Cabin Fever

Well, we don't live in a cabin, but we sure get cabin fever.  In the 6 months that we've lived here, we've been in the big city we live in for oh, 6 months of it.  Both Jess and I have had a restlessness in us that we just couldn't figure out.  We haven't gotten out much in the winter, so we decided that maybe we were just getting cabin fever and needed to get out and see some nature.  We decided to take a hike in the local patch of woods.  I looked us up on Google Earth and found a patch of earth that wasn't covered in city and we decided to go hike there.  After all, it was only about a mile from our house - and we had no idea!  Here are some photos of our refreshing little adventure.

Jess and Scooter getting ready to go on an adventure.

A little of what the trails look like, at least the less traveled ones.  Hiking is basically a national sport in Korea (especially for older Koreans) so we were lucky not to meet anyone on the trail during this part of the hike.

We came across probably 30 of these family grave sites.  Scooter probably desecrated about 3 of them. 

Here's a three-tier family grave site.  Some sites are more ornate than others.

We walked into a small village in a valley somewhere and found these funny looking totem poles.  Scooter did his business nearby.

Rice fields that go up in steps.  This is about halfway up the steps.

We came across this old man (ah-ju-shee) and the first words out of his excited mouth were, "I Christian!"  If only we were all so bold.. or maybe he just saw Jesus in us right away and had to claim his brotherhood.  Haha..  nice guy.

The terrain started to get a little steeper so they put up a rope handrail.  Yeah, I had to use it, I'm out of shape.

A two story gazebo "tower" halfway up the trail to the top of the mountain.  We stopped in to take a look.  Maybe I will post a neat video of it.

The Korean mindset:

Up the tower!

The decorations on ceiling of the tower.

Scooty Mess

On a spur of the moment decision, Russ and I decided we would take a trip to Itaewon in Seoul on Sunday so that we could by a book and eat some good dinner. Lately we have been leaving Scooter in the living room while we are gone. Since he is prone to tear things up, we always leave him a cardboard box or something to rip up instead of him ripping up our apartment. When we came home from Seoul, we had an amazing surprise....

Instead of tearing up the cardboard box we had for him. He decided it would be more fun to tear apart our 10kg bag of rice all over our apartment. It took us FOREVER to clean it all up and we are still finding grains of rice every now and then. So, here are some pictures of the present we came home to.

Yeah, 10kg cost us 25,000 won which is about 25 dollars. Gone..

There were piles and piles of it.

He knew he was in trouble. Haha. The face of guilt. 

You can't see it in the picture, but there were also huge piles behind the blue couch and under our kitchen table. 

When we walked into our apartment, this is the sight we saw. 

To be honest, I was actually impressed with this mess. The full bag was in the kitchen under a cupboard and he never bothered it before. He had to have lugged the bag out from under the cupboard, and then out into the living room where he decided to tear it up. There were only a few grains of rice in the kitchen. Even with all the mess, he was still as cute as ever!

Yoido Church

Here we are at possibly the biggest church in the world! It is located in Seoul and it is called Yoido Full Gospel Church. It has a total of about 830,000 members. There are 7 services every Sunday that are translated into 16 different languages. About a quarter of a million people go there every week! Needless to say, it was packed. They preach a prosperity gospel which kind of bugged us. But, it was good as a one time experience to go there.

We had to wear headphones so we could hear the sermon translated into English. Yeah, we looked hot as you can see, lol. 

This is a view of the sanctuary from the 4th floor after the service was over and people started to clear out.

Some cool rock design on the front of the building.

Here we are. 

Here is a full view of the outside of the building. 

Here is a video during prayer time. Yeah, thats right, we took video during prayer. It was just too interesting, we had to show you! If you can look close, they are all talking out loud in korean or just making grunting sounds while bobbing back and forth and waving their hands in the air. It was very interesting to us. 

Science Museum Field Trip

Here are some photos of my 4th graders on our field trip to the Gwacheon Science Museum. Russ's class went too, but he did not get any pictures of them. 

This is actually harder than it looks!

Inside a model of the new future airplane.

Chris was being silly.

This is us in front of a green screen. If we weren't covering it up, you could see we were standing in a subway tunnel.

This is my favorite photo! They had a crooked room and my kids LOVED it! We were in there for like EVER! I love to see the expressions on their faces in this, lol. Especially Sydney's.

These are some of the dancing robots. I thought you might like them. 

Christmas Program

Here are some pictures and a video of our school's Christmas program called Its A Wonderful Life. The two girls in the video are twins from our Kindergarten class. They stole the show!!!

They are SO adorable!!

Snowboarding

So, it has been a while since we have written on here and a lot has happened. We have been so busy with the boys basketball team that we have not had a lot of free time to post things. So, i'm going to post a bunch of pictures with not a lot of words so that you can get caught up with our lives so far.

First, over Christmas break we got the chance to go snowboarding twice at two different resorts, one called Phoenix Park and the other called Hyundai Sungwoo Resort. It was my first time EVER snowboarding so it was a little rough for me. I got banged and bruised up a bit but Russ was a good teacher and I finally got the hang of it and could enjoy it as well. Now I can't wait to go again sometime! So, here are some pics of it!!

Here is a short video of me once I got the hang of it at the end of the first day. 

Christmas - Scooter - Basketball

Merry late Christmas to all of our friends and family who have been faithful in keeping up with our blog!  We understand that the more we slack off with this thing, the less likely you are to keep checking back, so we are very thankful for you.  We can officially check off Christmas as a married couple and in Korea from our list of firsts.  We still have our Charlie Brown Christmas tree up in the living room, garnished with a few expensive plastic ornaments (all ornaments around here are expensive!) and one special "Our first Christmas" ornament that Jess's parents got us (thanks!).  I have to admit though, that this just didn't feel much like Christmas.  It's just not the same without being surrounded with the family and friends that we have grown up with.  The season is just different.  Good, but different.  One good thing about Christmas in Korea is that it is definitely not as commercial as Christmas in America.   Not yet- Korea is ever trying to keep up with western civilization so I give it a few years.

Another thing we've been meaning to blog about is the latest addition to our family.  We have wanted a boston terrier puppy for the longest time and living in a new country didn't change that.  However, boston terriers are hard to find here and just as expensive as they are in the states.  We found a little pet store that sells them, and thought about buying one, but finally settled our minds on not getting one because we couldn't rationalize spending so much on a dog at this point in our lives.  Well, weirder things have happened, but not a week after we made the decision not to get a dog, one fell into our laps.  We visited the pet store again one time just to see the puppies for fun and the lady there showed us a year old pup whose American owners moved back to the states and didn't take him with them.  The pet store lady offered him up to us for free.  We had to think about it for about .. oh.. say, 10 minutes before we decided to keep him.  Scooter brings us much joy and fun in our household.  He's so funny and lovable and very smart too.  We have taught him a small variety of tricks and he learns quickly.  I'll post some photos of the little guy below.

One last order of business is basketball.  If you haven't heard already, Jess and I are coaching boys' high school basketball this year.  I (Russell) am the head coach and Jess is my assistant (but equal) coach.  So far it's been a bit challenging, but we are seeing much growth on our team.  We came into this venture knowing a bit about how high school basketball operates in America.  Too bad it's totally different in Korea.  The kids don't take it seriously like we did in high school and we have challenges such as not having a gym to practice in but twice a week.  Also, that gym only has two hoops and we have to share time with the girls' basketball team. We didn't know what to expect coming into the games, but once we got into the groove we have started to see some promising progress.  We lost our first game by 20, lost our second by 10 and lost our third by 3 (I hate making excuses, but the refereeing was terrible in this game - plus we didn't do our best).  Finally we won our fourth game by 20 points after the very disappointing 3 point buzzer beating loss the game before.  We as coaches were very proud of our guys.  They came so far from their first game until that point and they worked very hard to get there.  Unfortunately they got a little too big for their britches before the next game and we lost by 30.  That last team was pretty good, I'll admit, but we played horribly too.  

Oh well. 

One thing Jess and I wanted from this basketball season was to see spiritual growth on our team.  One thing I've found since starting is that coaching can easily become an idol if you let it.  It is so easy to focus on winning and wanting to be held in high esteem that the true goals are left behind.  I had that revelation after losing our first three games and I rededicated the season to God.  Now, I'm not saying that God gave us a game or anything - maybe He did - but I finally found joy in the game again and we won!  Now Jess and I are trying to find that mid line between trying to push a bunch of kids to be winners and trying to keep perspective of the whole thing and what our ultimate goal is: to be examples of godly leaders who live a godly lifestyle.  Please pray for us in this basketball season that God will convict our hearts during our practices and games that we will make the right decisions and lead by example.  Pray that He will give us the courage and strength to stand up to our convictions and be open to the Spirit's leading.  Pray also for the boys on the team (there are two especially that we want to focus on in prayer) that they will be impacted by the things they hear and see from us.

Thanks for reading and God bless!