Oh Christmas Tree! Oh Christmas Tree!

We have a tree! It's only about four inches tall, but with blinking lights, a toy train, and presents, it's very cute.Thank you Aunt Lydia and Uncle Brian!

anniversary

William is finally back from the field again. He got back just in time to celebrate our first anniversary yesterday! We celebrated by going shopping and eating dinner at a Thai restaurant. Each time we eat out now we go to Thai restaurants because we like the food so much better. I found an Indian restaurant that we'll hopefully try soon too.

This is the result of our shopping. For the first time in my life I own high heels! They're surprisingly comfortable and not hard to walk in. Korean women older than school age and younger than senior citizens tend to wear high heels just about everywhere, so there are hundreds of styles to choose from. I personally think it's too cold to wear them right now, but I also don't walk around in skirts and tights when its only twenty degrees outside. I frequently see men, women, and children who have on no hats, no gloves, and often not even winter coats. It's no colder here than at home, but it's still cold enough for all of those things! I usually look like Nanook of the North by comparison and I'm still cold, but I'm excited to try out my shoes when it warms up again.

These are the custom-made shoes that William ordered a few weeks back. Next he's getting a navy blue pin-stripe three-piece suit and a topcoat. Hopefully he'll have somewhere to wear them once he's out of the Army.

I miss Christmas!

It doesn't feel like Christmas season. Koreans celebrate Christmas, but there are no lights, no trees, few decorations :( Some stores have decorations inside but none outside. It's not festive at all and doesn't seem possible that Christmas is only nine days away.

more food

I went to lunch with my "teachers' class" today. Each time I go out to eat I think it can't be worse than the chicken feet incident, but it can. We went to a sashimi restaurant. I've never been very fond of seafood, with a few exceptions like salmon. With the teachers all watching me and telling me to try this and that (and actually putting things on my plate whether I wanted them or not) I felt obliged to try things I never would have considered putting in my mouth previously. But, I can now say with certainty, I don't like most seafood. The flavors weren't all bad, but I can't handle the textures.

The thing I absolutely refused to try, and don't care if I offended anyone by not trying, was crawling off the plate as the waitress set it on the table. I believe it was very recently cut-off octopus, or possibly squid, tentacles. Just looking at it made me want to gag so I kept my eyes down. By the time that came I had already tried squid, shrimp, octopus, eel, crab, raw fish and fish skin, and other things I did not even want to identify. I figured I'd tried plenty already and something alive and squirming was just too much.

One of these days William needs to be with me so that he can enjoy all these wonderful new foods too. I came home and had a couple homemade banana chocolate chip muffins. I needed comfort food!!

mountains

Here are some pretty pictures from a mountainous ride we did on Sunday with another cyclist William met recently on base. I think Pyeongtaek is in the far distance in this first one. The fall colors are still around in some places.


There are two interesting towers on top of the mountain below if you click on the picture to open it full-size. We were told it's a park at the top so I'm not sure what the towers are for.


The climb after it had started to flatten out. It wasn't very long since it took less than 10 minutes to ride up, but it was steep in a few parts with some fun switchbacks for the decent.

Songtan

On Saturday William and I went to Songtan to do some shopping. Osan Air Base is there so shop owners are more likely to speak a little English. Plus there are a few great Thai restaurants we've tried. It was really cold for walking around outside, but we had a nice day nonetheless.

We went into a couple tailor's shops and found one, Mr. Bo's G.Q., that does custom suits. William could get a three-piece suit with really nice fabrics for $200. Not bad! An Army Captain was there who said he'd previously ordered seven suits and gave a glowing recommendation. William will probably do a suit later, but he got sized for a pair of shoes from the man who shares the same space as the tailor. If William wants to buy any shoes while he's here he doesn't really have a choice other than custom because men's shoes off-the-shelf are huge. I doubt the shop had any smaller than a 12. The men don't seem to have particularly large feet, I think they just wear their shoes too big. Later we noticed a guy whose shoes were all curled up because his feet obviously weren't in the ends of the shoes at all.

As we were leaving I asked if they knew of any similar places for women. It turns out they make women's shoes too. All I have to do is bring in photos or pictures from magazines of shoes I like. He seemed pretty confident that they can make any shoe. So, Kim, if you come to Korea and want some nice shoes then bring some pictures of your favorite shoe styles with you :)

The two guys who owned the store were cool. We liked this place better than others we'd been in because Korean shop owners tend to hover and follow you around the store. I'm sure it's a cultural thing, but it drives me nuts. I don't like feeling as if I'm being hunted as I shop. I prefer to go in and look on my own and if I have a question I'll ask (or try to with the minimal Korean I've learned), otherwise leave me alone. It wasn't a big shop but these guys let us walk around and look and didn't try to push us into buying something (also pretty common).