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Pictures form our weekend in Seoul are posted on the right. Double click to view them larger and see captions.

fear factor

Those are silkworms. Bonnie and I each tried one after a hike that we took with a bunch of our students to prepare for our mission trip to Nepal. They were stomachable but not necessarily enjoyable.

Sorry that we have not been keeping up on blogging well. We have a lot to blog about so hopefully the next week will be full of all kinds of interesting information.

The voice from the wall

So every once in a while we hear this tone emit from a small speaker above our intercom panel and it begins to speak. It is a very strange thing to us. Check it out.

Lunar Break

Well today begins Lunar Break for Bonnie and I. It is the Korean celebration of the Lunar New Year (5 day weekend!). We had thought about trying to go to Japan or Taiwan but decided just to stay around here and explore a bit more of Seoul and Korea. So we decided that we were going to go to Seoul today (Saturday), spend the night in a hotel, and then check out a church that we have heard good things about Sunday morning. On Saturday we hoped to explore various part of Seoul and hopefully find some cool things to see and blog about.

Well I just rolled out of bed, walked out of our room into the living room, and I see from our 9th floor vantage point that the world outside is covered in about 3-4 inches of snow...that could make for an interesting weekend. We already booked the hotel so there is no backing down now. More later.

swimming!

Tom and I (like many Americans) decided to commit to working out as a New Years Resolution. Our school has some really great workout facilities. There is a weight room, a cardio room, and a swimming pool. This past weekend we decided to give swimming a try and it was awesome! We loved it so much we even bought cheap goggles so we could enjoy our future swimming experiences.

Another cool thing to note, I am going to Thailand in March! There is a global issues conference there and our school gets to take four kids to it, and I am their sponsor!!! I'm bummed because Tom won't be able to come, but he'll be going on his own trip to Hong Kong a week or two before my trip to Thailand. As I learn more about my trip I'll post more on the blog.

Sorry we haven't posted very much as of late. We've been pretty bogged down with school stuff since it was our first week back. I know it's a lame excuse, but we'll try to pick up the slack this week.

A visit to Yoido

Well this weekend Bonnie and I traveled with our friend Joe to a church in Seoul called Yoido (yo-e-doe). It is said to be one of the biggest in the world. I would say the size of the building is not quite as big as Willow Creek in Chicago but definitly bigger than Pleasant Valley in KC. They have like 6 or 7 services a weekend and other satellite video broadcasts. So between all of those things they have a lot of people. At night that cross on top would be neon orange. It's a Korean thing. Here is a view of all of the buses that people took to church.Us on the steps of the church. Notice the masses of people exiting the early service.

Here is a little compilation of some videos we took before the service and right before a man came walking down the aisle next to us holding a sign that read "no pictures please."

The service itself was fine. We are going to keep looking when it comes to a church. After the service Joe took us on a little tour of Seoul. He has a car so it was pretty fantastic to just cruise around and get a feel for the big city. I think the trip has set us up nicely for future adventures. On our tour we had a big korean first. We saw our first actual house. There were many in this very snug neighborhood. Check it out...

highlights from home

We are officially back in Korea, but we wanted to share a few pictures from our time at home. Being back in America was great!!! We really enjoyed time with our friends and family and all the conveniences of home.

We spent New Year's with friends. This is my best bud Mary Kate celebrating her 1st Anniversary as a married lady on New Year's Eve (I also got my hair cut over break...thank you Liz):

My parents and the dogs (Macey is the big black one and Hank is "the best dog ever" on the right). The hats were all my parents doing. I also think it is fitting that in this picture my mom is wearing an apron. Cracks me up.

Tom and Hank on Christmas Morning:

My favorite coffee shop--Kaldi's!!! If only Kaldi's could come to Korea.

This was great...we went to visit my Grandma and found that for the past year she has befriended a wild cat. She named the cat Twister and now Twister comes in the house on occasion and lets my Grandma pick her up and pet her. Only my grandma could take a very wild cat, name it Twister, and turn it into a friendly kitty. Our first day back in Korea has been nice. We woke up early, caught up on email, unpacked, went to a coffee shop to read, shopped for groceries, watched a movie...it's been nice to have an easy transition into life here. We don't start school until Monday so we have a few days here in Korea to still enjoy our break and adjust to the time change.

Sorry to anyone we didn't get to see over break. We tried to balance time between our family and friends, and it turned out that two weeks just flew by! We'll be home this summer for at least a month, so if we missed you this Christmas we'll catch you this summer. Being home really reminded us how blessed we are to have such great family and friends.

Still kickin

Just wanted to let you all know that we are still in the USA and doing good. We have spent most of our break either visiting with people or shopping for things that we can't get in Korea. We've really enjoyed getting to chat with people and have gotten a lot of encouraging comments from faithful readers. If you have any suggestions for things you would like to see or hear about let us know. For example, our good friend Matt Roach suggested that we bring our camera to some of our favorite places and take some videos. So if you have any suggestions leave a comment or e-mail us at:

Tom: tommeyer82@gmail.com
or
Bonnie: Bonnieannmeyer@gmail.com