Breaking our vegetarian-ness!

Aaron and I were invited to lunch with Emo, Serry dog's mom, who owns a little teeny tiny convenience shop in our neighborhood.  How adorable is Serry?!  Man, we love this dog and she loves when we come to the store to see her! 

And man do we love our Emo (word for aunt in Korean).  She is just the sweetest, independent, gracious, giving, thankful, and inviting Korean woman!  We absolutely adore her and were really excited when she asked us to lunch!  We met in front of her shop at 1pm and walked over to a beef/pork restaurant down the street with two old men (who we've seen and talked to a bunch of times at her shop).

When we decided to be vegetarian, we decided that we wouldn't be obnoxious about 'it', and if people asked us to lunch or dinner for meat, we wouldn't say no!  We actually really enjoyed the samgyupsal (Korean pork) today!  It was the first time we'd had it in almost 6 months!  

The two old men who joined us are two of the nicest Korean men we've ever encountered!  This one is 78 years old and spent a lot of time in America over the years.  He works 7 DAYS A WEEK, on a ship in Yeongdo's harbor, and has traveled all over during his 78 years!  He speaks minimal English and usually mumbles so darn much we typically have no idea what he's saying and just nod yes and hope we're not saying yes to something we wouldn't never normally say yes too! lol

** I love that the servers cook the meat at your table for you if you can't do it (or don't want to do it) yourself!

I love how the drinking culture in Korea involves other people pouring/refilling your drink!  Not only do they pour YOUR drink, they hold their hand over their chest or arm, depending on the age difference between you and them.

My sweet Korean aunt!

This guy was saying over and over again that he really likes Aaron and I. haha

When we were leaving, we wanted to take a photo all together to commemorate the lunch, but the servers wouldn't touch my camera because they were afraid to use it, so Aaron had to take this one!  My favorite part about it is the old guy in the front who squatted down!  Aaron said, in plain English, "Why is he squatting like that?!"  There are perks to being with people who don't TOTALLY speak your language!

As we were walking out the door, the 78 year old man asked if he could take Emo, Aaron and I out to lunch on Feb 17th, before we leave for America!  I love how hospitable and generous he iis!  I was really blessed by all three of them today and had such a fun time!  My guess is that we'll probably never experience something like this from neighborhood store owners back home, so we're taking it all in and enjoying every moment before we say goodbye to Busan!

Aaaaaahhhhhh!!!

The 6th graders all came to school this morning to find out which of the 4 neighborhood Middle Schools they'll be attending in March. (It's done by a lottery system in Korea and their elementary school teachers tell them). My entire hallway erupted, for at least an hour, with the loudest screams as the students found out which middle school they were assigned. They seemed to be either really excited, or really bummed about the news...  Either way, it was the SAME sounding, blood curdling, scream!  Gotta love overly dramatic Korean preteens!

Just call me "Jill Productive!"

There's nothing more satisfying (okay, I'm slightly over exaggerating) than laying down in my bed at night pulling the covers up to my chin and realizing just how productive I was during the day!  If I ever sit down and do nothing for more than 3 minutes, Aaron will either ask me if I'm okay, or tell me he loves to see me relaxing.  :)  I'm a doer, through and through!  If you worked with me at Millennium High School, back home, you KNOW I'm intense!  I like to get things done, and WAY ahead of time! 

When the bills come in the mailbox downstairs, I'll sometimes turn around and walk right over to the bank and pay them. When a friend asks me to help design their blog, I'll work the next 24-48 hours straight getting it done.  If I feel like our apartment is a little messy, I'll put things away and then re-organize my entire closet before I sit back down!  Like I said, I'm intense (and this is an improvement from 5 years ago!) lol! 

Today was one of those productive days!  I started out with a bus ride over to Seomyeon's H&M, where I spent $36.79 TOTAL on these three coats) and saved $223.59 from the original price!  

Okay, that wasn't really productive, but it was GREAT!  With 35 days left before we leave Korea, I decided to start packing.  (See what I mean about doing things WAY ahead of time!)  I'm now 95% packed for our month in Indonesia, and all of my summer clothes have been rolled up and neatly packed into a box to ship home, or the suitcase I'm taking to America for our road trip!  ... All while Aaron sat nearby, laughing inside (I'm sure) that I was doing this so early!  Good news for him is, I'll probably pack all of his stuff too... Good news for me is, he'll probably cook me a delicious dinner and tell me how wonderful I am!  Sounds like a nice trade to me!   

Christmas is over...

I was pleasantly SUPER surprised when the Christmas cards came rolling in this year!  Some were from old co-workers in Arizona, some from college friends, others from family and friends back home!  It was so much fun to be handed envelopes addressed to me at work, and even more fun to open them, gawk at how adorable the pictures, cards and notes were, and even more fun to hang them on my front door and enjoy seeing them everyday!  (Since Christmas was over 3 weeks ago, we realized it was probably time to say goodbye to all of our Christmas cards and finally took them all down yesterday... sad)

Thank you mom and dad, Amy, Keith and Kaye, Pegg, Mammy, the Tyson's, Heuseveldt's, Irvine's, Neilsen's,  Layman's, Kearns's, Moore's, King's, Hudon's and the Bould's for thinking of Aaron and I and mailing us a Christmas card all the way across the ocean!  We love you guys! 

"Moving out and moving on!"

According to my "Big Day" iphone app, I've got 39 days left in Korea...

With 39 days and counting, I knew it was about that time to start sorting through stuff and packing boxes to ship home. So, yesterday, Aaron and I walked over to the post office (yes, we walked ... and yes, it's that close...) to pick up the boxes. We only bought three boxes for now, but we're probably gonna end up using 3x's that many!  eeekkk.  How could I possibly part with all of my cute Korean coats, and how could Aaron possibly part with all of his new camera equipment and H&M sweaters!?  lol That's the question we've been wrangling with around here!

We poured some wine last night and toasted to:

before we tackled the packing!

For anyone living in Korea, looking to send stuff back to the US when they're finished with their contract, here's the deal.  For the slow shipping (which takes approximately 2 months), you can use ANY box, as long as the dimensions are within these measurements:

length + height + width = 2 meters (and they can't be longer than 1.05 meters)

Or, you can just pick up box #5, the largest box available at the post office.  It'll run you 1,600 won. 

Then, pack to your little hearts content... as long as you don't fill it with more than 20kgs!  That's the limit, for ALL boxes being shipped to the US.  And 20kgs will run you  51,200 won per box.  It'll obviously be less if you have less than 20kgs inside. :)

As you can see, Maverick is a big fan of his "new cardboard toys!"  I had to lay a heavy pot over the one in the background because I woke up to him, more than once, playing inside of it, on top of the stuff we had packed!  Oy vey! Speaking of Maverick... He got a bath today because he'll be meeting his potential new mom tomorrow afternoon! :)