CARMEL DELIGHTS?!?!?!?!!!!!

Last night we went to an American Air Base to play a basketball game and after the game we got to hit up their food court.  These bases are like little America's so the food court had Taco Bell, Subway, Pizza Hut, Captain D's, and Charley's Steakhouse.  It was fun for us and our students to eat all this American goodness.  A pleasant surprise also happend while we were there; Girl Scouts were selling cookies!!!!  I was so excited because just last week my mom mentioned getting some cookies for my brother and I thought they sounded so good.  Now I can have my own Carmel Delights and Peanut Butter Patties.  You'll also notice we were able to snag some other goodies from the vending machines by the food court too.  They actually have a full on US style grocery store on base but because we do not have a military ID we can't purchase anything from their store.  So, we resorted to being like little kids and bought a lot of goodies from snack machines.

Tonight we head off on what our friend Laura has denoted as our "babymoon."  Philippines here we come!  We'll be back at the end of the week on Thursday night.

Philippines

Bonnie and I made a late decision last week to head to the Philippines for our upcoming Lunar New Year break. We are flying on a discount airline you may have heard of called Cebu Pacific. The reason you may have heard of it is from their safety dance viral video that came out back in September. Here it is in case you weren't one of the 9 million hits it got.

I can only hope we will get to see it first hand.

another "Meyer Dream"

My "dreamer" came up to me yesterday in class to report that she had another "Meyer Dream." In the dream I was decorating a nursery for the baby and everything was pink.  I had also bought baby clothes that were dresses and other little girl items.

It will still be a little while before we find out how accurate this particular dream is, and it will be pretty crazy if she's right about this one too!

In other baby news, this week I've begun my second trimester! Woohoo.  I've had a lot of people asking me about how I've been feeling.  Overall, I'm feeling much better now than I did in the heart of the first trimester.  I still have my moments of feeling nauseous and tired, but I feel like my energy is slowly starting to return.   Praise the Lord!

Classic Korea

Last weekend we traveled to two away games with our basketball teams. While on the way home we stopped at a rest stop for some lunch and stumbled upon a restaurant called "Americana." We thought this was super exciting so we decided to check out the menu. Check out what we spotted:

Cheese Bong anyone????

Another classic Korean encounter is dealing with awkwardly parked cars in the parking lots. Since it's SUPER COLD in Korea right now (rumors say this is the coldest winter here in at least 10 years) everyone with a car at our apartment complex parks in the basement where it's a bit warmer and protected from the elements. This makes the basement really crowded because a lot of people usually park outside. The problem, however, lies in the fact that there aren't enough spots for all the cars. So what do Koreans do about this dilema? They make up parking spots anywhere and everywhere...including parking right in front of your car. Now this may seem like an issue to most Americans because it looks like you are blocked in, but have no fear! In these scenarios, Koreans leave their cars in neutral. This means that instead of being frustrated and stuck you just push the other car out of the way until you have enough room to get out. It's a pretty crazy concept for us Americans to wrap our heads around, but it surprisingly works quite well. Case and point:

the Mrs. Meyer pregnancy dream

Last semester before finals week one of my 9th grade students/basketball player came up to me after class one day and told me she had a dream about me.  She refers to this dream as "the Mrs. Meyer pregnancy dream."  The dream itself is pretty basic; I found out I was pregnant and told the basketball team or something like that.  Now this normally wouldn't be a big deal except for the fact that I was pregnant at the time and she had no idea.  I played it off really well to her face and joked with her about it...."haha...silly dreams"...."keep dreaming girl!"  But inside I was like, woa....that's weird.

After we made our big announcement at school this one student was especially elated.  This was the email I got from her:  (I asked her if I could post her email on my blog and she was thrilled. Oh students...so fun.) 

CONGRATULATIONS again :P
I can't believe my dream came true!!!!
I think I have something lol
I hope I have some more dreams to see some more :)
anyways don't go away from us after you have your baby because ill miss you :)
anyways CONGRATULATIONS TO YOU AND MR MEYER AND YOUR FAMILY AND YOUR BABY!!!!!
I'll keep you updated with my "meyer dreams"

Overall the student reactions have been great.  A lot of the boys have been giving Tom high fives saying, "Way to go!"  The girls kind of point and giggle at me and then start eyeing my stomach, which still looks normal.  The boys basketball team reacted by saying that the baby should be called "Michael Jordan Meyer."  (Yeah. Not going to happen.)  One student said, "Wow...you're going to have a GIANT baby."  So far it's been fun to watch the news trickle throughout the school.

Little Meyer

Tom and I are excited to announce that we're having a baby!  Little Meyer will be due on July 28th.

Here are some of the basics that we've been asked:

How far along are you?
I'm a little over 11 weeks.  We just had two doctor's appointment, one in the US and one in Korea, and both appointments went great.  Little Meyer is right on track. We won't have another appointment for about 4-5 weeks, so we thought this would be a good time to go public with our little secret.

Where will you have the baby?  
Since we'll be home for summer break we will have the baby in America in Kansas City, Missouri.  KC is where both sets of parents are, so that will be home base.  We usually leave for Korea right at the end of July, so the timing should work out well to be home for the summer and have the baby in the States.   The general plan (that is ever evolving) will be for me (Bonnie) to stay in America for at least a month with the baby while I'm on maternity leave and then we'll return to Korea sometime in the fall.

Will it be safe for you to fly while pregnant?
Doctors say that you can fly up to 36 weeks (40 weeks is full term).  I'll be flying home around the 31 week mark, so I should be okay.

Will you find out the gender?
Absolutely.  Tom and I are planners and we can't wait to know if we're having a "he" or "she" so we can stop calling the baby "it" or "he/she" all the time.  We'll find out sometime in March.

How have you been feeling?
It's been rough.  I've had pretty bad morning sickness and have lost some weight as a result.  I think my energy is slowing coming back, so I hope within the next week or two once I'm in the second trimester that I'll be feeling a bit better.  The end of first semester, especially finals was pretty intense!!!  The Lord has been gracious through it and luckily I haven't thrown up in front of students.

Here's a video of our lastest appointment in Korea.  It's an sonogram of Little Meyer.  During the video the technician is measuring how long LM is, the size of the head, etc.  Everything is looking good!

break

Now that school started today break is officially over....sad story.  We had a fantastic break!  We stayed with our parents, spent a lot of quality time with both of our families, hung out with great friends, played with the dogs, and relaxed.  We were so thankful for the time we got to spend at home.  We did an especially terrible job of taking pictures this break, but here are a random few we took over the two weeks we were in the States.  

Typical night with my parents: dad playing angry birds, mom (see her leg) falling asleep early laying on the couch, and Hank (the dog) trying to cuddle up to people as much as possible.  

 Hank and I cuddling on the couch.  It seems like he has a question in this pic:

 By now you know this is Hank.  We miss having a dog so much in Korea, so we love spending time with our little canine friend.

 Christmas morning.  My mom got me a knitting kit.  I'm pumped about it.

 One of my best buds Sara and her little girl, Lakin.  We got Lakin a Hello Kitty hat for Christmas (its all the rage in Korea).  It's a little big, but she lives in Minnesota so she'll have plenty of time to grow into it.

 We also got Lakin her first laptop!  She's so into it.  :-)

 This was the first time we got to meet Lakin, so we had a lot of fun with her and her parents.

 Christmas night at the Meyer's.  My sister in law, Jen, got a cat hat.  Here she is showing her new look.

 Tom got a Chiefs hoodie and some milkshake spoons from his sister, Lori.  She knows Tom so well.

Once again, I apologize for our lack of pictures.  I don't feel like these do all of our break justice, but it's a little taste of what we were up to.  Although there were a lot of people we got to see, there were many out there that we missed, especially since we didn't get a long stay in Columbia.  We'll be home for a long time this summer, so hopefully if we missed you we will see you then.  Now its time to get back to the grind...!

it's cold up in here

We are back in Korea.  Overall it was a good trip; our flights were really smooth, all of our luggage arrived in a timely manner, and we made it to our apartment safe and sound.

Speaking of our apartment...when we got here it was at 12 degrees Celsius (around 54F).  To stay warm we wore our long underwear under our sweats, slept in sleeping bags, and layered some blankets over the sleeping bags. It's around 5am now (Korea time) and our heat has slowly warmed up the apartment through the night; we're at about 23C (73F).  Praise the Lord.

Two of my last comments to Tom last night were, "This is nothing compared to Mongolia."  and "Despite the long trip, the exhaustion, and a cold apartment....it's good to be back in our place."

We know we've been blogging slackers lately, so we'll make sure to post more in the coming days of our break and our semester to come.