Simply the holidays

The last time I wrote this blog I was alone in Korea.  While I was alone I was learning how to bank, shop, take a taxi, use public transportation and how to eat at home and in a restaurant. It seems so strange to say that I had to learn how to do these things at 50, but living here is a challenge for many reasons.  The biggest one being, everything is different, especially the language.  I have learned a few words that are helpful and use my Iphone translator for many things. The lessons I was learning have been very  helpful  helping Ben get settled. He’s been here now for 3 weeks, has his own phone, does the shopping, and all of the at home tasks. He can take a taxi and get around to all of the local department stores all by himself. We have also taken the time to visit the local recreation center and investigate the gym and pool hours.  He needs to get exercise. Swimming is available and not as hard on his ankle.   We are together again, working on learning Korean language, especially written language at this point, so we can pronounce things better, read menus and signs.  Slowly we’ll get better at this. 

Meanwhile, I have been teaching at my two schools and getting acquainted with my husband again.  The Holidays are upon us. The good news is that here the sensationalism is quite benign. I was able to avoid all of the usual anxiety, even though I visit the department stores every week. No mental reference could be detected to bring me down this year.  It was wonderful!  To enjoy the two days that I have off before winter camp begins, we plan to spend Christmas eve in Seoul.  The city tour bus is pretty cheap, and makes seeing all of the important sites really easy. We can ride, get on and off all day.  There’s so many things to do and see there that we have plans to keep going back to the city tour bus for a while, until we get our bearings in Seoul.  Tomorrow is Christmas eve here. We’ll get up early and take the express bus to Seoul, and pick up a couple of subways to the city bus tour.  We hope to see  one of the palaces and have lunch in Itaewon.  Afterwards, we’ll ride the rest of the tour which takes about 2 hours total. That’s a full day of tourism. We hope to have a nice Korean style dinner and head back to Chungju. 

 We’ll see how efficiently we have planned the actual event, and make necessary changes to our itinerary for New years eve. That is going to be a simple day. We have only one destination in mind, the traditional Korean Hannok village.   We can do all kinds of things while there, make crafts, see the shops, and see how early Korean villages worked.  I know traditional Korean food will be available, so no problem with that.  We’ll take plenty of pictures on each of our excursions to Seoul.  Ben knows how to load them into my blog, so I may actually be able to show you some of my pictures from the other entries.  Yeah!!  It’s so good to have my other half back. I really missed him.  He seems pretty happy to be here with me and is great company.  

Life continues to be good and an excellent adventure for us.  Happy holidays everyone. Think of us as you dive into the turkey and dressing, sip on eggnog and enjoy familiar people and things that you love.