Fifty Five

One week down and only a couple more to go! Since we have officially received orders, we were able to get Joshua's flight. So exciting! One step closer to home :) We have a meeting to go to before we can figure out what day they will come and pick up our household goods that they will move to Colorado for us. This is all so exciting. I am leaving a little earlier than Joshua so I am about 5 weeks out from my date of my flight :) Woo!

In other (semi-less exciting) news, this past week, I cooked the ever-yummy broccoli, rice and cheese for the boys. This week is going to be a little different. This week, we have a birthday and someone who's leaving. We are doing two cooking nights. Tuesday, we're going to make homemade lasagna with homemade bread sticks (I'm going to try and make cheesy bread sticks) and we'll also have salad and pink stuff for dessert. Then, on Thursday, it's going to be a mix of a going-away party for one of the guys and a birthday party for another. We're going to have mexican food night. Tacos, taco salads and I'm going to try my hand at enchiladas. I'm sure they won't be so fabulous, but that's okay. These boys tend to be easy to impress. lol. For dessert, I'm going to make a flan. Yum! Flan is one of my most favorite dishes!

Anyways, I'll let you know how it turns out! It's sure to be fun no matter what.

This Friday, I went out with some girlfriends to say goodbye to one of the ladies. We ate dinner and chatted for a while. Afterwards, the group split in two. The two ladies I went with found a shoe store that had shoes that actually fit me (Heaven!!!!!) and went to the accessories store nearby. After we had our fill of shopping, we ran and got some Baskin Robbins ice cream. Yum! It was lots of fun and relaxing. These are the memories that I will cherish when I get back to the states and aren't with them any longer. Just silly little evenings, but meaningful none the less. Saturday, Joshua and I had a date night. We went to Daegu, ate dinner, stopped at a little cafe to have some cake (they had red velvet! Yum!!) and then walked around a bit. We ran into some of our friends from Waegwan and so we stopped to chat with them a little. It was a nice night out. I really enjoyed it.

Do I have pictures? Why yes, yes I do :)

The restaurant we ate at. Italy Italy. It's pretty good italian food.

Joshua enjoying his alfredo.

My heart-shaped pizza. I figured it was appropriate for our date night out :)

The red velvet cake we had for dessert!

I just thought this was interesting....I found a "Sex and the City" clothing store lol. It's not legitimate or actually have any sex and the city style clothing, but I thought it was cool that it had the name.

Okay, I'm off to go read some. I'm working on the Twilight series for a while just to get myself back into my 'reading zone'. Will write again when there is more to tell :)

xoxo,

Hannah

Fifty Three

This past week and weekend have been so busy. Joshua was gone all week on a field mission and it seemed that no matter how positive or happy I tried to be, every day something worse would come along. By the end of the week, I was defeated so I was happy to have Joshua back home.
During the week while Josh was gone, I had dinner with a friend of mine (whose hubby was gone, too) and her little ones twice. First at our house and then the next night, we ate at her house. It was nice to have someone over to our house since that's such a rarity due to the fact that we live so far away from everyone.
Late Friday night, Joshua and I went to Daegu and saw Harry Potter.... *sigh* Loved it but was so sad that finally Harry was over. All those years of reading and it's finally done.
I have been reading a lot. I ordered 5 new books from Amazon about 2 months ago. When they finally came in two weeks ago, I picked them up and haven't been able to put my books down.
I have read The Help, Sarah's Key and am starting on The Hunger Game series.
This past weekend we went to the Boryeong Mud Festival. Now, THAT was interesting. It's basically just a bunch of people getting together getting really drunk and really dirty. I didn't do much of either. I sipped on my water bottle and got a little muddy. Joshua, however, drank a few beers and got VERY muddy. I didn't get in any of the pictures that we took because I knew how yucky I looked, BUT I'll post some anyways :)
The prison you climb into and get sloshed with mud every 2 seconds..
The aftermath of the prison

The aftermath of the mud wrestling pit

Joshua's face all calico looking from half of the mud drying and the other half being fresh! haha

That's all for now..
xoxo,
Hannah

Fourty

Lordy, lordy. Look whose turning 40...posts?
So this week has been a stressful week. No memo....STILL. Which means still no apartment. GRRR. I've officially began bugging everyone I know (Army-wise...not civillians) about it. I've even practiced what I would say if I happened to run across either of the "gentlemen" who have been holding back my move off post. It starts off nice and sweet and ends with a few rude words and a hair flip.
The guys are gone to the field...yet again. Joshua won't be back until the end of the week, I assume. Then we have a 4 day weekend that will be full of extra duty shifts. They left for the field on Valentine's Day which just further aggravates me with this Colonel. It's just a silly little day with a silly little name, but why wasn't this just delayed for an extra day so that we could spend it with out significant others? It's killing moral for anyone with any kind of family on a day like this. Just a silly day but it just makes it worse when they take them all away. I'm ready to rip someone's head off.

Sorry for the rant.[Daegu]

[That's an awful picture of both of us, but it's all we've got to commemorate the day]

We celebrated our Valentine's Day a day early- on Sunday. We got dressed, took a train to Daegu and did a few things that we don't get to do on a regular basis. We ate at a little burger joint that is the closest thing to a good hamburger that you can get over in Korea. It's called Gorilla Burger. It has all kinds of hamburgers. My favorite is the Original Gorilla Burger. It's a burger with a slice of (real, not Kraft) Cheddar cheese, smothered in Barbecue sauce with lettuce, tomato and pickles on the side. It may not be the classiest restaurant or classiest dinner, but it was good, and that's all we were going for. After wards, we went to Krispy Kreme donuts to get a little extra American lovin'. It was delicious. We sat down and started eating. In about thirty seconds, I had already eaten one and Joshua had already eaten two! Ha. They were so so great. After we fattened up at Krispy Kreme, we headed back to the train station. It was so cold that Joshua even let us grab a cab back even though the donut shop and the train station are really close together. When we got back home, we swapped gifts. He even bought a red bag and pink tissue paper! [My Red Bag present with Pink Tissue paper!]

Haha he did so good picking it all out for me :) He gave me an x-box Kinect work out game that I really wanted and I got him a laptop bag. The second present that I bought for him didn't come in the mail yet so we are still waiting for that one to come in!
Even if we didn't get to spend the official holiday together, our Valentine's Day was great. It was nice to just get away and do something together...alone. We are almost always with others when we go out and do stuff. Even though I enjoy the time we spend with others, I also enjoy the time we get to do things solo.
Hope your Vday was grand!
Love,
Hannah

Thirty-Six

Cold.
That's pretty much the best way to describe this season in Korea.... COLD!
It's the kind of cold that just burns your skin when it touches you. Makes you wish you had indeed put that third layer of clothes on! lol And it definitely makes you miss Texas a lot.

Christmas came and went. It was nice. Bradley (my little brother) came up on the 23rd and hung out for a couple days. It was nice to have extra family around during the holidays! Joshua worked an overnight shift on Christmas Eve. Since I was going to make a dish to go along with our Christmas Day lunch/dinner, I made sure to cook that downstairs where he was working so we could hang out a bit for Christmas Eve. On Christmas morning, as Joshua got off work, we opened presents. Joshua's Staff Sergeant bought us a new TV...yes.. you read that right. A TV! How sweet of him! They snuck it in our room on Christmas Eve while I was cooking and Joshua was working. The guys that Joshua works for are so so sweet. Truly we are blessed with such sweet people in our lives.Bradley opening a present from mom!Me opening a present

Our present from Joshua's SSGJoshua's big Christmas present

All of our Christmas Presents!

Then we went to one of our friend's house and had a Christmas dinner with all the guys Joshua works with. The food was delicious. YUM! It was a lot of fun as those guys are a barrel of laughs when you put them all in a small room. They crack me up. My abs definitely got a workout! We watched the movie Three Ninja's and all sorta hung out for the evening. It was nice.

Dinner with Joshua's friends

I don't have a ton of wives as friends here yet, although I have met a few that I really like which is a great :) The only problem is that within Joshua's platoon there are only about 4 wives (there are about 40 soldiers) and only one is actually here in Korea!
Our New Years was fun, as well. We went with some of the guys (of course, I was the only girl.) to the neighboring city of Daegu. We went to TGI Fridays (It was $15 for a burger but it was just so nice to have American food in my tummy!) then went to one of their favorite bars which Joshua and I had never been to. We had a few drinks and popped a bottle of Champagne for the New Year. It was interesting to say the least! Although, I do have to say it's a little nice being the only girl because they protected me like none other. There was always some guy standing next to me to make sure that drunk guys didn't walk up and try and hit on me! Haha It was fun.

Either way, that's all I've got at this point. So for now, I say adios, amigos y amigas!!

Sixth...Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!Hope yours was lovely.About 15 minutes until 12 on New Years Eve night,Joshua and I discussed that it was so weird to be sitting here this year. On new years of 2009,I never thought that for 2010, I'd be sitting in South Korea at a random hole-in-the-wall bar watching Rolling Stone music videos with a ring on my finger and planning a wedding. Joshua and I had an "i love you" conversation when we first started dating. He told me that he knew that there was no way he could ever say "i love you" to a girl within the first 6 months of dating....a few months later,he said it to me!How odd life is.We never know where we will end up or where Christ will lead us in the years to come.I never thought I'd be engaged to a soldier and living temporarily on the other side of the world...it still blows my mind.

Well,without further ado,to ring in the New Year,we first went bowling with Josh's closest friend over here, Dustin. After we got done with that at 11,we went to one of the little bars around post called Rolling Stone.Its a very American-ized bar,which is nice.They had balloons covering the ceiling

And when the clock stuck 12, the Korean owner brought out sparklers and Roman Candles for everyone to do.

The owner also handed out little blowers

The evening of Jan 1st,we went to Daegu with The Watsons and about 6 other people. We went out to eat at a Canadian Owned restraunt and then went to the upstairs bar so that the boys could play Foosball

They were so intense!lol The owner and his friends are all Canadian so they also had the America vs Canada hockey game on. We watched the end of it with them and Canada ended up winning in double overtime by one point!!it was so intense. It was the first time most of us had even relaly watched a hockey game,too. It was fun. After that, me and joshua went and perused a few stores and stopped at a Korean McDonalds.Their menu has some American Mcdonald "classics" but it has some of the weird stuff too.like the 3rd burger from the left is Bulgogi burgers and the next one is a little cheeseburger.its tiny!how is anyone supposed to eat that?!ah!

After that,we went back to the train station. I took a picture of the train station so that everyone can see what it looks like :) Can you see the Dunkin Donuts on the right hand side?these people LOVE dunkin donuts!

Okay, well thats all the entertainment that I have to share for now!I hope everyones holidays were great!I miss and love you all!I will be home sometime near January 31st.

Until Next Time,

Hannah

Second...

This weekend was a fairly lazy one. It was nice to have a relaxed weekend without having to run and go to the neighboring cities. I mean,its fun to go "see the sights" but its exhausting!lol We stayed in and went to bed early on Friday night. Saturday night,we went out to one of the bars and sat there enjoying the crowd. It was fun.
Last weekend (I think.They all start to run together after a while), Joshua and I went to the neighboring city of Daegu because I had seen a few bridal shops and really just thought it would be fun to try on some Korean dresses. We walked into one of the shops and they handed us a book of pictures of the dresses so i figured that it meant we were supposed to pick out which one we wanted to try on and then they would bring me to the back and let me put them on.....wrong.once we sat there and realized there was something wrong with this, i finally went and used my "sign language" to talk to the lady about how this all worked.it finally came out that these arent bridals shops that you get to BUY the dresses,you PAY to put it on and someone to take a picture of you in it!haha.Joshua and I decided that was a bit ridiculous and we would be fine with OUT doing it lol.Needless to say,the dress "shopping" didnt go as planned,but it was fun,never the less :) A definite learning experience.
Joshua is out for the whole week "in the field" which is a base about 6 hours away called Kunsan. Its a Korean ROK Army base. The guys take their trucks and just pretend to do drills,etc. Its just him and his other people on his "crew" so its just 4 of them all together out there. They drove out there Monday and will be there until Friday. I just want them to be back already! Its hard to be in Korea and not have him here.
I bought some new "bootleg" movies :) Julie & Julia and the Harry Potter 6. They both look like theyre DVD's I just bought brand new. I love it.and it only cost me about $8 all together :) woo.

Okay okay okay, I've bored you enough.
We send our love. I wish our worlds weren't so split.Half my life is in Texas and half my life is in Korea. Why can't it all just be in one hemisphere?!ah!
Until Next Time,
Hannah

First...

I've been in Korea for about 3 or so weeks now. I figured creating a blog would be helpful in keeping everyone in "the know" of what Joshua and I have been doing since some of y'all dont have facebook,etc..
Last weekend,Katie and Thomas (the people im staying with),Josh and Me,and another couple went and saw New Moon on the IMAX in the neighboring city of Daegu. It was fun. Instead of the theater being cold,it was hot.hot enough for me to take off my jacket and scarf and eventually I just quit holding Josh's hands because our hands got so sweaty!it was ridiculous.and it was insanely loud. The building that held the IMAX was huge.probably atleast 10 stories and the IMAX was just two floors. Everything is really compact here because they dont have a lot of land. In the first 3 floors or so or the building is a department store. It looks like a Nordstroms or something. I hav eno clue what was in the rest of the building. They have an underground parking garage for the cars that are going to the IMAX,shopping,etc. It was so expensive though! We were there for about 5 hours and it cost us 16000 won. Which is more or less $14.50.
In Daegu, they have malls underneath their streets.There are entrances on the sidewalks near intersectioins of roads.The entrance looks just like the entrance to a subway in New York.you walk underneath the street and when you get down the stairs its a long mall. I'm glad they thought of that kind of idea. Since Koreans drive INSANELY,people can cross the street by going underneath the road into the Mall. We found an Olive Garden, a Bennigans, and a KFC while we were running around in Daegu-it was lovely. (and Sarah,they have a Taco Bell over here on one of the bases!yay!!) We even found a bar that was run by an American!It was so nice to be able to speak English without trying to use sign language haha

^^ Both of those are from walking around downtown.in the bottom picture to the right you can see one of their dunkin' donuts.these people inhale donuts and coffee!!

^this is the bar we found.thats Katie and Thomas on the left.Josh in the middle in the grey shirt and the other couple we went with,The Martino's.

Joshua also re-enlisted while I was over here about a week ago. I was the only civillian in the room,therefore I was the only one in open toe shoes. They all asked me if my feet were cold,but lets be serious-I can wear flip flops in just about every type of weather! ;) It was really fun watching how all that swearing in and stuff was done and getting to meet some of his "big-wigs". They were all really nice and had good advice about Korea because most of them had been before.

Well i dont have too much else to write currently. Im about to go email all of you with this URL so I shall chat later,aligators!!

Hannah