Fun Fun Korea Adventure

Life in a foreign country is definitely an adventure. Every once in a while something happens that strikes us funny and one of us will say "Yep, we're living in Korea." Not everything is funny when it happens, but with time and perspective we can see the humor in our day to day challenges. The biggest challenge continues to be the language. We are learning and love to try to test out our skills. We know we will never really speak Korean, but we are having fun learning a few phrases and words. We have found a few good tutorials on YouTube. One of our favorites is "Christina's Fun Fun Korean Lessons".  She has several short lessons which are easy to follow and actually quite fun. Christina also introduces random cultural facts as she teaches the lessons. I decided to borrow from Christina and make this post just a few random experiences/facts that demonstrate our fun fun Korean adventure.


Our church held Thanksgiving the Saturday before the holiday. A family made up of soldiers (a few families), college professors, American teachers, federal employees, missionaries and Koreans.  We also held Thanksgiving in our apartment for those who do not have families here. I believe this may be the main reason Heavenly Father sent us here.... to provide a home away from home for some of his children.

The blue trees are vinyl from my daughter.
There are others placed around the apartment.
 Love them!

I received several Christmas decorations as birthday gifts. Thanks to my family, who know me so well. And also to some sweet missionaries who wanted to wish me a happy birthday. I loved decorating our cute little Korean apartment .  This is the darling little tree which is pre-lit and decorated.

Seoman  market- This is one of one of many  displays. Some things at the markets we may never get used to (blood & noodle stuffed intestines). "Yep, we are living in Korea"





Each Monday we have Family Home Evening  We share a spiritual thought, refreshments and games. This week Sup taught us a traditional Korean game called Yut-noli. Its a game played with sticks. We see older people playing it in the parks often. Sup says its a traditional family game played at Chuseok and Chinese New Year. It was lots of fun.



I don't have a picture for this, but want to share a frequent subway experience. Respect for Elders is an important component of Korean culture. I am always impressed when a young Korean jumps up to offer their seat to someone older. It's also quite entertaining to see the "older" people trying to give their seats to each other. They are often quite insistent. In many cases they look like they are the same age, but obviously they don't want to believe it.

Okay, I just want to throw in one more random observation. Here in Daegu nearly all cars are black or shades of grey/silver or white. You see a few colorful cars, but very few. I have no idea why. Maybe I should ask Sup**. The one exception is the blue trucks you see everywhere. They are all blue. Here's a picture.  Oh, one more thing.... everyone parks on the sidewalks. Fred always teases that you better get off the sidewalk or you will get hit.

That's it for this edition of our fun fun Korea adventure.

So much more to come.

 

**I asked Sup and one of the Korean missionaries. They responded it relates to being in harmony and not wanting to stand out. Interesting, and not at all American!