randomness...

Sorry for the lack of blogs lately! The past month has gone by too quickly, leaving me little time to do much blogging. Anyway, here is my feeble attempt to catch people up on life through pictures. I know they are all completely random, but then again, I am known for being a random girl. =o) Enjoy!
The weather here has been beautiful! It just started getting cold this week, I might actually have to break out my winter coat soon! I have been taking my kids outside as much as possible to enjoy the nice weather. We went to a park to collect leaves, it was a beautiful day!

Our school also got the privilege to go see the "elephant show" at a park. I can't say I am the biggest fan of seeing elephants unchained for an hour or 2 each day so they can perform a "show" for people, but nonetheless, my kids loved it! From the picture, I am sure you can tell how entertaining it truly was.
In my eight months of being in Korea, I haven't had any run-ins with huge spiders, until recently. It is hard to tell from the picture because there is nothing to compare it to, but this spider was a little smaller than my hand! Yuck!!!
We got to ride the elephants after the show!
I have discovered a new level of shopping! Namdaemun Market is a huge outdoor and indoor market with thousands of vendors selling everything imaginable! Each stall is small and cramped and filled with people. I can only handle being in the market for so long before I freak out because of all the people. You take two steps without being pushed over by an "ajuma" (old korean woman) who is trying to get her shopping done. If you can handle the crowds, you can find some good deals on almost anything.
This is a paper vendor at the market. The "stall" was just a little hallway filled wall to wall with paper.
On to Halloween... Good times were had by all. My original costume idea of being half of a ying-yang, with Christine being the other half, didn't work out. We settled on "good and evil." Obviously, I was the good one! =o) I danced the night away and got home at 7am! Most Koreans do not celebrate Halloween, so after we left the bars for "foreigners" we got some pretty funny looks! You can imagine an angel and a can of pop saying hi to you at 7am would be rather amusing for an old Korean person! I think Morgan and I made the morning of many people!Here we have Joe, aka "God's gift to women" and Morgan, aka "Milkis," a popular Korean drink here made of carbonated milk. It sounds disgusting but it is quite good. Evil Christine and Adam, aka "Borat" are in the background.
Have you ever walked down the street at 3 in the morning and gotten a craving for oysters? Yeah, me neither! I just happened to find an oyster truck parked on the street a few weeks ago. There are a lot of food trucks out on the street that sell food, but this is one of the first times I have seen a seafood truck. People stand outside the truck and eat the oysters. I'm not sure they are cooked either. I have also seen a crab truck selling crabs, but didn't get a chance to snap a picture.

Soap on a stick! If you read one of my earlier blogs about bathroom behavior, then I hope you will appreciate this picture. This is a picture of the soap that is in some bathrooms here. It always seems so unusual to me to wash my hands on a stick of soap!
I went hiking, with a few thousand people, a few weeks ago at Bukhansan, a mountain in Seoul. Hiking is a major hobby for a lot of people here. Since South Korea is 70% mountainous there are a lot of opportunities to hike. Every day, especially on the weekends, thousands of people escape to "nature" and do some hiking. It is a nice break to be "above" the city, because we are technically still in it. Here is just a small portion of Seoul that you could see.

We made it to the top of a peak! It was windy and cold (note the absence of guardrails anywhere!) Also take note of the hardcore "hikers" in the background!
I thought this was hilarious! The security camera at the top of the peak was made to look like a tree. The branches sticking out are fake! I definitely appreciate the efforts made to make everything blend in to look natural!

Ok, I guess that is a quick update! Sorry for the lack of quality or details, I just wanted to get a blog out there. Also, in the three days it took me to write this, we got our first snow! For about 2 hours we got huge, fluffy flakes and it was beautiful! Of course, nothing sticks, but it was beautiful nonetheless.

I'd also like to say that I've been reading some amazing books! I just got done reading A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Housseini, the author of The Kite Runner. Both books were amazing and I would highly recommend them to anyone looking for a good read! I will leave you with a quote from the book:
"One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs, or the
thousand splendid suns that hide beneath her walls."