Thanksgiving

Today I had Thanksgiving dinner with a bunch of the singles in my church. It was great to have American style food (biscuits, pasta, mashed potatos, pumpkin pie....) and great to eat a lot of it! All the same, I'm very happy that I'm coming home to share Christmas with my family. Less than a month now!

Mountain Top View

This is a mountain top view of my city.




For the regular readers who are wondering if that ubiquitous pink hoodie is the only one I have the answer is yes, yes it is. I've realized I didn't bring enough winter clothes with me. I did some shopping this weekend trying to add warmer items to my wardrobe. It's a good thing I did because it was 30 degrees today...

Cotton Candy

This is Mi Hwa. She's a science teacher who I share office space with. She doesn't speak much English which is too bad because I don't speak much Korean. We are both Christians, teachers, and piano players. She has a warm, fun personality. I know we'd have a lot to talk about if we could speak the same language.

No More Jelly Belly Fear

I received a package of candy today from my sweet family (thanks Mom!). It included some of my favorite candy, Jelly Bellys. I love Jelly Bellys and I think there are few foods in the world that can top the juicy pear flavor. But my problem with Jelly Bellys is that I don't like the root beer flavor. At all. Ideally I should just be able to pick out the root beer ones and give them to a root beer lover. But the tricky thing is that root beer looks a lot like chocolate pudding and some other really good flavors. Usually I eat the brown ones carefully, cautiously taking a small bit to test it. But today, I realized that it's really a not a big deal if I accidently eat a root beer flavored one. Since I've been here, I've had pig intestine, squid, pig feet, fermented cabbage, and other things I would never have tried at home (and some I'll never try again). Coming after all that, a root beer jelly belly seems pretty tame.

Fall

One good thing about knowing you're living somewhere for only one year is that you really enjoy the moment. I know that this is the only fall I'll have in Korea. Because of that, I'm staring down the yellow trees and enjoying the mild chill of the autumn afernoons as I walk to school. I spent yesterday helping harvest persimmons. It's similar to picking apples. For lunch, we had pork that was grilled on a sort of hot plate. You put the cooked pork in a large lettuce leaf, add some grilled garlic dipped in a Korean sauce, and voila! Korean barbeque perfect for a persimmon farm picnic.


Pastor Troy (the Canadian pastor) grilling lunch


I was cold. Later in the afternoon, I added a borrowed sweatshirt jacket and fleece pullover on top of what you see in this picture. I think it's going to be a long winter for this Arkansas girl...