Family Custard Night

One night when James was in town we decided to take a family trip to Andy's a frozen custard shop. It was a full car and quite an adventure.

too cute.

these are pictures my mom sent of the dogs. i guess hank and macey have become quick buddies, so much so that hank can practically sit on macey's head and not get eaten. I also think it's funny to see a huge 90 lbs. dog curled up in a little ball by a little 25 lbs puggle. they're just too cute.

I think Hank has also been good company for my dad. A few weeks ago my dad severely sprained his ankle. It's pretty bad and he's stuck at home for at least 8 weeks keeping that foot propped up. At least he has a little friend to keep him company!

thanks mom and dad!

We got a package from home! This was our second one since we've been here and it was glorious. We filmed the opening of our package, but the video wouldn't load up on blogger! bummer! so I posted the video on Youtube. You can click the link below to check it out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAdS6YJ9MiI

We also added a video bar to our blog on the right hand side. This will display the videos we have posted on Youtube (our apartment and/or our package)

one thing we've been missing

Tom and I have been thinking recently...and we miss Hank. At times we picture what it'd be like for Hank to live in Korea: hearing his paws pitter patter on the hard wood floor; what it would look like for him to be perched on the back of our coach looking out the window at Asia; what would he think of all the interesting smells??? But then we think about how he would be cooped up in an apartment and he would have to go to the bathroom on concrete because we don't have grass. And then we think more about how sweet of a life he has at my parent's house just hanging out with Macey, getting treats (but hopefully not getting fat), and going on all these great walks everyday with Jerre. Yes...he's better off without us and without Korea for now, but we still miss him snuggling in bed with us.

We're Ready To Go

Saying goodbye to Young Life friends...

This is it! We're all packed to go. Can you guess which bag weighs 100 pounds?

Our Top 5 Columbia Favorites

Ice Cream:

1. Shake's

2. Cold Stone

3. Dairy Queen

4. Wendy's (the Frosty)

5. The Quikshake from QuikTrip

Grocery Store:

1. HyVee

2. Gerbes

3. Schnucks

4. Wal Mart

5. Mike and Jerre's House (Bonnie's Parents)

Restaurants:

1. Addisons

2. Murray's

3. Flat Branch
4. Shakespeare's

5. Chipotle (we realize this is a commercial place, but its top 5 worthy)

Coffee shops:

1. Kaldi's

We need not mention any other coffee shops in the top 5.

Honorable mentions: the Artisan, the Coffee Ground, and the Lamppost Cafe (at the Crossing)

Favorite Activities:

1. Hiking Rock Bridge State Park (especially Shooting Star Trail)

2. Jogging/Biking the MKT trail

3. Hanging out at Bethel Park

4. Twin Lakes dog park

5. shopping Columbia Mall. just kidding. tom hates this.

the real 5. reading and hanging out at Kaldi's

Things We Will For Sure Miss:

1. Selling programs at Mizzou football games for Young Life

Just kidding.

We're going to miss a lot of great things from Columbia, but more than anything we will miss spending time with the great people we know.

Asia here we come! 2 days away!

Goodbye Honda Accord

Well as mentioned below we sold the Honda that we used to drive. It was sad to see it go but nice to get some spare $. So here's the story:

We put the car in the paper on Sunday and finally got our first call on Tuesday morning. The dude was obviously foreign and a little difficult to understand but I was able to answer the guy's questions. He wanted to see the car but didn't have a way to get to me so Bonnie and I drove to downtown Columbia to his place.

He was a really nice 25ish year old Chinese man. He gave the car a thorough look over and decided to take it for a test drive. As we start driving down the road I begin to realize that he's not the worlds greatest driver which he confirms by saying, "I'm not very good driver. I just have learners permit."

Our eye light up like head lights and I ask, "Ohhhh, are you going to take the driving test?" He resoponds, "Oh yes, I took this morning. I did not pass." My pulse begins to pick up and I feel Bonnie clutch my outside shoulder as we turn north on Providence. As we drive up Providence I'm feeling pretty nervous and he keeps tapping the accelerator and says that he wants to go faster. I mention that I-70 is just ahead and he can just hop on there for a second.

As he begins to turn onto the on ramp he mentions, "I never drive on the highway before." I'm thinking "WHAT!!! Are you kidding me!?!? Please let this go okay." He gets on the on ramp and basically comes to a complete stop. I hurridly tell him, "You should speed up here." He does and everything thankfully goes according to plan. Eventually we make it back to his apartment.

He ended up taking the car in to get it inspected on Thursday and we agreed to a price and sold the car. Oh and he did pass his driving test on Wednesday with a 76. One point better than my score of 75.

Our Life In A Box

Moving day was intense! This is everything we own in a 10x10 storage unit. Fitting everything inside it was like solving a life sized puzzle. Luckily, Tom thrives in these situations. He's gifted in spacial reasoning.

I will never be a professional mover.

Bonnie and I just spent some portion of the past 4 days packing up our stuff and moving most of it into a 10x10 storage unit. What didn't go into the storage shed is in her parents garage. I still don't know where my toothbrush is. I'm so sore that I don't even want to support my upper body. I just want to be limp and lay around. Even reading takes too much energy. Oh and by the way there are probably only a few things that are harder to motivate myself for than cleaning a place I know I won't live in.

On a less negative note we sold the Honda yesterday for $4500 to a very nice Chinese grad student at MU. The day he took it for a test drive he had yet to pass his drivers test. That was a bit unnerving. He passed it the next day though. See ya Honda...

saying goodbye

It has begun...The process of saying goodbye to the people we love is becoming a regular part of life these days.

Tom and I are super excited to move to Korea. We just really have God's peace in this and we know this is what he's calling us to do. All that to say, saying goodbye to America is still extremely difficult. Since we accepted our jobs in February I have not let myself think about the fact that moving to Korea means moving away from friends/family. My focus has been completely on where we are going and not on what we're leaving. Two weeks ago, however, I began to crack. Tom and I visited the Osborne's in Chicago. Right before we left I had to say goodbye to Mary Kate and reality began to creep in...I don't know when I'll see MK again! Tears began to well up in my eyes, but before I would let myself get weepy I decided I just wouldn't allow myself to think about leaving MK. And it worked. I just refused to think about leaving my best friend and I stopped the tears. Success!

This past week we were in Minnesota at Castaway (a beautiful Young Life property). We were adult guests for the week and got to see a lot of our friends who are serving the camp for the entire month. Carly Roach and Christie Reaves (two women I really love) were both there, and right before I had to say goodbye to them I felt really confident. "You know, when I left MK I was able to keep myself from really crying. I can do this! I can be strong! I can say goodbye...no problem!" However, this confident demeanor crumbled when I said goodbye to Carly. I don't even know if I spoke any words to Carly because I became a mess of tears. For the first time in this entire process it fully hit me...man, I am leaving my friends. This is hard. After Carly I pulled myself together and thought I was doing okay. We said goodbye to a few more folks and then we had to say our final goodbye's to Christie and Travis (my YL area director and his wife). At one point Christie said, "I can't imagine Jeff City without my Bonnie." And I just lost it. I was a weepy, weepy mess and I continued to be a weepy mess for the first 30 minutes of our drive home from Minnesota. Saying goodbye is messy.

In the midst of saying goodbye I have noticed a few things: First, I feel so blessed by the friendships I have with people. Leaving is hard only because the relationships we have here are so great. Second, crying is such a funny thing...how weird is it that when we get really emotional water comes out of our eyes? Third, I think it's okay to feel sad at times. What kind of person would I be if I didn't feel sad about leaving these relationships? And really its just a happy-sad feeling because its a sadness that comes from realizing how sweet and beautiful friendships are to us. And lastly, I trust these relationships that I have with people. I feel confident that the only thing that will change in relationships through this move is physical distance. The love will remain, the prayers will remain, the facebook creeping will remain...I really trust all of that.

Besides it's not really goodbye. It's more like (from the words of Desmond from LOST), "see you in another life brother."

Public Transit

So one thing that Bonnie and I will have to get accustomed to in Korea is the fact that we are not going to have a car; at all. So we will be doing a lot of bus, train, and subway riding. As a result I decided that I should take a little adventure today via the Columbia Public Transit system.

I had a dentist appointment at 9 and we were meeting my step-sis Jessie and her bf Jeff at Chipotle at noon. Bonnie wanted to go downtown to Kaldi's (the best coffee shop ever!) and spend some time reading and probably creeping on Facebook. In the interest of conserving fuel and not having two cars downtown at the same time I had the novel idea: maybe I should look into taking the bus.

I got back from the dentist at 9:50ish and hopped on the comp to look up the bus schedule. I noticed that there was a bus coming by a stop near our house at 10:22 (I love the precision) so I closed up the comp, strapped on my Chaco's, and started walking to the bus stop. This was going to be the first time in my 7 years here in CoMo that I had ever taken the bus anywhere.

It took me about 10 - 15 minutes to walk to the bus stop and I waited about 7 minutes or so for the bus to arrive. I was a little nervous about the whole process because it was all so new. Well as I sat waiting for the bus a car pulled up in front of the bus stop and I realized that it was a girl from YL and Rock Bridge, Kelsie Shearrer . I began to feel squeamish. She rolled down her window and politely asked with a subtly pitying tone, "Mr. Meyer, can I please give you a ride." That was so nice of her. I replied in turn informing her of my intent to meet Bonnie downtown. How fitting that the first time I choose to ride the bus someone sees me and offers a ride. I resisted the temptation though.

Then the bus arrived. I hopped on paid my 50 cents and sat down to enjoy the ride. I'll be honest there was something quite enjoyable about just being able to sit there and read a book and not have to hassle with traffic and driving and all that stuff. I rode for about 15 minutes and the bus stopped about 3 blocks from Kaldi's so I pulled the cord, told the driver thanks, and went on my merry way.

I would say that my first experience with public transit was most enjoyable. The driver even wished me a good day as I exited the bus. That was so nice of him! Now the question is will I be able to read the bus schedule in Korea? I hope they have an English version...

Garage Sale!!!!!

Bonnie made the last post so I figure that now it is my turn. Even though the garage sale actually happened several weeks ago I decided that I had to post on it. We sat down with Bonnie parents towards that end of May and came to the conclusion that we must have a joint garage sale and we must have it soon. So we set the date for June 13 and 14 and began the process of going through all of our possessions.

So for Bonnie and I this process took about, I don’t know, 3 or 4 hours one afternoon a couple days before the sale. For Jerre and Mike (Bonnie’s parents) this was a completely different story. I would conservatively estimate that it took them close to 30 to 40 hours of work to go through their house. Now to be fair they have been living there for 15 years and still had boxes they had not unpacked. (Dog head not for sale.)

To make a long story short between Bonnie and I liquidating a ton of our possessions and the unpackratting of Jerre and Mike’s house we had one heck of a garage sale. As many of you know I am a big fan of garage sales. I go to them regularly and shop mainly for books to stock my now steadily declining book business (so sad). Well, as much as I like going to sales I think that working them is like 10 times better.

It was so fun to haggle with people. Friday morning I had a guy offer to buy my old Nintendo and Atari for $30 combined when I was asking $20 for each. I said, “Well, seeing that it is still 7AM on Friday I’m going to stick to $20 each.” His response was to walk away. Nobody even looked at them the rest of the day. At this point I’m second guessing myself. Saturday rolls around and first thing a couple of kids come and buy them each for $20. Take that Mr. Walkaway!

It was also a lot of fun to watch what people bought. Some people buy the most random stuff. Like a garage door opener. Maybe the dude thought it still worked and he could come back by later… Or a cell phone that was probably 10 years old. I don’t even know if it can be activated anymore… How about a half working toaster oven? This was a wedding gift that Bonnie and I received that crapped out after a year or so. The bottom heating element still worked but not the top one. The guy was foreign. I tried to explain but I’m not sure he understood.

All in all it was a great experience. When everything was said and done we ended up making over $1000 between us all. Bonnie and I have used our cut to eat out a lot and take vacations. I hope there are garage sales in Korea…

We're Bloggers!

After much anticipation, Tom and I finally have a blog! We hope that we'll be able to use our blog to stay connected to America and give America a picture of Korea.

We leave for Korea July 30, 2008. We are about one month out from the big move and more than anything we just feel excited and at peace about what is ahead. Over the next month we need to pack up our house, figure out how to fit everything we need to live on into two 50 pound bags a piece, prepare academically for school (this part feels the most overwhelming), and spend a lot of quality time with people we love. I think Tom and I had high hopes of being super productive during our time off this summer but unfortunately we spend much of our day playing around and/or being somewhat bored. We just recently got a new laptop (thanks to our new school), so we also have been using our time to sit around in silence as we both work on our computers and on occasion Gmail chat with one another.

Life is good at home.
-BAM