Tea Party

Today Marley went to her friend Emma's 5th birthday party. I have to say that Emma's mom (Misti) really outdid herself! She had her son dress up really nice and he was the doorman that greeted us. He took the little girls shoes and gave them all princess heels and a bright pink feather boa. Then the girls were seated to tea where Emma's daddy, dressed in a tux, waited on them and poured their tea. Misti had spent all day making petit fours and princess cupcakes and she even let the girls dip strawberries in chocolate fondue. It was so neat and Marley and the other little girls had such a wonderful time.

Korean for bangs

Yesterday my friend Leslie and I took the kids to Little Bear (indoor play place) since it has been too cold for them to play outside. This place it heaven for 3-4 year old, but I swear to you Jackson and his best friend Jayden have more fun than Marley and Logan. Once all of the children were sufficiently worn out, the mommies dropped them off at home and we headed out to get our hair cut. The girl that normally cuts our hair is on maternity leave until April (Koreans take a LONG maternity leave) so we decided to try one of the places that other moms go to. In the states they wash your hair and then cut it, but here they cut your hair dry and then wash and style it. Of course the girls there do not speak a word of English so I brought in a picture of what I was going for. I had no intentions of making a drastic change, I just wanted her to reshape my style. Apparently I must have given her the impression that I wanted bangs at some point in my pantomime, or she decided that I needed them. I have never had bangs before, but once she started cutting there was no turning back. I decided to wait until my hair was styled to make my decision on whether I was happy or not. First they wash my hair, which is usually my favorite part, but this time the water was a little cold and there was not that much head massaging going on. Next they move me to the chair where two women dry and style my hair. This was the most amazing part of my day. I cannot believe how wonderful this felt and that it only cost me $6 and a set of bangs that I did not want. I think that I will be going back to this place every week to get a wash and style and a little me time! In the end, I am still undecided about the bangs. I like them, but I think I am going to have to wash and style them myself to see whether I love them.

Back to school

I registered for my classes forever ago and today is finally the first day of the semester. It has been a little while since I took any classes, but I am really excited. I have been on the websites and downloaded/printed the syllabus and materials for each of the classes. I took a trip to the store and thoroughly enjoyed getting all my new school supplies. I am totally ready to finish my degree, completely overwhelmed, but ready. I have a feeling that Marley is not going to make this easy on me, but that is what I get for taking forever to finish. My time here in Korea could not be better spent!

Hey Goat!

After dragging the entire family on a tour earlier in Scott's visit; this time we opted to go by ourselves. Scott and I were both exhausted, but we got on that tour bus anyway. In the end we had a wonderful day. We laughed ourselves silly and absorbed as much of the history and culture as we could. We even ate at a traditional Korean-style restaurant where we had no idea what we were ordering until our tour guide made goat noises at us. Given the choices, Scott and I stuck with the goat and ended up rather enjoying it.


This first picture is of an ancient ice cave. This is apparently where they would store the ice for royalty. It was pretty cool. From the outside it just looked like a huge hill of dirt, but there was a hidden entrance that led to this cool little cave.

One of the stops on the tour was an ice forest. In the winter time they spray water up into the trees to make this beautiful backdrop for all the ice sculptures. It was really a very majestic sight. Scott and I even got to walk through this cave made entirely of ice.

This is one of the ancient Confucian Academies in the Daegu vicinity. The colors and the details were absolutely breathtaking. Scott and I got really excited when we found out that we were going to be able to go inside and look around the grounds.

This is one of the many shrines in the Daegu area. One of the ones we saw on our tour was over 1000 years old.

Dr. Fish

Today we decided to walk around the downtown area of Daegu and take a break at this crazy place called Dr. Fish. I had heard about this place before, but this was my first time to actually go there. Dr. Fish is a coffee bar/lounge where you put your feet into little basins full of fish that eat the dead skin off your feet. I cannot tell you how bizarre this felt to us. Scott and I both decided the best way to describe it was a feeling of little bubbles bursting all around your feet. This was truly an unique experience.

Uncle Scott Arrives

We are all so excited to have Scott here with us in Korea! I am pretty sure we have completely bombarded him with attention.

2010

New Years Eve has never been a big deal to me and Jason. We usually make the choice to stay home and avoid all the drunk drivers out on the road. This New Years we watched an Indiana Jones marathon on television right up until midnight. Since Korea is 15 hours ahead of the United States, and that meant no Dick Clark, we were curious how the Koreans would ring in 2010. One of the television channels we flipped to had a huge crowd of people (it looked a lot like the crowd that gathers at Time Square) and a counter that was counting the seconds until the Year of the Tiger (this was pretty cool since in America we count down the last seconds of 2009). Up on a platform they had a man and a woman in traditional Korean dress with the host of the evening. When the clocked finally reached midnight the man and the woman together banged on a large gong. I did not see any kissing like we do in the U.S., but they seemed to be enjoying the evenings festivities. We all headed to bed very soon after and made sure to eat our black eyed peas for luck and turnip greens for money on New Years Day.