LOVING the ADVENTURES of LIFE

Christmas Break = Fun, Fun, Fun

2012-01-09T15:36:00.000-08:00

Christmas Break we had such a Blast. Liji got out early on the 16th and he didn't have to go back until

Jan. 3. It was so much fun to have him home with me. The plan was to go to Oregon for Christmas and New Years but we took the first few days of Liji's break to spend time together and to finish up some projects. Here's Liji out front with 2 of 4 of our neighbors dogs.

He somehow talked me into sleeping outside to watch the stars with him 2 nights in a row. Can you see the frost that is shaped around my head circle on my pillow? But we were actually nice and toasty in the warm bed Liji put together for us.

(Liji) A month or so ago I bought about50 square feet of birch wood at the construction thrift store for $20 (birch isnormally about $7 a foot so that was really good deal). I was planning on making something forChristina, but I hadn’t started when she showed me a piece of furniture onlinethat she really wanted. It was a threesided narrow set of shelves that rotated, on one side was a mirror, on anothera cork board, and on the last side a chalk board. When she said she wanted that, I decided thatI would make it for her. I only neededthe piece of hardware that allowed the shelves to spin. Luckily we found a spinning bar stool at thethrift store for only five dollars. Itdidn’t match any of our furniture but Christina let me talk her into buyingit. I took the spinning hardware off ofit and Christina never even noticed. Iasked the building trades teacher at school to help me cut the boards to theright length and width on the table saw at school and then I spent a coupleweeks working on it in our living room. I told Christina that I was working on a set of shelves for our livingroom. She never caught on.

Once I had it completelyassembled (but not stained) it was too big to hide anymore and I needed tostain it inside where it was warm so I decided to surprise Christina by havingit set up in the garage and then asking her to come out and give me her opinionon how I should build our work bench. Itwas set up right in the middle of the garage and it’s seven feet tall so Ifigured she would notice it right away, she didn’t. After we had talked for a minute or two shefinally got around to noticing her Christmas present. We will finish staining it together (unlessshe gets impatient while I am at work and does it on her own).

Liji also had fun building himself a worktable in the garage.

Wednesday night we took off for Oregon to spend Christmas with Family. 9 our of 10 of Liji's siblings were all able to make it. We played A LOT of games; my kind of holiday by the way.

They took their traditional 7 brothers picture of their big ;) muscles.

Some of Liji's siblings built up a bunch of tumble weeds at the bottom of the bluffs behind their parents house. We had a lot of fun jumping off the bluffs and sinking into the weeds. We only got a few scratches.

The 27th was our 5th anniversary. Luckily it was the day the family planned for all the couples to go to the Temple together. So we got to spend the morning doing sealings and a session and then we went out to eat with everyone. It would have been nice to have a little more alone time but we got that before we went to Oregon so it was Ok.

I feel so lucky to be married to this man. He is such an amazing example to me. It was also his Birthday this week on the 5th so I guess it's a good time to brag about him a bit. He does so good at keeping us on track doing the things that we should. He's mainly the one making sure we're saying our prayers and reading the scriptures everyday, getting a full fast in, that we're paying our tithing, that we're fulfilling our duties in the church, volunteering us to do things all the time, ect., ect., ect. I love that I can sign up for us to be in charge of or show up to pretty much anything and I can do it knowing that Liji will be full for it. As long as it involves service I know that Liji will be jumping to action. To me that is such an amazing quality to have. We have gone through some hard things and Liji has always been so supportive of me and anything I feel like we need to do. I love him for always and forever, just in case you were wondering :)

Re-upholstering our Thrift Store Couch

2012-01-09T14:36:00.000-08:00

Mondaywe started on our thrift store couch that we’re reupholstering.. I was worried that we would come into somecomplications but we really didn’t have any problems and it was a lot easierthan I thought it would be. Monday nightLiji helped me take it apart. As you can see from the pictures there was a lot of staples to take out. We had to get all the fabric off still in good shape because that is what I used as a pattern to cut out the new fabric. Tuesdayand Wednesday I worked pretty much all day while Liji was gone at taking offthe old fabric and putting on the new fabric. Then Wednesday night Liji helped me put it back together. It went a lot faster and turned out a lotbetter than I thought it would. Afterworking so hard on it I don’t want anything to happen to it and I now know whymy Dad used to get so mad at me for jumping on our couches when I waslittle. .

We got a couple of oak chairs from the thrift store for only four dollars apiece. They are really solid, but we didn’t like the color of the fabric on the seat and back so I took them apart and Christina used some of our left over couch fabric to reupholster them. She also sanded them down and re-stained them with linseed oil. They match our couch and rocking chair and they look really nice. We now have all matching furniture in our living room. We paid fifteen dollars for the couch, twelve for the rocking chair and eight for the two chairs, plus about 30 for the fabric and now we have a complete matching set of very sturdy (the couch has an oak frame) living room furniture for about 65 dollars. We are glad that Christina has her sewing machine and that she is so proficient with it. Since I made our coffee table and dining room table and chairs out of scrap lumber all of the furniture in our house cost us much less than $100.

This is all the matching furniture together now

Thanksgiving Break

2012-01-09T14:17:00.000-08:00

For thanksgiving we went down to my parents house for the weekend. It was really nice to see everyone. My brother Andrew and his family are staying with my parents right now and so we got to spend a lot of time with these 2 cuties.

This one is Jane. My brother says she should be mine because he reminds him so much of me. I wish she were; she certainly has quite the personality.

After all the adults were done checking out the Black Friday deals they were so cute going through the ads showing us everything that they want.

Lunar Eclipse

2012-01-09T14:00:00.000-08:00

Liji planned such a fun date for us starting at 5 am one morning. He woke up earlier and set up a pillow bed on the floor by our sliding glass door that gave us a perfect view of the whole lunar eclipse and even made hot chocolate. Then he carried me out at 5 and we cuddled up and watched Psych on the computer while watching the eclipse all the way through until 7:30. Such a fun morning! And I am not a morning person.

Our New House for a Time

2012-01-09T13:49:00.000-08:00

The week before Thanksgiving we got word that we could move into the house further south in the valley, in Bellevue, that we have been wanting to move into since we first came to check out the area this last summer. We like Bellevue because it's a small, quiet town and closer to the High School for Liji than where we were first renting. Since we have been married we have always lived in tiny apartments where we have had to cram everything in(we're both pack rats). When Liji got this new job and we found out we would get a rental stipend from work we decided it was time we got ourselves some space. It has been so fun to unpack and get everything organized. It took us longer than we thought because we've never had more than one option for a picture wall, or where to have the furniture. I swear I moved our furniture in the living room around like 20 times before I was happy. We also like being on the edge of town and having our own space and having a garage is nice too.

Kitchen Area

Living Room

Guest Bedroom

Hallway to the Bedrooms

Our messy workroom

Bathroom

Our bedroom

Front entrance

This is our view out the front window

View out the back sliding door

Waiting Upon the Lord: Thy will be done

2011-11-07T15:20:00.000-08:00

This is the title of Elder Hales talk from Conference this last month and I loved it when I listened to it over the TV but today I re-read it and I have found so many more wonderful insights than I ever imagined I could find when I was listening to it. This was truly a talk prepared for me and I have a feeling for many of you as well:) All of you should read the full version for yourselves and here is the link:
http://lds.org/general-conference/2011/10/waiting-upon-the-lord-thy-will-be-done?lang=eng
but I just wanted to share some of my favorite parts.
He started out by giving several examples from the life of our Savior. He shares the 6 specific times when our He had to wait upon our Father whether it was for comfort, the time of his ministry, release of pain, or release from temptation. Then Elder Hale's says this:
"I have often pondered, Why is it that the Son of God and His holy prophets and all the faithful Saints have trials and tribulations, even when they are trying to do Heavenly Father’s will? Why is it so hard, especially for them?"

He later gives this answer:
The scriptures give us an answer in one simple phrase: we “wait upon the Lord.”¹² Tests and trials are given to all of us. These mortal challenges allow us and our Heavenly Father to see whether we will exercise our agency to follow His Son. He already knows, and we have the opportunity to learn, that no matter how difficult our circumstances, “all these things shall [be for our] experience, and … [our] good.”¹³
I especially was grateful for the understanding that he gives. Saying that waiting on the Lord doesn't mean that we will always understand our challenges. That there will be hard circumstances where we may fall on our knees and ask, "O God, where art thou?" He then quotes Psalms and tells us that "yes, weeping may endure for a night, but that joy cometh in the morning." Then in the dawn of our increased faith and understanding, we arise and choose to wait upon the Lord saying, "Thy will be done." This was exactly what happened to me after my second miscarriage. That night I had no hope. I really did not want to go back into work because I didn't want to have to tell close co-workers that I had already told I was pregnant. And I just felt so sad I didn't think I could hold back the tears when thoughts of my loss suddenly hit me, which I knew they would. We were supposed to be moving a month from then anyways and I just wanted to leave right then and start over, not having to face anyone at work or church. But I went to sleep that night and it was amazing what a difference that night made. The next day I had a new perspective and a new Hope. I thought, well maybe I can go back to work and maybe I can get through this. Everything is going to be Ok. I'm glad to know that we are aloud that night of weeping:)

This next part is my favorite part. He gives us 7 meanings of "waiting upon the Lord." What I loved about it is that it was a good check up on myself. For many years now I have been waiting on the Lord for a very righteous desire. All of these meanings that Elder Hale's gives are things that I have been taught line-upon-line already through whispering s of the Spirit or other people that Heavenly Father has put in my path and it was just really neat now seeing this all put together and my thoughts confirmed.
One answer came over Labor Day weekend when Elder and Sister Ballard came to our ward that Sunday and sat down next to us on our bench. I had the chance to chat a little with Sister Ballard and after asking how long we had been married she asked about children. I told her how much we wanted children but have not been able to have any yet. She shared with me that it took her 3 years to get married and how hard that was on her. The advise she gave me was that it takes a very mighty prayer, which is the 2nd meaning Elder Hales gives of "waiting on the Lord."

Here are all 7 meanings he gives:

"To wait upon the Lord means planting the seed of faith and nourishing it “with great diligence, and … patience.”¹⁷

It means praying as the Savior did—to God, our Heavenly Father—saying: “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done.”¹⁸ It is a prayer we offer with our whole souls in the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Waiting upon the Lord means pondering in our hearts and “receiv[ing] the Holy Ghost” so that we can know “all things what [we] should do.”¹⁹As we follow the promptings of the Spirit, we discover that “tribulation worketh patience”²⁰ and we learn to “continue in patience until [we] are perfected.”²¹

Waiting upon the Lord means to “stand fast”²² and “press forward” in faith, “having a perfect brightness of hope.”²³

It means “relying alone upon the merits of Christ”²⁴ and “with [His] grace assisting [us, saying]: Thy will be done, O Lord, and not ours.”²⁵

As we wait upon the Lord, we are “immovable in keeping the commandments,”²⁶ knowing that we will “one day rest from all [our] afflictions.”²⁷

And we “cast not away … [our] confidence”²⁸ that “all things wherewith [we] have been afflicted shall work together for [our] good."

And what a great reminder he later gives us, that when we are waiting we should be reminded that there are many other people in our lives who are waiting for us.

He says, "In your daily Christlike ministry, you are waiting upon the Lord and doing your Heavenly Father's will."

I'm pretty sure that there are is a lot more that I should be doing as a servant of Christ and I hope that I will not leave many people waiting on me much longer.

"Let us remember that as we wait upon the Lord, we are becoming “saint[s] through [His] atonement, … submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon [us], even as a child doth submit to his father.”^36"

He concludes with this beautiful witness:

"I bear my special witness that our Savior’s promise is true, for He says, “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”⁴⁶ May we wait upon Him by pressing forward in faith, that we may say in our prayers, “Thy will be done,”⁴⁷ and return to Him with honor."

I am so grateful for all of our special witness' of Christ that are on the Earth today. What a blessing we have in having them to guide and direct us in such challenging, yet exciting times.

Sad Day

2011-06-22T19:18:00.000-07:00

Right now I work at an employment training facility for adults with disabilities and I love it, but I guess it can also have it's hard moments. This morning as I was walking into work my directors husband stopped me and told me that he thought I should know one of my clients passed away that morning. They found him dressed so they know it wasn't in his sleep but don't know what happened. I was shocked, there was nothing that happened with him recently to predict this; he was just at work happy and joking around as could be. I was shocked at first and it wasn't till I got inside that I just couldn't keep the tears away; he was a pretty big guy and so sweet. I always thought of him as our big brown teddy bear(he was also very dark skinned) The part that really gets to me is that just last week was his birthday and during a conversation with him he told me that for his birthday he wanted to go up to heaven to give his angel mama a hug and sing her a song; he wanted to know if that would be ok. I asked him what song he would sing and he said one he made up. I asked him to sing it to me and he just started singing this little tune about going to his angel mama and giving her a hug, it was pretty cute. Then he told me that he wanted to go up to heaven and he asked if he could go up there. I told him that he couldn't go yet because I would miss him to much. Well I guess Heavenly Father decided to give him his wish and I know that he is so happy up in heaven without his physical and mental limitations but I'm still gonna miss him so much at work. He had such a big heart, was never one to complain and always quick with compliments. It took me awhile to get to know him because he was very soft spoken and is definitely one to avoid attention but it was all the more reason to develop a really soft spot for him in my heart. The rest of the morning I found so much more appreciation in each one of the wonderful people that I get to work for. I kept looking at them and tearing up just thinking about how much I love them and how much I would miss them if they weren't here anymore but how easily one of them could pass away any day. Since I have been working here last August there have now been 3 clients from my facility pass away. I hope to do better at helping them to enjoy each day at work and to make the most of my time with them. July will be my last month here and I am not looking forward to saying goodbye.

My Mom; an Elect Lady

2011-05-22T19:03:00.000-07:00

I’ve always known that my parents would do pretty much anything for me. But for my Mom especially, it seems very hard for her to see me go through hard times. Throughout the years I have continually seen my Mom sacrifice herself for the needs of our family and I have always thought of her as the most compassionate, Christ-like person I know. She has always been my greatest example of pure love on this Earth. I thought I understood what this meant but a couple of weeks ago she touched my heart in such a way that I did not know was possible. Anyone outside of my family won’t know this but after trying for four years to conceive I was finally able to with the help of a fertility specialist, but then soon after ended up miscarrying. I’m sure you can all imagine the excitement that we felt of finally being able to conceive and then the huge let down that we then felt at finding out I miscarried. We are ok now and will just continue treatments at the clinic and we have hope that it will work again. But just a few days after I found out I miscarried my parents came to visit for the day and make sure we were doing all right. My Mom who is 64 told me that the other week she had been thinking about what she could do to help me and she actually thought about what if she carried our baby for me, and she was serious. I was completely shocked, I just told her that she was crazy and there was no way I would ever take the risk of her health by letting her do that but I was so completely touched that she would even consider that possibility for me. What a sacrifice to be willing to make. I’m pretty sure it’s harder for her to see me suffering than it is for me to actually suffer. I feel so blessed to even know such a woman as her, nonetheless have her as my Mom. She has done and would do anything and everything for me; I love you so much Mom.

Feeling Blessed!!

2011-05-14T12:36:00.000-07:00

Maybe I'm speaking too soon and we won't end up liking Hailey but right now it just seems perfect for us. The more we think about it the more it seems like something that could really turn into a long-term thing for us and a great place to raise our family. It really just seems like such a miracle to me and I thought I would share. Since we have been married Liji has asked me several times where I picture us living long-term and settling down in but I have usually always put him off and shy'd away from answering him or discussing this topic because anyplace that I could realistically see us ending up, because of Liji's job and his need for a small town, I just couldn't see myself being happy there as well. All the things I wanted like, being within a few hours of my parents and our children's cousins, being near mountains and a ski resort, being in a smaller town(for Liji) but a place that still had fairly big size schools that would have good sports, music and arts programs for my kids and where they would get a really quality education(for me), being in a smaller town(for Liji) but a place that still seems kept up well and clean(for me), a place with a job for Liji that he would really enjoy and where he could make a decent income teaching to raise our family on, a place where we were both happy, ect., ect., I just COULD NOT actually see happening. For Liji it was a fun and exciting thing to talk about and it should have been for me too but it was just so hard because any of this places that he talked about living in were far from Utah and my family or in the middle of no-where with practically zero population, and just not exciting to me. I mean, I would get really stressed and worried thinking about this and would get really emotional or angry anytime Liji tried to make me talk about it. I just told him there was no point, it just stressed me out thinking about it, and we would just end up where ever we ended up and that would be where Heavenly Father needed us and where we were supposed to be. And then we were guided to this job in Hailey and it wasn't until thinking about it the other night that I realized that it has all the stipulations that I have ever really wanted. I mean it is just perfect for us and I really can't even believe that it actually exists. I felt so loved and understood by my Heavenly Father and for that I am so grateful. He really does know me and my desires(even my little ones) so perfectly and wants me and Liji to be happy(I've always known this but it just really sunk in for me). I don't know why we spend anytime worrying about the future; of course Heavenly Father will take care of us he always has and always will. Even if we end up somewhere else after Hailey and then somewhere else and somewhere else, I know that it will be where the Lord wants us to be and therefore the perfect place for us.

Life is moving us Forward

2011-05-07T10:51:00.000-07:00

Liji got a call Thursday for a really good teaching job offer in Hailey, IDaho. They told him that he was by far their best candidate and were really putting the pressure on him to give him an answer right away, but he put them off for a bit by telling them he wanted to see the school and Hailey first. The job is in a dual-immersion program where he will be teaching sophomore's World History in Spanish and from the beginning he has been really excited about it, it fits his abilities perfectly and they have the best pay by far of anywhere in the area.

Yesterday morning we took off for Hailey to find out what we think of it and we'll be here through Sunday to attend church here and see what the ward is like. We arrived around 10 am yesterday and went straight to the High School to meet with the Principle who wants Liji. Right away it was apparent that they really wanted Liji and what Liji loved the most is how supportive the administration seemed and all the other teachers were of him. He really felt appreciated. He stayed with them till 1 to observe, and I went to tour Hailey a bit. Hailey is a pretty small town of only 6,000 people 75 miles down hwy 73 from Twin Falls and it is 11 miles from Sun Valley Ski resort which is a really ritzy resort so this area is a pretty popular tourist place. We are surrounded by mountains and it is just gorgeous. Everything seems to be kept really nice and clean and the school is so nice. The principle told Liji that their budget is $80,000,000 and they only have 3,000 students so they are really supported by the community. They are the only school district in IDaho that is giving their teachers raises while everyone else is cutting back and laying off. After I picked up Liji from the school and they sent us over to the district office to talk to their Human resources department where they really schmoozed us over with the pay and benefits and all the other perks of living in Hailey. One reason that the salary is so high is because of the high cost of housing. Rent prices are higher than Logan, even though Hailey is in the middle of nowhere. It is however just 12 miles away from Sun Valley which really drives prices up. He got to Liji with a lot of talk of hunting just 5 minutes away and getting huge bucks and tons of birds:) They wanted our answer by 3 so we took it all in and then went to a quiet place to pray about it. From the beginning I felt like this would be good for us even though I wasn't that excited about living in such a small town and we still felt really good about it and went back over to the school where Liji went in and accepted the offer! I waited longer than I expected to and he said it was because the principle had to take him around to practically everyone in the school announcing that he had accepted the job. Liji really likes how supported he feels there.

From the beginning we have worried about this job because it means we will be farther than we planned from a fertility specialist but it just feels right and I guess Heavenly Father will help us with the rest. Boise is just 2 hours away which is how far I'm driving to the clinic now anyways. Hopefully I'm just pregnant before we come here in August. Just thought I'd give everyone an update; we are really excited if you can't tell:) We have always loved and wanted to stay in Idaho but knew that the pay in most districts wasn't enough to raise our family on, well here it is and we're just about half-way between my parents and Liji's parents. It will be about 6 hours either way; which is a do-able drive.

Liji still has to graduate (he'll be defending his thesis on July 19th) and then he has a short contract to teach an ESL class at Utah State until the beginning of August, then we will come to Hailey.

CAUTION! This Could Get Long! First Stop: HAWAII!

2010-08-26T11:00:00.001-07:00

Liji is off to start of school meetings and lunch so I feel like I finally have a little bit of free time. Therefore, I'm finally going to be getting to our Summer Update. Since June we have stayed in 13 different States and I can't even count how many hours we've been in the car; but it was all worth it for the family and friends that we were able to visit with.
We started off by stopping in Hawaii for 10 days on our way home from Korea; and boy was it a fun 10 days!
We searched for sea creatures

We attended my nephew Charlie's baptism in the ocean and were the key note speakers.

We had lot's of BBQ's in the park by the beach.

Liji even caught his own meals:)

We tried out Paddle Boarding.

Enjoyed amazing evenings on the balcony of the hotel.

Found beatiful places to swim and play.

Made some twin island mountains to match the ones in view.

Found some great rocks where the waves crash up HUGE on them!

That's Liji in the middle of that wave.

Before he got drenched:)

If you look close you can see me up at the top of the picture just out from the rock cliff.

We hiked to a lot of beautiful waterfalls.

Tried to see what it would feel like if we were Tarzan and Jane~!

Got Wet, Wet, and Wet some more.

More Dinner! If you can't tell Liji was pretty excited about this one;)

Somewhere out there in the waves is Liji trying out surfing.

Got to keep practicing our photo taking skills.

Let's play; Where's Liji? He climbed some really massive trees.

Hiked through the rainforest and got really muddy.

Enjoyed some wonderful conversation with my long missed family.

Dug out some pools in the sand with our adorable nieces.

Watched some dolphins do some tricks with our very excited nephews.

Swam in the hotels new tropical paradise pool.

Did some more cliff jumping at sunset!

Liji and my brother Paul gettin back from some fun in the waves.

And we of course left some time in there to go swim with some more sea turtles.

Finally Settled

2010-08-17T13:22:00.000-07:00

Don't really have time to update you on everything that has gone on in the last 2 and a half months since we've been back from Korea. I'll have to do that a bit later cause we have definately seen and done a lot. For now we made it to Logan yesterday and should be officially settling down. Getting everything organized right now and probably won't get to posting our summer pictures until after that's done; but we've stayed in 13 different states and I have now been able to see everyone on my side and Liji's side of the family. Thanks to everyone who put up with us, gave us beds, and fed us! We really do have the best family and are so happy to be closer to everyone.

Memory of a Lifetime

2010-07-28T21:34:00.000-07:00

Sunday I drove to Nauvoo from Independence with my sister and her kids to spend a few days here seeing the sites. We both lived here for a semester of school so we both have very fond memories of the beautiful city. I hadn't been here yet in the summer when they have the pageant and all the other day shows and activites so we have been seeing a lot of shows, having ox and carriage rides, and visiting the old homes. My parents have also been here but left today. It has just been so fun to re-learn about and remember the early saints who sacrificed so much. When I went to school here before I got to live in the Joseph Smith Academy building(which no longer exists) just across the street from the new Nauvoo Temple. But I could only do Baptisms for the Dead at that time. I have been really excited to be able to go back to the Temple for an Endowment Session. I made my appointment for 4pm and then a little bit later for different reasons called and had it moved forward to 3pm. I was really excited to be back in the Nauvoo Temple and was praying that I would have a special experience. Well when I walked into the Chapel Elder Neil L. Anderson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles was sitting there on the back bench with his wife. I gave him a huge smile and he smiled back. I went up a few rows and sat down and just couldn't believe who was sitting right behind me. We soon all went in to start and there was only 9 of us. I was so blessed today to have the privileage of being able to participate in a very small and beautiful Temple session with a man who is a special witness of Christ. Throughout the meeting I couldn't help but ponder on the early saints and I just felt such an overwhelming amount of gratitude for their strength and courage. I had strong feelings that I was meant to be there in the Temple at that time and with Elder Andersen to help feel of the Spirit of the Pioneers there with us in the Temple identical to the one they worked so hard to build so long ago. I felt that I need to have more courage and strength in hard times. It was an experience I will never forget. What a remarkable answer to my prayer. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is God's true Church. I know that He loves us and is so mindful of our needs; and even wants:) Jesus Christ is his Only Begotten Son. Please do not Doubt; but Believe!
I Love the Sunset on the Mississippi!!

Our Last few Days with the Students

2010-07-16T12:21:00.000-07:00

Oldest Class: Middle School 3rd Graders (Steve, Sandra, Jenny, Kristy, Jenny, Heather, Liji, Veronica, June)

Middle School 2nd Graders (Leah, Monica, Emily, Christina, Lisa, Janet)
Top to bottom (Chase, Harry, Howard, Steve, Blake, Lucas, Leah, Monica, Lisa, Emily, Janet)

Middle School 1st Graders (Brad, Jim, Jeff, Julian, Vin, Den, Luke, Tony, Kaleb)

6th Graders (Stella, Vanessa, Anne, Peter, Andy, Chris, Jay, Kurt, Tyler, Rob)

3-5th Graders (Sam, Michael, Tom, Ian, Adam, Katy, Alana, Tina, Emma, Vicky, Emily, Ella)

Mrs. Young and Jack

Our Youngest and Sweetest student (Nina)

We said our goodbyes to her in the afternoon but then that night as we were in with the oldest class there was a little knock on our door and there was Nina. Tears came to my eyes just seeing her there and I was so touched she came back. She had made us some little crafts and came to have another goodbye. She is one we will never forget. That morning she was the first one to the Academy and when she came into our office she came over to me, hugged my arm and whispered to me, "Mr. Waite and Mrs. Waite go uhm."(motioning her hands away) I nodded my head sadly and said, "Yea." Then she just squeezed my arm so tight and started moaning and saying, "nooooo." It was like the sweetest thing ever.

Jenny, Veronica, and Grace some of our favorites.

Leah was super shy when she came to the Academy and stayed that way for quite awhile; but we finally got her to open up a bit and ended up being one you could really see progress.

My most favorite:) boys class.

Vin was probably our best conversationalist in the whole school and he is Nina's older brother.

Jeff got me some chocolate!

The students brought tons of chips to share. They wanted a party.

Howard tried the hardest.

We got to spend of lot of fun tutoring hours with Vicky.

Vicky, Jess, and Sam

Brady

David

Michael trying to look like Mr. Waite

Emily and Ella

2 of our funnest students and they happened to be brothers. (Julian and Ian)

Doing a dance for the camera.

Ella and Michael

Beautiful Emily

Lucas, Blake, and Chase

Jenny and Grace

We each tutored Kim once a week.

Sylvia was our only High School student that we tutored each week.

Korean Ward Friends

2010-07-16T11:43:00.000-07:00

Kim Nak June's Family: The father of this sweet little family was the first member of the Korean Ward that we met. Our first Sunday in Korea we only knew where the church building was but not what time the wards met, so we figured we should be there at 9am to be sure and not miss it. So we showed up about 8:50 and Kim Nak June was the only one in the building and he didn't speak any English. So he just showed us into a room to sit down and then the Elders showed up just a little bit later and filled us in on everything. Well when we stopped to say goodbye to this good family our last night in Korea Kim Nak June learned and memorized, "I wish you the best of luck with your life in America," to say to us. His wife and son speak English really well and they said that he had been practicing that all day. We will really miss this family and their great example.

Saying good bye to our last Elder in Korea; Elder Brassfield.

The Bishop's Wife and I. She could hardly speak any English but tried so hard to communicate with me none the less and help me feel comfortable and at home.

Here we are with Jason; one of Korean Ward's forever investigators.

Goodbye's at the Base

2010-07-16T11:35:00.000-07:00

James, Jason, Pres. Ault, Christina, Liji, Elder, Jeremy, Elder Brassfield, Matt, Shaylee (left to right)Liji, Steve, Jeremy, Christina, Liza (Those of us groupies still left over from last year)

Seriously Spoiled

2010-07-16T11:25:00.000-07:00

Jude Yeon seriously spoiled us with Korea memorabilia! She didn't want us to forget about her or our time in Korea; how could she ever even think that that could be a possibility?

Farewell Lunch

2010-07-16T09:40:00.000-07:00

Our 2nd to last day our boss took us out to lunch at a popular Italian Restaurant in town. She, along with the other two teachers, were so nice and showered us with great Korean traditional souveniers. We had our difference of oppinions and miscommunications over the last year, but overall we feel really lucky to have been placed at such a great school. Our boss really did do her best to look out for us and make sure that we had a very fun year.

Our Last Days

2010-07-16T09:31:00.000-07:00

We went back to the GhaiBi(the first Korean place we ate at) to finish off our time in Korea and to thank Jude Yeon and Chi Hoon for all the help that they gave us during our year here.

Then we took them to a new Cold Stones in town.

Then I gave Jude Yeon her first scooter ride. She was super scared, but loved the thrill of it.

Exploring Sucheon

2010-07-16T09:14:00.000-07:00

Just before we left the fields were all just getting flooded for rice planting.

A very strange group of dressed up singing men.

Getting ourselves drawn Oriental style:)

What do you think? Can you see the likeness?

Hanuk Village in Jeonju

2010-07-16T08:56:00.000-07:00

I'm just gonna be posting a bunch of pictures that we haven't gotten to yet since things have just been super crazy since we left Korea.

Logan, Here we come.

2010-06-26T22:40:00.001-07:00

We have been terrible about keeping people updated lately, we are so busy spending time with all the people that we missed while we were in Korea. After Hawaii, where we had a blast (and might post some pictures soon of this) we went Oregon for a very short visit with the Waites. After most of the new nieces and nephews on the Olsen side ran from me, I was glad to have all of the nieces and nephews from the Waite side run to me. I really missed them a lot.
We also got to spend some time with one of Christina's old roommates. We went to a cabin and lake in central Washington, it rained until the day we left, but we still had a great time. We wanted to spend more time in Oregon but we kept feeling like we needed to get to Logan to find housing. I was especially torn because my brother really needed help with a fencing contract that he had. We didn't have a ride to Utah, but by luck (or most likely divine intervention) I met up with my old institute teacher and we found out he was going to Utah the next Monday. I really wanted to stick around Oregon another week because a cousin was returning from a mission, and another cousin was blessing his baby, but in the end we took the free ride to Utah.
We spent a day getting insurance and clearing up some other errands, and then we went to Logan. We spent the first day trying to find a cheap mobile home without success. That night we drove up Logan canyon and camped out. The next day we gave up looking for a trailer and started looking for apartments. We called about 27 zillion numbers, but didn't have much success, but we did find a lot of places in our price range. After we had spent most of the day driving around and calling people that didn't answer their phones, we decided to check out an apartment that Christina had found that was listed just that morning.
We looked at it and liked it but found out that there was another couple who had filled out an application before us. The apartment was right across the street from campus, and only one block from the building that all of my classes were in, we really wanted it. It was one of the cheapest apartments that we had found, and it was in such a great location, the managers assured us that they never had any trouble filling vacancies, but that they would call us if the other couple decided not to take the apartment.
By that time we were both tired of the search, but we kept looking and did not make much progress. What I don't understand is why people list apartments for rent and then never answer their phones? Don't they want to rent them out? Or are they so sure of filling them that they only answer the phone occasionally just to make it more interesting? Anyways, we got really annoyed with the search and decided to call it a day. We camped out again in Logan Canyon and went to the library the next morning to charge our phone and check to see if any new apartments had been listed. We didn't find any promising leads, and were just waiting for the phone to finish charging when we got a call (we had left about 27 zillion messages the day before, so we were hoping to hear something good) it was the place right across from campus, and the other couple didn't want the apartment. I ran down the hill to give them the money for a background check, and if we pass, we have the apartment.
We feel that we have been very blessed to find a cheap apartment so close to campus. As always, everything seemed to just fall into place when we needed it most. We will be in Lindon for a little while longer, then we're off to Logan. We are excited to start this new stage in our life.

How Time Goes By

2010-06-12T11:21:00.000-07:00

Sorry to have left everyone hanging for so long. If any of you are wondering 8 days ago Liji and I finished our adventure in South Korea and headed onto our new adventure in Logan Utah where Liji will be starting a Master's Program. We are super excited to be closer to family for the next 2 years, but we will forever treasure our year in Korea. We had so many special experiences and made so many dear friends. Korea will always be a very tender place in our hearts with all of the manner wonderful memories Liji and I made there.
But before heading straight to Logan we're going to be traveling around visiting family and friends who have been so greatly missed. This last week we have been have a wonderful time in Hawaii with my parents and some of my siblings. It is so beautiful, but actually I was surprised upon arrival that as far as the landscape goes I think it is prettier in Korea; more green and lush:) The ocean is 100 times clearer though and the air is a 100 times cleaner here in Hawaii, which has definately been a treat. We were getting pretty tired of breathing the smog and not being able to see out farther than a 100 yards.
On Tuesday we'll be arriving in Oregon to visit with our Waite's side of the family and then with 2 of my best friends. The thing I missed most about being away was having close girlfriends to chat and laugh with. I never realized how important that is for women to have, until not having it and knowing something was missing but not being able to figure out what it was for a few months until it just dawned on me how much I longed to have some girl time.
Everything after that isn't yet set in stone, but we'll pretty much be travelling around until it's time for Liji to start his program in August. We'll be looking for housing in Logan, visiting Idaho, visiting Colorado, visiting California, and I may possibly get to go with my sister to Nauvoo, Independance, and Texas. We feel so blessed to be able to have such a nice break to look forward to and hope we will get to reconnect with many of you who we have missed so much. Thank you for keeping tabs on us and sharing our adventures with us as we have been gone. We are so greatful to have so much love and support.

Here are my cute parents who I missed so much.
I got to go shopping with my mom and share this tasty strawberry shortcake cream puff.
And here I am on the lap I missed sitting on so much; my dear Dad(with my adorable little nieces). They gave us a great homecoming.

I still have a lot of pictures from our last few days in Korea saying good-bye and now a lot from Hawaii so stay tuned.

English Plus 4.wmv

2010-06-04T01:14:00.000-07:00

Aaron

2010-05-26T22:30:00.000-07:00

Recently the Elders have been teaching the Gospel lessons to a man named Aaron; he is actually from China though and that is his English name. Liji and I have been able to sit in a few lessons with him and we have really been touched by him. He is just so humble and sincere. About 2 Sundays ago we were able to listen to Aaron's first prayer, and it was such a spiritual experience. I've never been able to be a part of something so humbling and I am so grateful for this mans strength and wonderful example to me, it has been so good to get to know him, and feel of the love that our Heavenly Father has for all of his children, especially those who are just finally coming to him for the first time. The pictures below are from a lesson we had with him at the Gunsan University where he is studying. He is married, but his wife has to stay back in China; that would just be so hard.

Daedunsan

2010-05-26T17:43:00.000-07:00

Driving up to the mountain we're going to hike.
As I was picking up a map of the hike we would be on this lady was standing next to me so I tried to ask her which route on the map was the shortest one to go on and she showed me on the map where to go. She said we needed to take a Gondola up most of the way and then instead of just sending us on our way she said let's go and she took us all the way up to the top, taking pictures of us the whole way. We never figured out why she was taking us; if she was on her way up herself, or if she was a tour guide or just a really nice person. Either way she was a big help to us and we had a great day.

After the hike we were super tired so we stopped at this nearby crick we found to put our feet in. Of course Liji found some frogs to catch and they ended up being really cool colors on the bottom.

We drove around some more and found a better place that was deeper and we could actually get in and swim around.

We ended the day at VIPS; a really nice buffet restaurant. They had a lot of Western style food and we stuffed ourselves.

2 pieces of cheesecake for me and a little ice cream!

Gia Tigers vs. Lotte World Giants

2010-05-26T17:33:00.000-07:00

Last Wednesday we had a professional game come into town for a 3-day series. Since we finish work early on Friday our boss helped us buy some tickets and we had a great time. Sadly our team lost it in the 9th, but it made for some excitement there at the end I guess.

I Love You!

2010-05-25T22:02:00.000-07:00

This video is a little bit staged but I still wanted to share. This is Nina; our youngest student and she is always at the academy the earliest. Everyday we have about an hour to plan lessons before our classes start at 3. Well Nina always shows up about 2:30 and completely demands our attention the rest of our prep time, so we now have to make sure we are ready for the day before she shows up. Well a couple of days ago she came in our office and was hanging out as she usually does, but then she acted kind of funny for a minute and she left the office. She does this a lot so it wasn't really that unusual but when she came back in she suddenly burst out with "I Love You, Mrs. Waite. I Love your, Mr. Waite!" We haven't taught her that and so I'm pretty sure she had gone out and asked our boss how to say that. Anyways it was super cute, so then I got the camera out to have her do it again and thats why it's not quite as natural on this video; but it melted our hearts.

Our Last Big Meal

2010-05-22T05:45:00.000-07:00

2 Sundays ago was our last time to cook the big meal on base. We've had a lot of fun doing them and this last one Liji planned all on his own and it was super good. He did taco salad with grilled chicken and beef. How he marinated them is what made the meal. The flavor was so perfectly great and everyone raved and raved. Sorry I tried to upload a video of everything all finished and set out, but I guess it's too big because it won't load.

Where's the Camera when you need one?

2010-05-19T20:11:00.001-07:00

For the last 3 weeks Liji and I have been doing some walking/hiking everyday somewhere around town. In two weeks we are going to Hawaii on our way home and Liji has all these hikes planned out so he wants us to be in shape. Well it has been a lot of fun and we have been able to see some beautiful things. We have usually been taking our camera along with us, but today I didn't take it because we were going somewhere we'd already been hiking at. But that was a mistake because I could have gotten the cutest video.
Because it has warmed up so much a lot of the schools are taking picnics with their school kids. We have run into them a lot over the last few weeks as we have been out on our walks, and it is probably the closest feeling you could have of being a movie star. They all act like it is the most exciting thing in the world to be seeing us as they yell out hello and their names. We have to be completely out of sight before we stop hearing shouts of Hi, or Hello to us. Well today during our walk around Wolmeoung Lake we stopped at the big excercise area they have there and we happened to get there just as all these students are gathering there for their picnics. They were running all over the place playing on the excercise equipment and just having a lot of fun. Well I went over to do work my abs on this twisty machine and Liji went to a machine we call the Strider. I was a bit a ways and had a great view to just watch these kids notice Liji and then with in a minute of him starting his excercise having a swarm of about 15 kids just goggling at him. And they stayed there the whole time he did. I wish that I could have gotten a video of it so bad. You would have thought he was Tom Cruise or something!

And I guess I should add some pictures from some of our beautiful hikes. So here ya go.

And Liji and I have come to the realization that we will never be true hikers in the eyes of the Korean people until we get some cool outfits like these.

Beautiful Korea

2010-05-15T16:07:00.000-07:00

When we got to Korea last summer everything was green and beautiful. It took me a while to realize that because there were so many people. For me beautiful = no people. After I got used to the fact that there is NO WHERE in Korea that you can escape the people, I really began to appreciate the fauna. Unfortunately for me, by the time that happened it was winter.
I almost did not make it through the winter, everythins was soooo dreary, it was smoogy, cloudy and bleak. It seemed as if color had been removed from our world. To make things worse, people told us that Spring would be here at the end of February. Well, that didn't actually happen until the end of April. But now that Spring is here, I am astonished everyday we go outside and find green trees and vibrant flowers. To us it seemed like the transition from bleak and dreary to green and vibrant took only one or two days. One day it was bleak, the next it was beautiful. I am so grateful for the beautiful world that God has created for us (even though I have to share it with other people!)
This is our last picture of the temple.

As we walked around this resavoir, I kept telling Christina that I wanted to go swimming, she wouldn't let me.

We keep thinking that we have seen every kind of flower or blossom that Korea has to offer and then a new shows up. These tree all looked dead until they suddenly put on these purple flowers.

T-shirts and green leaves, what could be better?

These great pink blossoms were late bloomers, most of the other trees had bloomed (except the purple ones above) and then we found these. The blossoms are monstorous, about the size of my fist.

This last picture is just to show the contrast. We took it a few months ago when everything seemed like it was dead.

What the!?!?!?!?

2010-05-13T23:26:00.000-07:00

Christina and I have been planning a trip to a mountain hike that is about an hour and a half away by scooter. One of our friends went there and told us about is so we have been excited to do it ourselves. Last Saturday we got up and packed a lunch and went downstairs to get on the scooter and head out. We got to where we parked our scooter, but it was gone! We thought someone might have moved it so we looked around, but it was gone. We found the basket that was on the front of the scooter on the floor right where we parked it.
We were astonished, we have had the scooter for almost a year and we have never had any problems aside from people ocassionaly throwing trash in our basket. I called our boss, but she said she was too busy, she could help us file a report with the police on Monday. We thought that was too much time so we asked the missionaries to help us. We spent the rest of the morning filing a report with the police. We did not have much hope of ever seeing the scooter again, but we thought we should at least report it stolen.
We feel like the thief targeted us, where we park our scooter, there are two other scooters just like ours, only newer and nicer. Why would someone steal an old beat up scooter like ours when there are two nicer ones only a few feet away? We were disappointed because now the weather has finally warmed up enough to go out exploring again and we had so many plans of places that we wanted to see, and now we were stuck with only our bikes (which after a year of no maintnence are barely running) to get around on.
We made plans to ride the bus to church and got everything ready for that, but to our surprise at 6:30 Sunday morning we got a phone call. The caller was speaking Korean, and I don't speak much Korean, but I did recognize the word for scooter, in my broken Korean I tried to ask him where it was but he couldn't understand me and hung up. Luckily for us, when we were filing the report at the police station Christina had the foresight to give them the Elder's number. So the officer called them, and they told us to go to the police station to pick up the scooter.
It was completely out of gas, and missing a few accesories, but other than that, it was in the same condition as before. I pushed it to the gas station and gassed it up and then rode it home. We thought that was the end of it, but on Tuesday we got a call from a detective asking if he could give our number to the theives so they could 'forgive' us. I assume he meant that they wanted to ask us to forgive them. I was a little apprehensive, but I said that would be OK.
We were very surprised later that day when four high school age boys and their mothers showed up at our work to say they were sorry. After they asked us for forgiveness, we had to sign a paper stating that we did indeed forgive them. I felt bad for the mothers, they were so embarrased. We found out later that if we wouldn't have signed the paper the boys could have been sent to jail.
We still don't know how they found our scooter, but we are very glad to get it back. Getting the scooter was the best thing we have done. We know more about the surrounding area than our students who have lived here their whole lives. We have seen all kinds of interesting things, and hope to see a lot more in the remaining weeks before we leave.

Now Is The Time

2010-05-08T05:09:00.000-07:00

Liji and I wanted to have children right away; pretty much since the day we were married. It is now almost 3 1/2 years later and that still hasn't come to pass. I'm not going to lie and say that it's been easy but I also don't want to whine and complain. Life is as it should be and we know that the Lord has his plan. Before coming to Korea we were putting Liji through school and didn't really have the means to go into intense doctor visits. We did do what we felt we could afford at the time and according to the doctors, they didn't find any problems. I was also on a fertility drug called chlomid for a couple of months and that didn't help.
We will soon be coming home from Korea and then living in Logan.
At this point in our lives we are researching the many different options that may be available to us. This isn't a topic that we have really talked about a lot with other people(mostly because it's a very emotional one for me), but since we have started some more intense research of this over the last couple of weeks I realized that the more people who know about us and are sharing our situations with others, the more windows there may be that open for us. So please feel free to share. When we get back to the States we would like to meet with a specialist, but we would like to go to someone that's highly recommended. We would greatly appreciate any and all suggestions about anything related to this; possible contacts that would be good for us to talk to, doctors, nurses, couples with similar experiences, great clinics, tests, treatment options, financial assistant opportunities, insurrances that may cover fertility testing, ect. I guess if you would just please keep your ears and mouths open for us, we would so grately appreciate it. Call, e-mail, or comment at anytime. Thank you so much for all of your love and support.

Children's Day

2010-05-05T22:28:00.000-07:00

May 5th is Children's Day Holiday and we got the day off. It was such a long day outside and I am still super exhausted from it. We all met at 9:30am at Gunsan Lake. Here we are setting off on our hike around the Lake. The hike was about 5 miles and then we had a picnic. I don't think the hike had been planned out very well and I'm not sure if anyone had actually ever hiked all the way around the lake before because most of the people ended up going about a quarter of the way and then turning back because they were too tired. Just before getting to our quarter mark resting point there was a pretty steep incline and a couple of the sisters were exhausted and seemed really put out that his hike was so hard. It was pretty funny. As we were going up this last hill I went up to Sister Che who was breathing really hard and asked her how she was doing. She does not speak hardly any English, but in her broken English she said, "I hate Sports; I never doing this." She especially seemed mad at her husband; he must have talked her into coming. Liji and I, and a few others wanted to go the whole way so we kept going to make it all the way around. It was so much fun to spend the morning with such wonderful people.

After eating lunch Liji and I headed out to the Saemangum because they just opened up the seawall road going out to the Islands nearby and they were having a Flag Festival out there. We hiked up another small mountain there and had a great few of all the Islands.

This is the Longest Sea Dike in the World.

At the Flag Festival

They had this big flag performance/dance show to bring good luck to the future of the Saemangum.

Your supposed to write down your hopes for the future on these big pieces of Paper.

What Happened to Spring?

2010-05-05T22:03:00.000-07:00

Just last week everything still seemed really brown. The weather was terrible and we were in a rut. Now, just one week later, it is summertime. Everything is suddenly green and beautiful. It's so hot during the day, and even warm at night; no jackets needed riding home from work. It is so nice. And we have definately been taking advantage of this time. Sorry for all the couple pictures, but your just going to have to deal with them since we have no cute kids to take pictures of yet:)

Beautiful Wolmyoung

2010-05-05T20:15:00.000-07:00

Maisan

2010-05-02T17:11:00.000-07:00

This past Saturday we went to 'Maisan' which means something like 'Horse Mountain.' There are two mountains that look like horse's ears. The weather was beautiful and we had a great time.
There is a cave in one of the mountains with a spring inside it, Christina thought it looked too dangerous to go inside.

We passed this hill on our way to Maisan, the purple flowers are tiny, but they plant them really thick.

'Hiking' in Korea almost always means going pretty much straight up or straight down. ALL mountains are very steep, no gradual slopes, everything is very abrupt. We probably hiked only 4 miles, but all off it was up or down stairs. We are still sore, especially our calves.

This is actually a picture of a picture, we were about one week too late to see the Cherry Blossoms like this.

There were several Buddhist temples and this great Buddah statue.

We didn't get to hike to the top of one of the horse ears, the staircase was blocked off. So we hiked to the top of a smaller hill and this is what we could see.

This is one of the Temple complexes, a vey nice Korean woman took this picture for us.

If you ever wonderd if you would be able to find a bathroom in Korea, worry no more. Even if you can't read Korean or English, I'm pretty sure you could figure out the pictures.

Most of the cherry trees had lost their blossoms, but some still had a few flowers.

They do look like horse ears, we had a great day even though we didn't get to climb to the top.

Spring is here! Maybe...

2010-04-26T06:08:00.000-07:00

'Spring has brought us such a nice surprise, popcorn popping right before our eyes!'

Spring Learning Festival

2010-04-09T06:48:00.001-07:00

Today was a really nice day and there is this cherry blossom festival going on around the city for these next two weeks and we decided to go out on the scooter to check things out. Well over at Eunpa park there weren't many blossom quite yet, but we did come upon this annual Learning Festival and had a pretty good time. It was pretty much just all these different booths set up from business around the city teaching you some things about their trade.
This man works in Gunsan city hall and had his own private photographer following him around. He really was really nice to us and had a lot of fun watching Liji try out all of these taekwando moves in the following pictures. Afterwards he wanted to get a picture with us.
This was actually the last thing that Liji got to do at this sweet taekwando demonstration booth but the pictures are out of order.

Putting out the flame without touching the candle.

Cutting through a piece of newspaper.

Liji is now about to punch through these "bricks"

Liji taking his shot with the Bow.
There were a ton of different booths demonstrating a number of different things.
We're not really sure what they were doing the hair and make-up demonstration for.
Boiling Ramen nooddles in a cup sitting on a solar panel. We even got to eat a small cup of it.

If you're bored in Korea

2010-04-04T22:18:00.000-07:00

Previously, (especially during the winter) quite often on a Saturday night Christina and I would find that we had absolutely nothing to do aside from watching a movie on the internet. Since that is not terribly exciting (less so since we decided that we would stop encouraging pirating by boycotting movies until they come out on video) we have tried to find other ways to keep occupied while still enjoying ourselves. We thought we had it fugured out when we discovered a really cool stationary store, but then we realized we do not have the self control to spend time looking at all of the cool stuff without buying it, so since then we have avoided the stationary store because it is too expensive for us.
One of the first things that we discovered after coming to Korea is that big stores have samples of everything, you can try out food, toys, sports equipment, hand held massagers (which by the way are very relaxing, we hope the one we bought will work in the US) beds, pens, pencils, the list could go on and on but I think that you get the point. It is actually a great marketing strategy, we never would have bought the hand held massager if we couldn't have experienced the relxed bliss of using it. In the States you have to look at the picture on the box and wonder if the product lives up to the picture and description, but in Korea, you just try out the sample.
E-Mart (I guess that would be close to what Wal-Mart is to America) is just across the street from us. We know from experience that the best time for food samples is Saturday afternoon around 4pm. They have so many samples that we go there when we are hungry instead of making dinner! But even when we go there, we still end up with almost a full evening ahead of us. So after we take care of the dinner portion of our date, we still have to find and activity.
Recently we have been going farther afield, there is another chain store, Lotte-Mart, it's like E-Mart, only bigger. There are more food samples (last Saturday I ate a slice of raw octopus tentacle, it was suprisingly mild and with a texture kind of like beef, not really chewy like I thought it would be) and other items that are not found at E-Mart.
On Saturday we were in the TV/recliner section of the store (just genius putting recliners in front of TV's on which they play the latest movies) and we saw some of those massage chairs, you know the ones that you sit in and they give you a massage. Well we sat down in two of them and pushed buttons until they started. AHHH! What bliss! A free 20 minute massage in front of the TV. Luckily for us we have no idea how to ship a recliner home, otherwise we would be out $1,600. But we do have a free date activity anytime we care to go over there.

We Lucked Out Afterall!!

2010-04-02T07:19:00.000-07:00

A new LDS English Teacher showed up at church about 3 weeks ago and since that time we have been able to go over to his apartment and talk with him a bit about the experience that he is having so far. And I have got to tell you he has got it rough. We have had it so easy with our whole situation compared to what he’s got, and we feel so bad that we have been thinking that we may have gotten it bad by having a boss that is a little hard to deal with at times. Our apartment is about the same size as ours, but his front room has no furniture and he only has a mini fridge/freezer in his kitchen, so pretty much he can’t really do much cooking at home, and you can only barely see out his windows. I’m pretty sure I would have most definitely gone into some sort of deep depression if we had to live somewhere like he has for a year. Our apartment has pretty wallpaper and is just so much brighter and home-ier. He is getting paid less than us and he has been at work for the last few weeks from about 8am-8pm everyday and his first Saturday here because it was parent-teacher conferences; whereas we have our whole morning free and haven’t had to work any Saturdays. He isn’t supposed to start until 11 something but his boss wants him coming in early this first little while so he can observe other teachers. He has to write these long lesson plans for each class and he said his boss has been really getting onto him about making them long enough; he’s had to re-do a lot of them. She wants him to write down every single question that he is going to ask the students during class. We barely write down about 2 sentences for each class in our log book that we have every day. We are pretty worried about him, because he is getting pretty fed up with everything and he is working with about 6 other foreigner teachers who aren’t members of the church and go out to drink a lot. He’s told us how they’re always pressuring him to drink and saying that he’s going to be drinking before he leaves here. We really want to get him heavily involved in doing stuff with the members of the military branch before we leave, so he can have that support and good friends to do things with like we have had. It would be really hard to come over here single. Pretty much we are really grateful for the experience that we have had.

March Update

2010-04-02T06:38:00.000-07:00

This week our boss officially bought our tickets home and she actually paid for the whole thing. Even our 10 day detour in Honolulu. We thought we would end up paying some sort of difference and that was our original plan to present to her. But my Dad gave us the idea of just showing her the full trip with a stop in Honolulu, which was priced at $981 and then showing her the price of just a straight shot to Salt Lake City, which was $970 and tell her we would rather do the one with the stop in Honolulu because that is where my family will be She said she would pay for the whole thing going through Honolulu!! We were so happy and grateful that she would be so generous to us on our way home. We have had some really tough times trying to communicate effectively with our boss, have felt very uninformed about must everything, and especially tired of the frequent last minute schedule changes to our classes but over the last few weeks we have gained a great appreciation for the many good things that she has done for us.
This month we took two trips to Seoul because next month the Temple will be closed for cleaning and that was just about all we could handle of the city for one month. The first Saturday of the month we drove with 2 others from the Branch and the last Saturday of the month we took the city bus there and back. Both trips were a success and far less stressful than last trips but it is just still never very much fun for us to be in that crowded of a place for very long. The traffic is always horrible and we are pretty sure that breathing the air there for one day is the equivalent of smoking four packs of cigarettes. It really is that bad. And you are constantly being pushed and shoved by people going either which way. The second trip when we were on our own we decided to take the subway to a shopping area that we like and had heard had a lot of ties. We did find the ties and Liji was in tie heaven. You would not believe the shopping here. I feel way too overwhelmed with the amount of choices in everything that I just have to give up and not buy anything. Liji isn’t patient enough to wait for me to finally make my choice and I don’t like to buy something without thinking it through for awhile and making sure I have seen all my options and that I am getting the best deal. Well there are at least 6 or 7 blocks in the area we were at that has these stores covering them that each go up at least 6 or 7 stories. Pretty much whatever it is you are looking for, whether it’s shoes, ties, suits, nightgowns, underwear, pants, shirts, dresses, accessories, handbags, hair things, Korean traditional dress, bedding, fabric, buttons, crafts, ect.; you can find a whole floor a block long of just that item. It is insane!

These are all the sweet motorcycle/scooter guys that zoom past everyone else in traffic to the front of the light, and then all zoom off together just before the light turns green. It's so funny to watch. Plus they sure know how to pack their scooters right:)

This next picture is for the benefit of Myriah and Tara and any of the others of you that knew Liji during his short tie/single days.

As you can see Liji is seriously in tie heaven.

Last Friday was a really clear day, which happens very far and in between here in Korea, because of the smog. So because of that I got an early morning wakeup call from Liji asking that I get up so we could drive over to Oh Sung San Mountain and get some clear pictures of the city. Well I got up and I’m really glad we went over because we really did get some great pictures. I didn’t even think that you could even really see the city from where we were because the past times that we have hiked that mountain you couldn’t see the city at all and I thought that it was pretty sunny and clear on those days. I guess that’s how much I’ve adjusted to the smog here and not being able to see more than 20 feet ahead of you. When you can see just 50 feet ahead of you I think it’s a clear day, when it’s really not. Well this was a really good day. This same day our first Elder here in Gunsan; Elder Truehaft was also here in the city with his companion because Elder Jeong had to do a day of his Korean Military service and Elder Brassfield couldn’t find someone available to do splits with him all day. We were really excited to be able to see Elder Truehaft again. In the morning they invited us to go to Wolmyoung Park with them to make some contacts. It happened to be a sunny day and they were able to get a few phone numbers which was good. Lotte Mart had half off at their Food Court so we all stuffed ourselves there. Pretty much everyone ordered 2 different meals because it was so cheap and there were 5 of us so we could barely fit everything on our table, but it was good.

Also this month the members of the Korean Ward decided to start up reading the Book of Mormon in English together every Saturday at 4:00 so we’ve been going there to help out with pronunciation when we have been in the city. It’s great for us because they have a meal together afterwards and their food is always really good. The Korean Ward has been really strengthened in the last year. They haven’t had any baptisms from this particular city, but they have had some strong member families move into the area just recently and there has just been a huge change in the ward since we first got here. Our first Sunday last June there were only about 21 people and just this last Sunday there were 43 people! It’s doubled. The atmosphere of love and friendship is just so strong; it’s awesome.
Here's Liji taking two of the kids from the Korean ward home after they showed up on their own(their parents both work Saturdays) for the weekly Saturday English Book of Mormon reading class. But it was cancelled due to all the other members going to a stake activity in Jeonju. We happened to be at the church sitting in a discussion with the Elders so Liji offered to drive them home. I just had to get a picture of all three of them on there. They do this a lot here.

Now that Winter is coming to a close and we have acquired so much stuff while being here we have boxed up our Winter clothes to send home. It is so weird that in just 2 short months this whole Korean experience will be coming to a close. It will probably be the most Bitter/Sweet Moment of my Life. When I think of saying goodbye to the students and our Korean friends I am close to tears, but when I think about being back in the US, and being with family again I’m ready to jump on the next plane out.

YUMMY TACOS

2010-03-31T20:52:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we were able to have the Elders over for Lunch and we've been preparing for this feast for quite awhile. We've been saving up some corn tortillas that my mom sent us and we had some cheese and sour cream that we got as left overs from one of our meals we cooked at the Air Base. Elder Jeong hadn't had sour cream before and you should have seen the way he loaded up his tacos with that stuff. It was so much fun. We all stuffed ourselves and at 10 pm that night we got a text from the Elders saying they didn't eat dinner they were still so full. It was then that Liji and I realized that we didn't eat dinner either and weren't hungry even though we hadn't. We ate a lot of tacos and they were good!!

Taking out the trash, Korean style

2010-03-28T03:49:00.000-07:00

We have had to learn to do a lot of things differently in Korea, perhaps one of the most annoying chores that we have is taking out the trash. You see, in Korea they recycle everything, and there is a special way to prepare the trash. We learned how to do this within our first few days or arrving. When we first got here, there was a bunch of stuff in our apartment that we did not want or need, so we put it all in the trash. Our trash can filled up in about one day, but we had no idea where to take our trash. We asked our boss, and she said, "Oh, I forgot to tell you how to take the trash out, there is a special way to do it."
We asked what we needed to do, and she insisted that she come over and show us what to do. She came over and brought some special bags with her. She explained how the trash needed to be sorted and only 'real' trash could be thrown away, everything else had to be recycled. Niether one of us had ever recyled before (unless you count picking up popcans off the side of the road for the deposit) so we asked her what constituted 'real' trash, her reply, "You Know, not paper, not plastic, not metal, not glass, just trash." What other kind of trash is there besides food trash?
Then she looked in our trash can and asked us why we had chicken bones in it. I pointed out that bones are not paper, plastic, metal, or glass so the should go in the trash... not so. So I had to sort out all of our trash, luckily it wasn't too bad, mainly because I don't believe in throwing away anything edible, and because I strip chicken bones completly clean before I throw them away.
She told us the food trash was separate from all of the other trash and had to be put in a special trash can for food only, I will let you imagine what that special food trash can smells like. Because of the smell, niether Christina or I jump at the chance to take the food trash out. If we didn't have a pint sized food trash can, we would probably take it out bi-monthly (or sooner if the smell in the apartment got to bad) It has gotten pretty rank several times, and since niether one of us wants to take it out, we have to resort to Rock, Scissors, Paper, to decide who has to take it out.
Early last week I noticed that the food trash was starting to stink, because of procrastination, we didn't actually take it out until Friday. By that time it was the worst smelling anything that I have ever smelled in my life, worse than a pail full of rotting diapers in midsummer, worse than a landfill, worse than anything. I don't know why it smelled so bad, but it was terrible. We live on the 12th floor, so when we take the elevator, more than half the time there are other people in it with us. When we got on the elevator was empty, and I was silently praying that no one else would get on, about that time a very fashionably dressed lady got on with us. As soon as she stepped in, a look of horror spread across her face, at first she covered her mouth with one hand, but by the time we reached the bottom, she had both hands over her mouth and nose.
We were on our way to gas up the scooter and run some errands, so we were gone for close to an hour. As we were parking the scooter after we had finished, I wondered out loud if the elevator still stunk, it did. It's pretty hard to hold your breath for a 12 floor elevator ride, but I did it. Maybe next time we won't wait so long to take the trash out.
Going back to the special trash bags that we have to use, well the ones that our boss gave us ran out. No problem, I thought, I'll just run to the store and get some more. Well I couldn't find them everywhere, so I just got some bags that were the same color. They worked just fine for us until we were taking out the trash and a very irate Korean woman made it very clear to us that we could not throw the trash away in that type of bag. We easily solved that problem by taking the trash out late at night when no one is around to see that we don't have the right type of bag.

Froggy Project

2010-03-22T18:07:00.000-07:00

My niece had a school froggy project, where each of the students have a chance to take froggy home and then share his experiences with the class. Well Rebeckah sent Froggy to Korea and here is some of the fun things he got to see. Our students loved having him in class.

The best choice?

2010-03-16T04:26:00.000-07:00

So from time to time I have wondered whether coming to Korea was the best thing that we could have done right after my graduation as a certified teacher. Could I have found a job in the States? A job with real benefits and in a country where the majority of the people speak the same language that I speak. Well last Sunday the question was answered. When we got to the Korean Ward there was an American sitting in front of us, since we don't see a lot of Americans I was curious as to who it was and why he was in Korea. When he turned around I immediately recognized him as one of my classmates from BYU-Idaho.
I didn't remember his name, but we took at least one class together and graduated at the same time, last April. Turns out he was looking for a job since the time he graduated but did not have any luck. He finally gave up on the real job search and looked for a job overseas. So he has been without a job for almost a year. We got our first paycheck last July, but he has yet to receive a paycheck. The worrisome thing about discovering that Matt (the new English teacher that we met at church) is teaching overseas is that he is the third person from that one class of only 20 students that had to look outside of the US to find a job. A close friend of mine is teaching at an American high school in Shanghai China. We are so glad that we have a job, and that I have been accepted to a Master's Program. We know that we have been directed to be where we are at this time, we have made many friends that we never would have met without coming here, we have no debt and we are in good shape to start school again, we both have gained valuable job experience, and we have definitely come to appreciate the freedoms and opportunities of the good Ol' USA.

Liji's Awkward Moment

2010-03-09T18:40:00.001-08:00

So I've really been meaning to post about a really awkward moment for Liji from last Friday. So we usually always head down to work at about the same time everyday. Well on Wednesday last week when we came out of the elevator there were some men workers waiting to get on the elevator. Well one of them who is probably in his 20's spotted us right away and started saying Hello and was just so excited to meet us. Well, we said hello and continued on our way to our bikes and headed to work. So a couple days pass and Friday we come out of the elevator and there is this same guys, seemingly waiting for just us to come down on our way to work. As soon as we stepped out he is just so excited. He says hello and then he puts up his hand to Liji and says, "High Five" So Liji gives him a high five but then he like grasped onto his hand for a while and like tried to give Liji this side hug, which I was almost dying laughing by the look on Liji's face when this happened. But the guy was not sattisfied with this small side hug, and I guess he felt more comfortable with Liji now that they had high fived and side huged so he said "Hug" and full on bear hugged Liji, and told him how Handsome he is. It seemed like he just wanted to hang onto him forever. Man, that made my entertainment need for the week. Koreans are very affectionate towards other people of their same gender. It is not unusual here for our male students to be sitting in my class and have their arms entertwined holding hands. But this is just their showing of friendship, not romantic sort of love. It took awhile to get used to but it's not that weird now, and this hasn't been the first time that Liji as had some stranger come up and give him a hug like this. But it still gets me everytime.

Girls Playing Tag

2010-03-04T22:06:00.000-08:00

Back to Site-Seeing

2010-02-26T05:08:00.000-08:00

Because it felt pretty much like summer on Wednesday this week we decided to get back into our Sight Seeing mode. We remembered seeing some brown signs on a previous scooter drive that we hadn't checked out yet, so we decided to go check them out. Here's some pictures of what we found. If you read the writing on the plaque sign writing below you can see that these statues are over a thousand years old.

Now at General Cho Ho's Grave, a General during The reign of King Seounjo.

Yea for he warm sun. It really was so hot. By this time, was feeling way too hot and overdressed.

There's quite a bit of bamboo here and Liji decided that it would be fun to try and jump into them and hope that he didn't get hurt.

Pancake Banana Bread

2010-02-26T05:02:00.000-08:00

With no oven I have been getting very ancy to be able to bake, so I had to get a bit creative. I thought, "I wonder if banana bread would cook on the stove on low heat covered between two pans, to make a small oven." And guess what it worked just great! So yummy, and hit just the right spot for both Liji and I.

Happy New Year

2010-02-25T22:21:00.000-08:00

Yea, Yea, I know this has been the longest we have gone so far without posting. Very poor blogger I know. Sorry, Sorry. But there should be plenty to keep you going for awhile as I try to fill you in on all the fun stuff we have done over the last two week. Last week it warmed up and since then it has really felt like Spring. We are really hoping that the nice weather is here to stay. Some of the days have been pretty rainy, but at least it is now warm rain. So February 14 was the Lunar New Year, which is the biggest Holiday here in Korea though they didn't celebrate it quite like what you see them doing in China, but we did get a 3 day weekend, which was superb and we have another one coming up this weekend as well.
The Saturday of that holiday weekend was our ski trip and then Sunday we had the morning free, due to the Korean ward pushing back their sacrament meeting until 4 pm so people could have time to celebrate the new year with family in the morning. So Liji and I got to spend a nice relaxing Valentine's Day morning together resting from our previous day of skiing until it was time to go to the Air Base for church in the afternoon. Monday we spent the morning cleaning up our apartment that was in desperate need of it. In the afternoon we got to go out to the Air Base to play some wolleyball with the other branch members. It was so much fun of course. For dinner was pretty much the only time we got any feel for the New Year holiday because we went to the Korean Ward Bishop's house and had a nice evening with some of the other members there. Here in Korea they don't gain a year in their age on their birthday, they do at the Lunar New Year. Everyone eats the special rice cake soup called Dukgu; that is supposedly representing you eating up into your next age. Interesting right? Well, Tuesday was back to work and back to some rainy weather.

Here's Handsome Liji all ready for Valentine' Day Sunday

These next few are at our Bishop's house on the New Year.

This Last Sunday it was our turn to cook the meal at the Air Base so on Saturday we met our Branch President at the Base to help him do all the shopping for the meal the next day. Then he treated us to some lunch on Base which of course is a treat for us to get some American Fast Food. So Yummy! After that the weather was so sunny and nice we decided to go up to Oh Sun Sang mountain here in Gunsan where you can get a really great view of the city. Sadly we were greatly underestimating he smog in the air and didn't exactly get the clear view from the top that we had been hoping for. Still, so warm and nice to be outside again, enjoying the fresh air. Then to take advantage of the sun for as long as we could, when we got home we walked over to the field across from our apartment and played some frisbee till we were nice and tired! Finally we walked over to E-mart to get some yummy samples to hold us over till our late dinner.

These are all ducks out on the river, but they were too far away to ever get a good picture.

On Sunday Liji and I talked together on Coming unto Christ through Temple Marriage. I focused on Love in your Marriage and Liji focused on more of the Marriage Covenant. I think it worked out well and afterward a male member that was actually visiting from another city sought me out to let me know that he had been having some troubles in his marriage and the things we shared were just what he needed to hear. Hearing those kinds of things always make all the preparation time so well worth it. After church we finished up on the meal preparations to serve all the different religious services on Base. I planned the menu according to what I've been craving since being here. Ritz Chicken, baked potatoes, broccoli, a salad and a Very Yummy Ice Cream Cake. Everything turned out just right and I think I enjoyed my meal more than anyone. And of course getting to take home leftovers always makes all the preparation worth it:-)
Monday was a really foggy day, so we stayed in but Tuesday was perfect again and so we went out and played frisbee again for awhile. While we were out there was a man who looked to be in his 90's practicing some golf on the field with us. After watching us play for awhile he wanted to play, so I tossed him the frisbee and then he tossed it to Liji. His first throw wasnt that great, but Liji showed him how to throw it better and he ended up doing really well, He had a harder time catching them, but certainly put his all into trying. I was a bit worried he was going to fall over because he would almost jump up to try and catch it, and he was pretty feeble, though still in good shape for his age. It was pretty fun to play with him and after a little while he went back to his golf and just Liji and I tossed back and forth again. When he finished playing golf he sat down on a bench to just watch and would clap and cheer for us when we had a good throw or good catch. He was such a fun old man. As we were leaving he kept telling me that I was #1!

Muju Ski Trip

2010-02-14T19:39:00.000-08:00

We had so much fun skiing at Muju Resort on Saturday. Our friend In Su is a big skier and snowboarder and was our Resort Guide.

Christina on the lift in the middle of some strangers.

Christina and In Su heading up the lift.

Liji with some icicles in his beard.

At the very top of the mountain is was so windy, foggy and freezing, but it sure made this big building look beautiful. It looks like an ice castle to me. So Cool!!

Us with In Su

Christina and In Su

Looking up at the slopes from one of the two resort bases.

Just Trying to Keep Busy

2010-02-11T22:24:00.000-08:00

It has been a very rainy and dreary week. We have not seen the sun shine since Sunday morning, but it has been warm enough that it has been raining and not snowing. We are glad though because we will be going snow skiing tomorrow and hopefully it has been snowing a the resort this whole week and we will have some nice powder. We heard that they mainly make all of their snow so if it hasn't been snowing for awhile you can get some pretty icy spots. Last Saturday we went on another Branch trip to the Temple in Seoul. It turned out to be our smoothest trip so far. It was our new Branch Presidents first time driving the trip, so I was a little worried, but we only turned the wrong way two times and were able to get back to going the right direction fairly easily. We were able to do sealings and then an endowment session this time even though they were pretty crowded, so we were happy. Then we went and got some lunch and headed back to Gunsan.
Since we have been cooped up in our apartment due to the rain we have had to occupy our time with some other things. Liji has been working really had at improving his typing skills. He claims he never learned how to type because only had to take one computer class in school and it just so happened that he broke one of his wrists that semester so he couldn't ever do well. (I don't 'claim' anything, that is what happened! And just for the record, I took two typing classes, after I failed the first one because I couldn't type with my wrist in a cast (That's gotta be some sort of discrimination, failing someone with a disability?) they made me take the class again the next year, and wonder of wonders, I broke my other wrist. At the time I thought I was pretty lucky, but now I am paying for it.) He has developed this really unnaturally way of using only 2 of his fingers on each hand to type. Well since he's going to be going into a Masters program soon he decided he'd better learn to type the correct way. He has been doing really well too. Just in the last couple of weeks he has gone from about 14 wpm to about 30 wpm; YEA!! He is also studying a textbook that will prepare him better for his masters program, that one of the professors recommended to him. I have been trying to keep busy with practicing the piano so I can play for Sacrament meeting without too many errors. I have also been busy studying the Conference Ensign, that we were finally able to pick an English copy up of, when we went to the Temple on Saturday. Thursday morning we had some workers come and spend a few hours in our apartment again. This time they pretty much re-did our whole kitchen area. We got all new cabinets and a new sink. It does look a lot nicer, but we aren't sure if we like the setup as well. I think it's just a matter of getting used to it.

Spring Fever

2010-02-04T22:27:00.000-08:00

We are happy to getting back to our old schedule at work. The last month we have been having to teach 7 classes a day, instead of our normal 5 classes a day, because the students were on a winter vacation. It made for really long hours at work and less time to do stuff on our own in the mornings. Just yesterday we found out we don't have to be here until 2pm again and it has been really nice. This week we really haven't done a whole lot other than work because it has been really cold out. Liji has tried to get me to go out with him and play with the boomerang, but I guess he wasn't persuasive enough because he never talked me into it. Well, I guess I was out there for a few minutes with him one day but that was only after he finally deciding to go out there and play on his own. Then I looked down from our apartment balcony at my cute little husband playing with the boomerang by himself on the field across the way and thought, "Why, aren't I down there with him?." So I just had to go join him; even though it was freezing! Monday we went out with the missionaries to visit In Su and Pi Nah, whom we really love being with. We had a great discussion and then they came to Family Home evening again at the base. But we were supposed to meet with them this morning and they cancelled. Sadly they told the Elders that they don't believe in the Book of Mormon and they won't be finishing the discussions. We were pretty dissappointed because we had really high hopes for them. We still have plans to go snow skiing with them though next Saturday, so we'll see what we can do. They're family is Catholic and a lot of the other churches around, opening preach bad things about our church and many people believe them and thing that it is evil. I don't wonder if someone from their church found out they were taking the discussions and talked to their parents about the things they had been hearing. It's really too bad.
It has been really fun being able to go to discussions with the Elders this month. Usually we can't go to so many because they can't usually schedule them for the morning since that is when kids are in school and parents are working. But with it being Winter vacation all the students are home in the mornings. Now winter vacation is over though, so they won't be.
Anyways, other than that things are going really well. I guess besides the fact that Liji has a case of really bad Spring Fever and I get to hear about it everyday! It hasn't snowed hard for awhile and it's actually been really clear skies this week, but really cold.
I guess I also decided to start up an Olsen Family Newsletter and that kept me busy for a few days, but it was really fun to get it together and get updates from everyone. Liji already started a Waite family newsletter with his family 2 years ago and it has just been so fun, that we decided we need to do it on my families side.

New Investigators, New Students, and New Toy

2010-01-27T18:01:00.000-08:00

So Friday of last week Liji and I went with the missionaries to meet with a new family that they had been referred to by the family that we met with the week before, and I am so excited about this new family.(And it's not just because I found out that they are big skiers and snowboarders) They really are a great family. The oldest son is 20(Korean Age, 18 or 19 American age) His name is In Yu. He is just about to graduate from High School and will be heading to a University in Seoul, in March. He speaks English very well. I would say he is fluent. He came with the Elders to our family home evening at the Air Base last night and I'm pretty sure he understood most everything. He has a younger sister who is 19 and she speaks English pretty well also, though not quite as fluently as her brother. Her name is Pi Nah and she is already a great Korean Hostess. Both of them go to High School Boarding Schools that are a few hours away from their home so they are usually only home on the weekends. It is pretty common for High School students to go to Boarding Schools like this from what we have heard from our own students, especially the really smart and dedicated students. At these boarding schools they must study until 10:00 at night. I don't know how they do it. But right now they are on Winter Vacation so they are home during the week. Last night I did find out from In Yu that him and his family are big skiers and snowboarders, which I am really excited about. I have been trying to figure out how I can go skiing while I am here. There is a pretty famous ski resort only about an hour from us, but I've been asking around and nobody has been able to tell me how we can get there on public transportation. In Yu told me there is a bus that goes to the ski resort every morning at 6 and that we can go together sometime, so now I'm really excited. Liji's not so much because it is pretty expensive to buy passes; it's worth it to me to be able to go skiing in Korea, but not as much to Liji who doesn't have quite the passion for it that I do. But he's still willing to go for me. It's gonna be Great!
Saturday Liji and I went out on the field to try out the new boomarang that we got in Australia and it ended up working pretty good, besides the time that Liji almost wacked to ladies walking by. We got it so it would come around and come back to us and Liji caught it a couple of times, but didn't like to because he said it really hurt. We also went shopping at Lotte Mart and I finally talked Liji into getting a huge carton of ice cream that was on sale. It's usually pretty expensive. I wanted to get the all chocolate one but decided on this one so that Liji would get to have a treat eating it too, since he doesn't like chocolate. I was really only getting this one for the chocolate part and was so, so , so looking forward to diving into it when we got home. So much so that I had to open up the carton to look at it when we were in the elevator on the way home. When I opened it up all you could see was strawberry and I was a little worried but Liji said he was sure that they must just layer the different flavors differently than we do and that the vanilla and chocolate were on the bottom. That put me at ease a little bit until we could get up to our apartment and inside. Well, I opened that thing up and dug and dug on both sides and what did I find? No chocolate! It is all strawberry. Man, I was sooooo bummed, and so mad at the false advertisement. I was sooo looking forward to chocolate ice cream. So much for relying on the pictures over here anymore. Of course I will still eat the ice cream, I mean it's ice cream, but strawberry just doesn't quite hit the spot for me. Total Bummer of deal right? Liji thought I was being way too dramatic and then laughed and laughed at the carton after I was done with me search for chocolate, so he just had to take a picture. I don't think it's that funny, I only looked on the 2 corners.

Sunday I found out that we are going to be getting a third sister in the Air Base Ward in a couple of weeks so I guess that is now enough women to start up an official Relief Society and I was called to be the President. It should be good practice for me and not too much work with only 2 sisters to look after for now. President doesn't want me to set anything else up because he doesn't want me to feel to overwhelmed; I still have to teach Sunday School and play the piano in Sacrament Meeting. He just wanted to call me so that he can have a women to send the other women to that need someone to talk to and stuff like that. Not too hard if you ask me and I think it should be fun. I'm especially excited about having a new sister.

Here's Katie just taking it easy in Mr. Waite's chair.

Below are some pictures of our newest and youngest student so far. Her older brother vin is in one of our other classes. She is only about 5 or 6 and super cute. I named her Nina, for her English name. I just had to get some pictures of her when she was wearing this cute outfit and her hair in french braids, ADORABLE outfit as Liji would say. That's right Liji used the word ADORABLE. I never thought in a million years I would hear him say that word, and it was so cute when he did. I had just taken some pictures of Nina and was about to start our tutoring session when Liji walked into ask me something and then looked down at Nina and said, "Why, isn't she just ADORABLE!" and that she is. We have to spend an hour teacher her everyday; her attention span is very limited and she barely knows her ABC's, but she is so much fun. She is so easy-going, laughs at anything and everything we do, and has a smile to die for!

It can be a Hard Life

2010-01-25T20:38:00.000-08:00

Sometimes life challenges just get me down and I often end up taking out all my frustrations on Liji. Man, I just don't know how I can be so mean sometimes. I really don't mean to be! I just find it so interesting how many unsuspected places Heavenly Father takes us in life. I hope that I can do better at enduring it well and pass the tests that I am given without having to take it out on my poor husband. He is so good and patient with me. I know this is still only the beginning of many hard times to come, but Heavenly Father knows best. I am definately learning, even if it is a slow process. Those of you are enduring much harder things than me, and ten times better than me thank you for your examples. Keep going strong, I know we can all make it, and Oh what joy will then be ours!

Grad School

2010-01-25T20:21:00.000-08:00

So I think I forgot to also mention some really exciting news. Liji was accepted to Utah State University's Grad Program. We should be headed back to the states in June and will be living in Logan this August, which I am really excited about because we will be back to living within only one tank of gas driving distance from family! I think that I am a huge baby when it comes to having to miss out on family get-togethers, which happens a lot when all but 3 of my siblings live within 30 minutes driving distance of eachother. I am so proud of Liji for working so hard and being so smart. I really am lucky, I know our family will always have the things that we need. We are also really hoping on a scholarship because Liji scored in the 90th percentile on his grad entrance exam test, but we don't find out about that until April.

Another Early Morning Wake Up Call and Skype

2010-01-24T20:24:00.001-08:00

I forgot to mention that last Saturday at 4 am I was woken up by someone ringing our doorbell over and over and pounding on the door, yelling. It took me quite awhile to register what was happening as Liji and I happened to have stayed up very late that night already and had only been in bed for two hours. Once I realized that it was in fact real life and not part of my dream I tried to get out of bed, but Liji was even more dillusional at this point than I was and was having a much harder time coming back to reality. So his ramblings about the situation were making it even harder for me to think that this was really happening. I wasn't about to go answer the door because I was pretty sure it was some drunk person from one of the bars at the base of our apartment building and by the time Liji got dressed and over to the door the person had just left so we never saw who it was or what was going on. Oh well I guess. Wasn't to funny to us at the moment but pretty now. Who bangs on someones door at 4 am, seriously!
This last week my sister-in-law Cortney had their 2nd baby girl. They named her Nancy Jane and she is just adorable. I got to talk to them on Skype for awhile while they were still just hanging out in the hospital and I think it is so cool that I can still keep in such good contact with my family even though we are on the other side of the world. However I am not quite as astounded about it as my Grandmother was when she came into the hospital room with my parents to see the new baby and she got to see me on the computer as well. She just could not believe that we could see and talk with eachother over the computer. My parents have told her about it but I guess it hadn't quite registered to her how good it really was until she actually saw me and I could take the computer around the apartment and show her where we live and the great view of the city off our balcony window. She didn't stay a whole long time because she has a group of friends that she plays cards with every night at the assisted living center that she live at. But when my parents dropped her back off at home they said that as she got out she said, "Just wait till I tell the girls that I got to see Korea!" HaHa, I love my grandma she is so cute.
On Friday my sister Alisa called us while we were at work but not actually teaching yet so we had our computer out and I talked to her for a little bit. Some of our students started showing up for our first class so I had them come in our office and say hi to Alisa and her youngest baby Kaleb, who was still awake. They are the youngest class so that can't speak very much English yet, but they still really liked that. After we hung up one of them said "Wow!" and wove her hand around her face and then said, "Twins" to let me know that she thought Alisa and I looked a lot alike. I said yea we do. They were pretty happy about getting to do that, so we are really grateful to have Skype.

Unpacking, Family Love, and Missionary Moments

2010-01-17T03:03:00.000-08:00

After getting home from Australia it was a bit hard to get back into the swing of things. After flying all night to get home and taking a 4 hour bus ride home from the airport we were not too happy to be going straight to work after only having an hour to take a shower and eat. Luckily it was on a Wednesday which is the day we finish early so we only had to work from 1:30-6 and then got to go back home to unpack and rest. It took us pretty much the rest of that week and the weekend to get clothes washed and the apartment cleaned and the food shopping done to where we felt like we were back to normal again. You know how it is coming home from a trip. Right now our students are on their Winter Vacation from School but it’s not good news for us because it actually means two more classes a day for us. Since the kids aren’t going to their public schools in the morning they can spend more time at the Academy so now we have to be to work at 12:30 instead of 2:00pm and still finish at the same time. Yea! Because of that we haven’t been able to do as much in the mornings as we were and really liked to have that time. We shouldn’t go back to our old schedule until March though, which is kind of depressing to us. Oh well, we shall endure.
Last Sunday we got a package from my sister Mandy full of treats and cute pictures from Bella and just today we got a Christmas package from my mom, a nice letter and pictures from Liji’s sister and a really nice book of Australian Poetry that includes “The Man From Snowy River” with an extra little surprise inside from Liji’s parents. Today was like Christmas. It was so much fun to get and I’m pretty sure we’re going to gain back all the weight we’ve lost coming here in the next couple weeks eating all the treats they sent. Some of our friends have gotten to reap the rewards of their thoughtfulness as well, which they were quite happy about. I am so grateful for each of these very kind acts and feel so very blessed for the huge support that we have always had from our family. Even though very far away I still feel very close to them and will always know of their great love for us. It’s always nice to know you are still being thought of.

This last Wednesday we were able to go with the Elders to meet with a new family that they are teaching. They have a son who is 20 and a daughter who is 16. What they usually have us do is they practice their English with us for about 30 minutes and then the Elders teach them a lesson in Korean and then we share our testimonies while the Elders translate. It was really good to meet with this family and I have a feeling that it was only the first of many visits. The mom was just so happy to have us over, so kind and accommodating. We really had a good time. But the thing that impressed me the most was how strongly I felt the Spirit as the Elders taught them a lesson on the Plan of Happiness and I listened to them go off in Korean. I couldn’t understand what they were talking about and they weren’t translating yet I could feel the power of the words and the truth of them. And then it was neat to then after they finished, share what I could feel with this family and point out to them why they were feeling the things that they were and what that feeling means. That it is testifying of the truth of these words. I just feel so blessed to be able to work with our Elders. They are really powerful and doing a great work. Missionary work is not easy over here, especially in our small town of Gunsan where the members are so few.
Saturday was a busy day. In the morning Liji went with the missionaries to play basketball with the older boy from the family that we met on Wednesday and some of his friends. I think he had a pretty good time doing that and then we went to lunch with the Elders and a new man they found who is actually a member but less active. He is an owner of an English Academy like the one that we teach at and speaks English fluently. We were so impressed. He is for sure the best Korean English Speaker that we have met so far and he hasn’t ever even been overseas to an English speaking country. He just studied really hard on his own. He seems like a very intelligent man and we had a great lunch with him. After lunch we went to Liji’s favorite second hand store and found some more great $2 wool sweaters for him and then when to our friend sister Oh’s apartment to take some things to her and visit. She invited us to stay for dinner and then decided to invite the missionaries over also because she can’t normally have them over as there has to be another male around. She overdid herself as she always does and how every other Korean hostess does and really spoiled us with some great Korean food that she had delivered to her place. There is a huge cultural responsibility for the women hostess’ in Korea to take care of the guests in their home. They will never even think of letting us take our dishes to the sink nonetheless wash them or something like that. We try to but she says she will just feel really guilty afterwards if we do and feel like she is not a good hostess. After dinner we went over to the Air Base and finally got to see the movie ‘Avatar’ with our friend Michael. Wow, it definitely lived up to all its talking up. I never felt any sort of lull or boredom whatsoever and very eye appealing graphics. Amazing!

Today (Sunday) we went out to leave for the Korean Ward meetings on the scooter and ended up at the edge of the parking lot with a flat tire. We could have just went and got on our bicycles and headed over to the church building for the Korean Ward but that wouldn’t have gotten us all the way to the Air Base, which is where we have callings and we would have had to take the bus there which wouldn’t have been good getting back on the bus since we were having to stay after church for a PEC meeting and on Sundays the bus only comes every other hour. So we decided we would have to miss the Korean Ward while Liji tried to get the tire filled up but couldn’t find anywhere to do that and just ended up back home an hour and half later without the scooter, no bike shops were open. I guess that’s a good thing since it’s Sunday and we ended up catching the bus out and then getting a ride home with President Ault after our meeting so it all worked out.
I really felt bad about missing the Korean ward because our friend Sister Oh has been having a real tough time making it out to church the last couple months and we really laid it into her when we were at her house last night that we were expecting her at church and then we weren’t even there. I know that she showed up though because we left our camera at her house last night and I had called her when we got home to have her bring it to church. Now she had a specific reason for coming and when I called her today about missing church and how we could get the camera she said that that was the only thing that got her to church today, but she was really happy it did and was happy to be there. Heavenly Father pays attention to the details.

Liji Also bought some Cuttlefish this last week and had some great fun disecting and eating that thing.

Australia

2010-01-10T17:04:00.001-08:00

Here are a bunch of pictures from our trip to Australia, they are not in any kind of order. When we have more time, we will tell about the pictures.

Christina in the Hong Kong airport the second time around.

So, every time we got in the car to go somewhere, I thought we were going to die. They drive on the wrong side of the road! That also makes crossing the street very interesting. I was always confused about which way to look first. My solution was to look both ways 10 or 15 times before stepping off the sidewalk.

As we were leaving Mark's to go to the airport, I found this elephant beetle in the driveway. When I picked it up it kept hissing, hissing and hissing. I would have up-loaded a video, but it takes too long.

Mark's beautiful family: Veronica holding 'Rafa,' and Mark holding Helen.

We took Helen on a walk, in the park we found these flowers, I have no idea what they are called. We walked to the store to get some souvenirs and found much cheaper prices than what we got in the city. Helen got a bit impatient with Christina's slow shopping though and I had to chase after her a few times. She is a cutie though.

The first time I saw this sign, I asked Mark if the magpies were dangerous, he gave and emphatic 'Yes!' You can't tell by the picture how big this magpie is, but it is the size of an American crow, and as you can see the beak is much sharper. I guess they regularly attack people, though we didn't have any problems with them.

This is the best picture we got of Rafa.

We had a blast at the beach, it was a hot day, but overcast so we didn't get fried. The water was great, there were tons of waves. A couple of times we got caught off guard and were tumbled by a wave but that was the fum part.

This is a cake called 'pavlova' with mango and passion fruit on top. It is really popular in Australia; a member of Mark's ward made this one for us. It tasted like pure sugar to me, but Christina enjoyed it.

This mountain is part of the Great Dividing Range that runs along the eastern side of Australia.

That might look like a small kangaroo (that's what I thought it was) but it's a wallaby.

This is a wombat, a very interesting animal. They are burrowers and they had to cover the bottom of their enclosure with chain-link fence to keep the from burrowing out.

This is one of two joeys that we saw, Jay's daughter was fascinated by it, she kept trying to grab it and take it out of its mother's pouch.

These mother-baby pair was the main attraction at the koala enclosure. They were pretty cute.

This is a different species of kangaroo, he was much shier than the other ones so we didn't get to pet him.

A pair of Australian ducks.

Petting an echidna, Australia's version of the porcupine.

Most of the Kangaroos were too full to eat, every person that passed by was giving them food.

Kangaroos are sooo soft! Softer than any other animal I have petted, except maybe a chinchilla.

Most of the Koalas we saw were sleeping, I guess they sleep 20 hours a day.

This mother was so patient, but when Lily (Jay's two year old daughter) tried to take the joey out of the pouch, she hopped off.

These rhinoceros iguanas are native to Cuba. I bet the big one weighed over 25lbs.

The famous non-native Australian cane toad. Mark told us there was a bounty on them for a long time until the animal rights people made a big enough fuss to put an end to that.

Christina covertly organized a birthday party for me. Mark's twin brother Jay, a baker by trade, made me a blackberry pie, and a great cherry chocolate cake. The pie was not as good as my mom's, but his crust was amazing, the best I've ever had.

One highlight of the trip was Rafael's (Rafa) blessing, This is a picture of those in the circle.

Veronica's mom made these pants and the white shirt for the blessing.

A species of Australian dove?

Eucalyptus trees in Mark's yard. Australia was beautiful, so green, but they told us that it was unusually green.

The red berrys are called miracle fruit, they change your taste buds so that sour things taste sweet. After eating two of the berry, I ate a half of a lemon, and it was sweeter than an orange!

This is called a kebab, pronounced kee-baab.

This guy was astounding, he gave a great demonstration on the dijiridoo, but our camera battery died so we missed it.

We are posing with the lizard Jay caught, it bit him on the thumb, but it wasn't too bad.

We saw close to a hundred of these lizards, they called them bearded dragon.

This one is well over three feet long.

These cliffs were just behind the temple, it was a beautiful place and a bueatiful day.

December Waite Family Newsletter

2010-01-07T05:01:00.000-08:00

This has been a wonderful month. The month of December is always a good one, due to the Christmas spirit that is in the air. It took a bit longer for it to feel like Christmas this year because in Korea they aren’t quite as into Christmas as we are and didn’t get the Christmas decorations up until a bit closer to Christmas than we get them up. It really started to feel like Christmas the second week of December when it snowed 4 ½ days straight. We have never seen so much snow come at one time. It was melting as it was falling, so we only accumulated about 15 inches of very wet snow. I think that if it would have been below freezing the whole time we would have had over two feet of snow.
The roads were terrible, six inches of slush during the day and frozen solid at night. That did not keep the scooters off the road, we did not see as many people riding there scooters around, but we saw plenty that were braving the road conditions. During the whole snow storm we only saw one snow plow, and they never plowed any of the streets, not even the main streets. The plow we saw was not working and we have no idea why it was even out. We were riding our bikes in the snow, but it wasn’t too bad, we stayed on the sidewalks where we felt a lot safer than we do when we are in the street. It was cold, and sometimes the snow was falling so hard we could barely see, but we figured that riding bikes was faster than walking, and cheaper than a taxi.
At the beginning of the month, I took the MAT, a grad school entrance exam. I had to make special arrangements and pay a fee, but I was able to take the test on the Air Base. I felt like I did fairly well. We still have not heard back from them yet, but hopefully within the next few days we will find out my score. I have applied to Utah State University; they have a Master’s in Second Language Teaching program that seems to be just what I want. There is a good possibility that I will be able to work as a Grad Instructor, or as a Teaching Assistant. Plus We like Logan, it has a temple, and it is still a pretty small town.
We did not get to go outside much this month because of the snow, but we did make a Saturday trip to the base to spend time with our friends out there. It was right in the middle of the first big snow storm and the roads were terrible. We rode the bus out to the base, the road conditions were so bad on base that they were only allowing emergency vehicles to drive. So our friends Zarai, and Liza walked out to the main gate to sign us on. They took us to the commissary and bought some hard to get items for us (meat, cheese, and popcorn) and then we made lunch and watched a movie. We had a great time, and we are so glad that we have friends on base; it is nice to be able to have normal one-on-one conversations. (Most of our conversations with Koreans consist of them approaching us and initiating conversation, and then us asking them simple questions like, “How old are you?” to keep the conversation going.) It is very admirable how hard Koreans work on learning English.
Speaking of the Air Base, our Branch President left in the middle of December. The District Presidency came down to re-organize the branch on the third weekend of December. I was called to be the Second Counselor. When there are only nine active Melchizedek Priesthood holders, the chances of being called into the Branch Presidency are pretty good. When the District Presidency was there, and all six of us were sitting up front, there were more of us than there were people in the congregation. Normally we have more people in the congregation, but because of the Holidays several people were gone.
Our students are on their winter vacation, which lasts until the beginning of February. Since they are on vacation from public school, that means they can spend more time at our academy, yeah. (Notice I did not put an exclamation point at the end of the previous sentence.) Now we have to be to work at 12:30pm, and we don’t finish until 8:30pm. Our first class starts at 1pm, and we teach seven classes a day. Before, we got to work at 2pm, started teaching at 3:10pm, and usually taught 5 classes a day and finished by 8:45pm. So now we teach two extra classes a day. Our trip to Australia came at just the right time; we were just about so tired of work we were contemplating if we really wanted to stay in Korea for the next few months.
We only spent four days there, but it was the best vacation I have ever had. For me, the trip was about visiting my mission companion, but we got to do some tourist activities. We made it to the temple, the beach, and the Australian Zoo. (Home of the late Steve Irwin) At the zoo we petted kangaroos, and koalas. The weather was amazing, hot but not too hot. They told us that they have had an extraordinary amount of rain, so it was very green and beautiful.
On the day we went to the temple we also walked down along the river, there were a bunch of lizards, they looked like iguanas. One of them was over three feet long. We spent a lot of time trying to catch one before Jay (my mission companion’s twin brother) caught one. Then we went to a market where we met an Aboriginal man who was selling boomerangs, and dijiridoos (a dijiridoo, is the trumpet like instrument that makes a humming sound when you blow into it). He did a demonstration on the dijiridoo that was amazing, but we couldn’t record it because our camera battery was dead.
The time in Australia was great, but we spent a lot of time traveling. In all, going and coming, we spent over 60 hours on buses, planes, or in the airport. It was still worth it, but I told Christina the next time we go to Australia, we are going to stay for a long time, like a month or so. When we got back from Australia, it was snowing here in Korea, and it has been pretty cold. Only down to about 25 degrees, but for some reason it seems really cold, like hard to breath cold. I guess the humidity makes the cold more severe.
Liji didn’t say anything about Christmas so I’ll just add a bit more. The only day we got off for Christmas was Christmas Day. We had to work Christmas Eve and then had to be back to work on Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday we left for Australia. So the week before Christmas we found out that the Korean ward was having a Christmas party on Christmas Eve. We really wanted to go to it and thought it might be worth a shot asking our boss about the chances of us getting off work early on that day so that we could go to the party. We had already heard from a lot of our students that they wouldn’t be coming anyways because they would be going to their churches for some activities. Well we asked her she seemed very shocked that we had even thought of such a think. After a bit of talking she did say she thought we could maybe get off at 8 instead of 9 and that she would ask all the students what their plans were for that day. Well just the day before Christmas Eve she said she had talked to the students and most of them would not be coming, but we would still have to stick around until 7:40. Our Christmas party started at 7, so just go 40 minutes late wouldn’t be bad. Christmas Eve morning we had 3 of our students over to our apartment to help us make some caramel popcorn for all the students at school that day. When they came they each brought us a gift, it’s part of the culture for them to do that, but it was very kind of them. We had a lot of fun playing some card games and making the popcorn, which they had never seen done before. When we finished we took them out to the school field across the street and played some Frisbee. They left and then we went the work. It was pretty much just a party day and a lot of fun. We watched Ice Age with them and gave them caramel popcorn. They we played a few rounds of the traditional Waite Family rip the tape off the box game and they really enjoyed it all. We ended up getting off at 6:50 because by that time we only had 4 students at the school anyways and we were able to go over to the Church Christmas party. At the party the Bishop talked awhile and then they had a lot of musical numbers. After the performances we had a delicious pot luck dinner.
Christmas morning we had the missionaries over for breakfast at 7 am because they had to catch a bus at 8. We made some crepes with fruit to go on the inside and the missionaries shared a beautiful Christmas story with us. They took off and then Liji and I opened our gifts. I found a note in my stocking that Santa had gotten lost and had to leave my present in the closet. I went and found a huge box waiting for me. That was so nice of Santa. It was a keyboard. I almost cried when I opened it. That was so thoughtful of him. Now I can actually practice for the hymns that I have to play in Sacrament meeting instead of sounding like an idiot every week. Liji didn’t anything so big, just a few trinkets and treats and ties, which I always win with.
We also celebrated Liji’s birthday while we were in Australia. He got a big Aussie Birthday party and had delicious Blackberry pie made by Mark’s twin brother Jay, who worked in a bakery for 7 years. It was so good, I've never had a crust that came even close to this, but Liji said it still didn’t beat his moms. He was sung to in both Aussie and Spanish. It really was a great trip. Liji has not been lying when he has talked about how great of a guy Mark is. It was really a humbling experience for me to meet them. They are truly servants of the Lord in their every act. Even though there are some very hard things that the Macphersons are having to deal with at the moment, I watched them each day doing everything possible to help all the others around them. Serving one person, after the next, after the next. I feel so blessed just to have met such people. I look up to them so much. Even though it was my first time meeting them and we were only with them for 5 days, we became part of the family. I hope that our next trip to visit ends up being much sooner than later. Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. You are all in our thoughts and prayers. I know we are far away at the moment but if there is anything we can do for any of you please let us know. We love and miss. Happy New Year!

Snow Pictures

2009-12-24T21:06:00.001-08:00

Here are just a bunch of pictures from last weekend when it snowed for 4 days straight. We would have accumulated more if it wouldn't have been so warm. It stopped on Monday and has now already melted pretty much completely. It has been really warm, it felt like Spring. Weird I know. We are sad it's already gone but we had fun while it lasted, and it is a wole lot nicer getting around on dry roads when you don't have a car.

That's me over on the left side of the picture riding my bike.Liji took this while we were riding home from work.

Out at the Air Base last Saturday.

Just the Perfect size icicle for me....

...to get Liji with:)

These are some cute little snowmen the Korean ward members kids made during their Primary. They only make snowmen using 2 balls here. None of the kids will believe me when I say that snowmen are just much bigger and better when using 3 snowballs.

Me again up there on the bike and Liji wanted a picture of a scooter out in the storm. They are hardcore.

Liji took some of his classes out to play in the snow at the end of their lessons. They sure had fun!

I had my students make some Christmas cards for their families. Here's some of them hard at work. They're pretty cute.

I finally got a picture with some of the older girls. We just don't understand why they are so camera shy but the kids around 14 and up are expecially shy about getting their picture taken. The only way I got this one was because they wanted to get a picture of me with them, so I said I would take one if I could get one too. They agreed, but as you can see the 2 sitting down next to me made sure they had their scarfs on so they could cover up half their faces.

It's Chritmas Time

2009-12-22T03:15:00.000-08:00

I'm at work and my class got cancelled, so I'm just sitting here in the office and so I might as well write.
I am way behind this Christmas. I think it was because it took so long for me to actually feel like it was the holidays. I didn't really feel the holiday spirit until this last weekend, now I'm sad that Christmas is upon us and will soon be over. I have been enjoying doing fun Christmas activities with he students this week, but they are definately not as excited about Christmas as we are. They are in school clear up to Christmas Eve and Christmas really just isn't that big of a holiday. Most of the students will go to church on Christmas Eve and Christmas. I think the difference is the whole spirit of giving. They don't really exchange gifts on Christmas and no one goes out Christmas Caroling or makes treats to take to neighbors. Theres is just not that excitement and joy in the air that you feel in America around this time of year. This week it has been there for me. So now I'm worried because I have all these things that I want to do but no time to do them. We are having a Christmas party for the students at school Christmas Eve. Because of that (having to work) we won't be able to go to the Korean wards Christmas party which we are really bummed about, but it should be fun spending the evening with the students too. We will play some games and I am bringing some popcorn to eat while watching a movie. Hopefully it turns out well. Liji has said for 3 years now that he doesn't want any presents, so maybe I will just lesson my worries by doing just what he asks. But everytime he says that I should do what he wants I just have to reply so you didn't like gettin the DVD I made of your football games, or your new pair of pants or the many other things I have made for you. And he can only say "yes" he did like them. Well, I like to give him things he likes so what is so wrong with that. He sure seems happy about recieving them when they actually come, but I guess its good that he doesn't expect them. I'm in a dilemma here. Does Liji really want no gifts? Well I guess this year he has made sure that he didn't have to worry about me getting him something by stalking my every move. This whole month he has been with me 24/7. Of course if I want to go anywhere he wants to go and if I'm on the computer he is sitting right there next to me. It's definately made it hard to do anything sneaking. Sorry this is getting to be a pretty random post. MERRY CHRISTMAS!! I LOVE this time of year.

Loving the Christmas Season!

2009-12-20T04:06:00.000-08:00

It started snowing last Wednesday and has pretty much going at it since. Well did actually stop this afternoon, we'll see how long it lasts. Don't have time now to post all our snow pictures now but will do it soon. We have these flowers just outside our apartment building that are still hanging around. Just thought they were so pretty with the snow on them like that, and we wanted to share:)
Just thought I'd share how expensive snickers would be if we ever felt like splurging to have some American candy. That price below is in won, but that equals about $15 for this not very big bag of SNICKERS. YIKES!

I know this will sock many of you but these leggings that I am wearing were creatively made by Liji. So we said before how we found this place that has all these nice wool sweaters for only $2. So instead of going out and buying scarfs to wear while driving our scooter, we thought it would be warmer and cheaper to just buy a sweater and cut it up. Liii did is the one that carried this plan out and then will the left over arm sleeves he just sewed on some elastic at the top where he should would be if you were actually wearing the sweater and turned them into some leggings for me. I am not one to normally wear leggings but they're really nice to keep warm around the apartment and I wear them on Sundays under my skirt and I've actually even started wearing the under my jeans to keep warm. I haven't been brave enough to wear them on top of my pants yet, I don't know just not quite my style. Yes, I know he's practically a genius.

Here's our cute little Christmas set up for our apartment. Lucky for us the foreign teachers here before us left a tree and decorations boxed up in the closet so we didn't have to go out and buy anything to use for just one year. Really helpful in feeling more of the holiday season.

This last Wednesday night we went to the orphanage again and it was their Christmas party, so we got to watch all the kids get presents from Santa. They were sure excited and it was fun to be there with them. There were quite a few military members that came to it as well and brought the kids a lot of candy. Well this one lady, who obviously hadn't been to the orphanage before to know how wild and not shy these kids are, decided to give the kids some candy canes but instead of handing them individually to the kids she just held this brown bag open for them to choose a candy cane from. Nicely saying, her stash pretty much got attacked. The few kids that did get any candy canes took like 20 each(as many as they could fit in their hand, and her candy canes were gone in about a minute. It was so funny to watch her try and unsuccessfully pry some back out of the kids hands after she realized how many they were taking. I so wish that I would have been thinking fast enough to get this on film, but I didn't. It would have definately won some funny contest. We were laughing so hard! Gotta love these kids though:)

The kids decorating the Christmas tree set up at the Gunsan Ward building.

SNOW!!!!!

2009-12-19T16:09:00.000-08:00

It has been snowing, snowing, snowing here. So gorgeous. I lived in Idaho for 6 years and I thought we got it bad there, but I have never seen this much snow coming down so consistantly from one storm. This morning was our 4 morning to wake up to it still snowing. We love it! It has definately made our travelling interesting though. We have been riding our bicycles through the storm and it really has been bad we just bundle up. And I thought it would be more slippery trying to ride the bike, but it really has been fun to be riding through the snow, not bad at all. I do love the snow though. We thought that we had got a lot of snow here in town but then yesterday we took the city bus to the Air Base which is about 5 miles out of the city and right on the coast of the yellow sea and they hav gotten about twice as much snow as us. It was so fun to be out there and trudge through the snow with our friends. We are headed to church now so I don't have time to post pictures, but hopefully will get some up soon. Miss everyone back home.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!