Monday, December 30, 2013

Fun and Randomness before the Holidays!

Being in a foreign country for the holidays can bring many worries, challenges and new experiences.  As you can imagine, T.G. and I have see them all so far.  I want to put this blog post out before the real holiday blog (holidays were wonderful, by the way) just so y'all can get a feel for pre-holiday craziness in South Korea.  


 
In the spirit of the holidays, the leaders on post do their best to bring holiday spirit all around the post to make those of us far from home not feel so out of touch with the fact that it is a major holiday that is highly celebrated in the United States.  For instance, there was a tree lighting on Yongsan on December  2.  Unfortunately, we were unable to attend due to T.G. working a night shift that night.  They also put up very festive decorations around post at places like the commissary, the fire station and The Dragon Hill Lodge.  I believe Santa even visited The Dragon Hill!  



T.G. and I managed to take advantage of his schedule and take a trip to Busan, as previously mentioned.  We also had the military ball on the 14th, which was my first official military function.  I found it quite fun and exciting to see T.G. and his colleges dressed in their dress blues or tuxedos, enjoying a night outside 'the office' just having some fun!


Side Note:  Nicolle and I bought these dresses in Itaewon on the Thursday before the ball, picked them up on Friday after alterations and were ready to go on Saturday night….talk about customer service!

























I completed my Korean Language Class after 10 weeks and learned a lot, but have decided to take this next session off, due to a lot of planned travel.  Missing class is frowned upon.  But I feel that I learned a lot in the basic course and now my friend, Nicolle, will be taking the same class this next session, so we can study it all together!  If I decide to take the next course, I can test in and move forward with my Korean Language learning.  



Many of you already know, but T.G. has offered to stay in Seoul for an extra year in hopes to put him in a position that he would prefer later in his career, not to mention that we still have a lot to do here…nothing is official as of yet, but it's looking that way.  Luckily, we have amazing foster parents for our babies at home and all have agreed that they want to continue to care for them until we get home.  



Speaking of our babies, since we have extended another year, our landlord agreed to allow us to have a small dog or cat.  SO, we adopted Colby from the vet shelter on post!  He's the sweetest thing and I just know he will make an awesome little brother to Mr. Chedder once we are all together again.  







I've also started watching one of Julie's children, Rachel, on Wednesday afternoons.  Julie, my flower school teacher and dearest of friends, has had some schedule changes at the flower shop and her nanny, who was from the Philippines, had to return to care for her own family, so I offered to help out.  Rachel is the cutest 6 year old and we have a lot of fun together.  I hope we can learn a lot from each other!



Amongst all of this, we managed to get our Christmas gifts sent, on-time, as far as we know and even sent Christmas Eve goodies to each of our families.  Many of the gifts we chose were from areas in Seoul, where we found unique things we knew people would appreciate the fact that the item was from Korea, others we ordered their favorites from the internet…why buy people junk they won't really use or want, right?  Just before Christmas, T.G. had to work a tough stretch of five nights in a row, but at least he was off for Christmas!  More to come about Christmas later!

Thursday, December 12, 2013

Busan, South Korea (December 2013)

T.G. and I decided last minute to take a weekend out of Seoul to visit the second largest city in South Korea, Busan. We made our way to Busan from Seoul via the KoRail (http://www.korail.com/en/), which is such an easy way to travel around this country! 






We were excited!  Can't you tell!!


Busan is a beautiful seaside city that has so much to offer!  We stayed at a hotel in the Heaundae Beach area and loved it!



When we arrived in the late evening, we got checked into our hotel and grabbed a quick dinner at the chicken and beer place across the street.  The first full day, we ventured over to Jalgalchi Market, which is a HUGE fish market…even larger than the one in previous blogs. Luckily, the subway in Busan uses the same T-Money cards that the Seoul subway uses and they are built very similarly.  This made is super easy to move around the city with no problem! After the market, we walked around Taejongdae Resort Park for the rest of the afternoon and saw some beautiful ocean views!  




The second day, we went to an area called Centum City, which is home to Shinsegae Dept. Store and tons of other AMAZING shopping…not much was actually bought, but we had so much fun seeing all the different things there are here!  The Bexco center is located in this area as well, and if you can believe it, T.G. actually passed up seeing a Michael Jackson tribute, "Thriller", that was showing the weekend we were there!



Our third day was spent at the Busan Aquarium, where we saw a penguin feeding (they actually call them jackass penguins!!) and a shark feeding!  After that we walked along the beach boardwalk and found ourselves down a sea side trail that had more beautiful ocean views that were also very close to our hotel!  





On our last day we basically checked out of the hotel and made our way back to the train station, via subway, and headed back to Seoul!

Just like in Seoul, the shopping is amazing in Busan and should not be missed…there is a market in the Heaundae area that is not very large, but you could walk down it a hundred times and not see the same thing twice!  We found a few treasures and gifts along the way. It may have been a quick little get-away, but we sure enjoyed it and hope to go back in the spring when it is warmer!