Breaking Free

Hello Everyone! I hope this finds you well. Why are you so chipper, you might ask.... WELL it just so happens that CCA closed once again for the Swine Flu. This time, it was actually a really valid call I think. Last Wednesday we had 175 kids absent in our school, 30 of which were in kindergarten. That's more than a whole class. It's getting really crazy. So, I'm grateful for this time for all our kids to hopefully get well and not infect each other. Basically we had today (Friday) off and we don't have school again until Thursday. Teachers have to come in on Wednesday, but I'm cool with it, because it's not teaching!

I'm hoping this break will be a time of renewal and refreshment for me. I'm ready to move past my funk and start living my life again here. I've basically narrowed the funk down to just really feeling a lot of anxiety lately. I basically was keeping myself from doing things because I felt so anxious about them. Recently it has gotten to a point where I'm barely leaving my apt outside of school. I have no idea how this came over me, or when/how it started, but what I do know now, is I'm not going to let it beat me. This week, I started a new Bible study with my dear friend Kathy here. Consequently, the first week was about ANXIETY. Go figure. The Lord always knows when to step in eh? This verse has been quite a bit of comfort for me:

Psalm 91:14-16 (The Message Translation)

^14-16 "If you'll hold on to me for dear life," says God,
"I'll get you out of any trouble.
I'll give you the best of care
if you'll only get to know and trust me.
Call me and I'll answer, be at your side in bad times;
I'll rescue you, then throw you a party.
I'll give you a long life,
give you a long drink of salvation!"

I would just ask that you continue to pray for me, that God would just completely take hold of my struggles with Anxiety and just completely remove it from my life. Fear and worry is not of Him, and I don't want it anymore. I hope you can be encouraged by the verse above as much as I have been this week. I also trust that God is going to use my willingness to confess this struggle of mine to make Himself known, and I can rejoice in that. :)

On to new things, first things first, I got a new haircut, and I love it! It's cut to just below my jaw line, so it's the shortest I've had it in a while. I guess I'm copying my sister :) Here it is:

Next, here are some pics from Kathy's Birthday party last weekend. It was so fun!

Me and the Birthday girl!

From the left, Erik, Jake, Anthony, Cameron, and April. We had pizza and salad... yum. Apparently this was the night for stripes... And yes, Cameron is really into wearing bow ties right now. We try to stop him but what can I say he's addicted. He wears one pretty much every day.
Just kidding. I don't know why/where this bow tie came from?

I think Anthony had food in his teeth.

Cameron, April and Narae.

Kathy and Amanda enjoying some dinner.

Blowing out her 22 candles! The way they do candles here is you have how ever many tall candles for the tens place, and however many short candles for the ones place. So Kathy had 2 tall and 2 small.

Kathy got this awesome blanket from Pak In and Halla. If you're jealous, please tell me, and I'll bring you one home for Christmas :)

Kathy and Halla with the awesome blanket! It even has a little tail in the back.

The whole gang minus April and Erik.

One more time. Yes, my butt is still THAT big. hahaha.

The next picture is from a hike we took our kids on last week to teach the words HIKE and CLIMB. We were reading the book Happy Birthday, Moon. It was so fun.

Yes, I'm bringing 1994 back by tying my sweatshirt around my wast. Jealous?

I took these pictures for Amanda back home who is doing a Flat Stanley project for her college class. This is me and my kids with Flat Stanley:

Me and Sunny racing down the slides! We only had 3 kids in our class on Thursday, so we played a little... don't tell my principal :)

I'll update again soon... I have plenty of spare time in the next couple of days! Woohoo!

Lyrics for today:
I am going through a Christmas music phase (I know it's early, but it reminds me of the special times at home usually had during this season) so I chose these lyrics from the song

"Breath of Heaven"

I am waiting in a silent prayer
I am frightend by the load I bear
in a world as cold as stone
must I walk this path alone?
Be with me now...
Be with me now

Breath of Heaven, hold me together
Be forever near me, Breath of Heaven
Breath of Heaven, light in my darkness
Pour over me Your holiness, for You are holy
Breath of Heaven

256 days.

So I'm on day 256 in Korea. That seems like an extremely long time, but it has gone surprisingly fast.

Everything is absolutely crazy right now. I feel so disconnected from home. I've been working until 5 or 6 almost every day when I used to book it out the door as fast as I could at 4. There just always seems to be so much work to be done. Maybe I'm just trying to keep myself busy. I don't know. I blame excess of work on being sick the past couple of weeks. Today though, I finally feel like I'm back to normal. I've also been having trouble sleeping, and I think it's because I'm stressed. Who knew kindergarteners could cause me so much trouble.

Basically it seems like half the kids in grades prek-3 are sick, and we have a good number of students infected with the swine flu, yet we continue to have classes, and children and teachers are continuing to get sick. Parents here are ridiculous and still send their kids to school even if they're extremely sick. Come on.

On another note, I feel like I'm going through a major funk, and I've been trying to find out why. Thus I developed a theory on the emotional stages of moving across the world (so far). Stage 1: excessive happiness. Nothing can get you down because you're on a new adventure. Everything seems to go your way, and when it doesn't, you don't care because it's all part of the "adventure." Stage 2: loathing. During this stage the subject begins to hate everything about their new culture and begins to count down the days until they can go back home. Everything bad that happens can be easily blamed on the country the subject is in. This stage includes excessive calls to friends and family back home because it's the only coping mechanism. Stage 3: the "push". This is the part were the subject begins to feel somewhat content in their surroundings. All they can see is what's happening now, and can't see past anything that is going on outside of their bubble in their far away land. They begin to push people away that they are close to back home for fear of a relapse back into stage 2. Time becomes increasingly less meaningless and passes quickly. The subject wakes up one day and realizes 256 days have passed by.

That's were I am right now. Sorry for neglecting to communicate back on the home front. I feel like I'm in a funk with little explanation as to why. I can't see past my life here in Korea, and I can't figure out why. All I know is that I don't like my life that much right now, and I just want things to go back to normal. And no, I don't want to talk about it.

Ok, now all that is out, here are some snipets of the past couple weeks here:

There's a new restaurant next to the boys' apt so Cameron, me, Kathy, and Anthony decided to try it out a couple weekends ago. It was yummy.

This is the food. I can't remember what it's called. Surprise. The only way I know how to describe it, is just that it's a bunch of random veggies, leaves, and meat on giant bones thrown into a large boiling pot. Sound appealing?

One more picture of it. I know, you're probably thinking, you actually eat that Ashley? I surprise myself sometimes too.

Anthony and Kathy while it was cooking.

They had free ice cream which I couldn't eat of course. I believe this picture was post Kathy pushing the ice cream so hard into her cone that it broke in half, and then Anthony accidentally licked the public ice cream scoop and put it back into the jar. Nice. I laughed about both of these incidents for a very long time.

We had nothing to do, so we went to our old default. The waffle place by Suwon Station. Always a good choice. Anthony and Kathy are a little bit special.

The other side of the table.

After the waffle place, we decided to try something new and went to the Batting Cages. This is a very popular social outing here, and it's super cheap, so we went. It was my first time and I loved it.

Anthony up at bat.

I'm not sure what's going on here, but I was batting I think. I hit 7 out of 15. Woohoo! I was proud!

Kathy's first time too!

Anthony showing off that he hit 10/15. Wooho.

After the batting cages, everyone left at about 11:30 so Cameron and I decided to go do Karaoke. We didn't leave until about 2am. They just kept giving us more time! It was a really fun time.

The next night, Anthony and I went to dinner with our friend Pak In and some of his friends from school. After dinner we all went to karaoke. (I know, again?)

Anthony and Pak In dancing and singing to a Chingu (friend) song.

After karaoke, Anthony and I went to Paldemun market and ended up finding ourselves in the midst of this huge festival. It was kind of crazy. Roasting pigs everywhere. Very cool.

In the midst of the festival. There were tons of people and food.

Fast forward to the next weekend. This is Friday night. We tried unsuccessfully to go decorate cakes (it was closed). So, we decided to go to a DVD Bang (room). Basically you just rent out a private room with really comfy seats and a projector and you watch a movie. They are known for being shady (I'm sure you can guess why) but I thought it was a perfect hang out for a group of friends. We watched a really fantastic Korean movie. (English subs of course).

The five of us in our DVD bang room. After this it started pouring and we all got COMPLETELY soaked standing outside in the cold rain waiting for taxis. I found it really fun. I love everything about the rain. The smell, the feel of it on your skin, and the way it feels to fall aslep to the sound of it...

Ok that's all for this update. No one freak out over all the things I said at the top. It's just a funk. I'll come out of it. Hopefully sooner than later.

Song lyrics for today: Casting Crowns "Stained Glass Masquerade"

Is there anyone who's been there?
Are there any hands to raise?
Am I the only one who's traded
the altar for a stage?

The performance is convincing
And we know every line by heart
Only when no one is watching
Can we really fall apart

Are we happy plastic people
Under shiny plastic steeples?
With walls around our weakness
And smiles to hide our pain
But if the invitation's open
To every heart that has been broken
Maybe then we close the curtain
On our stained glass masquerade

The Rents in The Land of Kimchi

So this is in two parts because blogspot wouldn't let me upload as many pics as I wanted to, so this is part one:
Day one: this is on a walk through my neighborhood to my apt.

Eating (on the floor) at one of my favorite Kalbi places! They loved it! (much to my surprise!) It was also Amy's favorite food while she was here too!

All three of us at the Kalbi place :)

Me and Mom

Day 2: after our Chuseok breakfast with the Billy Kim family. This is in a prayer garden at my school where we were staying.

My parents in front of my school

At the Korean folk village. It's basically a mock up of Korean life in all the different areas of Korea way back in the day. You can try on clothes and try out different ways of life.

Dad and I harvesting rice... so cool

Mom and Dad in a traditional Korean home.

Me and mom grinding some grain I think

How royalty was carried. I barely fit in this thing. Surprise.

Continuation of our trip on the next post :)

Parent's visit continued...

So this is the continuation of my parent's visit to Korea, blogspot wouldn't let me put any more pics up :)

My Dad was kind of obsessed with red peppers while he was here. Basically red peppers are the most prominent ingredient in most Korean food I would say.

This is during our visit to Hwaseong Fortress in Suwon. This little visit turned into a major hike, but it was good! It was my first time to do the big hike too.

We ran into the Turner's while we were there! So I just had to take a picture of this little cutie. So was attacked by mosquitoes the night before, thus the band-aid.

Mom and Dad during the hike up the wall.

Dad "firing" the cannon.

Halfway up the stairs... ah!

We finally made it to the top! What a view!

After our big hike we went to eat Indian food! Yummy! (Dad didn't enjoy it very much!)

Mom and Dad eating their Indian food! This is one of my FAVORITE places in Suwon.

The next day we went to COEX mall in Seoul after going to my church.

After COEX we went to Insadong in Seoul. Here I am buying some yummy snacks for the parents.

THEN, we went to Myeongdong that day too. I really wore my parents out that day.

My dad enjoyed that potatoe on a stick snack! It's one of my favs too.

We went to have some yummy burgers at Kraze Burgers in Suwon Station.

We went to the waffle place!!! YAY! They loved it just as much as I do!!!

We went to Yeongtong where the boys live to have dinner at the best spicy chicken place ever!

The whole gang (minus Kathy who was taking our picture) at the spicy chicken place!

After the spicy chicken place we went to Karaoke!!! YAY!

They sang some Eagles, Carpenters, and Abba. NICEEEE

Our last day after we got off the bus because some really smelly ladies made mom feel really sick. But we took this opportunity in the middle of nowhere for a photo op.

After getting off the bus on the way to Seoul, we came across a driving range. Dad wanted to try it, so we did! I really liked it! The balls just automatically keep coming up from the ground onto a tee. Amazing.

Me giving it a shot.

By the driving range was a sculpture park in front of Suwon World Cup Stadium.

Dad immitating the sculpture.

Suwon has some really really pretty walkways!

We went to an outdoor market called Paldemun. This is the food section. Lots of crazy cool stuff.

In the middle of the road by the market.

This is for Uncle Mike!

By Yeongtong again on the big bridge by the boys apt.

Our last meal in Korea :( My parent's favorite, so we went there again! So good!

So thanks again for coming Mom and Dad! It was sooo wonderful having you here and having you get to see my life here!!! LOVE YOU!