Thanksgiving...

This year, Ben and I had 3 Thanksgiving meals, and two of them were at our house! The first one was on Thursday night and we had Bill & Erin come over. The evening was very chill and we ate and watched TV and talked...

On Saturday, we went to MJ's house, which is always a bit of a hual. MJ lives about as far south of us as possible, so we usually end up taking a taxi when we have food that needs to be warm when we get there. We went last year to MJ's and this year it was a similar crowd of people with just a few changes!For this meal, Ben and I took a massive supply of mashed potatoes, kalico beans (one of Ben's family's recipes), and creamed corn. YUM!

MJ has a special talent in the kitchen so we knew this was going to be a good feast! Like last year we ordered the turkey and people split the cost of it.
The people that bake the turkeys for us seem to make a large profit. We saw turkey's at Costco this year, but the problem is is that no foreigner has an oven big enough to even put the smallest bird. They definitely take advantage of us...

On Sunday we had another Thanksgiving with a different crowd of people at our house. Last year Matt & Maria hosted, but with out large apartment, this year we were asked. I enjoy hosting (even though it is a lot of work for me) and am glad that we got a larger apartment! So far we have no regrets with out place.
Sunday was also full of food, as we ordered another turkey delivery and everyone made sides to go with it. For this day Ben and I made another mountain of mashed potatoes, kalico beans, green bean casserole, and deviled eggs. I've hooked my man on these deviled eggs, which was always my goal...
Ben and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to fit 14 people in our place and be able to set up our table. We ended up abodoning that dream and having people eating on their laps. No one complained and everyone fit in the same room which was very exciting!
For desert we enjoyed pumpkin pie, milk tart (with a great turkey design on it), and some nutella cream cheese bars. So much food was consumed over the 4 days, and we really were so blessed to be surrounded by such great friends!

Multi-Bangin'... (Stef's birthday)

For Stef's birthday we got to go to a multi-bang! I was very excited that this is what she wanted to do because -go to a multi-bang- has been on my bucket list my whole time in Korea, and I still hadn't gone! 
Let me just begin by telling you that "bang" in Korean means "room". So when we go to a Noraebang, we are going to a "singing room", and when we go to a DVD bang we are going to a DVD room. A multi-bang, is a room that you can do all things! It is equipped with singing, gaming, and all sorts. 
While we were there, our group took up 3 rooms, and everyone was doing an assortment of different things. The room I was in started off with some Mario Kart and ended with a long session of Just Dance. Another room I know did a lot of singing as well! 
I made Stefanie an oreo cheesecake for her birthday too! It was yummy!
This multi-bang provided weird wigs and hats to wear while having fun. The best part about Korea, is that you can take your own food and drinks into most places and this was no exception. So while the drinks flowed, the singing got louder... 
And maybe the dancing got better in our room! Who knows?

Ben and Gianni competing...

Officially 1 year... :)

I guess I should go on record by saying that the last year of my life has been my happiest one to date. While I tried to embrace my single years and enjoy doing things, I was always missing a little something... A random decision to teach a year in Korea, and that resulted in me meeting my man at our EPIK orientation. I'm so grateful that I did.
Ben offers so much to my life. He is so darn calm and mellow and therefore mellows me out... He has just the right amount of goof, and young-ness to keep me young at heart. (Hence, the rubberband guns, whistles and practice swords in our house.) He calls me out when I am being crazy and unfair. He "goes with the flow" to the point that we end up doing random unplanned things that are great memories. He makes me feel special and loved, and really that is all that a girl can ask for! :)
Now, we really didn't have anything too crazy planned for our "official" anniversary. We were maaaaybe going to go to Duryu park and potentially go up the tower....maybe. After some very busy weekends prior to this weekend, we both just really wanted to stay home and do NOTHING!
This actually resulted in us HAVING to figure out how to order delivery McDonalds....
Now in America, I am not the biggest McDonald's fan, but in Korea- things are just different. Sometimes you need that taste of home... Also, I find it absolutely hilarious that you CAN order delivery McDonalds so I had put it on my bucket list. I am in the mode of trying to cross things off my bucket list, so we thought this was the perfect time!
Ben discovered that McDonalds has a website that we can order on, and thus meaning we don't have to give our address over the phone! Score! We ordered our food, and then 15 minutes later we got a phone call that it was here! While it wasn't as hot as when you eat in the store, the satisfaction that we got from our first delivery order was immense!

Another thing we did this weekend was eat Russian pancakes. I had been wanting to introduce this family tradition/recipe to Ben for some time now, and this was the perfect time! I love these things, and remember being so happy when my dad would make them for us! Here's the recipe:

Russian pancake:
2 cups flour
2 eggs
2 cups milk
pinch of salt

Chocolate sauce:
2 heaping Tbsp. cocoa
1/2 c. sugar
2 c. heavy cream

I taught Ben the "proper" way of eating them, and then he also had his own version....like I said- kid at heart! :)

I have accumulated a great stash of cake mixes since coming to Korea, so I thought that we should have one for our anniversary. It was too much for us to eat so we invited some friends to join us and then afterward went to the disc golf park. 
Ben's friend from Wisconsin (who lives in Gimcheon), Alex and his girlfriend Clarissa joined us, as well as our friends Matt and Maria. Discing was a good time, even though we somehow managed to loose a disc in the least dense tree grove we could have.... After it got dark we went with Alex and Clarissa to try out the new burger joint in town- Boogie Burger. It was actually the best we have had in Daegu.
Hopefully we can have a day like this many more times while we are in Korea! Overall it was a great weekend for Ben and I, not just together, but also great we got to spend some of it with friends. 
I look forward to many more anniversaries this this special guy!

Oh, I almost forgot....
After we ate burgers we went shopping for our anniversary gift! We previously decided that we weren't going to do individual gifts but instead we would buy a nice couple outfit. We were originally going to try to find a track suit (like Adidas or something), but they were sooooo EXPENSIVE!
We settled on a pancoat sweatshirt, which was still really expensive, but wearing it is like wearing a cloud... It is so comfortable AND it has POCKETS!

Halloween Slime...

Who doesn't want to make some slime for Halloween?

 For my Halloween after school lesson I decided to do something that was a bit.... "messy"....

I showed the kids how to make the slime, and then just let them go! They had so much fun. After they made it they even had 10 minutes to just play with it! It was messy but worth it for the smiles on their faces! 

Amazingly I was able to figure out all of the ingredients in Korean, and was able to round them up. That was a bit miraculous!

Ingredients:

white glue
warm water
water color paint
borax
cup and spoons

Daedunsan (Daedun Mountain)...

 

Daedansan:

On the way home from our weekend in Seoul, we wanted to see some fall colors. I was reminded by Tom, that there was a bridge outside of Daejeon that we could go see. 
This bridge was in Daedunsan National Park, and was one of the things that my friend Sarah really wanted to do while she was here visiting, but with the schedule that we had, it didn't work out to. 

After the time it took to get there, it was confirmed that we wouldn't of had time...That being said I still wish that Sarah had been there this time!

It was a rainy, cold day but after the effort we took to get there, we were not about to turn around and go back!

Getting there:

We took a KTX train from Seoul Station to Daejeon Station. From this station we took a taxi to Seobu Intercity Bus Terminal, which was about 6,000- 7,000 won.

At this station we were able to catch the #34 bus to Daedunsan. It was about a 50-60 min. journey on this bus to the last stop- the mountain. Unfortunately, it dropped us off a bit from the start of the trail/ cable car, so we had to walk about 20 minutes in the rain along the road to get there. Below is a picture I took of the bus stop sign and the times for the buses.

Once we got to the mountain, we hiked up a bit to get to the cable car. We thought that since it was cold and raining, that the Koreans would stay home and not be out hiking. We were wrong though because many tour buses go to the mountains during this time of year, and they take loads of people. I imagine that these people had a tour booked and wanted to get there money out of it, so they were in rain parkas and carrying umbrellas like us!
We got to the cable car ticket line, and found out that the earliest we could go up with almost 2 hours later. Again, I'm assuming that these tour buses pre-booked cable car tickets, so were forced to wait to go up the mountain.
When it was our turn we went up, and started our hike. I had read that it was about 1 1/2 hours or so to get to the bridges and back, but it ended up being faster than that. 
I'm sure that on a beautiful day in the fall that it is packed full of people who are just butt to butt going up the stairs, it might actually take that long. Fortunately we were able to avoid that because of the rain. We made it to the top and back down in almost 30-45 min. 
Be prepared- the hike is basically all steps. You go pretty much straight up from the cable car to the bridges via metal steps. I'm sure the view out is amazing, but we weren't really able to see it...
We made it to the bridge after a 10-15 min. stair climb. In the original picture that Sarah showed me, the bridge used to be a rope bridge. Now it is a metal bridge, which is a lot let spectacular and daring, but there still was a slight sway as you walked on it...

Shortly after the bridge there is a stair bridge to climb as well. It was pretty narrow and again: I'm sure on a clear day the view would be amazing! I still enjoyed seeing it in the rain.
It was an interesting hike that was different that any hike I had done in Korea or elsewhere for that matter. 

As we were almost back down to the cable car, the sky started to open up... We then learned we had made a mistake that we were not aware of before. At the bottom of the mountain we bought round trip cable car tickets because we had limited time. As we got to the cable car, we didn't see much of a line to get down so we didn't think it would be a problem to get down. 
After our hike, we realized that we had to get a lift ticket with a time, and the time we were given was  a 2 hour wait. It was already 4:30, and we knew that we had many legs of a journey to complete before we could get home. Emily was worried that if she missed her train that she had booked, that it would be very difficult to make it home until very late.
I don't use the foreigner card much, but we were able to convince the cable car operator to sneak us on so we could get down the mountain. 
We had no idea what the returning bus schedule was, but we knew it was every hour or so. We tried to get back to the bus stop as soon as we could, so we took a taxi up the road instead of walking 30 min. to get to the bus stop.
We we got to the bus stop we found this bus schedule. The column on the right are the buses that leave from the mountain. We were able to get back to Daejeon and take another taxi to the Train Station from the bus station so Emily could get her train to Busan. Ben and I waited on the others to get down from the mountain and we all took a KTX back to Daegu together.
I'm glad that we went on this hike, but it was a very long day, so to go to this mountain, you really need to budget the entire day.
Here is a look into our day...

• subway/metro 30 min.
• KTX train- 1 hour.
• Taxi to Bus Station 20 min.
• Bus to Daedunsan- 1 hour.
• Hike to Cable Car- 30 min.
• Wait for Cable car- 2 hours.
• cable car- 7 min.
• Hike to bridge & back- 1 hour.
• wait for cable car- 1 1/2 hour.
• taxi to bus stop- 10 min.
• Bus back to Daejeon- 1 hour
• Taxi to Daejeon- 20 min.
• KTX back to Daegu- 1 hour.
• taxi to our house- 20 min.

(Obviously there is a ton of wait time between these things)

To reiterate: Buy your cable car tickets as soon as you get to the mountain, and when you get to the top, budget how much time you think it will take and try to get the ticket to go down before you hike up to the bridge.