Spring 2015

Spring Time in Korea.  What better way to enjoy the spring, than to do a marathon in Chuncheon!  

After a long long long long LONG Korean winter, Anthony and I joined a gym in hope to start running some races.  

Our goal:  to finish a race. 

I find that if you lower your standards, you increase your probability for success. And guess what?  It happened!

Let's take look at some photos!

This is a beautiful statue outside the Chuncheon Metro Station.  

It is a golden calf, with a subway train flying over it.  What does this say to you?

It spoke to me.  It said, "This town be cray cray.  Moooooooooooo"

Here are a few pictures of us at the Chuncheon Race.  Anthony ran a 10K, and I ran a 5K.  Luckily, with setting our goal for finishing a race, we were both winners!  I finished my 5K in 38 minutes, and Anthony finished his 10k in an hour.  Pretty fly for us white guys!

After the race, we decided to eat some lunch. Thank goodness New York Grill is still up and running in Hopeyeong. Our old favorite haunt has a new, Korean owner, but she learned to make good ole greasy USA burgers from the best. Best. Lunch. Evar.

After the race, one of my fellow Korean teachers was getting married.  I have been to Korean weddings before, and they are pretty much the same as western weddings - with only a few differences.  BUT THIS wedding was going to be a traditional royal Korean wedding.  Needless to say, the groom's family has moolah.  They also own a private Korean temple in the middle of the city.  They decided to have a traditional wedding, including a ginormous buffet.  It was really neat.  I don't have great pictures, because there were only a few chairs for older guests to sit.  The rest of us had to stand in a crowd.  I was able to take a photo with the bride before the ceremony, but I don't have the photos yet - as they were professionally done.  There is a lot of bowing, and a lot of traditional Korean music.  This wedding was bomb diggity.  Not to mention, they had a previous photo shoot complete with western style tuxedo and wedding gown.  Don't ask me when she will wear that gown again.  No one got to see it!  But I guess if you own an ancient temple, you can afford to throw away a wedding gown.....
Here are a couple photos.  We met one of our students on the way to the wedding.  She was so excited to see it.  Many Koreans don't have traditional weddings anymore.  So it was a wedding of a lifetime!

Next up, is my new hobby.  The school garden.  The principal and vice principal gave Anthony and I a small plot in their massive garden.  The garden is for the cafeteria, and it lets kids plant some plantitias, too.  I was so impressed by the size, and the PTA takes care of most of it.  They even made us a sign.

I made a small garden plan, but I'm pretty sure everyone thinks we're crazy.    I'm doing small space or Square Foot gardening.  I basically broke things into square feet, and did some companion planting.  Slowly but surely, we'll get there.

This is my mini greenhouse at the apartment.  We're starting a little late, cause they just told us we could have some land.  I think they thought we would just buy little plants at the local garden store.  But we want some western delicacies, like cilantro, okra and jalapenos.  I'm keeping a photo journal to see our progress.

That's all for now!  Thanks for stopping by!