thankful thursday.

1. Watching the Insight Bowl live yesterday.  Even better, watching Iowa beat Missouri!  Such a good game.  Go Hawkeyes!

2. Amazon.com.  I just bought so many piano books (half for students, half for me - hee hee)!  I love that I can find obscure books for sometimes pretty cheap and that they ship things here.  And, along with this, I'm so grateful to have a piano here.

3. Starting school again.  I probably won't be grateful for school once it has started, but I'm glad to have the opportunity to finish my degree while we're here.  It's way past time to get it done.

More Pictures from Korea House.

I mentioned here that while at the Korea House a couple weeks ago, I got the chance to join the traditional dancers on stage.  One of the guys in our group took some contraband photos and shared them with us.

We watched about an hour of performances before this, so when they pulled me from the audience, I didn't hesitate at all!  It was so much fun!

Fog.

We recently had 3-4 days of heavy fog, so dense that driving was nearly impossible.  I took Lillie to play ball one very foggy morning. 

Shopping in Suwon.

Ben had a couple days off for the Christmas holiday, so on Thursday we took the opportunity to explore some of Suwon, a city about 40 minutes north (by train).  We walked the streets and saw some interesting things.

There is a giant mall above the train station.  This is the view from the walkway while crossing the street.  Yes, we have driven here too.

And while walking around the streets just outside the station, we found this:

... for sale at a butcher.  When I took this picture, the two guys in the shop started laughing.  I thought they were laughing at me for taking the picture, but they just wanted to show me the cow head at the other end of the counter.  Yikes.  Shopping here isn't for the squeemish.  But at least my curiosity entertains the locals.

Korean Choir.

Wow.  I am sure behind a the blogging!  Our new friend, Mr. Lee, invited us to see his choir perform at the beginning of December and I'm just now sharing.  Shame.  I was having the hardest time chosing between all the videos I took, but uploading multiple videos to one post was too frustrating so I chose my favorite.  Ever heard ABBA in Korean?  So worth it.

Mamma Mia!

They are really pretty amazing.  Wish I had the patience to upload some of their more serious numbers.  Very talented.  I look forward to their next performance in the spring.  Mr. Lee also invited us to the symphony in Suwon last week, which was just amazing.  I hope we get the chance to see many more performances while we're here.

english.

At a coffee shop with friends.

Korea House.

A couple weeks ago, we got the chance to visit the Korea House in Seoul.  They created the Korea House to show visitors to Korea traditional dances and food.  We went with a tour group from the base.  We started with dinner - they had samples of so many kinds of Korean food including several types of rice, octopus tentacles, crab, and different desserts.  The food was so good, though I wasn't as adventurous as Ben - he even tried the octopus!  After dinner, we were treated to about an hour of traditional dances and drum performances.  During the last number, they pulled four people from the audience to dance with them and guess who got to go up - ME!!!  It was so much fun!  Pictures weren't allowed, but I'll never forget it!

Korea House

Some of the performers came out afterward for pictures.  Their costumes were so pretty.

It was a nice look at the traditional Korean culture - something we'd recommend to any visitor to Seoul.  Hopefully we get to go again when family comes to visit.