Friday in Seoul

Buddha's birthday is Monday, May 28th this year, which gives us a 3 day weekend!  Thank you baby Buddha!  Aaron and I decided to spend it up in Seoul with Jess and Carlos (whom I will now only refer to as Mayo)  :).

We left on the 5:30pm KTX train tonight and made it to Seoul station at 7:55pm

We took a taxi to SPACE, the studio apartment that Jess and 4 friends are renting and using for yoga classes, cooking classes, building community, art, etc.  The girls had just painted this chalkboard wall, and Aaron and I were the inaugural welcome!  :)

Jess and Mayo's apartment is actually about 45 minutes from the center of Seoul, so to be able to hang at SPACE, which is right near Insadong (the mecha of foreign food and shopping) was perfect!  The 4 of us are actually going to stay at SPACE, together, until Monday afternoon when A and I head back to Busan!  Super excited for some quality time together!

We got to SPACE at about 8:20pm, dropped our bags and walked over to an awesome Thai restaurant for some curry!  I loved the wall hanging behind Jess! 

Aaron and Mayo.

The green vegetable curry was soooo yummy and AUTHENTIC!  

The head chef is a Thai woman and she definitely knew what she was doing!

Part of the purpose of coming to Seoul this weekend was to do a photo shoot of Jess and her friend, Dawn, doing yoga in busy areas of the city!  We did a little location scouting tonight and hiked up to this rooftop wine bar to see if it was somewhere we wanted to shoot from tomorrow.  We ended up scratching the idea, because it was way busier than we thought, but enjoyed the views while we we there! 

We all got home around 11 and called it a night!  Everyone's alarms are set for 6:30am tomorrow in order to get up and get the morning sun!

Wednesday Lunch!

It's a well known fact among my students that Wednesday lunches are ALWAYS the best!  I had never taken notice to the difference in the menu throughout the week, but recently I started noticing that Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday are almost always 100% Korean - tofu, fish, Korean meat, etc.... But, sure enough, if you're a student and you like fried stuff, kid food, or fresh fruit, Wednesday is like hitting the jackpot because that's when Western foods are integrated!

Today's menu was

APPLES...

McDONDAL'S STYLE CHICKEN NUGGETS...

YELLOW CURRY...

AND WHITE STICKY RICE...

If you were a kid, you would LOVE Wednesday's too, right?!

No matter how many times I ask the ladies who serve the food to only give me a little (and yes, I say it in Korean), they still PILE it on!  Korea is a hierarchical society, and this culture flows over into the cafeteria at our school.  For example; if you're the librarian or a teacher's aid, you get a certain amount of food.  If you're a teacher, you get more.  If you're in Admin, you get more than a teacher, and if you're the Principal, your dish is sure to be overflowing everyday! haha  

  

Happy Wednesday from the Dae Gyo Elementary cafeteria!

Sunday, adventurous Sunday!

I woke up Sunday with an itch to get outside and explore! The weather was lovely, the scooter was fixed and ready to be driven, and Aaron was up for a day out too!  So, we jumped on Scoot and went where the wind took us... which happened to be an awesome temple on the mountainside, on Yeong-do island!  I'm not sure what the name of it was, but it was WAY UP THERE and really beautiful!

Buddha's birthday lanterns!  The best time to visit a temple in Korea is right before Buddha's birthday (end of May) because they're covered in these brightly colored lanterns, which are lit at night!

Last week, Aaron sold my Nikon D5000 camera and I inherited his Nikon D90. (The perks of marrying an avid photographer!)  He, in turn, bought a Nikon D700!  We brought our cameras to play around and learn all the new settings. I feel like my old camera took better pictures, but Aaron assured me it's the photographer, not the camera!  So, apparently I just need more practice with my new toy!  I'm not thrilled with how these pictures turned out, but I'm posting them anyway, because today was an adventurous day, and a memory I don't want to forget.

Aaron, being artsy!

There was a darling little Korean boy, playing between these baby Buddha statues, and I was trying so hard to get a good shot of him playing, but I couldn't find all the darn settings!  UGH... I need lots and lots of practice!

After we had had our fill of the temple, we rode back down the mountain! 

While we were heading back down, I caught a break in the buildings and houses and was able to see down to my school.  The red arrow is actually pointing to my classroom! :)

We were starving by the time we got back down into the downtown area of Yeongdo Island, so we stopped in at Cham (참), our favorite restaurant on the island, and ordered some tuna kimbap.  Yum, right?!

... and then treated ourselves to a Sunday afternoon coffee next door.

Around sunset, Aaron asked me to head out with him to be his muse for some photo practice.  He's really passionate and excited about photography, so I was happy to help.  We found a couple awesome alleyways within this neighborhood to get some shots, and then scooted up further on the hill to get a birds eye view of the city below. 

Nampodong (where I spend a lot of time) is right below the tower sticking up in the sky, and Yeongdo Island (where I live) is to the right. You can just barely see the bridge connecting the mainland to the island, between the huge apartment complex in the foreground and the end of the picture.

The sun had fully set and we were still out, riding around, when we spotted this REALLY steep street, lined with lanterns.  So we parked Scoot, and walked, walked, hiked, hiked, up to the top of the street.

This was the view looking back down!  (Again, still learning my new camera settings!)

We knew the lanterns were for Buddhas birthday and that a temple was surely closeby, so we kept hiking to find it.  We climbed, in the dark, up the lantern lit path on the mountain, to the top, where we were blessed with this stunning view of our side of the city!  Aaahhhh, worth the hike!

We made it down in the dark, without falling... AMAZING and called it a night.

I love days like these!

Gilly - Jill Craft Saturday!

I've always been a crafty person, but there hasn't been much reason for me to craft while living in Korea, other than to sew bedding or curtains or to make little things for my 250 sq ft home, but with the wedding coming up, I've found an excuse to come out of my CRAFTY shell!  I debated showing or not showing the things I'm crafting for the wedding, but then thought, for those of you who read my blog AND will be at the big day, it gives you a chance to kinda see the behind the scenes work... Who knows, maybe you'll even appreciate all the hard work just a tinge more! :) 

My sweet friend Gill asked if I wanted to have a wedding crafting day at her apartment this Saturday!  With an "in everything" cat living in my apartment (I love Maverick, but it's true), I was thrilled to be able to lay all my stuff on the ground and not worry about it being scratched up, layed on, eaten, or even worse, thrown up!  Plus it's always more fun to craft with a girlfriend... especially my Gilly!

I've been working on cutting and assembling these fabric flags for weeks!  There are 8 different fabrics that I'm using for different things throughout the wedding, and the fabric flags will pull all 8 together!  Today, I cut and attached 85 flags!  They're all turned upside down in this picture, so you'll have to wait to see what the fabric looks like right side up after the wedding pictures come out!

Today's crafting necessities! 

Gilly is a flower making machine!  She made 6 fabric flowers today, which I'll add pearls to the center of later this week.  I'll be attaching them to an avocado green colored fabric sash and tying them around my two darling flower girls' waist's!   

Didn't they turn out lovely?!  I love even more that Gill handmade them!!

Between cutting and attaching fabric flags to the flag banner, I was busy making little baby bowties and gluing them to small wood pic's to stick in the cupcakes on the big day!
*** Don't mind the no make-up, tossled hair look, please!  It was supposed to be a PJ type crafting day!

I love cupcakes, and I adore mini bow ties... why not pair them up, right?! 

So, there you go!  One full day of wedding-crafting-cutting, gluing, sewing, laughing, and chatting with my Gilly!   Couldn't have asked for a better Saturday!  Thank you for your help, friend!

Cardboard Letters!

I saw a blog the other day, where a girl cut and glued cardboard together to make alphabet letters... Genius!! Then she painted them! I took it one step further and covered them with fabric; two fabrics from the wedding actually! Don't be fooled! They took me all day to make!

When I showed them to Aaron he said they were great and asked if I would make more... My response, "Ummm, NO!" haha. Love how they turned out, but wouldn't recommend it unless you have more free time than you know what to do with!! Lol. Still, I'm kinda proud with what I made out of cardboard, fabric,

and a hot glue gun!