Taiwan: Day 5 (Lukang)

These Taiwan blog posts are boring even me (hence why it's taking me so long to post each one) but I want to document our trip so we don't forget everything we did. You can skip over the boring parts.

Wednesday dawned damp and rainy, the perfect weather for our trip to an old historic town in which everything is outdoors. We checked out of our hotel in Yuan-lin (of our three hotels, it turned out to be our favorite hotel during our trip) and drove about 45 minutes north to Lukang, another town in which David had served in for a short while. Lukang is home to some of Taiwan's oldest and most famous Buddhist temples and is also known for its old historic district filled with artisans keeping alive many old Asian crafts.

Our first stop was to Matsu Temple (also called Tianhou Gong), an old wooden temple built in the 1600's (according to the few sketchy sources I could find) and renovated in 1936. David promised me that once I saw this temple, all others would seem boring by comparison and he was mostly right.

This is the inner courtyard with stairs leading up to more rooms (I don't know the purpose of most rooms in the temples) and a fountain full of koi.



I loved these circular doorways.

This is the memorial arch welcoming you to the temple.

Dragons are a common motif. Go figure.

The fountain.

Like any good Buddhist temple, there were lots of statues, lots of gold, and lots of burning incense.

After visiting the Matsu temple, David and I wandered around the town a bit, killing time until we were scheduled to meet his friend Suman (Susan) for lunch. I tried my first bing sha (basically a fruit slushie) and it was absolutely delicious. However, it made me very cold.

As we walked down the street, we came upon these two cats, chilling on someone's scooter.
Once we met up with Susan, we went into a very eclectic little restaurant which served an odd conglomeration of Asian, American, and Italian food. While David and Susan stuck with the Chinese food, I ordered what they called spaghetti but whose sauce had very little resemblance to tomato sauce. I was, unfortunately, not feeling so chipper by this point and so David and Susan had a nice long conversation in Chinese while I stared into space and dreamed of taking a nap.

By the time we left the restaurant, the rain had cleared up a bit, and we walked down an old artists' street, filled with old shops. David and I had walked down the street before, but most of the shops had been closed. Now that the rain had ceased, the shops were opening up.
The small street was full of interesting buildings with old wooden doors and locks. It was quite picturesque.

David and I had hoped that we'd be able to purchase a large Chinese fan in Lukang. While we did find a few fan shops, none had the large fans we were looking for. We did, however, happen upon one fan maker/artist who had a large board full of pictures of Mormon missionaries. I don't think that he was actually a member of the church, but a large group of missionaries had visited his fan shop and had brought him pictures of the various temples which he used as inspiration for some of the paintings he drew on his fans. He showed us a few with what I thought was the Taipei temple on them and even some with pictures of Jesus. If his fans hadn't been so costly (about $40 for a medium sized one), I might have purchased one of the smaller ones, but we have our heart set on a big fan to hang on our wall. I guess we'll just have to find one in China.

We did, however, end up purchasing a paper lantern at another shop. It has birds and purple flowers drawn on it, along with a bunch of Chinese characters but David has no idea what they say. He thinks it's a proverb or something. Once I take the lantern out of its box, and figure out where to hang it, I'll take a picture of it. I'm just too lazy to do it right now. (Also, it's late, and I need to be done with this post or I'll never finish documenting this trip.)

When I finally couldn't stand walking around anymore, David and I said our good-byes to Susan and headed back to our car. (I sound like such a spoil sport but I was really cranky by this point, having spent most of the day in the rain while dealing with some fun problems I won't document here.)

From Lukang, we drove east about an hour or so to Sun Moon Lake, a beautiful lake surrounded by mountains in the center of Taiwan. It's one of Taiwan's most famous and beautiful locations and huge tourist magnet. Luckily, we were hitting it at off-tourist time and we reached the lake just as the sun was setting. Sun Moon Lake has several very ritzy resorts (which we couldn't afford to stay at) but the majority of the hotels and restaurants congregate around two small outposts: Shuishe Village, at the northwest corner of the lake, and Itashao Village, which sits on the southeast corner. Our hotel, the Full House Resort Hotel, was located in Itashao Village, which is the smaller and more intimate of the two, and boasts a lot of stores dedicated to the arts and crafts of Taiwan's aboriginal natives, who mostly still reside in the mountains.

I was very excited to stay at our hotel, having read many favorable reviews and seen pictures of the absolutely gorgeous all-wood bed and breakfast. It was a small hotel, with just a hanful of rooms, with rustic charm and filled with the artwork of the owner's artist wife. It took us quite some time to actually find our hotel, since, it being off-tourist season, most of the roads in the village were in various states of disrepair and we couldn't take a direct route. We eventually found our hotel, sitting near the water's edge and went inside to check in. The hotel was just as gorgeous as I had pictured and I was excited to see our rooms, so imagine my surprise when they led us out of the hotel, up the hill, and into some little faraway little rooms that reminded me of the cabins we sometimes used to stay in during Girl's Camp. I was very disappointed.

David questioned why we were being stuck out in the boondocks and we learned that when we had made our online reservations, we had selected these rooms (being the cheapest). Luckily, they still had rooms available in the main house and so we were transferred to a room on the second floor with a deck facing the lake. After bringing in all our luggage, David and I walked around the small village and finding nothing we really wanted to eat, we bought two bowls of ramen noodles at the 7-11 and went back to our room to eat them while watching TV. (Luckily, there were 5 English channels which showed either news or a random assortment of movies.)
The exterior of the hotel. It had a lovely garden fulled with all sorts of animal statues, tables and candles which they lit at night. Unfortunately, it rained through much of our stay so no one ever ventured out. During the summer, this is probably a happening place.

A side view. I love all-wood buildings. They have such charm.

Our deck.

And then view from our room.

Inside the hotel, on the second floor. There were three floors. The first floor is the restaurant and cafe, and the second and third are the rooms.

While the hotel itself was beautiful and charming, the rooms were nothing special. The second night, a very large and noisy party checked in to the room right above us and since everything is wood, we heard every step and creak. The beds were hard (but all our beds in Taiwan were hard) and the bathroom left much to be desired, especially the too short tub and the shower head which was the perfect height for people under 5 feet. You know that scene in Elf where Buddy (Will Ferrell) is trying to take a shower in the North Pole and he has to splash water onto his face and shoulders? That's kind of what showering there was like (though the shower head was detachable).

Still, I enjoyed our stay in our hotel, if only because it was so peaceful, quiet and charming there. But best of all was our breakfast: two heart-shaped eggs with ham, toast and passionfruit juice. Real food is so good.

Up next: Our Day at Sun Moon Lake.

Taiwan: Days 3 and 4 (Monday and Tuesday)

Monday was an adventurous day for us though we certainly didn't intend for it to be so. We started out the morning by driving to Douliou, one of the small towns that David had served in on his mission. Apparently, Douliou is home to many crazy people, but we had no fun run-ins. We drove through the town, and stopped at the church building there and I was once again regaled with missionary stories (which is fun the first day, but after a week, it gets a little old :-).

We didn't really stop and explore in Douliou--not much to see anyway--so we decided to head elsewhere. I suggested we poke around the little mountain town of Rueili, which my tour book
described as a scenic little outpost famous for its fireflies, waterfalls, and hiking trails. None of the maps we had were very clear about how to actually get to Rueili, but we set off anyway, confident that it wouldn't be that difficult to find.

Well, we missed the road we should have taken for a direct shot at the town (which we wouldn't have seen anyway since we were on the highway, and the only way to access the road we really did need was from a local road) so we decided to head on to Alishan National Scenic Area and take the smaller country roads to reach Rueili from the back way. It sounded like a good plan at the time.

A short while into our trip, we stopped at Chukou, a small mountain town boasting a small Buddhist temple and a suspension bridge over a dried-out river bed. It was a picturesque place, so we decided to stop and check it out.

The little towns were always the most fun to stop in because we got lots of strange looks. Not many white people come through these parts, I'm sure.

We'd eaten a big breakfast that morning, and we weren't hungry yet but we bought some mountain apples at a roadside stand and bought a few snacks inside a 7-11 and then continued on our way.


The first hour of the journey was very scenic and beautiful as we climbed up twisty mountain roads. (Though not very pleasant on our stomachs as both David and I have a tendency to get carsick.)

Most of the land up in the mountains is used to grow tea. All those rows and rows of green bushes are all tea bushes and most people travel to this area to sample teas at various tea houses along the road to Alishan National Forest.

By this point, we'd been driving for awhile and had seen no signs for Rueili, so we contemplated just turning around. But David asked a few locals for directions and learned that the turn-off for the road to Rueili wasn't very far away so we decided to continue on our journey.

As we pressed on, the roads grew much more narrow and in some places, whole lanes had been washed away by recent heavy rain and landslides.

But even though we passed whole houses still sliding down mountains.....

.....and a strip of crushed buildings, we still didn't stop.

We had finally found the road to Rueili and seeing no indication that we couldn't still access the roads, we pressed on, though we saw fewer and fewer cars.

And then we came to this. The whole road was completely wiped out. And you know what? It still didn't stop us.

Because there were signs pointing to a small dirt road that promised access to Rueili. We'd come this far, it seemed like a shame to stop now. So down muddy dirt roads we went, climbing up and down mountains, driving through big muddy puddles and squeezing through impossibly narrow spots. Our rental car was not cut out for this kind of abuse. At one point, we took a wrong turn and ended up on some guy's chicken farm. We couldn't turn around so we had to back up the hill. I was growing more and more panicked (and hungry and cranky, since we hadn't stopped for lunch) and eventually we finally decided to admit defeat and turn around.

Our poor rental car after the journey out of the bowels of the mountain valleys. It wasn't a great car to begin with but it made a lot more noises after our off-roading adventure. It was about 2 p.m. when we turned around and started to make our long journey back to our hotel. We eventually made it back about two and a half hours later and I begged David to go to McDonald's for dinner since I wanted real food after our harrowing adventure. He kindly obliged. French fries have never tasted so good.

Tuesday, by comparison, was a much calmer day. After a relaxing morning, the Qiu family picked us up at our hotel to take us out to lunch. Brother Qiu, his wife, daughter, and a family friend took us to a Japanese restaurant in Yuan-lin. (The restaurant that they had originally wanted to take us to was closed on Tuesdays.) Brother Qiu was the Branch President in Yuan-lin when David served in that area eight years ago. They were incredibly nice and friendly people and we enjoyed our lunch immensely though I didn't get to partake in much of the conversation since only the daughter spoke much English.

The food--what I did eat--was quite delicious, though there was a lot a shrimp and fish heads mixed into things. Asians just fry up whole fish and eat it, bones and scales and all. I couldn't even handle all the tiny shrimp in the fried rice. Luckily there was fried rice with chicken as well. I eat a lot more seafood than I used to, but I can't eat it the way Asians do. Also, the Taiwanese don't drink anything with their meals, except for maybe tea, and they never drink cold water since they think it messes with their digestive systems.

After our lunch, David and I headed north to Taichung, the largest city in the area. David served in the Taichung Mission which comprised the central portion of Taiwan (there used to be 3 missions in Taiwan, but now there are only 2 so Taichung now includes all of the southern half of Taiwan). We drove to the mission home which is right next to a church building and a massive department store in central Taichung. Unfortunately, most of the missionaries were not in at the time, but we talked to one Senior Missionary married couple who were there and David bought some of their new language materials. He's very determined to keep his Chinese up.

After chatting with the Senior Missionaries for awhile, David and I went to check out this massive department store before we met another of David's friends for dinner. Kevin, who lives in Taichung, was a recent convert when David first served in Taichung. Luckily, he speaks great English so I actually got to participate in this conversation. Kevin took us to a "hot pot" restaurant. Basically, each person is given a pot of boiling broth and then you can select a variety of meats, vegetables, seafood, and noodles to boil in your pot. It was quite tasty. (Plus I'm always a fan of getting to cook my own food, especially meat, to my desired doneness, which is probably why I like Korean BBQ so much.) They even had "desserts" but Asians really don't like very sweet things and so their desserts always taste bland and flavorless to me. After a good meal, we said our good-byes to Kevin and headed back to Yuan-lin for our last night there.

Next up: the old town of Lukang and Sun Moon Lake.

Taiwan: Days 1 and 2 (Saturday and Sunday)

Travel blogs can, quite frankly, get a little boring at times. Especially if it's just twenty photos of "Here's us at the Empire State Building," "Here's us at the Brooklyn Bridge," blah, blah, blah. Not exactly exciting stuff. So it is with a little bit of trepidation that I attempt to document our trip to Taiwan. I hope it will not be boring but I make no promises. I can promise, however, that there will not be 20 pictures of David or me. I think you've seen enough of us. I'd rather you see what Taiwan looks like.

Taiwan was like a warm tropical paradise to us. Not that it was extremely warm--I still tended to wear sweaters and occasionally my jacket--but it was at least 20-30 degrees warmer than the cold we left in Korea.

Case in point: our plane before leaving Seoul. I was afraid that our flight would be delayed or cancelled due to the weather, but luckily, the Incheon airport was prepared for snow. (And good thing we left when we did because later that week, Seoul had it's biggest snow storm in 60+ years.) We had to go through a de-freezing process before we took off, which meant we sat on the runway for an extra hour, but otherwise it was an uneventful flight. We did, however, get bumped up to the big cushy seats in Business Class. There was only one person in First Class and none in Business, so they allowed a few people from the packed Economy section to sit in Business. David and I thought we'd hit the jackpot.

After landing in Taiwan, collecting our luggage, and breezing through customs, we rented a car. (And here's David attempting to read his directions in Chinese while trying to drive at the same time. I was absolutely useless as a navigator.) Aside from our plane tickets, our biggest expense on the trip was on the rental car which wasn't all that fabulous of a car to begin with and was ridiculously over-priced. I don't think many foreign travelers rent cars in Taiwan but it was the only way we could visit all the cities and towns David wanted to see from his mission.

I assumed that since Koreans, who consider themselves as such an "advanced nation," are such awful drivers, that the Taiwanese would be even worse. But I was wrong. Driving in Taiwan was a pleasure after the streets of Seoul. Not only did people stop at red lights, but they obeyed traffic laws. Their goal in life was not in trying to run you off the road. They didn't want to kill you. (The biggest challenge to driving in Taiwan are the large number of scooters who occupy the same street as the cars.) It was a revelation. It has also made driving in Korea all the more infuriating because now I know that Asians CAN drive like civilized human beings but the Koreans choose not to. I have lost all my tolerance and patience for lousy Korean drivers. It's going to be a very long year and a half.

Anyway, after getting our rental car, David and I hit the road toward Yuanlin, which sits in the middle of Taiwan's west coast. It was David's favorite area during his mission and was in a centrally-located area to the other sights we wanted to see so we decided to stay in Yuanlin for four the first four nights.

Our hotel wasn't anything fancy, but it was quite comfortable and the people there were extremely friendly and helpful. In fact, most Taiwanese people are incredibly friendly, more so than Koreans. They were especially fond of David as soon as they discovered he could speak Chinese so well. I, meanwhile, perfected the smile and nod.

Here's the view of Yuanlin from the front of our hotel. Our first order of business was to get something to eat and then get a phone card so David could call all his Taiwanese friends. As it started to get darker, we decided to walk through Yuanlin and we stumbled across this, for lack of a better term, Buddhist fairground.

There were sculptures and a fake temple and lots and lots of lights. We thought they were just setting up, for Chinese New Year perhaps, but later that week, we saw them dismantling the sets. I'm glad we got a chance to see it when we did because it was incredible.


There were all sorts of colors and characters.

You can't tell from photography, but most of these figures were moving as well. And there was music.

Here you can see most of the cast from Sponge Bob. Why, I don't know. But there you go.

And these amazing statues made entirely of suckers and lollipops.

Behind this area was a night market full of street food like stinky tofu and dried squid, games, and other items for sale. It was an incredible sight to see on my first night in Taiwan. Later that night, Shuqi, who was a new convert in Yuanlin when David served there, and her husband Aaron, came over to our hotel room with a bunch of snacks, including tianbula (fried fish paste) and mixue (rice and pig's blood). Yum! (Actually, the tianbula wasn't bad. I steered clear of the blood.) Shuqi served her mission in Hawaii (and then later went to BYU Hawaii) and so we were able to have a conversation half in Chinese and half in English.

The next morning, we woke up early to drive to the chapel in Yuanlin to attend church. When David served in the area, they had just a small branch that met in an apartment building. Now they have two wards and a brand new, big church building.

We attended Sacrament meeting in the both the wards. David was in Chinese heaven while I was struggling to stay awake. It's already hard enough to stay awake when church is in English but when it's a foreign language that you can't understand, it's real easy to nod off even though Shuqi was doing a great job translating for me.

After church, David and I ate lunch at a "steak house" where they bring out flaming skillets while your meat is still cooking. I wish I knew then that that would be one of the best meals I'd eat that week.

Later that evening, Shuqi and Aaron picked us up and took us to Shuqi's parent's house in Changhua for dinner. David was very happy to eat Taiwanese food cooked by a real Taiwanese person. Plus, it was just cool to see how the Taiwanese live. Shuqi's father is a music teacher and he played a few things on his Asian guitar (I don't know what it's called) and Taiwanese wooden pipes.

After dinner, we drove to the Big Buddha on Baguashan Mountain, literally a 72 foot high giant Buddha. Unfortunately, it was fully dark by the time we explored there and my camera struggles with night photos so I didn't get pictures that really capture the area.

But you get the basic idea of the Big Buddha. You can even climb inside him and look through his eyes. (But it was closed so we didn't get to do that.)

Behind the Buddha was a large Buddhist temple.

After awhile, all the Buddhist temples start to look the same.

But this one was still cool.

There was also a great look-out at the top of the mountain to view the city of Changhua and fountains with "dancing water" shows.

Now, if you've made it to the end of this boring post, I'll leave you with just one picture of David and I with a faintly glowing Buddha in the background. Just proof that we were actually there.

A Guide to Traveling in Asia

Even though we've lived in Korea for 6 months, our trip to Taiwan last week taught me that I am woefully unprepared and unsuited for life in Asia. We're really spoiled here because we do have access to American products at the commissary and the PX and I get to enjoy my favorite foods on a daily basis. We have an APO address so it's quick and easy to have things shipped to us without paying exorbitant international shipping fees. My friends are all English-speakers who are either here with the military/government or teaching English. Basically I get to live in America but in a foreign country.

So spending a whole week in an Asian country with no access to a commissary, PX, or other white people was not fun.

At least not for me.

David had a ball.

So a few tips if you are considering a trip to Asia anytime soon. (These tips, however, will not apply if you come to Korea to visit me.)

1. Bring American food and snacks - I really enjoy Korean food. A lot. But we've found a nice restaurant near our home that we really enjoy and trust to give us tasty food everytime. You won't always be so lucky with traveling to different areas of Asia. I don't think Americans have any expectations about Korean food because not a lot of people have ever really eaten Korean food. But we've eaten a lot of Chinese food--or what we call Chinese food--but it doesn't even remotely resemble the food that is consumed in Taiwan and, I assume, mainland China. David spent two years living in Taiwan, and he grew to love this cuisine. I, on the other hand, was quite surprised to discover that I couldn't stomach a lot of it. Some of it was quite good but a lot of it was just plain weird and/or suspicious. I think I was overly cautious because David had warned me that food poisoning is a constant threat and I was reluctant to eat food at the tiny hole-in-the-wall places that David wanted to eat at (because he ate at those places on his mission). I was saved, however, by 7-11, McDonald's, and the pack of granola bars I had brought along. So if you want to be assured that you'll have some food and snacks to eat when nothing around you looks good, bring some food with you.

There are, of course, McDonald's, Pizza Huts, KFCs and Burger Kings all across Asia but you don't want to travel to an Asian country to only eat American food. I was also pleased to discover that Taiwan is far more international in the products it sells in its convenience stores. While Korea tends to only sell Korean products (and a few American/European ones at an exorbitant price), Taiwan had a whole array of snacks like Kinder eggs and Oreos. (I haven't seen Kinder products since I lived in Italy.) But you'll be thankful for a few comforts from home.

Especially when something like this shows up on your plate. (And this is not even remotely the worst thing I saw. Just the only thing I happened to take a picture of.)

2. Practice squatting - Behold the squatter toilet. I've had the good luck to mostly avoid having to use squatter toilets in Korea but squatter toilets are the rule rather than the exception in Taiwan and probably throughout most of Asia. Asians view the squatter toilet has far more hygienic than a regular toilet but I found the concept of my bare bum hanging out while I desperately tried to stay upright in a squatting position to be rather onerous. Not to mention that it's rather difficult to position yourself just so to ensure that nothing else (i.e. your pants) gets in the way.

This toilet even had this helpful drawing. But I found the bar to be far more helpful. (It was the only one like it that I ever encountered.) Now, there are regular toilets. Homes, hotel rooms, and handicapped stalls are all equipped with your standard toilet. So if I couldn't bear to bare my bum, I'd wait to use the handicapped stall. Some stalls even helpfully show what kind of toilet can be found within which was much appreciated.

3. Bring toilet paper - The majority of public restrooms do not provide toilet paper so you must bring your own if you find a dry bum to be preferable to a wet one. Most stores carry little packs. The gas stations hand them out when you fill up for some reason. I found the mini-packs of facial tissue to be quite helpful. However, if you use a squatter toilet, chances are you can't flush the toilet paper down. Most Asians throw the toilet paper into a trash can. Weird, but otherwise, the toilet paper doesn't go down.

4. And soap. - Add soap and/or Purell to that list. Public restrooms also very rarely provide soap or hand dryers/paper towels for washing your hands. They are plenty of sinks, just no way to do a good job of washing your hands.

5. Speak the language or stick to the cities - Since we haven't left Seoul, and since the majority of people here speak some English, I haven't found it very difficult to get around on my own. All the signs are written in Hangul (Korean writing) and English. Same with Taiwan. But we would have been screwed as soon as we left Taipei if David didn't speak Chinese. So either you have to be an incredibly patient person, have a translator, or stick to the cities. Otherwise, navigating through Asia can be a bit tricky. (But maybe less so if you only take public transportation. We rented a car and ended up in some far away towns way off the beaten path where they probably hardly ever saw white people if the amount of stares we received are any indication.)

While David was very sad to leave Taiwan, I couldn't want to get back to my Americanized version of Korea. It's so nice to eat normal food again. And sleep in a bed with a soft mattress. (All our hotel beds were unusually hard, probably because most Asians typically sleep on a thin mat on the floor.) I definitely enjoyed our chance to see more of Asia, and especially for David to return to the cities where he served his mission, but next time I leave Seoul, I'll be much better prepared.

Up next: the exciting recap of our week's events. I promise there will be no more pictures of toilets, just giant Buddhas and a lot--and I mean a lot-- of Buddist temples.

Year-end Wrap-up

Last year I sent out Christmas cards to family and friends. I baked dozens of cookies and other holiday goodies. I climbed a very big mountain and lived to tell the tale. But this year, I did none of those things. Well, I still baked my Christmas goodies but I only finished delivering them this afternoon. And I never did send out those Christmas cards like I meant to. Since I never got to send my yearly update, here's a look back at what David and I did in 2009.

January - We became better friends with a couple in our ward. We explored more of Oahu by hiking, driving around the island, and went on a whale watching tour.

February - David got his official orders to Korea, we celebrated our birthdays (David's on the 6th, mine on the 8th) by eating at our favorite restaurant Roy's on the 7th. We adopted our crazy cat Suyom from our friends the Bartlett's and David made his first blog appearance in honor of my birthday (and my incessant nagging).

March - My sister Cassy and her adorable family came to visit us in Hawaii. I met my niece Anna for the first time and fell quickly under her spell. She flirted with my husband. We visited the Polynesian Cultural Center and went to the beach. I made several trips to the dentist. Two thousand dollars, two months, three cavities and one root canal later, I'm cavity-free.

April - I'm nearly eaten by a centipede in my sleep. David and I take a short trip to Kauai where we hike the Kalalau Trail, kayak down the Waimea River, and eat a mangosteen.

May - I get so stressed out that I literally break out into hives. I have outpatient surgery and my last day of work at the Hawaii Department of Education. We inventory and pack up all our belongings to have them shipped around the world, paint our condo, refinance our mortgage, sell our cars, and say our good-byes. Three days before we're supposed to leave Hawaii, the Navy finally sends us our tickets saving me from having a mental breakdown and David thoughts of divorce.

June - Visit our families in San Diego and Atlanta. We had a wonderful time with siblings and nieces and nephews. We miss our families! We celebrate our one year wedding anniversay. David finishes another semester of school (more A's, of course) and we move to Seoul! Within a few days, we've moved into our beautiful apartment in Huam-dong.

July - We make it through the monsoon season and take some time to explore Korea. We visit Changdeokgung Palace and become obsessed with eating Korean food. Our household goods arrive and it finally starts to feel real that we live in Korea.

August - David and I are called to be the Activities Chairpeople in our Branch. I'm also called to teach the Sunbeams (4 year olds) in Primary. We hike Seoul Tower and try to survive the heat and humidity of Korean summers.

September - David starts school again and I join a knitting group where I make some wonderful friends and also learn how to knit in the process.

October - David and I organize our first big ward activity, a picnic/BBQ that required a lot of work and planning. We visit Gyeongbokgung Palace (my favorite spot in Seoul so far) and attend the Navy Day Ball at the Hyatt. We attend another awesome Halloween party at the Bartlett's and David makes his second blog appearance.

November - We hold our second ward activity, celebrate Thanksgiving with our wonderful friends here and finally buy a car!

December - Our church congregation (the Yongsan Military Branch) and the Seoul English Branch combine to form the biggest branch in the world. David somehow manages to finish his two classes despite his ridiculous work schedule and miraculously (though not surprisingly) pulls out two more A's. I start taking a Korean class but I still can't say more than 5 words in Korean.

2009 has definitely had its ups and its downs, but it has also been an exciting year for David and I. But I can't help but think that 2010 will be even better. We're looking forward to a full year of living in Korea and possibly having some family members come to visit us. We're taking a trip to Taiwan during the first week of January (which we super excited about) and have other fun things in the works.

Yep, I definitely think 2010 is going to be a good year.

How to Drive Like a Korean

We've been the proud owners of a Kia Sephia for about 3 weeks now. In that time, I have learned how to dodge pedestrians like a pro, cut off people without feeling guilty, run red lights with little hesitation, whip around tight corners and barrel down tiny little streets barely wide enough for two cars. I can back into deceptively small parking spots, read the overly confusing street signs (in two languages!), and somehow arrive in one piece to my desired destination.

Unfortunately for my excellent and typically law-abiding driving skills (speed limits, of course, being guidelines rather than hard and fast rules), you have to learn how to drive like a Korean in order to survive on the streets here. Which basically means you have to drive like maniac with no clear sense of direction, purpose or understanding of a turn signal. Thankfully, in the short time I've been driving here I have started to learn that Koreans are often predictable in their unpredictability and I've learned how to anticipate what they will do. It has made the number of heart attacks I suffer drop drastically and has made driving in Korea much more enjoyable. (Well perhaps enjoyable is too pleasant a word.....survivable may be more correct.)

All told, I love the chance I get to drive in Korea. It makes me feel brave. Sure, there are lots of foreigners who drive all over the world and do so without compunction. But it can still be a scary proposition and I know several women who will not drive here (being content to let their husbands do all the driving). I, however, was determined to drive and I'm proud of myself each time I get behind the wheel of our car and drive in Korea. [Driving on base doesn't count.] Just don't get me started on Korea's convoluted roads. (David thinks whoever designed them should be shot.)

While sitting at a very long light at a busy intersection the other day, I decided to take some photos with my phone's camera to illustrate driving in Korea. Granted, these are all from a busy road, and is not indicative of the tiny streets are the norm around here.

On the left of this picture is the Sejong Performing Arts Center. The mountain in the distance are close to Gyeongbokgung Palace and that statue is of Ye Sun-sin, a Korean military hero who designed Korea's famous "turtle ships." In front of me is a blue Hyundai truck. (They are always blue!) These are all over the place and are Korea's version of a pick-up truck. You can often buy a lot of good produce from the back of these trucks but they're also used for hauling, moving, and transporting things. Like taxis and buses, drivers of blue trucks believe they own the roads and ignore all other vehicles on the road with them.

A couple things to point out: road signs are thankfully in Korean and English but are not exactly instructive or helpful in understanding where or when to turn or what road to follow. And lanes just suddenly disappear or appear or the time. Second, the number of cars on the road is typical. The only time there are not a million cars on the road is either late at night, early in the morning or on Chusok weekend. And third, just beside the Christmas tree is a huge TV. There are massive televisions all over downtown Seoul playing all sorts of commercials or news shows (with subtitles) which are an annoying distraction when you're trying to pay attention to the road and not die.

More televisions. I think I counted that at this particular intersection there are 5 visible bigscreens. Also, note the number of pedestrians and how the cars like to block the intersection. What fun!

In addition to blue trucks, taxis and buses, the most elusive and annoying vehicle are the countless number delivery men who use motorcycles and scooters. Apparently, if your vehicle has 2 wheels instead of 4, you don't have to follow any traffic laws at all. The motorcycles scare me the most because they whip around cars on either side of you, squeeze in between the small space between two cars, are hard to see, and are the most unpredictable drivers. I'm just waiting for one of those motorcycles to knock our side-view mirrors off.

Here you can a see several Korean buses blocking several lanes of traffic. Buses are the most deadly vehicles in Korea because they throw all their weight around as often as possible. They are the worst in terms of running lights, cutting people off, and stopping traffic.

Another bigscreen. They're everywhere.

Next time I'm driving home, I should stop and take some pictures of the tiny alley-ways and back roads we typically drive. And someday soon, when we actually leave Seoul, I'll get to see what Korea is really like. Who knows, those roads may be worse.

Thanksgiving

I've fallen behind in the updates lately. (And I was doing so well there for awhile.) The lack of new posts can be contributed in part to the fact that I've been keeping myself mildly more busy lately and that we haven't really done anything extremely exciting recently. Work and school have been sucking most of the life out of David while I've been rejoicing in our newest purchase: a car! It's so lovely to have a car again. It makes running errands and visiting friends so much easier and I'm starting to suffer fewer heart attacks everytime I drive the streets of Seoul. I'm starting to learn how to drive like an Asian.....which isn't really a good thing but it's necessary if I'm to stay alive here.

The most newsworthy thing to happen this past week was Thanksgiving. And what a day of thanksgiving it was!

I made several pies, of course, but my proudest accomplishment was this absolutely delicious maple pumpkin cheesecake.

Cheesecakes still freak me out just a little because you can't stick a fork in one and declare that it is done. They are supposed to still be runny and jiggly and it's a cheesecake's wriggles that make me nervous. Is it wriggling too much? Or not enough? In any case, this cheesecake set up very nicely. (I'll post the recipe if anyone is interested.)

We celebrated our Thanksgiving feast with our friends from church (the Bartletts and Cottrells) and four missionaries. There were two Korean missionaries and two American missionaries. Needless to say, the American missionaries were very happy to eat turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and pie again. I am very grateful that I get to live in a foreign country but still have access to all the familiar foods from home.

I'm also very grateful for David. He works extremely hard and I really appreciate all that he does for us. (And aren't we cute?)
Here's the majority of us (minus the children) digging into our feast. And what a feast it was, too. We had two turkeys, two pot roasts, mashed potatoes, stuffing, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, corn, green beans, two types of bread, jello, salad, and numerous types of pie.

After dinner, Superman and Spiderman here decided to cause some mayhem and destruction.

Mostly by attacking David. One thing that I've always loved about David is that children love to play with him and that he, in turn, has the patience to play with them. See, I find playing with children to be mind-numbingly boring. I can only handle about 5 minutes of it before I'm desperate to get away but David always spends at least half an hour playing with the kids and they love him for it.

There's always a lot of swordfighting going on. And most of the time, it was four against one.

As we were finishing our meal, we went around the table and said what we were thankful for. It might be trite and cliche, but it really is very touching. This year, I have two things that I am most grateful for. One is that we've made some wonderful friends already in our time here in Korea. It's hard to be so far away from home, but now I have a support system and network of friends from our ward that rivals even my family. In some ways, being so far removed from home and family has made us all turn to each other in ways you wouldn't normally do. But since we all are in the same boat, we all help each other. And I'm so grateful for those relationships. It makes the thought of being away from home for so long or having a baby in a foreign country not seem so scary after all. I feel truly blessed to have made these friends so quickly, especially since I've always had a difficult time befriending new people.

The second thing I'm grateful for this year is being a woman. I've always been particularly drawn to women's history and I spent a great deal of time researching the home and women's role within the home during graduate school. And I've come to the perhaps unpopular opinion that the so-called "liberation" of women and the feminist movement have done more to debase and destroy the notion of womanhood and femininity than it has to uphold it. Women are sacred; the work we do to bear and raise children and to keep our homes warm and safe is the most important work on earth. And yet, to be seen as the "equal" of men has required women to give up their place in the home, become things to objectify and sexualize, and has reduced women to say that they're "just a wife and a mother" as if that's somehow not good enough. I love being a woman. I love my femininity, and I love that my husband worships me all the more because I want to be a mother, I want to stay home to raise our children, and I want to vacuum our carpet wearing high heels and pearls. (Just kidding about the last part.....we don't even have carpet!) I certainly don't mean to say that women who have high-powered careers or choose not to have children are any less of a woman than I am, but rather, I'm grateful that I've finally learned to embrace my womanhood and be content to not have the career that I had always envisioned for myself and to finally have found a purpose for myself outside of the world's expectations for me.

So, Thanksgiving was wonderful this year. And on Friday, David and I put up the Christmas decorations because I just couldn't wait to bring some Christmas cheer into the house. And of course, Suyom just had to help us set up the tree in the way she knows best: taking a nap in the box.


Happy holidays!