identify the body since they didn't know who it was. They could only use a tatoo to identify him with. That's how bad his body was mangled. My cousin said that's my dad. So here I am separated from my family by thousands of miles...wishing I was there with them at a time like this. I didn't cry when I found out, although I teared up. I was just in shock. Well, yesterday my friend had said something about "if anything happens to me...patrick can have my ..., jiyoung can have my..., and roxie can have my..." it WAS really funny cuz of what he was talking about, but as soon as he said it, I started balling... I'm doing ok now. I called my dad's side of the family and talked with several of them through Skype, but it's just not the same. I wish I had the chump change to fly home.. lol but I don't. So I you guys back home and abroad to please pray for the healing of my family. My dad had the opportunity to lead my uncle to the Lord a thousand years ago, but he didn't live a God-fearing life. So our hope is to see him in heaven one day. Pray that God grabs the rest of my family!

i love you guys! talk to you soon!

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

I feel so disconnected from America. I didn’t even realize that 9-11 was the other day until almost the whole day had gone by… Things are still going well here, except for the cut from American reality. I can’t believe I have been for 2 full months! It’s crazy!

So I’ll back track to last Friday, the 12th… I worked as usual till about 835 then went to home to pack. Then got a call from my boss telling nerida and I to come eat with them. So we did and then we went straight to downtown afterwards to walk around and hangout with people! Then it came time for me to go home so I could finish packing and leave for the train station at 3:15AM. My train left on time at 4am. It was the longest 3 hrs of my life… I fell asleep a few times, but got woken up by the announcements and/or the person beside me getting up and out (diff people came in/out at diff stations). So finally got to Pyeongtaek and took a cab to Songtan which is where my hotel was (the one nerida and I stayed at last time we were there…very nice and cheap!). Took a nap till about 11:30 till I got a call from Erik asking where I was! Lol I should have been with him by then, not just waking up!! Ugh. I would. So finally made it to the subway station and headed to Suwon. When I got on the tube, a group of really cute airforce boys got on too! I didn’t talk to them cuz they were standing a little too far to make conversation, but not too far to make eye contact! Lol eventually they got off and the REALLY hott one gave me the “nod”!! ugh. Why do I have to go back to TX?? Lol jk During this time of me scoping out these soldiers, my friends hopped on the subway so that we didn’t have to wait for the next one. They finally found me after getting on the subway 10 cars behind the car I was at! :o) suckers.. so an hour and 15 min later we arrive in seoul only to change subway lines a couple more times to actually get to where we were going, Itaewon!!! We got there and shopped all day! I made some good purchases. Before we decided to leave Itaewon, we wanted to grab some cold stone. While we were in cold stone, I felt something on my ankle. I reached down to brush it off and realized it was this HUGE bug!! I screamed, spilled my powerade, and jumped REALLY high and jumped around! Lol needless to say EVERYONE was looking at me and laughing after realizing it was only a bug… but this bug was HUGE!!!! Omg. I couldn’t believe I did that, but if you know me, you probly CAN believe that! Lol well, we left there and headed back down to the subway station. After erik and april got off in Suwon, I snoozed here and there. During a couple stations I would look up at the marque to see what the next stop was. I guess I was sleeping when mine went off, cuz I had to get off at the next stop and take a cab back to Songtan. I can’t believe I missed it. That happened a lot this weekend… hahaha So finally made it back to the hotel just long enough to wash my face and change clothes to meet up with some other friends! We ate dinner at a Mexican restaurant down the street from the airforce base and then met up with some other friends around that area. Well, we were playing darts and one of my friends was being stupid and wanted someone to throw a METAL dart through his hand..well 3 of his other friends took one dart. The first 2 missed, but the 3rd guy nailed it right through his left ring finger. It went straight through without any problem.. it was sick! Someone pulled it out for him and it was dripping blood everywhere, but it shortly stopped and he was fine. After this eventful night I went back to my hotel and slept in till about noon the next day! Yes!! It feels soo good to sleep in while everyone else is up and getting ready for their day! Lol (not like I wake up early anyways!!!) Eventually I headed back to Suwon to meet erik and april again. We had subway for lunch. Suwon was deserted…. It felt like a ghost town cuz it was a national holiday, called Chuseok. It’s pretty similar to our Thanksgiving. So typically everything is closed and everyone is in their home with their family. So we had the city to ourselves pretty much! So we ate lunch then walked around Home Plus (a Korean walmart) and bought tons of stuff there! Then headed back to the train station…just barely giving me enough time to get there without being late. Good thing…my train was delayed a few minutes. On my way home, I watched two of the three movies I bought. 3 and a ½ hrs later, it’s time for me to get off the train…I forgot one DVD on the train in the case…and my new little Korean fan I had bought. Sad day. Ugh. Oh well.

So on my way home, I totally forgot that I didn’t have any cash on me. So when I got out, I realized that I needed the cab driver to go to a bank so I could get some out. So he drove me to about 20 atm machines, but guess what?? They were ALL closed. Cuz it was after midnight…so, finally about 20 min and 15 dollars later I called nerida and went by her house and borrowed some money. Geez. I was soooooo lucky she answered. Idk what I would have done…

So MONDAY!!! I woke up a lil late cuz I was suppose to meet my friends and go to another friends’ house for Chuseok lunch. Well, I finally got there an hour and a half late cuz I woke up late and my eye was sore cuz of a stupid stye… anywho, we had the BEST Korean lunch I have ever had!! We had a little bit of everything:
Bibimbop
Barbeque Chicken
Shark
Cooked Bacon (it might have been beef, but not sure)
Egg fried fish
Beef and potato soup
Lightly fried sweet potatoes
Lightly fried greens
And a couple other things I can’t remember
Doesn’t this sound amazing!!? Mmmm. There was kimchi too, but I didn’t eat any…yuck! We also had fruit for dessert with icecream!! Yummy!! After that we played some Korean games and then I taught them how to play phase 10 and they loved it! There was about 15 people at lunch and about 8 of us kids playing the games!

Later that night I went to eat dinner in downtown at PAPA JOHNS with a new friend I met in downtown Friday night! We had fun! Her name is Izzy and she teaches 8yr olds on one of the army bases here in Daegu. She only lives about 15 min from me (bus ride), so I think we’ll hang out often! Anywho, we had fun and today was just a regular ol’ day at work!

BUT I BOUGHT A BIKE TODAY!!!! It’s cute! It’s white with big tires and black and hot pink writing and décor on it!! I can’t wait to take a couple pics so I can show you! I’ll do that soon! It’s gonna be so much easier to get to work and faster. It’s hopefully gonna work out my legs! Yay! I can’t wait to take it around the lake too!! Yay! Well, its’ 3:30 am…I’ll talk to ya another day!! Peace out!!!