Mom's visit!

Phew...

I have been waiting SO long to write this blog post, waiting for Mom's arrival.  We had such an amazing week, experiencing the differences in Korean weather, expensive shopping districts, the "knock off" shopping districts, varied cuisine from Turkish to Korean, and even seeing the reason why we are here...the DMZ & North Korea.  

Waiting for mom to arrive in the airport built up SO much anxiety, but the best kind :o)  I had to work and right when we got off we jetted to the airport.  It was a bunch of emotions picking her up but I was so overwhelmed with happiness.  

She took a TON of pictures while she was here but here are just a few that summarizes our/her visit...

One of the neat things about her visit was that I was able to see things I had either not seen in over a year OR was experiencing for the first time with her...one of the things being to tour the largest palace in Seoul- Gyeongbukgong palace.  It is a palace that the King(s) once lived on long ago.

Our tour guide is the woman in the pink/blue traditional Korean dress.  She was really good and spoke really good English, which made the tour much more enjoyable (ha ha).

One great highlight to the visit was hiking Seoul Tower (Namsan).  It is quite a ways up there but was so beautiful and throughout your whole walk you get peeks of Seoul.  Thankfully, the cherry blossoms were still in bloom and she got to see the amazingness of them in person besides in pictures.  Pictures can't capture how amazing they are!

On our way to begin the hike...downtown Meyongdong 

We are so close!

One of the neatest parts about the trip was our trip to the DMZ.  It was so informational and gave me a whole new appreciation for why Mike is serving here and the risks we take each & every day living here.  Here are a few pictures & I'll explain more in detail what they mean underneath them...

This picture sort of begins the tour.  Right past this building is a look-out point, looking at the DMZ...beyond that, North Korea.

This was taken with a South Korean soldier at Dorasan station.  Dorasan station used to connect North and South Korea but was closed not too long ago because of confrontational issues.  It is now restored and open for tourists.  This soldier had only 8 months left of his 2 year mandatory service in the ROK (Republic of Korea Army).  He was excited :)

This picture serves a TON of significance.  The U.S. Army (on the left) is telling us about the significance of the room and of the South Korean's pose.  From where mom and I are standing, we are actually IN North Korea.  The room goes past the North Korean "line".  The room is a U.N. room used to hold peace talks, which is rarely used these days.  The South Korean soldier has to stand at attention with his fists clenched for 6 hours a day, for 2 years.  They are wearing sunglasses (both in and outdoors) so they do not get into staring matches with each other, having caused previous issues in the past.

If you stand too close to the Korean guards, they will smack their heels together and put their fist in the air, fearing it could cause potential distractions if a North Korean were to act in any way. 

The S.K. soldiers at the DMZ are the tallest, largest, and are triple black belts amongst the people that serve in the army.  The white-ish building straight across is North Korea.  Typically, their soldiers stand outside too but since it was raining, I guess they just decided to stay into their little roof.  If you notice, the South Koreans by the blue buildings are standing half behind the wall and half out.  This is because if any shootings were to break out, they would have a quick reaction time.

If you direct your attention to the soldier by the doorway, he is looking at us with BINOCULARS.  Just to keep tabs and I guess make sure nothing weird was happening?  It was intimidating but awesome all at the same time.

This is what we call "propaganda city".  Some of you might have heard of this.  That is the largest flagpole in the world, which the North constructed to "out-do" South Korea's.  The flag alone weighs 600 lbs & is speculated to take around 60 soldiers to take down.  It is called propaganda city because no one actually lives in the "city".  The buildings are hollow with speculations of the windows & doors being painted on.  The U.S. soldier told us everyday they hear the propaganda on loud speaker from there, announcing things to a village that doesn't even exist.  TOO weird!

The most annoying Korean pose that literally everyone does here, including my friends and their children BUT this is my first time doing it and Mom convinced me lol!

View of Seoul while we were riding the subway.  It was such a great, clear day and we explored everywhere!

I could post & post about our visit.  It was by far my best week in Korea so far.  I learned & experienced so much and laughed even more while doing it next to my mom.  Even though it was SO hard to see her go I write this with a smile on my face and memories that will last forever!  

Hope this blog helped you learn a few new things about our "home", Korea :o)

Love you all!!

WAY overdue!

Hey, hey, hey everyone!

So sorry it has been so long!  We've both been busy, working a lot, moving, and so on.  Finally things have settled down, except for now the Nuclear Summit (which I'm sure you've been reading on the news) is here in Seoul.  More than 60 heads of state are here..which is such a joy when you live right across the street from the presidential designated airport, NOT.  I actually can't hike on any mountain because the country's various secret service and Army guys are up there.  I guess they are trying to prevent anyone from being able to look down into the base.  We are also banned from going into a particular downtown area where the summit is being held.  The subway just keeps on moving past that stop.  It is NUTS around here.  I think Friday or sometime this weekend they all leave and life can continue as normal.  

Things are finally starting to warm up around here, verrrrry slowly.  I've noticed in the past week or so that things are starting to bud and bloom just a tad.  Mom is set to come here in the next 3 weeks so it better hurry up!  Last year, I think on April 16/17 these are what the cherry blossoms looked like on base.  Even more breathtaking in person...

So I am really hoping they will look like this while she is here.  They are only in bloom for about 2 weeks so cross your fingers :o)  I'm so ready to get her here and give her a "tour" of our 'home'.  It will be super fun to host someone and I'm sure I'll have plenty of pictures and funny stories to share while she is here.

I was introduced to this amazing Korean shaved ice..kind of thing.  Holy moly, I could bathe in it is so good!  They call it bat-bing-su and is eaten year round (but you have to know where to go to get the good stuff).  The coloring in the picture is messed up but it is basically shaved ice with a fruit topping.  Sounds simple but there is something about this that is great.  Mike LOVES it (I got him hooked).  They have all kinds including green tea ones, milk something, who knows.  We just stick with the fruit :o)

If you're wondering what the brown stuff is..it is red bean paste.   I know, you're thinking "ew, how can that be good?"  But it is sweetened and actually is a majority of what Koreans eat on anything sweet.  You have to try it to believe it!

So we moved downstairs, finally.  You would've thought that was an easy move but I swear we might as well moved across KOREA.  But we are so thankful it is done and now we have a small but huge yard (in Korea) that the pups can hang out in.

I think the picture makes it look much bigger than it is but it is perfect for us right now.  I promised the dogs our next house will have a HUGE yard for them.

Korea seems to take a lot of pride in their coffee shops, cafes, things like that.  I went to one the other day that was so cute & quiet.  I couldn't help but take a picture of the coffee.  They can make anything with the foam, I've even seen a Hello Kitty before.

Some of you may already know this but we are finally (after a year and 7 months) taking a vacation.  It took so long to decide where we wanted to go and what we wanted to see.  We decided to go COMPLETELY off the radar and head to....

We are actually going on a Mediterranean cruise out of Rome in May.  We fly from Seoul to Bejing and from there to Italy.  We depart from Italy heading over to Sicily, then to Athens, Greece, then Crete, Greece, finally Ephesus, Turkey.  (Not in that order).  We are so excited & very ready to get a break (especially with Mike being so so busy with work).  We are following with 2 days to tour around Italy.

I think the next year we are going to go to Thailand and Mike wants to see Tokyo.  So still a lot of traveling to do while we are here!

We love you all & apologize it has been so long!

<3 Mike & Britt

Welcoming the 'new year'...

Hey everyone :o)




Hope everyone is doing great so far into this new year.  Can't believe it's already 2012.  This month marks 1 year & 2 months we've lived in Korea!  Time is moving sooo fast.  Come May, our tour will be halfway over.  In fact, we can say we can leave next year.  Which...makes me happy to be near family again but I have to say it will be really hard to leave Korea in many ways.  But..the adventure must go on :o)




Things have been going pretty well here, still haven't gotten much of any snow.  Maybe 1/4 inch all winter so far.  This season is MUCH more mild than last season (which I'm not too terribly disappointed about).


I think some of you have seen our picture from the ball..sorry for the blurryness but it was the best we could do with my lovely camera.  Overall, we had a good time.  Much, much more quaint of only 175 people compared to 4,000 from our last ball at Fort Bragg.  Besides the food, they tried but at the end of the day when a Korean cooks lobster and Filet Mignon and is NEVER going to taste like we want it to.  Ha ha.

Today we decided to venture out and try out a new place in Seoul.  It is called 'Time Square', kind of like Manhattan, except, it wasn't, ha ha!  It was nice, but definitely not how I pictured.  We have much more near us and this was pretty far, about an hour on the subway.

It was fun though, always cool to see new places!  Here are a few pictures of just ONE of the malls...I just now noticed the pregnant girl in the first picture lol

Koreans celebrate the "Lunar New Year", or Chinese new year.  They are really big on seeing the new sun rise for the new year and sending out the old, in the with new, type of mentality.  SO my coworkers, Mike, and I went out to a really, really good restaurant and then to Noribong (or Karaoke).  Now before you say, "WHAT?! They went and sang in front of people".  No, no, no we did not :).  They assign each group their own little room, full equipped with tambourines, maracas, disco ball, the list goes on.  They have both American and Korean songs.  It is sooo funny.  My favorite part was that Mike was saying all day "Oh, I am so not going to do that".  Want to know something?  HE WAS TEARING IT UP!  And they said, "Wow, Michael is so good at singing".  If anyone has heard Mike sing, they will get a huge kick out of this :o)  Here are a few pictures...

And lastly, I haven't shown you guys this Korean dish before.  A couple of weeks ago my landlord picked me up and took me to go see his Korean friends that get together and learn English.  I would say they range anywhere from around mid 40s to late 60s.  They are so cute and they speak really good English.  Afterwards they took me out to dinner for Buddae Jiggae (a Korean stew).  It is kind of a bunch of junk thrown in a pot but it is sooo good ha.  As far as I could tell, it had noodles, rice cakes, rice, spicy sauce, spam (ha ha), and who else knows...

Have a great day everyone :o)

We love you!

FINALLY, a new post :o)

Hey!  So sorry I haven't posted in a long time.  I've been trying to think of something new and interesting.  You're probably thinking...how is that possible, they are in KOREA.  Ha ha.  

A little update on us--

Our Thanksgiving was nice!  We had a quiet day, spent cooking (well Mike cooked it :p) and I was offering "moral support" LOL.  Since Koreans don't celebrate Thanksgiving, I actually ended up having to take the day off.  How crazy is that?!  Koreans celebrate a day called Chusoek (I wrote a post about it a while ago with that disgusting picture of their "rice cakes" they eat).  Anyways, we hope you all had an awesome Thanksgiving.  

The weather here really hasn't changed much at all.  It is still lingering around the 40's and upper 30's at night which is pretty strange for this time of year.  But I am sooo not complaining!  Running the heat is super expensive here...like around $500-$1,000/MONTH!  That is right...per month!  The Army gives us around $900 (Korean money W956,000) but we try to not use that much.  The reason it is so expensive?  Because we don't have ventilation in our houses, the heat comes from the floor, up.  Heating the floors is great but that is where the high expense comes from.  I think our most expensive heat bill last year was $560.  Yikes!!  No more pretty fall though..just a bunch of sticks now!

One of my favorite places to go here with friends or Mike whenever he has time is called, "Caffe Bene".  It is soooo good and it just a quaint little coffee/waffle place.  A very popular thing to snack on nowadays is a waffle.  No syrup though.  Blueberry sauce with yogurt or cream cheese. YUM.  In the back, Mike got some sort of bread with a candied type-fruit topping.  Very good too!

I figure I'd show a few pictures of Mike's work..vehicle :o)

Speaking of Mike, we are h-h-HOPING he is getting promoted to E5 by January.  WOO HOO for that.  So well deserved!  At the end of next year, the Army is making the new dress uniform mandatory.  They are switching from the 'greens' to the 'blues'.  I think these new uniforms are sharp.  He had them hand-made from a Korean tailor.  This is just the raw uniform, his medals and all that haven't been put on yet.  I will post that picture another time.

One thing I have never written about is how ridiculous (but smart) the Korean recycling works.  Because Korea has no natural resources, they have to be ultra resourceful in every way possible.  I mean...they even recycle WASTE. Ew.  Trash bag colors vary upon district of Korea you live in.  In our specific area, there are I believe 4 color trash bags.  A pink, blue, yellow, and miscellaneous color.  They each of a distinct use.  We don't recycle, ha!  We take our trash across the street on base.  It is so expensive, around $10 for 10 bags.  The way we go through trash, we'd spend like $400 a month!  But in the new high-rise where I walk the pups, this is what a recycle center looks like.

And last, but certainly not least, my absolute favorite view I have seen in Korea.  Never gets old!  Every time we cross this area, I look from both ways and think "how awesome is this?". There's nothing quite like it, you have the city, water, and mountains.  What more could you ask for?  

Have a great week, all :)  We love you!!!

--Mike & Britt--

Tour to the North Korea border...

HEH-LOOO!

So I found out today that Koreans believe that if you turn on the heat (inside house/car) that it makes you age faster.  Which brings me to my next point, they looove the heater.  So next time someone tells me that, I'm going to say "Man, that explains all your wrinkles" :P

Things in Korea are good, kind of strange actually.  It has reached a record high in the past 10 YEARS.  It is the end of November 4th today and it reached over 70!  This time last year it was like 40.  I'm telling you weather around the world is just completely out of whack.  Though, I am not complaining.  It just seems odd that the leaves completely changed colors and are now losing their leaves but the weather so does not reflect that.  Hmmm.

So I have been meaning to post this for a while now.  A few months ago Mike and his company escorted some new junior Congressman from the states to the DMZ (Demilitarized  Military Zone) between North & South Korea.  I still haven't gone (I know, I know, how "un-tourist" like of me.  But hey, I figure I have 2 more years!).  Any who, he got some great pictures.  A little fun fact is every man in Korea is required to serve a minimum of 2 years in Korea either right after high-school graduation, during college, or after college.  This is actually one of the stations that you can get.  NO THANKS.

Something really interesting about this picture is if you see the guy that has his back to us, he is South Korean.  He has to stand exactly half way between the building in case the North Korean soldiers decide to shoot.   Crazy right?!  The 2 blue buildings are the UN buildings where meetings between the 2 divisions are conducted.  

This is the tunnel that could once go into North Korea but obviously you can't anymore.  It looks tall but you'd actually have to bend half way all the way down.  Which that position is about 90% of old Koreans because of them carrying rice on their backs back when Korea wasn't so well off.

One of the other really amusing things about his whole experience was if you look closely, same with the other picture, you can see NORTH Korean tourists taking a tour of the South Korea line.  To top it off, it was an elementary school field trip!!!  Mike said it was so awkward :o)

Such a beautiful country!  Just a shame that they can't be civil.  If you look closely, you'll see like a tall looking pole in the middle of the picture.  There is this guy that is offering like 10 million dollars (maybe more, I forgot) if you get a piece of the North Korean flag that is at the top of that pole.  THE TRICK IS, you take one step past the line & you are dead.  So, that doesn't make much sense lol!

This is called the "Bridge of no Return".  And...they mean literally no return :)  You will walk right into somewhere where...you aren't supposed to be.  Actually and interesting story.  A South Korean was trimming a tree & I guess got to close to the line of the North Koreans comfort so they bludgeoned him to death.  So sad :(  There is a small memorial there for him.

You actually can't bring children under the age of 12 I think to the DMZ tour because of fear that North Koreans will take a child running and gesturing motions the wrong way.  The tour is fun but very much composed and structured.  

I hope you all are staying safe & healthy in the states.  We love & miss you all!!

Fall has arrived!

Hello everyone :o)


So, I think I can call this my first "official" fall season that I have seen the leaves change colors.  I had seen a few here & there but we weren't in NC long enough for me to see a true fall season.  Now I have seen all four season of Korea..& they are definitely four seasons alright!


Here are a few pictures that I was able to snap while driving & hiking..I'm going to try and get better ones soon.  Some of the trees, well most actually, are still in the process of changing so more pictures will come as they change.

The dogs & I have been hiking a lot lately after I get off of work since the weather has been so nice (for once).  They are loving it & I figure might as well get it all in before the ice and freezing cold comes!

My big, big boy!  If you're wondering where the little one is, since he has proven multiple times that he cannot listen..he gets leashed on the mountain.

Anxiously waiting for some food to drop.

They put these random exercise machines everywhere on the mountain trails.  This is Mike "attempting" to perform some ab workout.  Wasn't able to capture that he nearly flipped off :o)

This entire weekend they are having an air-show/air expo right across the street from our house at the ROK (Republic of Korea) Army base.  We are allowed to go on by military bus only but that way you can see the planes and what not.  Mike is up there, I stayed home.  I have seen and heard (sooo loud) them practicing for the past 2 weeks so I figure I will watch from our rooftop :o)!  

Anyways, got to run for now!  Got some cleaning up to do.  Love & miss you all!!!!!!

<3

Mike

&

Britt

<3