long time coming...

marie and I have really fallen behind on this blog thing huh? Well not to much has happened so let me fill you in. My mom came to visit and we got to go see some new things with her that we had not yet seen, like the DMZ. That was interesting and a good day trip. We also took her to see some of the crazy busy markets that the city has to offer. This is an amazing experience for anybody and no matter how many times you go, you still look at all the people in shock in awe. I think mom had an ok time, it was hard for her to be out of ohio and around so many people. Since she left we have been takeing as many beach trips as we can. We went to the Hawaii of Korea called Jeju Island. This was a good weekend trip. We got some beach time, got to see an acrobat show, and we got to visit a place called Love Land which is dedicated to sex and penis. It was funny to see a bunch of old women walking around and laughing their asses off. Then the next weekend we went to another beach right outside the city called Muuido. The sun was nice, but we did not get to swim. This is one of the very very few places in the world (I think there is like 2 total) that has THE lowest tide. When the water goes out, there is nothing but wet sand and mud for like 2 miles. At one point we walked for a good half hour strait out and still did not find water. So in short, the sun and beach bumming was good, but no water which was a bummer. The next weekend we went to the city Busan, which is on the very southern tip of Korea. There is a very famous beach in Busan where everyone and their mother travels to. If you were to Google Busan beach photo's, you would see ten hundred thousand koreans on the beach. We went down with our friends Dj and his wife Margie and they new of a smaller, quieter beach, and so we were not swamped by the mass crowds and that was nice. We two beautiful days of sun and swim... It was perfect.
And so that catches you up to our lifes thus far. We have another trip to the beach this coming weekend, to a festival called Mud Fest. And yes it is just what it sounds like. Here is a link if you are intrigued enough to want to know more: http://www.asknow.ca/mudfest/
Oh and of course, Robby and Rose arrive in a little less than 2 weeks which we are both really excited about! And then off to China... And then home... Busy, Busy, Busy!

ok here i am in seoul, and let me tell you this is an experience. there are so many people it is unbelievable. buildings everywhere, hardly no grass...just people and buldings...lol. they really know how to use what little space they have. some people are rude but keith and marie tell me that is the way they are here. they look at you different here. trying to find your way around is something else. every bldg looks the same. it really makes you think of life at home, we take things for granted. it is pretty here and the coolest thing is they have exercise machines in the park, the park is just like our rails to trails at home. i am really proud of keith and marie for doing this because i dont think i could have the guts to do it. im glad i came. this has been an experience of a lifetime.

tina

Pictures

We may not update the blog very often, but we have been uploading photos like crazy! We have pictures of the Cherry Blossom Festival up (very beautiful), and some new hiking photos, and some new teaching photos. So check out the page and also the different albums.

http://photobucket.com/kmsk

Complicated Love Holidays

In the States holidays like Sweetest Day and Valentines Day are treated in a number of different ways. Either you see them as a made up holiday for the benefit of the greeting card companies, or you dread figuring out what to get your wife, or you see it as a good excuse to get some. In Korea romance holidays are taken to a whole other extreme. First there is Pepero Day, a holdiday made by a candy company. Then of course there is the traditional Valentines Day on Febuary 14th. In Korea the woman is expected to get something for the man on Valentines Day. However, one month later on March 14th White Day occurs. On White Day the man is expected to get something for the woman. No surprise the advertising for potential products to buy your lady on White Dau is much more intense than those to buy your man on Valentines. However, the love holidays are not over yet. April 14th is Black Day. Black Day is for singles. If you are single on Black Day you eat Ja -Jong ....a black bean sauce with rice or pasta. Two single people are supposted to meet over bowls of black beans and fall madly in love for life...or at least for the night.
A bit intense no?

To his credit, Keith took me out for a very very very nice, very expensive Itailan restaurant on White Day. The fact that he had absolutely no idea that is was White Day made it even better....and much more the Keith Bryant style. We enjoyed a nice bottle of wine and great seafood and pasta. Of course I forgot that in Korea seafood almost always comes whole (nothing is ever taken out of its shell or off the bone) and entres such as "Seafood Pasta" almost always include baby octupus. Having tried baby octopus before and discovering that they are about as good as they sound I chose to eat around the octopus in my pasta :)

Wisdom of ages...

We decided to take advantage of the icredibly cheap health care that South Korea has to offer and get my wisdom taken out. Before we left the states, Marie and I both got checkups from the dentist and what not. Well my dentist told me that there was no problem and that my teeth could wait to come out till after we returned. I assumed that he meant my teeth came in strait, no big deal... Yeah not so much... I went to go get an x-ray to see if my teeth could just be yanked out and no such luck. My two bottom teeth came in completely sideways and i needed surgery to get them out. Well we decided that it was much more financially savvy to do it here still and i went in wednesday around 5:30. In the states, they put you under while they do surgery... Not here. i was given a local anesthetic (sorry Rose if that is spelled wrong hehe) which consisted of a couple novacain shots to the roof of my mouth (OUCH) and some down time to allow my mouth to loose feeling. I then had a heavy cloth placed over my face that looked like a doorknob hanger. It had a big hole for my mouth (duh) and then a slit for my nose. My eyes and everything else were covered up. He started with my bottom right tooth, which i was informed before hand that they would have to cut the gums (yeah ok i accepted that without question) and then he would cut the tooth itself in half before removing both halfs... (Yeah that concept threw me off alittle) Then he moved on to my top wisdom tooth. This one was going to be "pulled" out. So when i hear of teeth being pulled out i get a mental picture of a kid placing a rope from his tooth to the door knob and slamming the door. Well that is exactly what they did... Just kidding. But it was an extremely primative, grab the tooth with vice grips and pull as hard as i can procedure... Interesting to say the least. In total, the surgery only took about 35 minutes and i was out the door. The grand total for this excursion... drum role please... around the equivilant of 35 US dollars! No Joke. Now the only down side is that they would not do both sides of my mouth at the same time, so i get to go back and get the left side down in about a month! This is me being excited!

Coffee conclusion

Since we have moved here Marie has got me hooked on coffee to actually wake up. Well i have come to the conclusion that coffee does not actually make you more aware, it just makes you have to pee ALOT and that in turn wakes you up! The bathrooms are really cold here too :(

Can you make an elephant trunk with your arm? I can!

Just another day at work, teaching students the most pivotal of all English words...."eli fant."

Ski resort trip

Koreans like to put on concerts in weriod spots...this is at the bottom on the hill at the ski resort.


The Black Diamond slopes.

We spend the weekend at a ski resort about 2 hours outside of Seoul, which is ironically about 3/4 of the way across the country. We left saturday morning and headed up there with a large group of people. We were on the slopes untill 10 pm and then headed to our cabins for some korean bbq and beer. It was the first time i had ever been to a real ski slope and the first time i had ever been on a real snow board. Granted Jason and I would buy crappy wal-mart brand snowboards and act like we knew what we were doing... but knowing now what it is really... We were way off man lol. Marie rented ski's but the slopes were a breeze for her becuase she knew what she was doing. Me however, took a little work to perfect my incredibly novice style of snowboarding. I started on the beginer hill, although at first i was thinking about going for the intermediate hill. And i have to say that if Jason was here with me, we would have went big or went home... but anyway, it took me about 35 minutes to make it down the hill for the first time. I was on my butt every few feet... not exsagerating. Well you have to carve with your board, in other words turn your board sideways so that you don;t fly ten thousand mph down the mountain. Well when you turn your board to have shift your weight so that the board is tilted up the hill not down. Yeah i know, common sense, easy enough sounding...... not so much. If the front edge of your board catches the snow... face first, sliding down the hill like it is a frozen ass slip and slide! Well the same goes for carving in the other direction, when you have your back faceing down the hill. This carve was a little harder to do becuase lets face it, you stand backwards on the top of a mountian and tell me how camfortable you feel lol. So as the day went on and i kept picking myself up off the frozen ground, i quickly started to find my groove and was managing to only fall roughly 4 times in one trip down instead of the 16 or so like when i started. At the end of the day i was comfortably going down the intermediate hill with Marie, yes still falling, but not nearly as often and as a plus, i had learn how to catch myself from all the falling practice i did earlier in the day. Well as the day ended, I was pretty happy with myself and the progress i had made on the snowboard. But.... let me tell you about the morning after. I woke up in pain all over my body. I legs hurt becuase it took alot of leg strength to control the heavy snowboard. My arms and wrists hurt from falling and catching myself so damn much. But worst of all... My butt hurt sooooo damn bad that i had to ask Marie to check it out and... Bruised! My butt has three GIANT black and blue bruises on it! No joke. It has made sitting on wooden chairs a little difficult here at work :(. But over all... I loved out ski slope experience and would go agian anytime. I can confidently say that (hopfully) i would be confident enough in my skills that my butt would come back unscaved!

Cuban Cigar!

So you can find cuban cigars over here in various places. i decided to find a place that sold them so i could see what the hype was about. Supposedly Cuban cigars are the best smoke ever... Well it was slightly expesive thats for sure. about $12 bucks for one of the cheaper cigars. Anyway, i lit is up and tasted it, no special taste or anything like that (well i wasn;t really expecting a different taste or anything) But it did burn nice and smooth and smoke pretty well for what it was worth. And it is freaking HUGE... so that is cool. Marie took a picture of me with it in my mouth, so i took an Al Pacino/Scarface type pose, or at least attempted to. Overall, i would say was a pretty good purchase, even though i am not a smoker, but a good cigar is nice every now and then. And plus, i can say i have had a cuban when i get home :)

Hong Kong Pictures are up!

The Hong Kong pictures are up on photobucket. There is a seperate album titled Hong Kong (go figure right?) You can find it on the left hand side of the page. Enjoy :)

Made it home from Hong Kong

Marie and I made it home from Hong Kong just fine last night. We really loved it and had tons of fun. We got to see a lot of cool stuff like a GIANT Buddha and New Years fire works (totally blew any fireworks from home away!!) We also got to take a tram that went up and down a mountain at a 45 degree angle. We also rode a cable car through some mountains as well. Got to go to Macau (a whole other country that is tiny and covered with casinos. It is vegas as it's own country lol) So that was cool to get 2 new country stamps on our passports whithin a couple days. We also got to see a Cirque, which was amazing!!! We also gambled a little on the slot machines and came out $10 ahead :)

Big Buddha

Fire Works (in case you can't tell or something)

Not to much to report

Things have kind of been boring everyday life for us lately. We did meet and girl from Idaho that worked for my dad is his candy shop. She is a young girl here in the Air Force. She wa nice. Marie was excited becuase she has someone to go shopping with, apparently i suck at it lol. We all went out and celebrated a korean friend's birthday. That was fun, we got to eat Morrocan food and then go dancing. Other than that not to much excitment. We did attempt to go ice skating at the mall, but when we got there, it was EXTREMELY packed with people. There were so many people on the rink that the only ice you could see was in the middle of the rink where a learn to skate class was in progress. We have a couple pictures of this, but the camera is dead so they are not on the internet yet. We do leave for Hong Kong in 2 days, which is cool. We will definatly take alot of pictures and blog about what we see when we get back. Hope all is well for you all. We miss everyone like crazy!

Dancing to Barney!

Ok, so when we tell people that we are singing and dancing for children, we really mean it. Our school recorded Marie and I singing and dancing to our new warm up song that we sing at the begining of every class. We go to choose a new song becuase the center had been using a song called Hello World for the last year. So I looked around online and found The Clapping Song on the Barney website. The director and head teacher of the center liked the song so they said that we could use it. Well Marie and I were put in charge of coming up with a dance for the song that was fun and easy enough for the kids to do. Well i can not post the video on here becuase our school has rights to it and what not, but i will put the link up. But... before you view the video, you have to promise that you will laugh your butts off. And you might want to go ahead and learn the song becuase we will be teaching all the songs we know when we get home!

The link is: http://www.jybooks.com/center/kangnam/board_view.asp?BoardID=CMNKFree&idx=103348&gotoPage=1&strPart=&strFind=

but, you have to be a member, so here is my login and password, but if you get onto the site, please don't be an ass and screw around on things, this is our company's official site and you have to be a member to get into anything (mostly this is for my (Keith's) friends, becuase i know that i would be tempted to poke around too) Thanks guys and enjoy!

Login: keith
password: 1111

Acupuncture ....no idea if this is spelled correctly

I've been getting headaches and my back has been very tight and stiff, so this week Keith convinced me to try something new. ( I've been getting tired of trying new things recently). Acupuncture. Turns out I LOVE IT. In Korea acupunture refered to as the Chinese Doctor. Acupunture has all the pleasant effects of a ciropractor except with a lot more massage and a lot more lying under warm blankets taking a nap while I'm suppose to be at work :)There is a acupunturist right down the street from our school. He is a cute little man who speaks very little English, but likes to pretend that he doesn't know any English. But he could say "no problam?" and "If pain say "ah"" At first I couldn't understand the "If pain" part of the direction. All I heard was "jashdkjah say 'ah.'" So I said "ah" everytime he said "askhdkashd say 'ah.'" Which of course got very confusing, and I'm pretty sure he thought I was crazy, but we finally got it figured out.

Of course there was the needle part of the acupunture. It wasn't nearly as bad as I thought. Since he was working on my neck I didn't even realize he had put any needles in until he put one in each of my temples. I guess he didn't know how to say "needle in your head now." Anyway I feel better and spent less than 5 dollars for something that would have cost me ten times as much in the states.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to everyone! Hope that 2009 is a generous year for everyone. We went out and celebrated with the hundreds of people on the streets of Seoul to see the count down and hear the traditional ringing of the bell. The only way i can describe the streets is "mosh pit"! There were so many people on the steets the we could not move. The entire croud would sway one way or another becuase people were trying to push their way through, and the only way to do that was to literally push about twenty peopl at one time. It was really amusing to see soooo many people hudled together to see the countdown (either that or we were all huddled together to keep warm lol) It was FREEZING cold out side! Korean's celebrate with "fireworks" that are really just roman candles held by thousands of people in the street shooting them into the air. There were tons of police officers out on the street to keep peace as well. We hung out around the fire works for a while and then went out to get a few drinks. We made our way to a bar the had tequilla shots for 1,500 won, which is about $1.30 maybe. Marie and I had one and we were in good shape :). Then after another beer, we made our way home to finally get under a thousand and one blankets to get warm. :) That was how we celebrated New Years this year. Happy New Years to ALL!!!! Enjoy 2009!

p.s. If you are reading this before i have posted pictures here... then check the blog again in a day or two. I will have the pictures up by then