rafting and more Seoul

This past weekend I spent Saturday with a group of our high school seniors on a rafting trip.  This is the river we rafted.  As you may guess from the picture it was not a rough ride.

I kid you not these were the only life jackets the place offered.  This was a classic Korea moment that had to be captured.  Also, I have never seen the through the leg straps before; not the most comfortable.  Fellow sponsors Greg (left) and Todd are sporting the gear with me.

 Here is the whole crew.

 Though the rafting was tame the time on the water was a lot of fun.  A lot of goofing around and jumping in the river.  It was nice to get out and play a little bit.

After rafting we went out for all you can eat sam-gyup-sal (think thick fatty bacon, literally means 3 layers of fat).  It was really good but fatty.  Here we are in the process.

They cooked it on this awesome makeshift grill. 

They would bring it over to us and cut it up straight onto our plates.  It was a pretty cool eating experience.

The aftermath.

 On the bus ride back we followed we followed this interesting bus for a little bit.

 Sunday I decided to head into Seoul again.  I spent some good time at a Starbucks reading and then worked my way up to the Philippine Market.  Basically they sold a lot of food and beauty products that are native to the Philippines.  There was one place that was making fresh Philippine food so I decided to check it out for my lunch.  It was pretty good.  The options:

After that I headed to the nearby Changgyeong Palace.  It was built in the 15th century and in 1909 when the Japanese imperialized Korean it was, like so many other things, destroyed (side note: it was destroyed and rebuilt several times before that too).  The Japanese turned it into a zoo and botanical garden.  One of the things that the Koreans decided to keep around after the Japanese were expelled was this greenhouse.  It was the first conservatory ever constructed in Korea and it was actually pretty cool.

I decided that the palace grounds would actually be a really cool place to come visit in the fall because there was a lot of nice coniferous and deciduous foliage.  Maybe Bonnie, Everett, and I will come back for a stroll.  They fenced this tree off.  I guess because it looked like it should be dead but it was living.  Resilient, like Koreans.

 More nature:

Good times out and about over the weekend.  Only 9 more days until I am reunited with Bonnie and Everett!!!!!!

New address

This is not the most exciting post but just a heads up if you ever need to send anything here.  The government changed our school's address the new one is listed on the sidebar of the blog at all times.

Here it is:

Tom and Bonnie Meyer
c\o Gyeonggi Suwon International School

451 Yeongtong-Ro, Yeongtong-Gu,

Suwon City, Gyeonggi-Do

Republic of Korea 443-808

Go Tigers!

Thanks Gramps and Granny Jerre for my Tiger hat and shoes.  I know I have big feet but I'd just like to clarify that these shoes are still a bit big. :-)  I also love my outfit from Aunt Jen and Uncle Jim.  I especially love that I got to wear my Shakepseare's Pizza outfit when the Shakespeare's delivery lady brought our pizzas! Much Love--Everett

Everett's Lady Friends

I've mentioned a few times before that I'm blessed to have a close group of girlfriends called "the Council."  There are five of us women in this group and within the past year 4 out of the five of us have gotten pregnant and had babies!  My friend Sara had her girl, Lakin a year ago.  Polly had her baby girl Adelyn earlier this summer.  My friend Carly is pregnant with identical twin girls that should come any day!  Do you notice a trend?  Everyone has had beautiful girls, making Everett the lone male.  I like his odds of possibly marrying one of my best friends kids! hehe

Here is the meeting of Lakin and Everett: 

Although Everett technically hasn't met Carly's daughters, here is Carly in her pregnant glory with Baby A and Baby B inside.  (Can you believe she's pregnant with twins?! She looks awesome!)

This past weekend we had a baby shower for Carly in St. Louis, so Everett had his first road trip! He did awesome!!! I was able to go half of the way to STL with my friend Polly and her daughter Adelyn, who is six weeks older than Everett.  It was so fun for Polly and I to ride together with our two babies in the back.  Here's a picture I took looking into the baby mirror in the backseat so you can see the two kiddos. They were so cute.

 Here are the two sweet babies together.  I love this picture.

It's been a busy weekend but Everett and I were so blessed by all the friends we got to spend time with. 

Saturday in Seoul

Since I was flying solo this past weekend I decided to head into Seoul and do a little exploring.  I went to  this place called Dongdaemun (Dong-day-moon).  It is known for being a clothing mecca of sorts.  I am not a big clothes shopper, especially in Korea, but I wanted to see what they had in the way of baby clothes.  It was actually kind of slim pickings but there was some stuff to choose from. While there I found a series of shops selling used books.  If you know anything about my past you know I spent a decent amount of time selling used books on Amazon and Ebay.  So I am always drawn to them for some reason, even if I know I won't buy anything.  These shops were especially cool though because they were so compact.  They were probably like 8 feet wide with and aisle about 2 feet wide down the middle.  Check out the pics:

Literally wall-to-wall books 

 There was a strip of about 8 to 10 of these shops right in a row.

 I actually bought a Korean/English Bible from one of the shops though it wasn't this one which I later noticed was a Christian bookstore.

There was a shop that sold restaurant style paraphernalia and for some reason I found myself very tempted to buy one of these.  

I spent some more time exploring other places but forgot to take pics.  I'll have to work on that in the future.

Everett's Photo Shoot

I was able to spend some time with my good friend Sara today and we did a little photo shoot of Everett.   He's one month old now!  Here's a preview of some of the pictures she took.  She did a great job!

family time

Everett has had a bunch of visitors lately!  It's been really fun for him to meet some of his extended family.

Aunt Jina:

 Papa

 Emmy and her daughter Lilly:

 Aunt Lori:

 Uncle Aaron:

 Everett got a Florida Gators football jersey from his "Aunt" Emily.  Emily and I grew up together and my parents even call her their adopted daughter.  Here he is sporting his jersey:

 Emily and Everett:

 My cousins Rachael and Amanda:

 Uncle Tim:

 Aunt "Pooh" (like Winnie the Pooh).  Her real name is Jan.

Everett has been doing great! He's growing like crazy and becoming more alert every day.  He misses his daddy too...16 more days and Tom will be back!

Civil Defense Drill

We have signed up with the US embassy to get email notification of any important news that we need to know about at Americans living in Korea.  This one came into my inbox today:

"The U.S. Embassy in Seoul is transmitting the following information as a public service to all U.S. citizens in the Republic of Korea.
Seoul Metropolitan Police authorities advised the Embassy that on Thursday, August 18, at approximately 2:00 p.m. an air-raid siren will sound for one minute to signal the start of a nationwide civil defense drill.  Pedestrians in open and public areas should seek shelter in nearby buildings or subway stations.  All drivers/vehicles on the road must pull over and come to a complete stop. At approximately 2:15 p.m. a second siren will sound, signaling the conclusion of the drill.  Local authorities will give further instructions if necessary."

I have never actually seen one of these take place because we are always in school.  I feel like it would be super creepy to just be going about your business on a Thursday afternoon and then this siren goes off and everyone goes into "holy crap we are being attacked" mode.  The crazy thing is that there is a reasonable degree of necessity to the drill based on who our neighbors to the north are.  I'll do my best to remember to honor the drill tomorrow by doing a good ole duck and cover under my desk when I hear it.

Nesting

One of my assignments while being here in Korea is to get stuff ready for our new addition.  When I got back one of the first things that I noticed was the awesome folks at our school that work in the housing department had set up our crib and moved in a dresser.  My task was to inventory all of the stuff that we have here so we know what we have and if we need to get anything else before bringing Everett here.  I also wanted to get the room cleaned up and organized.  I've still got 3 weeks over here but when you are living the single life and jet lagged there can be a degree of boredom involved from time-to-time.

So over the past few days I counted up all Everett's baby stuff, cleaned up his room, hung some curtains (and in the process put about 5 unnecessary holes in the wall), threw down a rug, and put a sheet on the mattress.  The walls still need a little love but I may have to wait for Bonnie on that one.

I can't wait for Bonnie, Everett and I to get settled in here.