Repatriated

Today seems like a good day to get started with blogging again. Here’s the short story. Since we got back, we’ve been shuffling back and forth between our parents’ houses, collecting the scattered remnants from our life before Korea, and trying to figure out what’s next for us.

Today we are at Kristin’s parents’ house near Conifer. This morning the clouds rolled in and swallowed up the mountains across the valley, leaving only one spectral mountain spur in sight. You can still make out a few puffs of golden aspen trees breaking up the triangles of pine trees, highlighted by a layer of snow. It looks like this:

Mountain in the clouds.

In the last few weeks we’ve gotten to enjoy a lot of good old fashioned American activities. We’ve done some gardening, learned how to make jelly, can pickles, and assemble corral gates.

Homemade Concord grape jelly. Not so sickly sweet as the stuff from the store.

One of our old home brews with jars full of beets waiting for their pickling brine.

This is a picture from branding at my dad's a few years ago. We helped replace the gate behind and to the left of the new mom. Just for fun, guess what she's eating?

We brewed some beer.

Me watching some industrious yeast making beer fun.

We took a little road trip and visited some tourist attractions.

Back row (left to right): Devils Tower. Front row: Kristin.

The moment we found the bathroom at Mount Rushmore.

We went to a football game.

Me and my dad at the game.

Saw some Americana.

You mess with the US, you don't just get the horns, you get an eagle with a cow skull for a body that will seriously peck you really hard if you get close enough for it to reach you. Like, it will really hurt. I'm not messing around here. It'll maybe even leave a mark. Or a bruise. So you really shouldn't try to steal it. Even without the camera. Canada.

This was not a common sight in Korea. Nice work, 'Merica!

Saw some wildlife.

A mule deer in the driveway at Kristin's parents' house.

A mountain goat in the parking lot at Mount Rushmore.

A mounted jackalope at the gift shop near Devils Tower.

We’ve done a lot of other things since leaving Korea, too, we just don’t have pictures.

It’s been good to be home, but we’re still a little homesick for at least some aspects of our life in Korea. Here are just a few of the reasons:

Kristin's last day with some truly remarkable kids.

Feeling fussy.

Six years old and pretty much fluent in two languages. They're that cool. And funny, too.

Fun with tissues and spit.

Dance Master’s Delight

So we were just on vacation for eleven days wherein we did nothing much, hung around, drank coffee, chilled, read books, and intended every day to catch up on posting, uploading pictures, and generally keeping our fan up to date on the goings-on of our final days here in Korea.  Alas, we never did.  Because we were too busy not doing anything productive whatsoever.

On another note, Hillstate, the giant construction project located directly across the street from our apartment, is officially almost complete. This is due largely to the efforts of the diligent construction workers that like to start every day of the week (and weekends!) at 7 am by dropping 1 or 2 scaffolding pipes on the ground ever 10 to 20 seconds for 2 hours before taking a well earned break.

The signal that construction is nearly complete? The first delivery of kimchi refrigerators.

Keeping your kimchi fresh.

From LG in a variety of colors to suit your lifestyle--the new Dios Built-In.

A view of a section of Hillstate including scaffolding pipes.

Yummy, Teacher!

Today one of the kids at our school brought in the coolest show and tell ever:

Not just cute, Korean shit cute

Later, there was a fire downstairs, but the two incidents do not seem to be related–for now.

Kitteh

On the walk home from work today we found this thing just lying around in the park:

O hai! G'nite!

She was near a hot pile of garbage, next to the public toilets, all by herself, surrounded by flies, and crying for her momma. With no other felines in sight, we couldn’t just leave her, so we picked her up and took her home. She quieted down as soon as she was cradled comfortably in our hands, and started trying to nuk on anything she could fit into her mouth.

We’re not experts, but we doubt that she was more than 24 hours old. She still had her umbilical cord! We didn’t even know cats had those, as we’d never met a cat with a bellybutton. We thought that since they come in litters there must be some other arrangement with the placenta than the one people have, thus no bellybutton.

Anyhow, I digress. We called up one of our coworkers and she came by to take a look at teh kitteh. We realized that none of us had really any idea what to do for such a brand new baby, and after a few minutes on the internet found out that cow milk isn’t good for kittens. So we put away the dropper of milk we’d been trying to feed her and all set off together to find some kitten milk. On our way we ran into a couple of other coworkers on a patio in front of a coffee shop. While discussing which one of the other teachers at school might be enough of a sucker to play mamma kitty, a curious barista popped her head out the door, saw the tiny bundle, and agreed to take the kitten in.

After days full of cute kids, we were still overpowered by cuteness. Get smaller:

What's smaller than tiny?

Also, in case you wanted to know, E-Mart carries puppy milk, but not kitten milk. She seemed to like foreign food, though.

Chest-not

We had hereby altered the ecosystem of Korea, possibly forever, by doing this last weekend, and with a soup ladle, no less:

This is also his dressy shirt

If it knew what was coming, it would have given a grander farewell

Two hours later, a violent thunderstorm dumped around 20 tons of rain on Jookjeon, thereby lessening the effect of our efforts to alter any environments.  And by that I mean we think the chestnut tree is dead.

Soju Pillow

Last night we were hanging out getting ready to watch what turned out to be a pretty bad movie when we heard someone singing outside in the street. Public singing is a lot more common than you might think here, but it went on for a while, so we took a peek out the window to see the singer in action. It was a very happy man sitting out on a stoop, enjoying the pleasant night air. He seemed to be a little tired, though. By the time we got our camera, he had cozied up with his soju pillow and blanket and tucked himself in for the night.

Just taking a little break...

Soju pillow in action.

Still there after the movie.

Good thing they sprayed for mosquitoes at least a couple of times this week, or he might have woken up itchy, covered in bumps, and feeling even more miserable than he probably already was.

One YEAR

Happy Anniversary to us.  It’s one year today that we have been living here.  Let it be said that we know this from adding up  the hatch marks on our concrete wall.  Also, we have lived in this cell block apartment for longer than we’ve lived in any other dwelling since we have been together.  It’s weird to know where everything in our apartment is.  It’s about time we moved again.

So Now What Do We Get to Panic Over?

Yesterday was my Open Class (Jake’s was last week), an event where, after several weeks of panic, Korean style, the students’ parents sat in our classes for a total of 40 minutes, watching their children be, well, children.  No matter how hard they try to squeeze it out of them, darnit, it turns out a five year old’s will to party is much stronger.

But my kids were awesome.  They sang their songs, did their dance moves, answered my questions, sat nicely, and no one cried or went crazy.  I am so proud of them (and me!) for doing such a good job.  And they were handsomely rewarded with, what else? 20 cent toys from China that probably broke on their way to the bus.  But I digress….

Today is the final day of Open Classes, and I believe tonight there will be some to much celebrating.  We’ve been on the wagon for so long, I am kinda nervous–like first date nervous–to hang out with Sirs Vodka and Tonic again.  What if they have changed?  What if I have?  What if we don’t have anything to say to each other?  Who am I kidding?

We are officially under three months to go here.  We have decided not to go to China this summer, and just tour around Korea a bit.  We have made a very grown-up decision here (Let the Record Show!!) to save money for the future blahblahblah instead of gallivant about Asia, especially considering that we have already had two fabulous vacations in the last 6 months.  And truly who knows how long it will take us to find gainful employment?  I worry that all the fruits of our sacrifice here will disappear into the ether shortly after our return home.  Any suggestions?

We are going to hike Mt.Fuji before coming home though.  It will be early September, and I hear that it is a night hike with a summit sunrise.  We are so excited.  I am really looking forward to clean air, crisp winds, and views.  I did not realize how ingrained my need for open space was.  We are nestled into a foggy, smoggy valley here, and even on hikes we are lucky to see to the next ridge over, at best.  My mom always said that cloudy days made her claustrophobic, which I totally understand now.

This weekend we will visit a local temple/museum/park with some friends.  I am looking forward to doing something out of the ordinary.  These past two months has been a lot of business on the weekends and not a lot of playing.  I hope everyone has a great weekend and does not spend too much time missing us.

Mangoes

My kindergarteners are all around 3 years old, and seriously are the cutest things at school, save for Jake.  I have been teaching them the basics, like “May I go to the bathroom?” “May I have some water?” “Please” “Thank you” etc.  This week is basic vocabulary-building with fruit.  So it’s appleappleapplewatermelonwatermelonwatermelonplumplumplum until they get it.  It’s fun and easy and I love to see their excitement regarding strawberries and the like.  But today we got to “Mango” and they didn’t know what it was, so I decided to teach them an alternate pronunciation (Maaahhnn-go!) and a corresponding dance move.  Watch the whole video to see what I mean.

No Dice

The kid that said his family would take the dog said ‘no’ after all, which came as no surprise.  It looks like we’ve accidentally become poodle owners.  POODLE owners.

We took him and his one inch legs for a twenty minute walk, and look...