Thanksgiving!

This weekend we celebrated Thanksgiving with our English group from Joyful Church. Ashley and I started preparing the turkey in the morning. We had never done it before, so it was very fun and a little scary sometimes!

Ashley made the stuffing and stuffed the bird. We buttered it up, added salt and pepper, and it just barely fit into the tiny oven!

About 8 hours later and some prayer, the turkey was done! Peter did a wonderful job carving. The Koreans were so impressed, he got all the credit for cooking such a moist turkey! There were about 20 people for our potluck feast and almost no leftovers. It was a great party.

Some Koreans had never had turkey before.

We all love turkey!

Our friends Daniel and Heidi helping out.

Peter's first block print is finished! Check it out! This is a scene we viewed from the roof of a building in Fez, Morocco.

Our coworker William took us out for Indian food. We shared 6 different kinds of curry and it was amazing.

The aftermath

Teacher Ashley and Teacher Jennifer. They know all of the cool ways to pose for photos. The most popular, of course, is the peace sign.

The close second is the arm heart.

Look how Korean we are! Our first heart pose.

Getting into the swing of things...

We found a place where we can get cheap, dependable pizzas (Papa John's is $25 here). This is the sweet potato honey mustard pizza, Amie's personal favorate. We haven't tried the Korean choice: hotdog and mayo.


We also tried Korean army stew, Budae Jigae. It has: spam, ramen, mushrooms, kimchi, bean sprouts, beans, hot dogs, mandu (pot stickers), and deok. It was huge, very spicy and came with five side dishes and bibs too.

We cooked it right at the table!

This is Amie's favorite river. They are both beautiful in Autumn.

Saturday

Today we had our first Korean class! It's fun, but it will definitely be harder to grasp than Spanish. We learned the alphabet and how to write our names as well as some basics like hello, thank you, I'm sorry, how much.. and of course sit down and be quiet!

On our way home we passed a stall selling these awesome fish. We heard about these from our friend Rachel, so we bought a bunch of them. We haven't learned our numbers yet, so our request for two bought us two dollars worth. We ended up with six. They are delicious! They are like waffles on the outside and sweet black bean paste in the middle. Amie is in love.



This evening we've been working on our block printing project. Peter is working on a scene from our trip to Morocco, and Amie is working on an image of her beloved Beta fish. We will show you when we're finished!



We've started working out. We jog along the river until we come to an outdoor excersise park, which we will tell you more about later, and then jog back and climb the stairs. This is useful becuase of all of those extra fish we are eating!

The highlight of going to the immigration office...

We were encouraged to take this picture, the passersby thought it was hilarious.

Chusok: Best Weekend of All Time

This weekend was Chusok, the Korean harvest holiday. Though the members of the Christian community here dread this day because they are forced to tell family members that they will not be offering sacrifices to the ancestors, Amie and I had a great time not working on Friday. We went shopping for all the things the apartment still needed, took a nap, went out for Italian food (Amie needed pizza after a week with Peter), and cleaned the apartment.

Saturday, the actual day of Chusok, our friends from church came and took us to Olympic Park in Seoul. It is about 45 min. from Bundang on a normal day, but twice that with holiday traffic. The park was built for the 1988 Olympics in Seoul. It has a very beautiful garden walkway, a river, and is the fifth largest sculpture park. We had ice cream and saw a flame burning for peace that was lit for the games.

After the park we went to dinner at a friend’s house. His family provided quite a feast! The time with the family was great, and the food was terrific! They had beef, pork, fish, and stingray as well as three types of kimchi, noodles, rice, and vegetable cakes. For dessert they had rice cakes (the family owns a rice cake business), cheesecake, apples, and pears the size of cantaloupes. We had coffee and ginseng candies after dinner, and a great time hanging out. The family gave us each a pair of socks, and then we went for a walk in the park. We feel very blessed.

Daniel knows it's going to be good.

After dinner Scott made us bomb coffee.

The generous Lee family.

We are now back in our apartment resting up from the long first weekend together. We went to church this morning and then had lunch at the leader’s house. We took a nap and had a nice dinner. Now we wanted to get the first blog out. Thank you all for your prayers. We have a lot of work ahead of us in our lives and jobs, but we feel secure in God’s love and yours! Thanks!

Filling up the Apartment

In Korea, if you have an old bit of furniture you don’t care for, you take it to the dumpster area and drop it off. College students can then descend and snag all of the good things before they are taken away! Because this happens under the building, you don’t have to carry things too far, and they don’t get wet. We have found a coffee table, desk chair, large picture frame, 2’by 3’canvas painted red, and a dish rack. We are still holding out for the PS3. It is really fun to stop and check when walking home from the market. You never know what you may find.