Merry Christmas!

While preparing to come to Korea, most of the people I talked to told me that the holidays were going to be the hardest times. It's a time when families come together, familiar food is eaten, traditions are upheld, and loved ones gather together. I was fully prepared to be depressed and crying over skype, and having Kyle pick me up from the floor. I told Kyle especially to prepare for me to have a panic attack, because as a chronic worry wart, I tend to have mini freak out sessions. 

But this year in Korea, it was quite the opposite. I didn't sit by myself in a puddle of tears. I didn't wear Kyle's patience down with my emotional outbursts. I didn't do any of the things that I had prepared myself and others for. It was actually quite a perfect Christmas. This year, I spent it singing "White Christmas" in bed at midnight while watching snow falling from the sky. I spent it making blueberry pancakes and eggs for breakfast. I spent it drinking a delicious maple latte with my loving boyfriend in front of me. I spent it surrounded by great friends at a restaurant. I spent it laughing and talking and crying tears of joy. I spent it surrounded by all the people that have defined my life in Korea. And while I did get a little sad hearing about the feasts that everyone was sitting around, and the gifts that everyone was opening, it brought more happiness to me than sadness.

I have learned so much during this past year, especially in this past week. I really focused on preparing myself for the negative, being pessimistic about how I would react to these hard times, and it really was nothing to worry about. It was a great and happy Christmas; one that I will never forget. It taught me to break away from that fear that is usually holding me back. So instead of being afraid of what is in the future for me, or what may be looming when I leave here in March, I just have to look back on this week. I expected it to be the worst, but it turned out to be the best. Things are starting to make sense in life. It only took 24 years and 20 months in Korea...but that's a start.

I hope everyone is having a great holiday week. I hope that you, too, are grateful and thankful. And that you, too, are seeing everything as positives instead of negatives. And that you, too, are aware that you are loved by many people, one of whom is in Korea right now.

Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays! Happy New Year! And I will see you all next year! 

Lot of love from Korea

Kyle and I in front of a snow covered Christmas tree, on our way to a coffee shop for Christmas lattes.

Ryder skyping with his favorite Aunt.

Ryder roo

Some of the triplets skyping with me.

The Omura Family Christmas portrait

Family portrait

This is one of the triplets in our family! She's so cutet!!

PS: Look how cute my nephew is. I would pay 1 million dollars to see him right now! I can't wait until April!!!!

Winter is here....

As I'm writing this post, it's technically still fall, but if you look outside, it's winter. The trees are bare, it's freeeeeezing cold, and the sky is gray. I'm not too partial to cold, winter weather. In fact, I've already decided that I really, really dislike it. Kyle and I almost froze to death Friday night while walking back to the subway after dinner in Gangnam (yes, THE Gangnam from Gangnam Style). We were wearing multiple layers, multiple jackets. I had mittens, a scarf, a hat, a hood, and 2 pairs of pants on, yet I was still shaking. Withing 5 minutes of being outside, our legs were burning. It felt like little shards of glass were being pummeled at them. And then, after a few minutes of that, they went numb. We did not like it one bit. If this is a sign of what is to come, I am staying in bed for the next three months. I understand why bears hibernate now. I wish I could eat so much food that I go into a deep sleep. But instead, I must survive. For now, I can only look back on what Fall looked like, and just remind myself that I have 3 more months until I can thaw out on a beach somewhere : )

Here is the beautiful season of Fall in Korea. Enjoy.

Thanksgiving in Korea

It's officially holiday season in Korea, and basically the world. I knew this would be the hardest time to be away from home. I am very, very close with my family and the holidays are very big with us. We make a huge effort to see all of our family members and spend time with them, so being so far away it made it improssible to be with everyone. Luckily, Kyle and I have eachother to spend the holidays with, and all of our new friends that we have made while here in Korea. We also got to spend the weekend with Kyle's sister and brother, Katie and Spencer, and Spencer's wife, Maggie. We had a nice feast with them on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and Kyle and I got to have a Thanksgiving feast at our school on Thanksgiving Day. It was a really great way to spend the holiday. I was a little sad the night of Thanksgiving when things were winding down at night (and I was sent adorable pictures of Ryder at the beach). Hopefully Christmas will be just as merry surrounded by loved ones : ) Happy Thanksgiving everyone! And Happy Holidays!!!!!

I post this video every year! It's my favorite Christmas song and makes me want to skip and dance down the street, throwing fake snow at people! It makes me so happy, so I hope it makes you happy too! 

Another late post....but this one is about my mom!!

This past month has been very hectic. At the end of September, my mom arrived to Korea for a visit! She came with her boyfriend, Rodger, and they spent 10 days in Seoul. We went to all the touristy places, several of which Kyle and I have not seen, so it was a nice vacation filled with new experiences for all of us. We were lucky enough to stay at the same hotel as my mom so we could stay close to her and make getting to and from places a lot easier and cheaper. She came at the perfect time too!! The weather was great, and it was Chuseok, the harvest holiday/Thanksgiving in Korea. Kyle and I got a 5 day weekend, so we got to spend lots of time with my mom! I'll write more about Chuseok in another post, but for now, here are some pictures from my mom's visit.

The first time seeing my mom in over 7 months!!! These were the cool couches in the hotel that we stayed at in Seoul.

 Day 1: We woke up early to get our bodies moving, and for my mom to adjust to the time difference. We had a giant breakfast at the hotel, and then headed to meet our friend Mia at the FreeMarket in Hongdae. It's a little open air market across from Hongik University where a lot of students sell their handmade creations. There is live music, awesome art, and lots of beautiful jewelry, clothes, and accessories to buy. We took home a few things. After that, we headed to Olympic park for a yummy buffet. There's nothing like tons of food to adjust to a 17 hour time difference, right??

Early morning hike. Whenever my mom goes on vacation, she wakes up early and exercises by walking around the city. I usually sleep in on vacations. But I made an exception this time : )

Mom and I in front of the Olympic flame from the 1988 Seoul Olympics.

Day 2: We had planned to go to a baseball game in the evening, so in the morning we decided to head to Gyeongbokgung Palace in Seoul. This is a giant palace right in the middle of the city. It's back up to a large mountain with a beautiful view. This was a great trip for my mom, as well as Kyle and I, because we learned about some history and we got to see a beautiful palace that we had been planning to visit since we first got here. We also went at a risky time....It was Chuseok, so we didn't know if it would be crowded or empty. We took our chances and we were very, very happy we did. We left the palace and headed to Jamsil stadium to watch the Doosan Bears vs LG Twins. It was very exciting, and really great to experience an international baseball game! The crowd is constantly yelling cheers for the team and the players, and there are funny little mascots that run around as well. We even participated in the cheers with some thunder sticks : )

Day 3: Monday was another national holiday, so on this day we went to Namsan Tower, which I have written about in an earlier. It is where Ryder's love lock is, and also a place that has great panoramic views of Seoul. There is a cable car that goes to the top so we decided to take my mom on that. It was pretty great, a little scary, and something I don't think I need to do every again. Later that day, we headed to MyeongDong, which is the big shopping district in Seoul. It is packed with people. Literally....PACKED. You have to mentally prepare yourself to go shopping there. There are thousands of people, hundreds of vendors selling strange foods, some delicious, some not. And lots and lots of clothes and accessories. If you have received a present from my mom since her return to California, she probably got it from this area. It was quite a trip.

Day 4: It was finally NOT a holiday, and things were starting to open up again...or so we thought. We were heading to the National Museum, and as we were walking I noticed how eerily dead it was outside. No hoards of people, which I thought the museum route would be filled with, and signs up. As we reached the entrance,  a security guard comes up to us and smiles and says "So sorry!" and makes an "X" with his hands, which in Korea means "no" or "don't" or "stop"...basically everything that we did not want to hear. The museum, it turns out is not open on Mondays or holidays. And if a holiday falls on a Monday, then the museum is closed the next business day. For us, that day was Tuesday. The day we chose to visit the museum. We were bummed we couldn't go inside, but we were able to walk around the grounds and see the gardens. It turned out to be a nice day. After the museum (or lack thereof) we went to another shopping area. This place is Namdaemun. Namdaemun is a series of alleys that is packed( again...notice the trend?) with people and vendors and strange food and live creatures, and etc. This is where you find the knock-off Louis Vuitton bags, the fake Ray Bans, and the "ajooma" pants ("ajooma" is the Korean word for older woman. Ajoomas wear big, vibrantly printed pants. With pride. A typical pair may consist of blue zebra stripes, rhinestones, and fringe at the bottom.) This was a fun experience because my mom got to see the real parts of Korea. It was not clean, not very friendly, people are yelling, there's raw meat and fish with flies hanging around, yet it is so packed with people. It's a very popular place. There are a few other places like this, but we only had time to visit one. I'm sure my mom has photos, so if you run into her, ask her to show you. In the meantime, I will just provide you with some photos I found on the internet.

Day 5: This was another holiday so we were unsure of what would be open or closed, so we decided to hike. My mom is a very adventurous and active person, and she really wanted to hike while she was here, so I found a few mountains, told her to pick one, and we headed there via the subway. The mountain she chose was Yongmasan. She chose it because there was a large beautiful waterfall with sweeping views of the Han River and Seoul. We got dressed and met up with Katie, Kyle's sister, and her friend Heather. When we arrived, we walked to wear the signs said "waterfall" and to our surpise, it was a man made cliff with plumbing sticking out the top. And no water. Nothing. There was a shallow pool at the bottom that was also dry. We thought, "IS THIS IT?!?! This is the hike??" A small winding path with a giant, dry, man-made waterfall at the end. We started to turn around and figure out what was going on, when a small man with a small dog said "Hiking path? Follow me!" We followed the man and his dog for quite awhile. At times, it seemed like he forgot about us, and we kept on following him. But eventually the path split, and he pointed us one way while he went the other. It was the hiking path!!! And a pretty grueling one!! Lots of stairs, but the description was right, there were awesome views of the city. We made it to the top to be greeted by a large Korean man selling ice cream. It was a great day. That night, we got dressed for dinner in Gangnam, and stumbled upon a nice little show outside the shopping mall near the hotel. It was a Japanese Festival so there were beautiful lanterns, loud taiko drums, and lots of dancing and singing. One man saw us taking photos in front of one of the paper lantern floats that was beside the performance area, so he took his shirt off his back (literally!!) and helped us make the photos look a little more authentic. What do you think?

Day 6 and 7: Kyle and I had to return to work, so my mom and Rodger were left to their own. They did meet up with us, which was great. On Friday, day 7, they came to the school. I had been telling my kids all month that my mommy was coming, so they were all very excited to meet her. They wrote notes, played games, and took lots of photos. One student's mom brought a cake to welcome my mom. The kids sang Happy Birthday since that's the only reason that they could think of as to why someone was given a cake. But it was okay, because my mom's birthday was going to be a week or so later.

Day 8: DMZ! One big thing I wanted to do was see the DMZ with my mom. It was going to be a once in a lifetime opportunity for her, so we had to do it. We got on a bus and headed up to the border. We visited the bride of no return, where the prisoners were exchanged over the border, we went to one of the infiltration tunnels that the north created to attack Seoul, and then we went up to the observatory to see into the North. This was one of the more interesting places because we were able to see, with binoculars, North Korean citizens. We could see propaganda villages (which the government created to mask the fact that their country is poor), real villages (which were right next to the propaganda villages, so what's the point?), the giant radio signal jammer, which isolates the north from any media, the giant flag pole (which the is 3rd tallest in the world, and which is the victor of the flag pole race with South Korea), and just the basic landscape of the North. In the north, the mountains are stripped of trees. They are all bare because they have been cut down and used for fuel. This is how you can tell if you are in North Korea (other than passing a dozen or so heavily guarded forts and fences); the once beautiful mountains turn to barren, dead, brown piles of dirt.

Day 9: My last day in Korea with my mom. We went to the War Memorial and learned about the Korean War and other wars that took place in Korea. Basically, pretty much every major nation has tried to take over Korea. France, Germany, Italy, Japan (successfully)....they all did it. It is a giant museum with lots of see, and we only saw a fraction of it. It was very interesting, and very scary at the same time. Later that night, we took a cruise on the Han River. It was a farewell excursion with my mom, and a beautiful one. We got to see the city at night, go under about 7 beautifully lit bridges, and even watched a light and water show that plays from one of hte birdges. It was a great night, and one that I will never forget. Filled with lots of tears, but lots of love and happiness because it was the conclusion of one of my best weeks here in Korea.

Day 10: My mom leaves Korea. I am sad, but excited  that she was here and able to see and do so much!

Thanks for coming out here, Mom! I know you are reading this, so I want to say thank you to you and Rodger for taking the time to come out and visit Kyle and I. I am so happy I got to spend that time with you!! I love you and miss you and can't wait to see you again in 4-5 months : )