Happy Lunar New Year!

Today is the first day of the new year in the lunar calendar.  My Korean friends call it Solar (they say it like this: Sole-are).  This is the biggest holiday in Korea (I think).  We had the day off school.  So my amazing husband and I went all out to celebrate (just kidding).  We did not leave the apartment all day.  It was so nice.  We slept in.  Then I decided to do laundry (good decision).  I washed 2 pairs of jeans, 2 pairs of sweat pants, and 2 pairs of running tights (bad decision).  I realized after I started the washer that I had no pants to wear (well I have dress pants, but who wants to wear that on a day off?).  I did the only rational thing.  I put on a pair of shorts, grabbed one of our blankets and wrapped it around me.  One of my friends during college taught me this trick.  You might be saying to yourself right now, "why did you not put on your robe?"  Answer: it is in America with all my other pairs of jeans and sweat pants.  Sidenote: in case you have not heard me rant about it before, we do not have a dryer, just a washer.  It is not too bad, except we end up with a lot more lint :)

Thank you Ovenless Chef for letting me borrow your picture!

My amazing husband did some "baking" today (Korean style).  I had a tried this ginger cookie recipe last week with some success.  My amazing husband decided to give it another go today.  He added an extra egg to the recipe and instead of cooking them in the skillet, he zapped them in the microwave for about a minute.  They were delicious!  We sadly, both got sugar highs from them.  He had a headache and I had a stomachache.  We do eat sugar - in our coffee, we have cake sometimes - but for whatever reason, they cookies were too much for us (go figure).  I can only imagine the sugar high I will have when I get back to the USA and have some real dessert!  Thankfully the sugar high passed and I was able to gobble up some more cookies. 

About this time, I realized that I should probably go for a run (help combat all that cookie-ness).  My amazing husband turned on the TV to flip through channels.  Sometimes there are really funny Korean TV shows, every so often we find something in English that we like.  Cha-ching!  Without Reservations was on!  Woohoo!  I promptly decided to cuddle up in bed for an hour and watch the movie.  I could run afterwards, right?  Wrong.  As Without Reservations started rolling its credits, the next movie came on.  Would you like to know what it was?  Pride and Prejudice (the newer, not BBC one) I LOVE this movie!  I LOVE IT! And I have not seen the entire movie in quite sometime....so there was no running for me today.  It happens every so often (by every so often I mean one day a week) 

Hanbok

I say ALL of that to say...I have no idea what happened outside our apartment today.  I have no idea how Koreans celebrate Lunar New Year.  I do know that some Koreans get dressed up in hanbok (traditional and beautiful Korean clothes).  We were also told that kids bow to their parents or grandparents today.  I think there is a big meal involved as well. 2011 is the year of the Rabbit.  I was born in the year of the Rabbit (a few lunar years ago).  Happy Solar!
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Book Review

Vacation is over.  I am back at school.  Desk-warming.  (I am bored out of my mind.)  I thought to myself, "Self, you should write a blog post."  Then I thought, "what am I going to write about?  How I watched youtube videos all day yesterday (too boring)?  How my school has no water because the pipes are frozen? (summed up in one sentence)"  Then I thought, "ding! ding! ding!  I can ramble about the recent books I have read!"

Thank you brother-in-law and sister-in-law for a good read!

Love and War by John and Stasi Eldridge
This was the first marriage book I read since getting married.  (As of right now, I have read more marriage books before I was married.)  I was so glad that I read it!  Two BIG points that I took from the book are:

1.) The devil does not want my marriage to succeed.  (why had I not pondered this one before?)

2.) ∴ (this is the symbol for "therefore" for all of you who have not spent hours writing proofs during college math classes) my amazing husband and I need to implement prayer into every aspect of our marriage (I knew this one, but it was a good reminder.)

I have also read 4 fiction books in the last week (sometimes I read books to fast).  You can read about them here.

If you have any books laying around your house that you think I would find interesting, mail them to me (please!).  Or if you have any suggestions as to what I should read, let me know!  I finally have time to utilize a library and there is no English library to be found.  Isn't that the way life works?

Challenge #8: Gyeonju

Yesterday was a long, full day.  I got up and bonded with the treadmill before we started off on our adventure.  We traveled to a nearby city called Gyeonju.  (Note: if you ever go there, do not get off at the train stop called Seogyenju, it is the wrong part of the city and it will take you forever to get to all the historical stuff).  Our first stop of the day was UNESCO World Heritage site: Bulguksa.   Basically it is a Buddhist temple that was really important back in the day.  It was built in 528 and destroyed in 1593.  (They rebuilt in the 1970s and that is what we saw)

This is the entry to the main temple area.

I think we have seen too many Buddhists temples.  The first one I visited in Korea, I was like, "ooo, this is so interesting."  Now I am like, "this is exactly like the last one we saw."

Click on the pic and it gets bigger

We did discover one difference about this temple area.  There was an area where people had stacked rocks.  I am not sure why or what the significance of the stacking of rocks is, but it looked neat-o.

I am not sure if I mentioned, this, but it was cold and windy.  Really cold and windy!  After we walked around Bulguska and had eaten our PB&J sandwiches, we headed back down the mountain and to the Gyeonju National Museum.  This place was pretty cool.  Here we discovered a really big bell. 

According to our touristy book, this bell was made in 771 and did not ring the first time they tried to ring it.  So they did the only logical thing (actually NOT logical at all to my 21st century American mind).  They melted the bell down and mixed in a body of a young girl.  Her last words were, "Emille!" (the word for mother at the time) and so it is now named the Emille Bell (emille rhymes with simile).  I guess it is the biggest bell in the country.  Of course, none of the aforementioned information was on the plaque by the bell....

We also walked around some museums (there are several different museum buildings all within the National Museum area).  For the most part, the museums contained jewelry, bowls, daggers, and horse riding equipment.  After the museum, we walked around this big park with tons of dead grass.  (This is where our trip started getting anti-climactic.)  We were in search of an astronomical tower.    My amazing husband's school had built a replica of  this tower out of milk cartons.  I was really excited to see the real thing.  We found it.  Not as large as I imagined.  The name of it is: Cheomseongdae  (sorry it does not rhyme with any other word that I know)  It is amazing to me that this was constructed in the 7th century and is still around today. 

The last stop on our journey was Tumuli Park.  There were lots of big mounds of dirt (they looked perfect for sledding!)  I guess they were burial places.  We got to go into one of the tombs and see how people (by people I mean royalty) were buried back in the day.  They were buried with a ton of swords and bowls.  Seriously, I think every bowl that the king ever ate of was in that tomb.  It was interesting to see how people thought of "the after life" and how people tried to prepare for it. 

See the mounds?  Perfect for sledding or rolling down

To end our day we tried to find this quaint little restaurant that our touristy book described (It said it had Thia chicken salad on the menu!).  After walking around for a long time (okay maybe it was not that long, but it was so cold and windy that it made it feel like a long time and I had been hungry for the last hour too) I finally gave up.  My amazing husband and I gave in and opted for McDonalds.  Ohmygoodness!!!!!!!  I have missed America and did even know how much.  We had an enjoyable train ride home and talked about our favorite parts of the day.  Did I mention that this is the city that I will be returning to in 10 1/2 weeks to run a marathon through?  (minor detail).  It will be fun to see how spring has changed the city.  Hopefully it will not be windy and cold on that day!

Challenge #7: Motivation

I had NO motivation to go to the gym today.  Thanks to my amazing husband, I finally made it there.  (He pretty much (figuratively) dragged me kicking and screaming there) but once I got there and started going it was not too bad.

Side note: I rediscovered pecans today.  I LOVE them!  I found them at a Western grocery store and got some to top my baked sweet potatoes.  Delicious.  Do you know that when you search on the internet for how long to zap your sweet potatoes in the microwave, it tells you to use the potato button?  (I have no clue what buttons mean on our microwave...I some how doubt that they have a baked potato button).  Oh yeah, Koreans have like 3 types of potatoes.  There are normal potatoes, sweet potatoes, and then there are some in between potatoes that they call sweet potatoes (but taste like normal potatoes to me).  So far I have not seen any red potatoes.  I think I am rambling now.  Anywho, go eat some pecans.

Fun fact about Koreans today: Did you know that Korea uses the metric system?  I knew that in my head before I came, but living it everyday is a total different story.  I am constantly do conversions in my head.  Koreans have even less knowledge of the American system than I do of metric.  Here are some handy reminders in case you travel to a metric country anytime soon:

4.5 kilograms is about 10 pounds (One of my co-teachers who is smaller than me weighed 4.5 kg when she was born!)
5 kilometers is about 3 miles (or 10 km is 6.25 miles)
2.5 cm is about 1 inch (I am 173 cm and my amazing husband is 190 cm.  Koreans ask us all the time how tall we are!)
3.8 liters is about 1 gallon (this is not very helpful)

I recently discovered that my cellphone has a conversion thing on it.  So helpful.  I still try to do my mental math.  Here are some more to help you out
1000 won = $.90 US dollars (as of right now)

38 degrees Celesius is hot! (maybe 100 deg F)
24 or 25 degrees C is room temperature
5 degrees is cold!  (the temperature of my classroom when I get there in the morning)
2 degrees is optimal refrigerator temperature
and the all time famous 0 degrees C is freezing which is 32 F

-17.8 degrees Celsius is 0 degrees F

Challenge #6: A walk in the park

I took the day off from running, giving my body some time to recover and stay injury free.  But I had a lot of energy and a little bit of cabin fever....so I talked my amazing husband into going hiking with me!  (cha-ching!  does anyone say that anymore?).  The first step was trying to figure how to get to the mountain.  But I used the handy-dandy internet and wonderful public transportation site and we were on our way.  We went hiking at Mount Apsan.  I had read on some other people's blogs that it was really easy hiking so I was thought it was going to be a walk in the park.

Nice Beginning

After navigating our way to Apsan Park, we began our hike.  It was just like the other bloggers had said, nice clear paths.  It was so nice to be in nature.  We even saw a chird (a mix between a bird and a chicken, I am not sure what it was) as we started our hike.  The air seemed cleaner.  The sun was shining.  It was a great day for a hike.  All the pictures that you will see in this post were taken by my amazing husband.  (He is way better at taking pictures than I am).  And any picture you see, you can click on and it will be a lot bigger.

People working out!

Then we hiked a bit further.  The path became less paved and more dirt.  And more snow.  And way steeper.  I was panting.  (So much for being in shape).  I decided that we needed to take a break.  Guess what we saw?  A gym.  Halfway up the mountain, in the freezing cold there are people working out.  I am pretty sure I have never witnessed this.  People hike halfway up a mountain to workout in the outdoors in the middle of winter.  Gotta love Koreans.

After hiking for like 2 hours we finally made it!  We were on top of the world!  Would you like to know what is on top of the world?  A helicopter landing pad (true story).  Here are our pictures from the top of the world.

Woohoo!

So pretty!

Our lovely city!

 So then after making it to the top of the world, it was time to go back down.  We decided to try a different trail for the way down.  It was so steep! (Side note: we did not see any other people on this trail, I think everyone else knew it was too slippery and steep to hike on...) They had wooden posts in the ground and rope connecting the posts.  I was holding onto the ropes most of the way down.  It was fun trying to stay on our feet.  I felt quite accomplished with our hike.  It was so nice to be in nature and the quiet peacefulness that comes with hiking.  

The rope that helped me down the mountain.

Happy Birthday Binks!

I wanted to give a shout out to my mom, Binks.  It is her birthday today.  I was like, I should think of a story about us and put it on my blog.  This was the first one that came to mind:

We were in the parking lot at HyVee when I was 15 and I was learning how to drive.  I was driving the awesome minivan and I tried to pull into a head on parking space, but I did not get it quite right.  So I backed up and tried to do it again.  And again.  And again.  I tried like 8 times and still could not get it.  My mom and I were already laughing at this point in time.  So we switched places and she was going to show me how it was done...but she was laughing so hard that she could not do it.  It took her 3 tries to get parked.  Then at the very end when we finally got parked, we noticed that car next to us had a guy in it and he watched the whole episode.  We lost it, we laughed so hard! 

Happy Birthday Mom!

Challenge #5: Trying to finish

I try really hard to be a good wife.  I could give you a list of things that I do, but that would be boring for you.  This week on the "good wife" list I had watching my amazing husband's favorite movie (I think it is his favorite movie): Lord of the Rings.  I am a girl.  I like girl movies.  I do not like adventure movies (that is what my amazing husband calls them).  I attempted to watch this epic movie once before, but I could not get through it.  I thought that it was going to be some amazing plot line or have really great characters.  Let me tell you the whole story: good vs. evil.   Who is going to win?  duh!  Good.

Here are some characters from the movie

I do not like battle scenes at all.  I do not like to watch people fight.  Not my cup of tea (I am drinking tea right now, white peach tea.  That is my cup of tea).  So anywho, I decided that I was going to watch all of the first (of three) movie this week and like it.  I did make it through the first movie, but I am not sure I actually liked it.  I tried to be positive, but then my favorite character died.  Nevertheless, I finished watching it.  I did it.

Fun Korean culture fact: There are men who drive trucks very slowly down the street.  They sell things out of their trucks: potatoes, oranges, garlic, whatever.  Usually it just one item per the entire truck.  How do these truck men let you know that they have wonderful things to sell?  They have speakers on their trucks.  They play a chant over and over and over and over and over again.  I do not remember this street selling thing every happening in America (well there are ice cream trucks, but they play happy music and sell ice cream so that is completely different!)