Bye Bye Shel and Christopher :(

Shelly and Christopher left Korea Monday afternoon at 3pm. I managed to hold it together fairly well until after parting with them at the security check-in, but then proceeded to bawl like a baby for the entire two hour bus ride back home. Saying goodbye that day, I suffered my first pangs of homesickness since arriving in Korea, but I was also overcome with feelings of thankfulness for my wonderful family.

My time with Shelly and Christopher here was really precious to me. I feel so blessed that they had the opportunity and the freedom to be able to come and stay for such a long time. Korea became a different kind of place to me for the time that they were here. I experienced Korea through their eyes-- and they had a much fresher perspective on it than I have had, even from the beginning of my time here. It was really wonderful to spend time with our Korean family together, and to get to talk about how we saw our mother reflected in them and vice-versa. It was also special just to witness Shelly and Christopher be truly embraced and loved on by all the wonderful friends that have turned into a second family for me during my time here. I really enjoyed bringing those two separate worlds together and seeing that they fit beautifully :)

A couple of days before they left, as we were enjoying treats in this amaaazing little chocolate cafe (I mean, a chocolate cafe= obviously amazing) I asked Shelly and Christopher to each make a list highlighting their favorite things about their stay here. Since we were terrible about keeping the blog updated during their time here, I thought I would share those with you as a kind of summary to give you a picture of what their stay was like and what they valued most in the time they got to spend here.

Christopher's Top 5

1. Getting to stay up until midnight watching Friends
2. Our cousin Moonsun coming to visit us and staying at Mary Nuna's house in Ansan
3. FINALLY getting to go to Busan [after delaying the trip due to illness and injury :) ]
4. Turning 11 in Korea; Getting to decorate my own birthday cake, going to dinner with all of the new friends I made, and then going noraebang (singing room) afterwards!
5. Getting to see a bunch of old stuff

Shelly's Top 5

1. Staying up ALL night laughing and jumping around when we first arrived, even though we hadn't slept for twenty-eight plus hours
2. My siblings regaining their health
3. Meeting all of my mom's family
4. Korean FOOD
5. Sister time and getting to experience a taste of my sister's new life


*To see more about their stay here and some of the things they got to do and experience, go to Shel's facebook page and browse through her pictures. There are some pretty fun ones in there :)

Double the Holiday Love

First of all, Happy Belated *Seolentines* Day!

For those of you who have no idea what I mean (most of you?), that would be Happy Seolal, aka Korean Lunar New Year, and Happy Valentines Day, all wrapped up in one! The two holidays happened to fall on the same day this year, which meant it was a day doubly filled with love for families and friends. And I felt particularly blessed because I had two of the people I love most in the world here to celebrate it with me. :)

Valentine's day has always been a favorite day of mine. Before you start rolling your eyes and jumping on my back for buying into the comercialized hype, let me tell you I will be the first to admit that the whole concept is completely cliched and contrived, and, in fact, my love for the holiday has nothing to do with a desire to be romanced. Rather, I simply love being given the excuse to indulge in overflowing and absurdly ridiculous amounts of girliness for one whole day out of the year. In all honesty, I think that I would probably live my entire life twirling around in a display of pink and red hearts if that were at all socially acceptable, so it is quite fortunate for me that Valentine's day provides an outlet to express my deep appreciation for ubercheesy prettiness and all things tackily feminine.

Even more importantly, though, on Valentines Day it becomes completely appropriate-- in a way that it is not on any other day of the year-- to be extravagantly effusive in expressing your affection for the people you care about, and that is something that I absolutely *love*.

Not suprisingly, Korea, with its booming "couple culture," has fully embraced this particular holiday as well. Everywhere I turned on VDay I was faced with couples in matching outfits bearing gifts of flowers and chocolates for one another. In Korea, Valentine's day in mostly an opportunity for women to shower the men in their lives with lots of love and gifts (don't worry, the men get their turn to reciprocate next month on "White Day"), but I definitely witnessed the love flowing both ways.

In spite of all this, though, Valentines day was still a bit of a sidenote this past Sunday; mainly because it was so overshadowed by the importance of Seolal. The Lunar New Year is the biggest festival day of the year here in Korea and a time for families to travel to their hometowns and spend quality time with relatives. It's akin to the way we might view and celebrate Christmas in the States. (Side note: It was particularly sweet for me to have not just distant family here with me on this Korean family holiday, but my own siblings. I know I said it once already in this post, but I cannot say enough just how grateful I am for the time they have gotten to spend here!)

The Lunar New Year is also the day that everyone in Korea officially ages one year. I thought about skipping out on the traditional ricecake soup (deok guk) that is typically eaten on the holiday, because I was always told by my mother growing up that without eating it I wouldn't be able to become a year older, but in the end I couldn't resist-- deok guk has always been one of my favoriteeee Korean foods, and I just couldn't muster up the will power.

Yum.

Ah, well... I guess being 24 is not *so* bad. And atleast now I can rest easy knowing that I have secured good fortune for myself for the rest of the year :)

*All* my love,
M.E.

Guest Blogger: Sheldon McDougle :)

You may notice that there is a significant lapse of time between my sister's last post and this one. I hope you all weren't too worried. Let me assure you that we are all happy and healthy. Well... we are now.

You see, the weekend before last we all went on a nice relaxing skiing retreat. The weather was great and the skiing was a lot of fun. None of us really having a mentionable amount of experience on the slopes, I think we all did really well. This may have been to our awesome instructor, my sister's co-teacher, Kim Yang Il, who is one of the nicest and most super cool people in the world (you will soon understand what I mean). The first day was mostly dedicated to getting used to the skis themselves and that evening was dedicated to recovering and exploring the resort in our pj's. Then the next morning, after filling up on a good healthy breakfast of Dunkin Doughnuts and painfully cramming our feet into our boots, we were off! The morning went really well. Except for me almost crashing Unnie and me getting stuck in the wall-barrior-thing to avoid Christopher, we were having a very fun, incident free, time. We quickly became hungry for lunch after several really successful runs. We thought it would be nice and pretty to take the gondola up to the top of the mountain and have lunch at the restaurant up there. We were so oblivious to the dangers that lie at the top of the mountain. Dun Dun Dun.

Incident #1: Christopher was super excited to see "Chili hotdog" on the menu and gobbled one down before the rest of us had sat down.

RESULT: Vomit on everything in the back seat of Yang Il's car (including me), and a very sick food poisoned little boy for the next 48 hours.

Incident #2: On our way outside to take a cute sibling picture before heading back down the mountain, I saw several people slip on this patch of ice disguised as a safe route out of the building. Two of whom (one being my sister) hit their heads. One was wearing a helmet and was fine. The other one however, knocked her silly self out.

RESULT: Concussion, vomiting when moved, a separated disk in neck, and (not going to lie) a very worried little sister.

Well, that was at least the initial result; my sister is fine now. She did hit her head really hard and has one more day of physical therapy for her neck, but is doing really well. Her head is not hurting anymore. Just some pain in her neck.

And Christopher of course is all better (except for a minor cold). When he realized he was over his food poisoning he dancing on the bed, jumping up and down shouting, "I am better! I am better!"

I am so happy to have my siblings back in working order now; the first couple days after the ski trip were just a tad stressful, what with living in an infirmary and all...

Guest Blogger: Ferf McFub (aka Christopher)

Shelly Nuna and I were bored because Mary Nuna had to work all day. I had told Mary Nuna that I wanted to see a whole bunch of "old stuff," so she called up her Korean friend Micah. He thought it would be cool to show us around Seoul and take us to Gyeongbuk palace.

In the morning before we left, Shelly Nuna showed me a picture of Micah, so I recognized him in the train station. It was a long train ride to the palace. Right after we bought our tickets, they were doing a changing of the guards ceremony. It was perfect timing!




My favorite thing inside the palace was the heating system. I thought it was really cool and advanced. Shelly Nuna and I climbed inside one of the fire pits.


Then we went to the Korean folk museum where we saw traditional uggs and learned about the history of kimchi.





I even tried on the traditional Korean hambok.




After we left the museum, I noticed there was an ice-skating ring. It happened to only cost one thousand won per person to skate! Super cheap!! We went skating and I fell a bunch of times.




Then we went to a King Sejong museum that was underground. I even tried on his hat.





After the end of a long and fun day, Mary Nuna met us for dinner. After dinner Mary Nuna wanted to stop by the book store (surprise, surprise). It turned out to be alright though, because Micah bought me a comic book as a gift (score!).

By the end of our adventures I was very happy to crawl in bed and fall asleep, but already looking forward to my next day trip into Seoul!

The Little Tom Cruise and Backyard Football

Christopher is a HUGE hit here in Korea.

Everywhere we go, people-- and by people, I mean random strangers on the street-- stop us to comment on how good-looking he is. They are in complete awe of him. And I don't think Christopher is quite sure how to deal with it. He always kind of gets this deer-caught-in-headlights look on his face whenever people start fawning over him in Korean. We've told him to just bow and say kam sa ham ni da whenever he is spoken to, even if he doesn't understand, because chances are it is just yet another person saying that he looks like a "little Tom Cruise"...

Yesterday, Shelly and Christopher came and met me at school for lunch. We went to a restaurant nearby that serves handmade noodles and is owned by the parents of one of my students. The owners don't speak any English and I can never remember the name of the food I like, but when we walked in they knew exactly what we wanted. The meal was wonderful, as usual, and Shelly and Christopher really enjoyed their first experience getting to sit on the floor in a restaurant.

After eating, Christopher and Shelly decided they wanted to go play in the park next to my school. I whined for a minute about wishing that I could join them, and then got the brilliant idea that I could join them if I just brought all of my students along. My lesson for the day was on Thanksgiving, and I was planning to teach the students about American football-- so I decided, why not take the students outside and actually teach them how to play backyard football? Or, better yet, have Shelly and Christopher help me teach them! So I sent Shelly and Christopher off to Home Plus in search of a football (their first shopping adventure alone!) while I conducted the first 3 periods of classroom time, and then we all met back up the park for the last 45 min of class to play a game of touch football. It was a little haphazard and crazy but a lot of fun, and the students were able to demonstrate that they understood all of the basic concepts. They were also really happy to meet my brother and sister, and their excitement over Christopher's adorableness seemed to match with the rest of Korea's.

Below I've posted some pictures of the game that I took with Shelly's camera. Christopher and Shelly look like teaching pros, don't they?




Group shot!



I told the students to be crazy, and this was the result. It doesn't give a very accurate picture of how really crazy they can get.


:)

Sheldon and Ferf take on Korea!

I've taken a short break from blogging to deal with the excitement of SHELLY AND CHRISTOPHER'S ARRIVAL IN KOREA!!

They got in on Friday of last week around 9pm. Their flight was smooth and even arrived in Incheon a little early. The only minor glitch was that Christopher left his Nintendo DS on the plane from DC to Tokyo and had to fill out a lost item form... but we are still hopeful that it will be returned to us.

Right now I am wrapping up my last week of camp before my TWO WEEK(!!) vacation. Shelly and Christopher have lots of ideas for things that they want to do to fill up those two weeks, and I will try my best to post lots of updates as our adventures unfold.

All my LOVE... :)