China Part 1: Sweaty bellies, kung pao chicken, and starfish as snacks.

As a college student, while you don't long for the responsibilities, long hours, and office politics of most full-time jobs, you are usually jealous of one thing that your part-time, on campus job cannot give you = paid vacation. (well plus a nice paycheck.) Well friends, I just finished having my very first paid vacation ever as a self-proclaimed grown-up with a full time job - and it was amazing!

A few months ago my friend Amy and I decided that China was calling our names for vacation.  We began the process of applying for [expensive] visas, booking flights, planning tentative itineraries, etc. Many hours and changing entire itineraries later, we had it all set - July27-August 6, we would be exploring the cities of Beijing, Shanghai, and Hangzhou.

Obviously the trip is now completed, and I must say, it could not have been any better. We had a phenomenal time of seeing historical sites, eating good food, experiencing a different culture, having lots of laughs, and sooo much more.  I'm going to attempt to give you a summary of the trip with enough details and pictures to give you a true glimpse of what I experienced without boring you.

July26.
With only a slight hiccup in the initial plan (I booked train tickets for 6am instead of 18:00 so had to buy new KTX tickets, blah), we were off on the KTX (Korea's high speed railway) for Seoul by 7pm after work.  The plan was to stay the night in the airport's jimjilbang/spa as our flight left early the next morning.  Jimjilbangs are basically public bath houses and most have a room for sleeping the night.  While they're very popular here, I have not ventured to one as I just don't have a desire to bathe with other people, no matter how nice their jaccuzi pool is.  However, we had heard this one was very clean, nice and shouldn't be too crowded on a Tuesday night.  Thankfully, they were right and Amy and I had the changing and showering area mostly to ourselves.  You are given lockers, towels, and even clothes to sleep in when sleeping on your hard mat with what felt like a brick as a pillow.  It was quite an experience to sleep there, but it was worth it when we woke up at 6 to check in for our flight.

Changing area at the spa

stylish pajamas

ready to fly to China!

July27.
By 9am we were en route to Beijing, China on one of the bumpiest flights I have ever experienced.  We had a group of children on our flight and they were screaming for a few minutes. Lovely.  Luckily, we made it there in one piece, gathered our luggage, took the express airport subway into the city, and a few wrong turns later, found our hotel - a really nice Holiday Inn that was built about 5 years ago.

I guess I should explain who "we" are.  It was Amy and I, plus a friend (Jordan) she knew from the US who is teaching in Seoul and her friend, Katie, who was just in Korea to visit.  The 4 of us were only together for the first 3 days in Beijing and then we split off due to different amounts of vacation time. Clear?

After we had done the essentials at the hotel (checked out the view, made sure the TV worked, had a Pringles break), we headed out to take on Beijing.  Enter adventure #1 of too many to count.  We took the subway to the Forbidden City area...and oh my goodness. check out just a few seconds of this video of a subway we took frequently while in Beijing.... (I didn't take the video, but it is just what we experienced!)

http://youtu.be/So2AdMcIW5M

Needless to say, we were NOT prepared for the pushing and shoving and strategy it would take to allow 4 girls to get off at the right stop.  We got to our stop, thought people would move and when they didn't, we started to panic and all of us just shoved our way off.  I honestly didn't think we would all make it off, but we did!

The rest of the day was spent in a garden which we thought was the way into the Forbidden City (we could see it, it was so close!) but found out 2 hours later it wasn't even connected. Whoops. By the time we realized this, the Forbidden City was closed for the day but we got a few good photos and headed to the Temple of Heaven.

I wasn't joking about the Pringle's break..

Forbidden City Walls! (across from Tiananmen Square)

Get yer communist army crawler here!

Even more than in Korea...we were celebrites/objects to take pictures of/with. Usually they were awkward, like this one.

Catching dinner. (joking, I hope)

Biggest Bonsi tree I've ever seen, Gramma! your next project??

Bamboo forest.

L-R: Amy, me, Katie, Jordan

Cute little rambunctious boys!

lotus flowers - you can't tell, but some were in bloom!

 However, this was closed too! Our timing reeked.  [but it was China, so who cares, we had fun!] Finally we decided it was time for some retail therapy and headed to the Pearl Market.  This is an indoor market with every knock-off/real item but with defects you can imagine.  If you ever get the chance to go, put on your haggling shoes (whatever those might be) and prepare to hear a ton of "You want shoes? You want purse? What you want? I give you good price!" or my absolute favorite that made me want to give the sellers a nice little slug to the face, "Hey Lady, you want (insert any item here)?" while physically grabbing me and attempting to pull me to their store.  Whew! Can you tell I'm not the best haggle shopper? I become a stress basket! However, we did find some amazing deals and I bought a ton of real pearl jewelry (I even checked if they were real and they are!) and it was fun in a sort of stressful way.

All over China, there are tons of rickshaw/bicycle people who try to get you to pay for a ride - well we didn't know how far Pearl Market was, but Amy maneuvered an amazing price with two bicycle people to take us.  It was SO fun, cheap, and thrilling...as you can tell I feared for my life in the best way possible! We convinced them to take us alllll the way, which meant crossing a BUSY street!

notice the fear, and then notice the bus barely missing us and you can understand.

so scary, but SO FUN!

Back to the hotel we gallivanted with our new purchases, relaxed a bit, and then took off for a night food street market where they deep fry literally anything on a stick.  They had everything from whole baby sharks to seahorses to cockroaches to duck hearts. Gross. I felt that I was crossing the line just looking at the food, so when Jordan decided she wanted to try a starfish, I took a bite of that (tasted and had the grimy texture of fishy dirt) but that was it.  It was a great first day in Beijing!

yummy!

your guess is as good as mine...

Notice that he is crouched ON the counter.

sugar coated fruit...now that's something I can eat!

Culture Shock of the day: It is HOT in China right now, so apparently it's normal for men to pull up their shirts so their bellies are showing.  However, it's very crowded in Beijing (17 mil. people!) so guess what happens...yep, you end up bumping into sweaty bellies of overweight older Chinese men. sick.

August 28.

Long story short, after a fulfilling, free, delicious breakfast at the hotel, we narrowly avoided being majorly scammed and potentially in a dangerous situation. Now, before you panic, notice I say we avoided it. We had signed up for a bus tour for the day to the Great Wall, which the bus turned into a van just for us and the lady saying that we couldn't go all the places we had signed up for.  Luckily, we are intelligent young ladies and didn't pay any money and high tailed it to the closest travel agency to book a legit trip for the next day. That left a full day for exploring, so off we went to the Summer Palace.

The Chinese name for the Summer Palace literally means Garden of Nurtured Harmony and can trace history of it being a place for palaces back to the Jin Dynasty in 1122. Obviously much has changed since then, but it's a beautiful place with a huge lake, large pagoda, etc.  It was dripping hot that day - and I mean dripping.  I have never felt so disgusting in my life by just walking outside.  It was totally worth it though - so beautiful!

Mini water-town

Intricate artwork!

Sweet dragon boat on the lake

Delicious and cheap popsicles that were sold everywhere

gorgeous.

We grabbed a lunch at the most non-Chinese place possible - McDonalds...mostly because we knew it would have strong air conditioning flowing and then headed back for another round at the Forbidden City. Our timing was better and we made it in the doors this time, along with what felt like 12981238794 million other people. Fortunately, the Forbidden City has quite some room for that many visitors. The Forbidden City was built around 1410 and for almost five hundred years, it served as the home for emperors and their households, as well as the ceremonial and political center of Chinese government.  It's rumored to have over 9,000 rooms and is overwhelming to just walk around the grounds, let alone imagine people living there.  We wandered (and sweated) for hours. You could spend all day in there and still not see everything!

we weren't the only tired ones! haha

middle plaza of Forbidden City

ooooold sundial

apparently everyone loves a good rock formation

on our random walk back to the subway.

Fun Story: Plastic bottles must be worth a lot in China because people are always scavenging for them in trash and will even ask for your empty bottles if you're holding them.  Leaving the Forbidden City, I was holding a water bottle with about 4 inches of water left.  All the sudden an older woman snatched it like a ninja out of my hands so fast that I had no idea what just happened.  Then a Sprite bottle fell on the ground and it was the fastest I've ever seen two older people move - and my lady must've been a Chinese ninja...because she got that bottle too! Jordan saw the whole thing and we laughed for a loooong time - it was just so ridiculous!

Refreshed after cool showers and a/c back in the hotel, we went to a delicious Chinese dinner at a restaurant across the street from our hotel and sat on the patio outside.  We had lots of entertainment, including this cute dog and duck friend combo! Ironically we were at a duck restaurant, so I hope the dog made it home with his friend not ending on a plate for dinner!

friends!

the girls at delicious dinner

Kung Pao Chicken!

Well, I'm about blogged out for today. As you can tell, the trip has been nothing but fun and adventure so far...I think I can get used to this whole paid vacation thing!

Rolling in Mud - Boryeong Mud Festival.

Korea is known for their festivals.  In the few months I've been here, I've been to a few - the Jinhae Cherry Blossom Festival, the Lotus Lantern Festival in Seoul (and like 3 others in Seoul the same weekend), and the Pumba Festival in Eumseong. This past weekend, I added the most interesting and intriguing festival to the list - the Boryeong Mud Festival.  Since orientation, I had heard about this festival and that it was a "must see" - which of course made me want to go. A package of accommodation and roundtrip bus leaving from Daegu was set up by one of our EPIK members and with a few friends, I signed up for what I was sure to be a ridiculously dirty weekend. literally.

What is a mud festival you ask? well according to Wikimedia (which had the most concise summary I could pull from) it is an annual festival which takes place over 10 days in July in the small city of Boryeong (a beach town on the West coast). The first Mud Festival was staged in 1998 and, by 2007, the festival attracted 2.2 million visitors to Boryeong. The mud is taken from the Boryeong mud flats, and trucked to the Daecheon beach area, where it is used as the centrepiece of the 'Mud Experience Land'.  The mud is considered rich in minerals and used to manufacture cosmetics. The festival was originally conceived as a marketing vehicle for Boryeong mud cosmetics.  However, as can be seen in the numbers of visitors, it has evolved into a fun festival for all. 


Now that you kind of have a slight idea of the history, I'm sure you can understand the allure.  When else will I be able to attend a mud festival where you purposely get muddy and get to hang out on the beach?

At the early hour of 8:30 on Saturday, we boarded the buses and headed off for Boryeong.  4 hours and one very windy road later (we all know how I felt about that), we made it.  Unfortunately, there was a little miscommunication between our bus drivers and the set up, and we were dropped off in pouring rain with no idea where our accommodation was.  A little confusion and 10 minutes of walking later, we found our accomodation - a pension.  It's a traditional style motel basically with the rooms sans beds and just mats, blankets and pillows to sleep on the floor with. Basic, minimal, but do-able.  We (friends Orla, Amy, Jamie, and I) changed into mud appropriate attire and headed back to the beach/mud festival area.

Luckily, the rain stopped before we even left our pension and the weather was beautiful the rest of the weekend without a drop of rain!  We met up with Loren and attempted the festival.  It was a typical festival in the aspects of white tents selling random trinkets and typical festival food - my favorite are the corn dogs! The festival area was crowded. People literally covered head to toe in mud were just walking around like it's the most normal thing it the world.  This festival attracts tons of foreigners (I saw one statistic that one year it was 89% foreigners) so it was almost culture shock to see SO many foreigners that I could potentially communicate with! Sidenote: I can only imagine how overwhelming it will be to come back to the US and have most people speak my language! ah!

The main mud part of the festival is in a gated off area that contains tons of huge blown up slides, a mud wrestling pit, different relay games, and a fun blown up obstacle course - all covered in mud. Saturday it was extremely crowded, so we only did the obstacle course but it was so fun! The rest of Saturday was spent attempting to get clean in the ocean and eventually going back to the room for showers.  We spent the evening walking around the area, met interesting people, and even saw a popular Korean pop group Dal Shabet perform - my students this week are very impressed!

There was also an amazing  fireworks show sent off from a platform out on the ocean....so fantastic! I may have missed 4th of July back home, but at least I got to see fireworks in July!

After a night of poor sleep (mostly from just trying to sleep on the floor), we got up ready for another day of mud.  We hit the gated area first and the lines were MUCH better. We spent a few hours playing in the mud....and consequently spent at least that much time if not more attempting to get clean.  By the afternoon, we were exhausted, becoming sunburnt, and ready to go home.  It took us awhile and I'm pretty sure some people missed the buses, but we made it home to Daegu about 8pm.  What a weekend.  I am so glad I decided to go.  When else in life will I have the opportunity to get muddy at a festival abroad? probably never.  I'm just soaking up every experience - because most of these are once-in-a-lifetime chances.

Bringing my digital camera during the day would've been camera suicide, so I bought a disposable camera and took some mud pictures.  I need to finish the roll of *gasp!* film, get it developed (and the pics on CD) and then I'll update this so you can see the mud I'm talking about. :]  It'll probably be a few weeks until that happens...because I'm leaving for China next Tuesday!

yummy raw shark.

Last minute changes are a theme in Korea.  It's not called Dynamic Korea without reason.  As a foreigner, I am frequently told "you won't teach today" when I walk into work (or just when a class doesn't show up and I end up asking why) or "you will teach today" when I had been previously told classes were cancelled. I just laugh and think two words - Dynamic Korea.

So Wednesday of last week I was told that since it was the end of the semester, I would not be teaching on Friday, could come in at 10am, and we would leave on a teacher lunch trip at 10:30am.  Now those are words I like to hear!

At 10:30, we loaded onto 2 tourist type buses complete with fringe decorations and we set off for lunch.  We were having lunch (sushi) in another town between Gyeongju and Pohang.  Those words probably mean nothing to you - so in simple terms, we were driving 2 hrs to a small town on the East coast.  I sat next to Amy, the coteacher I communicate the most with, and had a great talk with her.  It was refreshing not to be asking about classes or school related topics but to chat about life.

About 2 hours later, we arrived at our restaurant for lunch.  Here is a picture of the outside and yes, it looks like a random building...and I'm pretty sure it is.

If I haven't mentioned it yet, Koreans always take their shoes off to go into most buildings, even restaurants if they are traditional style.  Also, you eat sitting on the floor.  I wish I would've thought to take a picture of all of the shoes but I didn't want to be camera happy so I kept it on the downlow. Here are some of the appetizers. Not really sure what they were...fish things, things that looked like large snails that they pulled out with a toothpick, things they didn't even know what they were, and of course, pieces of squid. yum?

Appetizer....

After the appetizer, large plates of thinly sliced raw fish were brought out.  I was informed that this was raw shark and to dip it in one of the many little dishes of sauces in front of me.  It was surprisingly okay.  It didn't have much taste (especially because I liked the sauce and put a lot of sauce on) and the texture was bearable. They were all impressed that I was eating it - even the vice principal came over towards the end and it was translated to me that he was impressed! woo - point for Rachel!
Post shark, we had some rice and kimchi jiggae - spicy soup with cabbage, tofu, and other stuff and they even put a little in a small bowl for me so I wouldn't have to share out of the big bowl of soup.  Everything at meals is very community style in the way that you just grab food off the plate with your chopsticks.  Germaphobes should NOT come to korea if they have problems sharing plates.  However, soup is like that too, just dip your spoon in.  They know that's even more out of my comfort zone, so without me saying anything, they put some soup in a small bowl and gave it to me! So considerate!

As they finished meals, people trickled outside by the ocean.  It was beautiful but a little windy and chilly, so the women decided to take over one bus, take it into Gyeonju and get coffee while the men stayed and drank more.  So off we went.

View outside the restaurant

The male teachers

Karaoke is really big here, so they even have it on buses! One of the Korean teachers rocking out singing on the way to coffee.

Noraebang! (Karaoke)

We ended up having the most expensive coffees I've ever had ($10! for an Americano!) paid for by the school at a really fancy hotel and just sat and chatted.  Compared to the last few teacher dinners I've been to, this by far was the most comfortable, relaxed one.  I was hardly put on the spot and they all were extremely considerate of me.  Teachers that barely speak English were trying to talk to me and made sure I felt included.  It's weird that I'm already 5 months done...next month I will be halfway!!

so, so, SO grateful for this opportunity to be here!!!

Unending adventures.

FYI: This is going to be another one of those jumbled, random posts about, well, random parts of life, so be warned - this is not my best writing.

I am Rachel Teacher, hear me... teach?

Last week, as I was standing at the front of my classroom in the middle of a lesson, I had a revelation. I am a teacher. whoa. that might seem obvious to you and I may have mentioned this epiphany a few times, but it still hits me.  Not only am I a teacher at a high school in Korea, but I am finally comfortable in front of my classes.  I don't get nervous before a class or get flustered when I fail to speak in perfect English.  No, I'm definitely not a perfect teacher or even close to it, but I am a teacher. crazy.

Yesterday I was walking home and I heard someone say "Teacher" like they were trying to get someone's attention. Without a thought, I stopped dead in my tracks and turned around toward the voice.  It was a little boy, and he just wanted to say "hi" but after I said hi and continued walking, I realized how instant it was for me to respond.  If someone would have said that 6 months ago, I wouldn't have taken notice.  I guess I really am a teacher.

What Just Happened?

Often in my life here, I will witness something or experience something and I'm usually left with the question of "what just happened?" Usually I post them on facebook or at least jot them down in my journal, but I want to share some with you. Here are a few of those things that make my day or make me shake my head in wonderment.

• Walking home, I saw an older Korean man taking a nap in the doorway of his shop.  He was laying on potato boxes, using an empty crate as a footrest, and (I kid you not) a small watermelon as a pillow. 
• On the way back from the gym, a whole posse of elementary school boys all on bikes went past me and almost knocked me over on the sidewalk.  I'm pretty sure they would be the "bad" kids from the Outsiders, minus the greasy hair and adding a few years.
• The teacher who sits directly in front of me, often will whip out his harmonica during lunch and play a little diddy.  One time he pulled out a jump rope during a break, went outside and I could hear the click-click of the jump rope as he had a lil work out during his break...still in his slacks and sparkly tie.
• While running to Duryu Park, I had to run through a group of older men blocking the sidewalk.  Instead of just staring, they made a tunnel (like cheerleaders do with their hands) for me to run through and cheered for me. Best Korean run ever.
• Students aren't allowed to eat in my classroom and I called a student out on opening a bag of chips while I was lecturing.  She put them away, the whole class laughed together, and at the end of class, she comes up, hands me a chip and says sorry!
• You just leave your trash and recycling out by poles along the streets (I'll do a post about that later) and old Korean women and men come and pull out the recycling.  However, they're stealthy about it.  I brought out a couple of cardboard boxes one day, ran back up to my apartment because I forgot something, and less than 3 minutes later when I came back down, the boxes were gone. Sneaky!
• Iced instant coffee is a production.  I've watched teachers take a full 5 minutes to make iced coffee. Here's what I can tell as the proper way: powder in cup, little bit of hot water and stir to dissolve, then add ice and cold water, and stir vigorously so that your metal spoon clanks against the side. for 5 minutes.
• "The two supermarkets now almost five years, and this operation, which seperate the two drops keep its distance from the supermarket five years had two supermarkets my have made money twice." a direct quote from one of the high school essay paragraphs I had to correct...where do I even start with that?!
• I may have taught 2 classes with my zipper accidentally down one day. whoops.
• One of the lunch ladies doesn't like me losing weight apparently, because she notices what food I have taken and then makes me take more.  If I don't do it myself, she will put it on my tray.  She's also very proud of me and speaks in rapid Korean and smiles really big when I take spicy food.
• At the gym, there is a big, buff dude (rare in Korea!) who comes in and looks like he's about to die on the stairmaster.  Frequently, he pulls his shorts up so that they look like underwear.  It's hilarious to watch people's reactions...it's like a car wreck...you genuinely want to look away and spare yourself, but yet you keep glancing.
• and many, many more but I will save those for next time. :]

Slackerville.

As life has gotten more routine, my picture taking has dwindled.  I still carry it most places, but I'm not as quick with the draw of pulling it out and snapping away.  That being said, I am determined to take more pictures and share more with you, because who doesn't like a little visual stimulation when they read a blog?  Here are a few recent pictures and will have many more soon!

Dinner and drinks for Loren's birthday!

Favorite coffee shop downtown - they give free garlic toast!

Live band near Kyungpook University

Amy! soon to be China travel buddy!

random view on my walk home from school.

fruit and pork. what a combo.

Bus for a daycare. I don't really get it, but I like it.

Infamous Ann&Andy coffee shop!

Inside Ann&Andy - the owner and my friend, Vivian!

my desk in the teacher's room

rainy day - Mom, Dad and Sarah...doesn't this remind you of when we built the house and all that mud?!

Teacher's room...my desk is to the right of this one.

snuck these when everyone was out :]

well dear friends, that's all for now! I'm off to the Mud Festival in Boryeong this weekend so I'm sure I'll have lots of pictures and stories after that!

Monsoon Season? wait a second...

Minus 4 months of my junior year of university when I studied abroad in Ireland, I have lived my entire life in California. I think it's fair to say that [most of] California has very mild weather compared to other parts of the US, let alone the rest of the world. While I've dealt with blistering hot summers and temperatures dropping far enough for puddles to freeze, I have never had to experience living in humidity, snow, temperatures below zero, or torrential rain.  Compound that background with my most recent residence in San Diego for four years where I have more than a few stories of soaking up the rays on the beach in January, I am one weather-sheltered Californian girl.

Koreans take pride in the fact that their country has four distinct seasons.  I have heard this more times than I can count - most recently it has been when I'm dripping with sweat just from walking from my apartment to the school at 8am - an hour I strongly believe should not have the capacity to make me sweat unless I am out for a jog. Nevertheless, I generally walk into the teachers room a little damp and have to take a few minutes to let my body cool down. More than one teacher has asked "Rachel, is it too warm for you?" and what I want to say is "Yes. That is a ridiculous question to even ask. You can see the sweat on my brow just from walking slowly at 8am" but instead, I reply "I am just not used to humidity - where I am from, it is hot, but you do not get sticky" and then they inevitably tell me about the four distinct seasons Korea experiences and that we are in summer/monsoon season currently. 

Being so weather-sheltered, I will admit that before I moved here I had to wiki what a monsoon season even looks like.  Lots of big words later, I have decided that it can be shortened to "seasonal winds and changes in precipitation causing heavy rain and possible thunderstorms." Apparently in Korea that doesn't mean that the temperature drops much but that it stays hot and muggy while it's pouring rain. lovely. 

As you probably have guessed, this rambling has a point. It has moved into monsoon season here in Daegu and hit with full force this past weekend.  It has been raining/thunder/lightening off and on for the past few weeks, but Friday it started raining and did. not. stop. Now, I don't mean a little constant drizzle.  I'm talking thunder and lightening so loud/bright that it woke me up in the middle of the night. Pouring rain that sounds like little tap dancers are stomping on top of your umbrella if you make the mistake of stepping outside.  Add quite a bit of humidity, and you have an idea of my weekend weather.

Because of this, I spent most of my weekend hanging out in my lil apartment watching tv online/studying for the GRE/skyping and sleeping.  I attempted to venture to Costco to meet friends on Saturday.  Getting to Costco takes me 10 minutes walking, a 30 minute-ish subway ride, walk outside to a bus stop, wait at a bus stop, and then a bus to Costco. It is a big ordeal even on a cloudless day.  Even with rain jacket, umbrella, shorts and shoes, I was soaked within 2 minutes of walking to the subway, literally said out loud "forget this" and went back to my apartment. helpful hint: never wear converse in the rain.

Don't worry, I braved the rain later for dinner and bowling downtown and then for church on Sunday, so I wasn't a total hermit this weekend.  I'm not telling you all this to whine about the weather (well maybe a little bit) but I know most people are curious about my life here and this is a major part of it recently! Not only will I have experienced a different culture and all the quirks that go with that, but I will have experienced 4 distinct seasons by the end of the year.  However, while that's great, I've decided that humidity and monsoons are awful and I will avoid them for the rest of my life if possible.

For now, at least I know now that I won't melt in the sweltering humidity...I'll just sweat! I give props to those who choose to live in this weather long term!

red, white, and blue.

hot dogs. watermelon. lakes. potato chips. fireworks. swimming pools. croquet. sparklers. fireworks that are duds. family. angel food cake with strawberries. laughter. celebrating summer birthdays with the family. friends. blowing up watermelons. patriotic demonstration with Kidder leadership 2010. funny stories. sunburns. red, white and blue.

4th of July has always been such a fun summer holiday.  To me it is a celebration of everything I appreciate - my freedom, my family, my friends, my country, summer, good BBQ food, and just life in general.  Growing up we always spent the holiday with family hanging out by a pool, eating BBQ, throwing things at people until someone got hurt, celebrating summer birthdays (I always loved that part) and setting off backyard fireworks and sparklers. 

This is the first 4th that I haven't been in the USA - and it's weird. It was actually yesterday for me...and it passed quietly.  A few of us went out to dinner for fun, but beyond that, nada. Don't worry, I repped it at school by wearing red earrings, a white shirt, and blue jeans, but I don't think anyone understood. haha. It was just weird not to see fireworks stands, flag t-shirts for $5 at Old Navy, grocery stores with sales on typical 4th of July foods, etc.  It's little things like that that you don't realize are so familiar and wonderful until they aren't there.

Being in Korea has made me much more appreciative and proud of my country.  Although it probably contributes to it, I don't think it's merely because I'm away from it.  In the first few weeks of orientation and moving here, I was hit with negative comments about the US and Americans not from Koreans but from other foreigners.  While I'm quick to admit that the USA is definitely not without many, many problems, and that Americans sometimes fit the stereotype of being loud, over confident, etc. it really bothered me when I heard negative comments.  It still bothers me. Sometimes (often) I feel as if it's a lose-lose situation for Americans abroad. Negative comments/stereotypes are said and if we stay silent, I feel as if we're just accepting it and almost encouraging it.  However, if we speak up and either A. ask them to please stop because it offends us or B. defend our country we are either told A. they're just joking and to lighten up (riiight - joking) or B. it looks as if we're feeding into the stereotype of being overly confident. blah.  It's just so frustrating to me.  While I may not fully agree with everything our government decides to do, I fully support our country and am especially grateful to those who have dedicated part or all of their lives to defend the US in the military.

So as cheesy as this is,  I'm proud to be an American.

To lighten up after that serious note, please enjoy this hilarious video from my 4th of July last summer.  This was in the backyard of a family in Yreka, CA and it's all of the Kidder Staff of 2010 watching.  Leadership put together this hilarious production in about 5-10 minutes and it was sooo fun. Enjoy and Happy 4th of July!!

Fondly named "A Patriotic Demonstration"

The proper means of increasing the love we bear our native country is to reside some time in a foreign one.  ~William Shenstone

UPDATE: My family was all (well minus a few) together today and because it's finals and I had a half day of work, I was able to skype with them before they went outside to do fireworks.   As usual, it was SO good to talk to them.  My family is seriously the best at making a person feel loved and missed when he or she can't make it to a family gathering!  We usually celebrate my birthday on 4th of July (since it's July 21 and we do all summer birthdays in the fam on the 4th) so they even put the computer next to everyone else who was sung to and I "blew" out the candle via skype! haha! To be expected, it made me miss home even more, but was totally worth it.  Here are a few screen shots I took of the skype video!  Love you family - you're amazing (even when you do tease me with strawberries and pound cake!)

as they're singing Happy Birthday!

Josiah! He loves his Aunt Rachel even over Skype!