Interesting...but not :)

Happy Chuseok! :) Our pile of diaries and book reports

We've been quite busy with school this last week and never really found energy to write a blog, sorry. A Korean holiday called Chuseok (pronounced chew-sock, their Thanksgiving) is next week, so we have Monday-Thursday off. We are going to use that time to hang out with some people and get caught up on the student diaries and book reports. Way to spend a holiday break. :) Today we are going to Itaewon with AP and Dennis (two people from church), and visiting a foreign market (there will be American food to buy!) and a used English book store. Yippee! On Wednesday, AP invited us to hang out again for Chuseok, so that will be fun! Also, sometime over break, our supervisor/co-worker Jaena wants to hang out. So hopefully all this hanging out with people will cancel out the boring time we spend on the diaries and book reports. :)

Last Tuesday, we tried to make it to AP and Dennis' for Bible Study. Yeah, that didn't work out so well. We thought we would ride our bike to their house instead of spending 5,000 won for a taxi ride. Thinking we knew where we were going, we headed out around 10 p.m. only to find ourselves calling AP at 10:30 or so asking which building they were in. We were in the wrong spot, so we pedaled off hoping to find the 500 apartments. At 11:00 we called it quits. We were lost in the next district over, but luckily we found the subway and followed that home. Maybe next Tuesday?? :D On our way home though, we ran into a Westerner who was more than pleased to see other Westerners. It was kind of an awkward introduction to someone new, but she was nice and doesn't live very far from us. Maybe soon we will hang out. Thursday, I had a student give me some traditional Korean food that is served on Chuseok. I thought it was good, but Jeremy didn't. One was a dessert made of sticky brown rice and almonds, the other, I'm not sure. It seemed like the outside was dough-like, not much flavor, and the middle.... I don't even know how to describe it. Maybe like the middle of a hard-boiled egg? It didn't have much flavor either. On Friday, a student gave me this tiny bottle that is a drink. It was very sweet tasting. You can buy them in the store daily. Also, our top boss bought us gifts: a set of seaweed wraps and a shampoo set. Apparently for Chuseok, they give gifts to people. To me, it's like Thanksgiving and Christmas put together with more emphasis on Thanksgiving :) I was able to buy a crochet hook here to start working on projects, but yarn is expensive here in Ansan. I also got needles to finish quilting the quilt I brought. I'm very excited to be doing my favorite hobbies! Jeremy just got a new computer game Starcraft, and he is very happy to be playing it. Things are looking up! :)

It will last us a lifetime :)