Thanksgiving in Korea

We hope everyone had a nice and safe Thanksgiving. I know everyone is worried about the news and we have been watching it closely, but as of now everything seems the same. We went to Seoul this weekend and nothing seemed out of the ordinary there either. If there is any change or we get any more information we will be sure to let everyone know.

Even though we had to work on Thanksgiving, Derek and I really still wanted to celebrate it in one way or another. So we volunteered to host dinner at our place. I made a trip to Seoul on Monday because I was determined to have green bean casserole. I've never gone a Thanksgiving without it and I wasn't going to start now. I was super lucky; not only did I get all the ingredients for green bean casserole, they also had Stove Top stuffing mix! On Wednesday we made a trip to Costco and I was able to get a pumpkin pie, an apple pie and some roasted chickens for dinner (they had frozen turkeys, but we don't have an oven).

It was strange working on Thanksgiving, but it didn't feel like Thanksgiving so I just had to force myself not to think about what I would be doing if I was at home on Thanksgiving (eating my Mom's elephant ears, yum!). I left school a little early to head home and start cooking and Derek carved the chickens, while I made deviled eggs, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, and stuffing.

It was a different Thanksgiving than we were use to, but it was nice to celebrate it with our friends that have been such a big part of our lives here on the island. We didn't take lots of pictures, but here are a couple of our first Thanksgiving away from home.

This is a Thanksgiving banner I did with my after school class. We watched a small video about the first Thanksgiving then each student made one of these.

The rolls and chicken were from Costco, but I made everything else, the dip, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, and stuffing. A friend also brought some chicken alfredo, which was great because we didn't have any leftovers really.

The Ganghwa Island crew.

Sunday Night Football

Thanks Mom & Dad for sending us, I mean Derek, the football! Today several of us got together to throw the football around. We started just throwing the ball then decided to get a little game of two-hand touch going. After explaining the rules to the South Africans it was me and Derek for Team America, and Hennie and Jonathan for Team South Africa. I wish I could say Derek and I dominated and taught the South Africans a thing or two about American Football, but after they got the jist of the game and started using their rugby moves also, we were definitely evenly matched. Luckily we had two more players come and help us out. We played for a couple of hours and decided that we would like to make this a weekly game and officially started the Ganghwa Football League (team name to come).

And although it's early, we want to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving. We love and miss you all and are thankful to have had your love and support over the last year! We'll think of y'all on Thanksgiving.

The Ganghwa Football League

Derek explaining the rules of the game

Free Fallin'

Well they say it's fall here, but if you ask me or Derek it's already winter. Highs are in the upper 40s/low 50s and lows are already in the 20s/30s at night. Yesterday was beautiful and actually felt somewhat warm and it was only 60.

Since we don't get much fall color in Alabama, I just assumed that fall here would be like fall in New England, with the mountains full of fall color. There were beautiful colors speckled throughout the city and mountains, but nothing like I expected. So here are some pictures around town and my schools of fall on the island. Good thing I took them when I did, the other night we had a bad storm and it blew off most of the leaves. I have a feeling next time we have a storm like that it's going to be a blizzard.

I don't know the name of this temple, but we walked by it in the Spring to go look at the Cherry Blossom trees.

This is in front of Ganghwa Elementary, which is one of the biggest schools on the island.

This is at Habil Elementary which is my main school. The leaves on the back tree are almost all gone because the the kids like to hang on the limbs and try to see how many leaves they can shake off.

This is behind the school at Myeongsin Elementary, which is my Friday school.

These are also at Myeongsin Elementary. Friday was beautiful, so I walked around the school and listened to my iPod under the tree after I was finished teaching. The other teachers thought this was so weird and kept coming to check on me and offering me a computer to use the Internet.

Sweet Home Alabama

Sorry, we've been so bad about posting lately. Not much has been going on. I've been working a lot of extra classes on the weekend and Derek bought an XBOX so our nights are spent playing video games and watching movies. Actually other than when we leave the house it's very similar to when we were living back in Bama!

Anyways, a couple of weeks ago I was teaching an English camp at a small school on the other side of the island. They had a huge world map that was all written in Korean. So I took a picture (sorry it's blurry) to show Dad cause I knew he would love it. Plus it made me laugh to read how the cities directly translate into Korean. El-La-Beh-Mah (Alabama). Can you read it?