Paul's Birthday

Saturday we went to the Osan Air Force Base. We have a friend who is in the Air Force. I have known Paul since I was in elementary school. He is Niki's age and was actually Niki's friend growing up. They stayed in touch all these years, then recently he found out that Jeremy and I were here. He got into contact with us, probably through Niki, and we began hanging out with him on base. This was our third trip to hang out in the last couple of months. It's awesome when we get to hang out on the base. It really feels like we are back in the states!
Paul's birthday was this weekend, so we went to celebrate his birthday. He is also leaving back to the states mid-April, so this might have been the last time we get to hang out. For his birthday, I attempted to make a German chocolate cake per his request. The cakes didn't seem to be too successful, but since I've never made one, who's to say they were bad? :D Then when I tried to make the frosting, again I had never made it, so I wasn't sure how to know if it was done. We were running late that day, so I had to just say it was done, put it in a bowl, and finish the cake at Paul's place. I made chocolate chip cookies as a back up, haha! :) In the end, when I was finished putting it together, I served the 3 guys and they all ate it. Paul's roommate said it was very good and he went back for seconds. Paul eventually went back for seconds also. The weird thing was that it was a moist cake, but it was really crumbly so cutting it was a disaster. Oh well, at least they ate it! :D
For Paul's birthday dinner, we went to a steak house! Woohoo! They had great tasting sweet tea there, too. Jeremy missed out on ordering a rootbeer because he didn't see it until after he ordered the sweet tea. Poor guy. Then after dinner we went bowling. Yahoo for bowling! I did very bad the first game- everyone beat me, haha! I couldn't slide, so a couple of times I almost biffed it face first down the lane. It was funny. Then at one point, I was already embarrassed for almost biffing it, that when I went to sit down, I completely missed the seat! I almost landed on my butt, but there was a lady behind me who helped catch me. Talk about complete embarrassment!! Hahaha! Good times, good times. :D Jeremy did really good in bowling, too. He had a great time.
We headed home probably after 9 p.m. Unfortunately, we didn't get home until after 11 p.m. The subway took a very long time to come, and we have to transfer once also. Oh well. While we waited Jeremy read his iPod, and I started on my paper for my master's class. All in all, it was a fun day. The weather was so fantastic! We didn't even need our jackets!  Sorry for no pictures, but I hope you enjoyed reading about our fun day. :)

Nami Island

We went to an island called Nami Island that is like two and a half hours NE of Seoul. The island is on a river, so we didn't make it to the east coast of Korea. We went with our Saturday Korean speaking class, and we left right after work Friday night (it was about 10:30 p.m. when they picked us up!).Needless to say, we slept a lot of the way, but it still felt like it took forever to get there. I woke up with about 20 minutes left, and pretty much instantly got car sick to the point where we had to pull over or it wasn't going to be pretty. Everyone decided to get out of the car as well, so we all just about froze to death! The place was amazing with its decor. We were told that these pensions are very popular places for couples to go for retreats/vacations, so the feel definitely was a "couple's" feel. Jeremy and I didn't sleep together as there were two other people that couldn't sleep together (a boy and a girl).
The next was such a gorgeous day to go the island. We still needed our jackets, but it wasn't freezing cold. The island is beautiful, and I am sure would be even more beautiful when all the plants are alive! :) The first picture is of a kimchi hut. They put the kimchi in the ground, then build this hut to help regulate the temperature. There like 15 or more in the area. Jeremy, of course, wanted us both to get in. Yeah right. :) The picture with the lines of trees is apparently the famous row of trees. Korean dramas are filmed on this island, and I am guessing these trees are in them?? Or maybe it's just a very popular tourist sight? The rock picture is spot of just tons of rocks that people were stacking. We found out that you stack the rocks then say a prayer for someone. Jeremy found an already made stack, then put a bigger rock on top and it stayed. Then he tried to do the same to other stacks and ended up knocking some over. We told him he killed some prayers. :) The next picture is the bathroom that is decorated with Soju (alcohol) bottles. They had quite a bit of Soju decorations. We say a tower made completely of what seemed like phone books or really thick magazines. It has been there since last summer. We also wanted to go zip lining, but the wait time was 3 hours and cost more than $35 each to go, so we passed :( There were two choices to get to Nami Island: by ferry ride for $7, or zip lining for $35. Jeremy also wanted to go bungee jumping, as well as the other foreigner, Jess, in our group. We decided to stop at it on our way out. The bungee place is the picture below that looks like a big construction crane. When we got there, we watched a handful of people jump. When Jeremy saw the first one go, he backed out. It looked really scary!! After a couple more jumpers, Jess decided she would do it. We waited a long time for her turn to jump. It was really nerve-racking watching her do it. She thought it was fun, but scary at the same time. She was happy she did it. That concluded our day on the island. It was a fantastic trip! After we had an awesome feast for dinner (a home cooked meal), we headed back home. I survived for the most part with not getting too carsick, but the person driving kept taking the wrong turn or missing the turn, so it actually took us about 3 hours to get home. :( We finally got home around 9 p.m. I think. It's a trip that we will hopefully be making again in a few months when the weather is fantastic and everything is in bloom. :) Enjoy the pictures!

Kimchi hut

Korean Hockey

We found out that Korea does do hockey! With my dad being a hockey fan, I wanted to try to find out if Korea has a hockey team. One day, Jeremy and I were walking in Lake Park, when we stumbled upon a game of roller hockey. Seeing this, we thought that possibly there could be an ice hockey team. I asked on Ansan Answers on Facebook, and they said there is a team called Anyang Halla. We also found out that there were only two more home games left in the season! I quickly asked our Korean friend to find out about tickets. Sure enough, we were able to buy tickets and attend their Saturday game. We also found out they were playing game 3 in the playoffs. Lucky us. :D It was open seating, and since we arrived pretty much at the end of the first period, all the seats were taken. Us and a bunch of people had to stand for the duration of the game. It was fine though. The arena was really small; definitely was not like the Rose Garden. We saw quite a few foreigners at the game, which was nice, but they looked at us whenever we walked by. They must not be used to white people, haha! :) Watching the game felt like we were home a tad bit. They had two mascots, a male and female polar bear! :D The game ended 5-4. It was a close one, too! What the funniest thing was whenever the home team got anywhere near the opponents goal, the crowd just went wild! The player could have totally missed the net, but everyone would be shouting and getting excited! It was definitely a lot of fun. Oh, and Anyang Halla is actually one of two Korean ice hockey teams in the Asia League. And the game we watched was against Japan.

Time Flies

Wow, I can't believe it's already been over a month since we last posted. We are terribly sorry for not posting more often. We have been up to a few things since our last post, but instead of cramming it all into one post, my goal is to get you all up to date ove a few posts. I have pictures as well that I want to post.
We have started a new semester so things are a bit crazy for us right now. This coming weekend we are taking a trip to Nami Island with our Korean conversation class. Also, I have started my Master's degree so I am juggling work and all that it entails as well as taking graduate courses. Thankfully I just do one course at a time, but it's all crammed into 8 weeks. I am now into my second course, having finished my first one with 100%. Woot woot!! :D I am also in the process of applying for jobs back in the states for when we are done here. I have so far applied to nine Wyoming jobs. Praying that God opens at least one door for us in Wyoming.
We are still taking everything one day at a time here. The weather has finally started getting better, so we are trying to get out more often before we go to work as well as on the weekends. I think I just had a case of winter depression for the last few months, which led to me constantly wanting to go home. But I am doing better now, and I think the weather has a little to do with it. Jeremy has also been very supportive, helping out wherever and whenever needed. I will try to get you all up to date by the end of the month. We are excited to know that some of you were very interested in our blog, so I am trying to catch up and stay on track for you.
Keeping my fingers crossed.............

Lunar New Year

Lovely hotel amenities :)

Hotel view (left)

Hotel view (right)

Final stage of beetles, yuck

middle stage of beetles, eww

Crabs with awesome colored claws

For Danielle! Has red on bottom side.

Wannabe Cinderella castle

I rode the roller coaster!

Inside Lotte World (left)

Inside Lotte World (right)

Fairies in the parade

Funny dressed ladies in the parade

More parade

Korean dancing

Up close shot of Korean dancer

Cool costumes, right?!

Dancers twirling the streamers

Only man and he has the long streamer

More twirling from the head

Oh aren't we so cute :)

Great gift for Sul Nal (New Year's)

Cute girl in her Hanbok

Another great gift for Sul Nal

Here is our trip for Sul Nal (Lunar New Year's). We went to Lotte Hotel World, which is the hotel for Lotte World. Lotte World is the world's largest indoor theme park, but it also has an outside theme park. It only cost us 50,000 won total to get into the park. At first glance, it seems very kid-like, but it was deceiving. There is lots to do for adults! We were very leery of doing rides because we were afraid that I would get sick. But I took it like a champ! Jeremy first took me on the Drunken Basket ride, which is the equivalent to the tea cups that you twirl in circles.I did fine for the most part. :) We walked around the whole to decide what to do, and that's when we discovered that some of the rides cost extra money. They were only like 2,000 to 3,000 won extra, but we didn't want to spend any more money than we had to. Outside we did go on the big chair swing where you sit in a swing (more like a char) and you go around in circles, we actually did a roller coaster, and then on a whim tried another ride that turned out to be another roller coaster, but underground. The first roller coaster was short, but an extreme thriller! I literally screamed bloody murder right off the bat! But it was completely awesome!! I wanted to do it again, but Jeremy had a headache and that ride probably didn't make things any better. :( The second roller coaster was called Cosmic (blah blah, sorry can't remember). It was all underground with black lights. It was so cool! It was a unique roller coaster because not only did you go up, down, and around, but the whole time your seat is spinning in circles. So at times we were riding sideways, backwards, and regular!! AWESOME! Then we headed back inside to do some more rides, but the lines got long. :( One ride was more than a 20 minute wait, but it was a very short ride. Another one that was like Splash Mountain had an hour wait time! Bummer. We played a video game and air hockey (which I totally won), then left. The day was so much fun! It makes me want to go to Disneyland. Lotte World seems like just a knock off of Disneyland, but Korean style. :)
The hotel was great. I went swimming once, we both sat in the bathtub once, and we watched lots and lots of t.v.!!! :) The bed wasn't very comfortable, but it was still relaxing because we were away from it all. The mall was great to roam around in, and there was bowling, video games, an underground shopping center, a movie theater, and much more.  We even played this one game, which we had no idea what were doing, to win a cow stuffed animal. We just pressed buttons, but we didn't win. As we were leaving, I saw the arrow spinning so I pressed the button, and BLAMO!! The cup that was holding not one stuffed animal, but four, turned and turned until it dumped out ALL the animals!! How is it that the one cup of four that had a stuffed cow in it would be the one to turn and dump them all out?? It was so cool!! I got TWO stuffed cows and TWO stuffed sheep! We laughed so hard because we have no idea what happened or how it happened, but we won!! YIPPEE! :D
For Sul Nal, our boss gave gifts, just like he did for Chuseok. Unfortunately this time, it's a lifetime supply of Spam, with a few cans of tuna and two bottles of olive oil. :( What to do with the Spam, sigh... We are going to try to make fried rice and throw some Spam into it.
We finished our relaxing weekend here at home watching a handful of episodes of Smallville. We got our much needed rest to start off our week. Thinking of you all! Happy Sul Nal!