Ice Ice Ice!!!

We have a friend here who posts a lot of fun things to do here in Daegu on her facebook page. This was one of her facebook page ideas and she wasn't able to find this place, but since we bought a GPS here we thought that we'd give it a try. It is called Mountain Biseul Ice Park. And after 2 hours of driving we found it. It would have taken 1 hour but I called a wrong turn from the GPS and it was about another 50 minutes later to find another route. Opps! We loved being able to watch some of the ice sculptors use the chainsaws to start working on the ice. The boys were in amazement as to how much ice it took to make a large ice sculptor. They had water squirting onto some of the trees and some very large igloo type area where you could walk right through. Very fun, and free, but not realizing how long it was going to take up to get there, we decided to eat dinner when we got home. 8:30pm dinner not too bad right? Well, it is because we usually eat around 5-5:30pm. It was worth the drive to be able to experience something different including the toll booths that we couldn't read what lane to get into and found that going and coming back we got into the wrong lanes and got the sirens and honks from cars behind us. Oh well, all they had to do was look at us and say some remarks about the stupid foreigners under their breath and then move on. But we are attempting to move out of our little area of Daegu and try a few more things. Next time we are going to try the driving during the daytime.

Birthday boy

Our baby is nine! What a special little guy he is. We can't say enough great things about him because he is such a neat little boy. He is still loving reading and if he is into a book enough, it takes great force to pull him away from it. He is loving legos and is now discovering that he can put them together with the directions by himself. Lets just say that he got quite a few of them for his birthday. And most are now put together. We had a birthday get together for him on his birthday with a few boys from our church. And they watched Karate Kid and had a blast. The day after his birthday he told us that is was still his birthday because if we were in the United States it would be his birthday then. So I guess in a way we had two special days.

Down by the river

We were told by some Korean friends that there was ice skating down by the river starting on the last day that the boys were in school before Christmas break. So we decided that we would take the boys there over the break to have a little fun. It cost us 1000 won (about 90 cents) for one hour, to skate. We had about a half hour walk across the river that I run on and the boys had a great time just getting out and being by the river. We had a great time and the boys especially Isaiah were adopted by two little girls who would help them up and skate with them so Brandon and I for the most part got to skate by ourselves. The little girls are 11 years old. Compare them to our almost 9 year old. In the picture where the little girl is helping Isaiah up there is a big tower type thing behind them. This is a women's parking garage. It looks as big as two cars fitting on each floor. The cars are then lifted and taken back down by an elevator type thing. Pretty cool! There is a shopping center right next to the parking garage where I have been to a Japaneese restaurant that is very good. 3/4ths of the way through our Braxton fell on his face and bloodied up his gums. They are healing! Yay, no damage done.

Christmas

We had a wonderful Christmas. The boys came in at 6:30 and told us it was time to get up. Isaiah told us that he didn't know how he got in Braxton's bed. And then the truth came out. He and Braxton snuck out to check on gifts. The picture of the loot is Isaiah's stocking completely empty and spread out all over the couch. Humm! I guess that they were very sneaky. All in all we had a nice day. Our church also decided to have church at 1:30 instead of 10:30am. Yay, more time to relax!

Before Christmas Activities

Brandon took the day before Christmas Eve off and we had a nice relaxing day. Took the boys bowling on post and practically had the alley to ourselves. Fun fun! The big winner was mom!



I took the boys downtown to a traditional Korean outdoor market Christmas Eve. Where we ate my favorite pancakes that they make here. We had a good time. In the pictures you will notice that the market is three stories tall. It is jammed packed with everything to buy. I even found an area that I had never been to before where they were selling live chickens, rabbits, ducks, dead pheasants and right smack in the middle there were kittens and puppies. (hoping that they weren't on the menu too. What a fun day.





We took the boys to eat on post at the Hilltop Club. They were putting on a Christmas dinner. Yum.
It doesn't feel as Christmas like here as we felt at home due to the fact that Christmas isn't as big of a holiday for the Korean's as it is for the Americans. We had to go looking for the Christmas lights. We took a walk down the busy streets by our house to go to Daegu Bank where they were pretty decked out with lights. Our apartment building even set up a few lights outside of our window a few weeks before Christmas.

This and That

Since I've last posted, I have gotten busy! I have boughten curtains for all of the bedrooms in our house. Brandon and my bedroom was the only one that didn't have to be altered. Now we all have very dark bedrooms. Yay! And I din't even come close to the $400-500 dollars that the Korean curtain guy quoted me. I found some curtain tracks at a local store called Home Plus and it is Koreas version of WalMart just a little more expensive. The tracks were very cheap and so I bought them hoping I culd get everything to work. It did! Yay! My Korean frind Jin took me to a traditional Korean Market called Seumoon (su-moon)wow did we have a blast! I was able to try a lot of different types of Korean food most pretty good. Especially a Korean pancake called Ha Tu (don't know how to spell it). They put the dough into a ball and then put a mixture of brown sugar, sugar, cinnamon and peanuts inside then flatten it and fry it on a skillet like we would in America. Can I say that is by far my favorite treat tha I have had here so far. Yum!


I have been wanting to reapolster my kitchen chairs for a few yeas now, and found some fabric back in NC that I just loved. But decided that we were going to be moving to one of the largest textile places in the world and waited until we got here. I hadn't found exactly what I wanted and then found a cute little lady in a market who tried very hard to cut me a deal and I bought enough fabric to cover 5 chairs. One chair got broken in the move. I bought this fabric for $15. And even though it wasn't exactly what I wanted, I thought that it would work with the chairs and the wallpaper that our landords have in the kitchen and if I really didn't like it, I could find something else because I wasn't out much money. I love how they turned out. Thank you Tracy for telling me how to do it myself. It was very easy.

Brandon has now decided to buy me a sewing machine so that I can start to get busy here with all of the fun fabrics here. Watch out! I may post some of my creations afer I learn how to use the sewing machine.

Since our last post Isaiah has lost two more teeth. So I thought that I would post at how cute he now looks. His bottom tooth came out on its own, but while were into the dentist yesterday the Dr. told us that he could pull it out and give an examination and exrays to Isaiah for $20 and so we let him pull it out. Kind of hurt. The Dr. said that numbing the tooth would hurt more than the actual pulling of the tooth out. Isaiah had no idea what was going on until it was out. I'm not sure if he will want to go back! But he was sure happy to have something to show the Tooth Fairy. We had to talk the dentist into letting us have the tooth. My friend had to come because none of the staff spoke much English. She told us that it is a Korean law that if the Dr. take anything out of a body including teeth they are to dispose of them. But he also understood that the American's have a tradition that they do with their teeth and he told us that he would allow this just this one time for us. So, is our dentist now a criminal? We don't know but are so gretful to have had him.