baby names

I was talking with a student of ours and I was telling her how I had no idea what we will name our baby.  Like seriously, how do you name a human being?????  I find this task overwhelming.  To help with this task, I got an email from the aforementioned student this morning. (see below)


Subject Line: Names!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
These are just some ideas. 
And if you don't like any of them, then I'm just going to call the baby, Bob no matter what name you and Mr. Meyer decide to go with

HAHAHA im just kidding~

so yeaaaa I hope you enjoy the list 

Here is her list: (I'm only putting the boys names up because if we were to have a girl we have a couple of names that we would go with. It's the boy names we find challenging!)  

Boys:

Gabriel

Noah

Mathias

Braxton

Andrew

Jacob

Paul

Brandon

Luke

Michael

Erik/ Eric

Clyde

Jeremy

Joshua

Lawrence

Alex

Kris

Brian/ Bryan

Seth

Micah

Damon

Travis

Dylan

Tyler

Evan

Phillip

Trey

Owen

Christian

Nate

Bret

Mathew

Ethan

Not a bad list.  She said she spent over an hour thinking of names (her girls list was just as long)!  Tom and I will not be telling the name we pick until the little one is born, but we'll tell the world the baby's gender in about a month after our next ultrasound.  

What do you think? What should we name Little Meyer?

baby update

While at my favorite coffee shop the barista man asked me, "Where is your tall chingu (friend)?"

Me: "That is my husband (I point to my ring so he knows what husband means)! He's in the car."
Barista Man: "Ohhhhh!!!!"
Me: "We're having a baby (I point to my stomach)."  (Why I felt the need to tell him this I don't know).
Barista Man turns to the other recently permed barista and tells her in Korean I'm pregnant.   She speaks back to him in Korean and they both laugh.
Me: "What did she say?"
Barista Man: "She could tell you were [pregnant]."
Me: "You mean she thought I was fat?"
Barista Man: "Yes."

I love the honesty of Koreans.  As a side note, one of the reasons I love this coffee shop is this Barista Man knows a bit of English, so I can have small talk with him.  This is quite a rarity for us!

Another recent Korean pregnancy encounter happened at school.  At the beginning of one of my classes a student raises her hand and asks, "Mrs. Meyer, is your baby coming out yet?"

I think the inquiring student was trying to ask if I'm starting to show.  I'll let you be the judge:

I'm at 17.5 weeks here. I'll be honest, I think I look more pregnant in this picture than I normally do.  I'm still at the stage where if I wear certain types of clothes I can hide the bumpage, but I decided to show off the bump in all its glory for the blog.  

We also just recently had a doctor's appointment and we got to have an ultrasound done to see Little Meyer!!! The baby and I are doing well according to the doctor.   The baby is about half a pound right now and is measuring slightly above average in size (surprise, surprise...we're big people).   I'll leave you with a video of Little Meyer:

Another one down

Yesterday Bonnie and I wrapped up our third season as basketball coaches here at GSIS. It was a rough year for both programs because our school passed the 300 student limit required to stay in the lower division of our athletic conference. This meant that we had to step up and play with the big boys and girls in Division one. Though the caliber of play from most schools (one of the military base schools is really good) still didn't match that of a normal US high school basketball team, it was still a big jump for our students.

Bonnie's girls team went from winning the Division 2 tournament last year to placing 9th (last) in Division 1 this year even though she returned all of her players. I like I said, it was a big jump. The highlight of her season was in the final regular season game when the team got their first (and only) victory of the season. It was tough for her and the girls to go from the mountain top to the valley.

The boys team proved itself to be a little more competitive and placed 7th in the conference tournament. To sum up a crazy tournament we played 4 games in 2 days, one went into overtime and our final game went into double overtime. Our two senior boys got to go out in dramatic fashion with that double OT game to take 7th place.

We enjoyed our time coaching but we are eagerly anticipating the extra free time that will be coming our way now that the season is over.

Contrast

One thing that we noticed while in the Philippines is the contrast between our lodging and the surrounding area. Really this is something that can be noticed in a lot of places but is particularly evident throughout a lot of Asia. Sometimes the best examples are visual. Here is the view from the balcony inside of our hotel room.

Here are some views from out our door on the opposite side of our hotel room.

It is sometimes hard for us to visit these places for vacation knowing the people we see so much live and work there on a daily basis. There is definitely a lot of economic disparity and we are trying to figure out what it looks like for us to wrestle with the contrast.

homesick

I saw this today in my email and instantly got a little homesick...

To all you Americans out there: join the Blizzard fan club!!! You can get frequent coupons via email for a buy one get one free blizzard.  Oh how I miss thee....

highlights from our trip

Here are some pictures from our trip to Boracay, Philippines.

First up, the beach!

This is what I did the bulk of every day we were there.
Dinner with my love!
 These are some friends of our's from school, Becki and Elise, who were also in Boracay the same time as us.  It was fun to see some familiar faces and grab a meal together.

 Classic Korean pose with my fake Ray Ban sunglasses.

 Sharing a decaf coffee beverage.  Korea doesn't serve decaf drinks, so this was a special treat we enjoyed every day on our trip.

 A different part of the beach on a gloomier day.

 Maybe I should start spelling my name, "Bomy"?

Overall, I think the Philippines were a huge win! We really enjoyed the people, the beach, and the relaxation.  I'd go back in a heartbeat.

The journey

It seems like every time we go somewhere interesting travel experiences always come our way.  This trip was no different.  On the way to Boracay we left Seoul at 10:15 PM and landed in Cebu at 1:15 AM.  We had to pick up our bags and walk outside to the domestic terminal and wait for our 5:30 AM flight to Caticlan.  Here is Bonnie passing the time in the shutdown Cebu airport.

Caticlan was definitely the smallest airport I have ever flown into.  They had a really sophisticated baggage handeling system though...

 After we landed in Caticlan we took a tricycle ride to the port.

We then caught a boat to the island of Boracay.

On the way back to Korea we were supposed to fly out of Caticlan again.  I said supposed to because that isn't what happened.  When we got to the airport we found out our flight was cancelled.  The airline's solution was to put us in a van and drive us to another airport 1.5 hours away.  Thankfully our original layover in Manilla was a little over 4 hours so this arrangement was feasible.  We felt really blessed that it actually worked and we were able to get back to Korea safely and in a timely manner.

We're back...

We're back to Korea and already missing this: 

More to come on our trip in future blog posts!