Bobby + Jestine

I am so excited to reveal our engagement photo shoot with Bobby and Jestine from a couple weeks ago!  They were so much fun to work with and were complete naturals in front of the camera!  I think my friend Katie Olson said it best when she said, "I'm in love with their love..."  They really are the sweetest!

To: Jill, From: Aunt Barb!

I think it's fair to say that I have one of the most generous aunts out there!  

Today, she struck again, with a surprise package in the mail!  

Look at all that delicious caramel?!  Looks like I'll be making apples dipped in caramel for the next month!  Woot, woot!

MY aunt Barb knows me so well and knows that I love stuff for my feet - it's the ultimate way to relax in my opinion, so she threw in some mint blossom "foot fizzies" and foot scrub, an awesome pink lip gloss (which I immediately applied) and some perfect for wintertime - red nail polish!  I already have my nails painted today, so I grabbed a wooden chopstick and dipped it into my new nail polish and painted a little heart on my left ring fingernail. :)  Why not, right?!

Thank you aunt Barb! You totally made my day, once again! :)

Dead Battery = no photos

If you're like me, it's hard to sit and read something without pictures! So, let me just say up front, I'm sorry!  I brought my camera with me most of the weekend and kept forgetting that the battery was dead!  Oops.

Friday night, Aaron and I went to The Loving Hut for dinner in Seomyeon, then to H&M for a little shopping (I bought a gorgeous mustard coat with a fur collar. It was 50%! SCORE), then over to Lotte Casino for some roulette with Adam and Ashley!

Saturday morning was spent lounging around the apartment.  Aaahhhhh!

Saturday afternoon and night was spent at a Thanksgiving potluck at our friend Grace's apartment. It was packed with 19 people, 1 adorable dog named Howard, and the most delicious homemade food I'd had in a long time!  Between dinner and dessert, we all rounded up 3,000 won each and played a round of LEFT, CENTER, RIGHT... and guess who the big winner was?!  ME!!!  When I won, I swooped up all of my money and made it rain!  Naturally, right?!  :)

Saturday late night: We got home and set up our Christmas tree!  Now it's starting to feel a little more like Christmas around here!  Nothing like back home, but I'll take what I can get!

Sunday morning, Ashley, Adam, Chris and Stella all came over for breakfast and football at 9:00am!  Aaron made eggs and homemade biscuits from scratch, Ashley cooked up the bacon and I whipped up a loaf of Cinnamon Swirl Banana Bread! Mmmm  I love having a house full of friends and delicious food!  

Sunday afternoon: At 12:30pm, the girls and I bid farewell to our football watching boys and headed to Seomyeon, where I met Gill and Sam for our "Tea For Three" Sunday afternoon date!  This time we opted for coffee and a little shopping!  :)

Today, I'm back at work. SAD  Luckily my kids were rock stars today and blew me out of the water on their oral tests.  Can't complain about that!

Tonight, I'm meeting Aaron at CHAM for some Dolsut Bi Bim Bap for dinner, then heading to see James Bond at the movie theater! Not bad for a Monday, eh?!   

Gary and Sharon!

Aaron and I have been super busy, every weekend, building our photoraphy portfolio for when we come back to the US next year!  Last weekend we did an engagement shoot for a darling Irish couple named, Gary and Sharon!  Check it out!

 FULL POST HERE

So thankful!

I have so much to be thankful for this year - a great job, a cute little apartment to call home, fabulous co-teachers who are also great friends, a loving family back home, a sweet kitty, wonderful friends in Korea and the U.S., a supportive, adventurous, loving and handsome husband!!!!!, and a plane ticket that'll take me to Indonesia for a month and then home to the US in March!  Hallelujah! 

Oh, and I'm thankful for the delicious Thanksgiving feast that Aaron and I cooked up after work last night...
to celebrate our very first Thanksgiving Day as husband and wife!     

Thank you to every single one of you, too! It means so much to me that you would keep up with my life while I live this crazy Asian adventure and document it here!  I feel extra blessed today!
 Happy Thanksgiving everyone, from our lil' family to yours!!xoxo 

I now present to you...

My adorable Korean students and their even more adorable, talents! :)

Behind the scenes...

A friends and photos type of weekend!

Last weekend was full of friends and photography, two of my favorite things!  Friday started off with the school talent show, which I'll blog about later in the week. I somehow ended up with the role of the school yearbook photographer, so I had a front row seat this year for the show! Then at 2pm, the entire school staff (from principal all the way down to the maintenance crew) went on a hike along the coast, ending on top of a mountain with a gorgeous view of Yeongdo Island. 

This is all of the people who work at my school
(minus a few teachers hidden behind the top row).

These are the people I'm the closest with at my school, because we have "tea time" together after 1st period everyday. 

Then we finished the night off with dinner at a fancy duck and pork restaurant overlooking the ocean!

 

Saturday morning was actually spent at home! I made a loaf of pumpkin bread from scratch for breakfast and we lounged around catching up on some TV! Then Saturday afternoon, we met up with Gary + Sharon for an engagement photo shoot on the back of the island!  Here's a little sneak peak of some un-edited photo's that I posted on Instagram yesterday.  Aaron took the top left and bottom right photos and I took the top right and bottom left ones.  I can't express enough how much I love working with my husband! :)

We stopped at Cham (our favorite restaurant) on our way home from the photo shoot for some good ole' Dol Sut Bi Bim Bap, our go to menu item!  

Then we watched the Korean movie "A Moment To Remember" which made me absolutely ball my eyes out!  Of course Aaron had to grab his iphone and film me balling - the perfect blackmail for later! I told him I'd get him back if he ever tried to use it!  Here's a youtube link to the entire movie with English subtitles if you need a good cry one night!

Sunday, I met Gill and Sam for "Tea for Three" in Suyeong.  We had an American style brunch at a darling cafe overlooking the Gwangan Bridge!

Then, at 2pm, Aaron and I met up with our new friends Bobby and Jestine (who we met after they e-mailed us about doing their engagement photos) and rode the bus to Amnam Park for their engagement photo shoot!  They were NATURALS!  Aaron and I had so much fun with them in the woods! **(I took the top 2 and the bottom left and Aaron took the bottom right photo.) We ended up choosing 97 photos from their shoot to edit!  That was a record, for sure!

After the sun went down, we all rode to Nampo for dinner together at mine and Aaron's favorite Indian restaurnat!  The food was delicious as always, but even better this time because Bobby picked up the tab as a thank you for the photo shoot!  Woot Woot! :) 

Then we went home, went through all the photos from tonight and last night, picked our favorites to edit, and called it a night at 9pm!   I think we both needed all that extra sleep after having such a fun and busy weekend!