TGIF!

YAY! It is Friday here in South Korea. Today is Gavin's last day of school before Christmas Break. I am positive his class will do nothing special since his teacher is big on NOT doing holidays. Which I really feel is a shame. She did do "A Day Of Giving" on Tuesday though which I guess is as close as she gets to noticing there is a holiday. They had the parents and kids split into 3 groups. Each group came in at a different time. My time was from 10-10:30. All of the parents brought some sort of food item. Mine was juice. Gavin was all smiles and waiting for me to get there. He and I sat and had some food. Then we exchanged gifts. His gift to me was a picture frame he had made with a picture of himself and some beads. My gift to him was a Game Cube game.

It was nice to have some time alone with Gavin. Court was back at the apartment with the girls.
And that was the day of giving.

This last weekend we were invited over to friends of Court's for a BBQ. Yep in December no less. Steve and Ju-he (I think that is what her name is?) live just a few blocks from us. So we took a nice little walk. I was actually pretty happy to be out of the house and I always enjoy a good walk through the streets of Daegu. You never know what you are going to see!


Steve lives off post in a Korean apartment. We get to the door and I noticed there was no fourth floor. I guess Koreans feel that the number 4 is unlucky..similar to American's with number 13. So no fourth floor...Steve lived on the 5th floor. His apartment was really nice. It almost made me wish we lived off post. He has typical heating for this area of the world...the floors are heated. Ohhh and sooooo warm. I decided to sit on the floor while we ate and it was so nice and warm....

Abby is just the friendliest little girl. Here she is with Mike. She just crawled up in his lap and started yapping.

Here she is with Steve's girlfriend Ju-He. This is her new best friend. Not only did Ju-He feed her all sorts of yummy stuff but she put a teeny bit of Lip gloss on her.

This is where all the food was so Abby just sat and made herself right at home!

We brought along the Disney Princess Christmas Movie for Maddie to watch. She sat and watched it with Julian and Rob (above) and Margie (below). These are all people that Court works with.

My favorite part was going up on the roof. I think if we could do that at my place I would sit up there a lot and just look at stuff. There is always something new to see. Below is our apartment complex on Camp George.

Here is just a view of the street below.


The tall building is one I can see outside my kitchen window. I have been watching them build it for awhile now and it is sort of a landmark for me.

Here is the Tower for Woo-Bang Land.

Winter Kimchi stored on the roof. These belong to the landlord.

And that is it from the weekend. It was a nice time. We went home around 7:30. The kids were a little worried about walking in the dark but I enjoyed it.

Yesterday....

Well as yesterday was payday I went out to do some Christmas shopping. First I had to walk to Camp Henry to give Court some money. As we were getting ready to cross the street (with the cross walk sign too) a lady started to run the red light and I had to jerk Maddie back real quick. It scared me really bad!

Gave Court his money and then caught a cab. We went to Camp Walker PX. There is not much selection. I got a few games for Gavin and movies for all the kids. We ate Anthony's Pizza for Lunch. I really wanted Taco Bell but did not want to wait in line. Next we walked over to the 4 seasons. This is where the toys are. Not a whole lot left. We did get a few items for the cat's for their Christmas. Walked back over to the PX and met up with a friend named Lois. We all caught a cab back to my place. Then Lois and I sat and chatted until it was time to get kids from school. That is only the second time I have been out on my own here and it felt pretty good. I had considered going to Walmart today but Court has the money card.

This weekend we need to finish up Christmas Shopping as well as do some major grocery shopping.

Gukchaebosang Memorial Park

I should have put these up awhile ago. We went to this park the weekend of Thanksgiving. I believe it was the 27th of November? Anyway..it was one of the last nicer days we had. As you can see from the pics no one is wearing a coat!

There was no parking to be had close by so we pulled up on a street. We thought it was free but a guy came along and put a ticket on our window. We asked how long we could park and he stuck a finger up and said ONE! So we thought we had just an hour. Turns out it was 1000 won to park..probably per hour. Above are Gavin and Maddie. There was this art/statue thing in front of the Bank of Korea. Thought it was neat so snapped a pic.

Here is Maddie with Court. Abby in the stroller and Gvain waaaaay ahead. This was a really pretty part of Daegu and as always it was just so nice to be off Camp George and enjoy the beauty that Korea has to offer!

Gukchae-bosang Memorial Park was built to retain the spirit of the National Debt Repayment Movement, an expressive national movement that originated from Daegu in 1907.

This building seemed to be the central attraction. On Saturdays they have a ceremony where they ring the bell. I would really like to see that!

This is an up-close shot of the underside of the building. I think it is just beautiful! The colors are so rich!


We sat for awhile and watched this guy and a few other people practicing with Nun-chucks. This guy was pretty awesome! He had 2 or 3 sets put together and was tossing them. I thought about Hayden while we were there and I know he would have loved to see it.
Here is Miss Abby-Doddle trying to escape. She probably did not want people to know she was with the crazy American Lady taking pictures! LOL
Lookie-Lookie! More birds! They have made their appearance in my blog before. Back when we went to Mt. Apsan. So seeing them the second time I knew they had to have some sort of greater meaning than just birds on a stick.

I did a search about them and this is what I came up with:

Sotdae, long wooden poles with one or more birds on top, were considered mediums between this world and the next, an ancient belief we can contemplate today just by gazing at their earthly forms soaring high into the sky. In Dangun mythology (Dangun was the founder of Korea),sotdae became a passage by which the gods descended from heaven. As they were also erected at the entrance to villages, often alongside the jangseung, sotdae were treated as village guardians as well, although some used them according to the feng shui belief to ‘fill what is empty’ (boheo) and for protection from evil forces and natural disasters such as fire.

For more information about Korean art or Sotdae click here.

I hate Mondays...

Yesterday got up as usual around 5:30. I got everyone ready and took Gavin to school. I noticed for some reason my cell phone would not stay on. It said it was halfway charged so when I got back I plugged it in. Waited until it was all the way charged and it still was shutting off...grrrr.

Went to get some coffee and noticed it was cold (?) even though the pot was on. Heated up that cup and made another pot and waited...and waited...and nothing. Coffee pot died. Uggggg. So I boiled some water and poured it through by hand and then stuck the rest in our thermos. And wouldn't you know...the thermos is crap too. Went back a few hours later for coffee and it was cold.

And the last reason why yesterday sucked.....I was playing with my PSP7. I just loaded a bunch of new gradients and everytime I tried to use them it would crash. Uggg.

Maddie is sick now. It is making her asthma flare up. I gave her a breathing treatment about 5:30 am and she cannot have another one until 9:30 am but I think I may go ahead and give her one anyway. She is already having trouble breathing.

I just sent Gavin off to school. Court was supposed to come right back home after PT but for whatever reason didn't. I had not planned on taking the girls and at 7:45 Court called to tell me this. I called Dee real quick and so sent Gavin downstairs to walk with her. He was not happy and was crying. So frustrating when he does that!

Here is a picture of our Christmas Tree. It is not my mother's..nor even close to her's. But hey the kids like it.


So I guess that is an update on my boring and dull life. I know I hardly post anything anymore. Just in a depressed mood and do not feel like doing much of anything. I have been playing a lot at Pogo. My new favorite game is Stellar Sweeper which is similar to Minesweeper but of course cooler.

I rejoined Vanilla Fields and Angelic Designs. These are both pixel places. So I have been playing with pixels a lot. That plus Pogo keep my mind off how depressed I am about things. Here is a small sample of stuff I made at Angelic Designs. I love love love her little dolls. They are so cute!

Here are the Logo's for the sites mentioned above. :) I am going to see if I can't somehow get the logos on the side? I am sure there is a way but I am just an idiot when it comes to these things.

Ok I guess that is it for now.

Oh..Hey Berk you need to add a comments section on your blog!

Woobang Land

Woobang Tower Land

Well we finally did it. We went to Woobang Land. We could not leave town as we had planned due to the APEC conference getting ready to happen in Pusan all passes have been canceled. So we decided to stay close to home. It took us a while to figure out how to get there. I have a map of the city..sort of and tried to read it to get us there. But it is not a very good map. I thought we were going West when in fact it was North...LOL. Anyways we got there with no major problems and had a nice tour of part of the city as well.

We went into the park the backway. We really did not know what we were doing but we got there at least. There was a HUGE fountain as we walked down. Here are Court and I posing for a pic and Gavin took it for us.
Lots and lots of stairs to climb down and a I just took it slow. My ankle is greatly improved but stairs still are a little hard.

There were stepping stones to cross the fountains and Gavin and Maddie had fun hopping back and forth. I was actually surprised no one fell in! Above is Maddie doing one of her new "princess" poses.

I really like this one of Gavin I think it turned out really well. All along the stairs as we climbed down were flowers and landscaping. I think these are the first bits of planted color I have seen since being here in Korea and it did my eyes good.

Here is Abby posing near some of the flowers. She would have really liked to get into them and pick some.

The place was pretty empty when we got there. But a lot of people here work on Saturdays and the kids have school for half a day on Saturday as well. Later on more people came. It was pretty nice while it was mostly empty.

This was outside one of the restaurants there...supposedly a "western BBQ" somehow I doubt that my version of western bbq and the version there were similar.

These guys came walking along and Gavin wanted his picture taken with them. I am thinking they are Transformers? I think it would be really hard to walk all day in these costumes!

Poor Abby...she was too little for almost all the rides there. But luckily they had these mini ride thingys everywhere. 1,000 won and she was driving along in her pink Barbie car.

Gavin, Maddie, Abby and Court all went on the Carousel. Gavin rode on a horse and everyone else went in this carriage.

The Balloon ride. Gavin, Maddie and Court went on this one. Just looking at the pictures makes me want to vomit. I am old and no longer can handle the round and round type ride.

They are in the green and white balloon. I sooo glad to be the one on the ground just taking pictures!

Here are Gavin and Maddie on "Circuit 2000". I think they did this one twice. It was sort of like a mini coaster/train and they both loved it.

Ok so it was finally my turn to ride a ride. This is the Ninja Turtle. Abby could go on it with me too. It moved pretty slow and I was fine until it went backwards. I was glad to get off of it cause I was starting to feel a bit sick....

Look at Maddie just smiling in this one. She does love Roller Coasters. I think this was her favorite ride.

After we ran out of tickets we went in search of food and snacks. Court is buying a waffle of sorts that had some sort of chocolate frosting and honey put on it. Too sweet for me but Abby enjoyed it.

Maddie picked Cotton Candy and look how huge it was! She ended up sharing with all. Gavin had a huge ice-cream cone. No pic of that though.

Court and I went to this place that said it had Carnival food and it ended up just having regular Korean dishes. Above is Rice Kimbap. Looks a bit like Sushi I think. They take seaweed and roll up rice and who knows what else was in there. Maybe some tofu? I ate about half and then decided that was enough. In the bowl is some sort of soup (?) I think (?)

This above is Bulgoki and rice. There is the typical side dish of Kimchi and another bowl of the soup (?). Tried the Kimchi but my lips were so chapped they burned. The bulgoki was really tasty though. I tried that yellow slice thing. I am not sure what it was. Tasted sort of like a sweet pickle.

Near the kid park was a walkway leading to a wooded area. Abby decided to take off. I guess she thought we were going that way.

This was the high light of Gavin's day. They had a Kirby Balloon. Maddie got a balloon with a barbie type doll on it and Abby's has a cat.

They had a few coasters and I would have ridden them but did not want to ride alone. Maddie probably would have ridden with me but she is too small. Anyways I got a kick out of the warning sign. The weak and drunken never get to have any fun!

This shot is of the Tower from the other end of the park. We can see the tower from where we live and I use it as a reference since it is pretty close to where we live.

Those last two shots are of the city as we left. I would have liked to ride in the sky cars but no one seemed interested.

So that wraps up our trip to Woobang Land. The kids had a wonderful time and really enjoyed themselves. And that is what is most important. As far as amusement parks go...well it pretty much sucked. It was great to get out as a family and do something special just for the kids.