Snow!

Colin graciously went with me last weekend on a women's retreat type weekend to take care of Mavry.  He was wonderful and he says he got to know Mavry a lot better from spending all day with her for almost three days.  We were at the foot of a mountain and the weather the first evening looked like this.  It was sort of magical.

 Then it snowed the next day!  We knew there was a chance of snow, but I was still entranced. 

 So Mavry got to experience her first snow!  I had warm clothes for Mavry, but not for me!

 

 

Along with my warm clothes, we also forgot to pack a bed for Mavry.  She usually only gets up once a night (and has slept through the night a few times), so we could have just made a place on the floor, but since we weren't sure if she'd be thrown off by a new place, we wanted her close by for easy lifting from bed.  So, Colin made a "co-sleeper" out of the luggage rack, a drawer with a towel for cushion, and a chair.  She liked it so well she slept through the night anyhow, but I was glad to have her next to me instead of a few feet down. 

our minimoon

Suzanne asked me recently if I had pictures from our honeymoon. I do. Here they are. We originally planned on going to New Zealand, as it's been my dream honeymoon spot in my mind. (Never really had a dream wedding in mind, but I did have a dream honeymoon spot!)
However, wedding planning got complicated, Colin was busy with work, and I was not excited about planning a honeymoon on my own. Plus, plane tickets were expensive because it was summer in New Zealand. So, we decided to plan a New Zealand trip for later. We're saving up our wedding gift money for that. Yay!

We did have a lovely honeymoon on the way back from Texas to California. (We drove from CA to TX for the wedding so we could have a car there for the wedding prep and because we were there for a few weeks.) We stopped in Santa Fe at a bed and breakfast called the Hacienda Dona Andrea. We were the only ones there, so it was like we had our own mansion with a breakfast chef.


The night we were driving in, it started snowing. The next morning, there was plenty of snow on the ground. We used the top of a storage container to try to sled, but it didn't really work. :)

We spent four nights there. Mostly just relaxing in front of the fireplace, taking walks, naps, reading, watching movies, enjoying the coziness. Most people go somewhere tropical on their honeymoon, I guess, but I really enjoyed the low key relaxed version that we took. We called it a minimoon because we are saving a more deluxe version for later.

We did go in to Santa Fe for a day - to the Georgia O'Keefe museum and a Japanese style spa, which was nice too.

Thanksgiving snow

It started snowing here around noon and has kept going all day. It's beautiful! I took pictures of my parents' backyard after a rain about two months ago (man, those two months have gone by quickly!) so my mom commissioned me to take some snow pictures. I probably would have done it anyway, since I have such a fascination with snow.





We're having a non-traditional Thanksgiving here. I made chicken with goat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes in a lemon sauce for just my parents and me. My sister, brother-in-law and nephew are coming in tomorrow along with my grandmother, aunt, and cousins, as long as the roads aren't nasty, so we'll have our real Thanksgiving tomorrow. On Saturday, we are travelling to the West Texas farm to see the other side of the family.

i can't get enough of...

snow! You might have noticed this before. I have a love relationship with snow. I went for a walk today even though the snow is melting into slushy rivers on the dirt roads. It was nicer in the fields under the tall pine trees where we made deep footprints and didn't have to deal with the mud. It'll be gone soon, so we had to enjoy it today! Tonight I think a few of us have made a date to go out and enjoy the awesome Colorado stars.

snow in Colorado

I drove in to Colorado yesterday and stayed with my next door neighbor from my freshman year in the dorm at ACU (which was a long time ago, and we haven't really seen each other since) and her husband. It was fun to catch up with them. They warned me that it was going to get cold today and possibly snow and it did! It's supposed to be back in the 70's later this week, but I am happy to experience some cold weather for a change.

So, this is where I am now. At a nice little spot near Colorado Springs.

I spent a few relaxing and re-filling days in Kansas City with a friend I know from China. So glad that worked out. It was good to have someone who's been where I've been and who I relate well to. I drove the nine hours across Kansas into Colorado yesterday and went through Abilene, Kansas. Not that anyone will care about that, but I've always heard that's the place my hometown is named for, so I set foot in it, got this picture, and then drove away.

week in review

We had a pretty big snowstorm, like I wrote about, last Sunday/Monday. We got about a foot and a half of snow. It was still in huge mounds on the side of the main streets and not yet melted or cleared from the back streets on Friday, but things were melting in the sun.

This was the scene from my window on either Wednesday or Thursday at the military base. They work with a wooden board that has ropes to be pulled by the guys in front while one guy stays at the back to push and steer. You can see at the top the perfectly formed banks of snow on the side of the road. After the roads and the area just around the statue were cleared, the guys set out to clear the area in front of the statue.

This morning, I felt sorry for those guys who worked so hard all week to clear it out, because it was all covered in snow again. I had plans to do a few errands and go to the gym today, but the only place I made it to was the nearby store to pick up some salad vegetables for dinner at my apartment with a friend tonight. Almost as soon as the snow finished falling the same crazy strong wind that blew all Monday and Tuesday started to blow again today. A good day to stay inside, skype with my family, finish a book and cook a friend dinner.

The 8th of March is International Womens' Day. This was my first time to really celebrate it. Our department threw us a dinner party at a hotel. These are some of the new teachers I work with in the English department.

I love my plant porch! I know you could care less, but here they are anyhow.

snow

It snowed gently but steadily from about 11 am yesterday until this morning. So much beautiful snow! I watched a short Korean lady get out on her porch to shovel some off and it came up past her knees. It didn't get that far on me, but it's a lot of snow!

I went out this morning to start the process of getting internet in my apartment. (I should have it in the next few days.) I was amazed again at how everybody gets out and gets to work to make the sidewalks walkable and the roads driveable. There is one or maybe two snowplows in this city, so everybody has to get out on the street and shovel. They make huge piles of snow and sometimes use blankets or buckets to cart them off somewhere else. This truck above was taking snow somewhere. And, I wanted to share a pic of my cutest little plant! I went to the plant market on Friday to restock my porch after being gone for the winter. (I left most of my plants with a friend and most of them survived, but I wanted some new color). I came home with this little guy, three aloe stalks, a lovely ivy, and another fuzzy little green thing. My porch is happy again!

Choo-ri

I have thought I should change the name of this blog to "the snow chronicles" or something, because I feel compelled to let you guys know every time it snows. I woke up to beautiful snow this morning. I celebrated by walking to McDonald's where they now have breakfast food! This is a new thing. They have always been open for breakfast, but now they not only serve hamburgers (I guess they still serve those at breakfast time too), but they also serve egg mcmuffins and pancakes in Korea for breakfast. It was nice.
Yesterday, I went to see 미녀는 괴로워, a movie with the family I used to live with. Afterwards, we went to a new shopping center near where they live. We were walking around outside and saw this sign. It says "Danger of electric shock. Do not touch the tree." Except the word they use for tree (the trees have Christmas lights on them) is not the Korean one, 나무 (nah-moo), it's a Konglish word, 추리(choo-ri) which is meant to be the English word, tree. I couldn't believe it. Why wouldn't they use the Korean word for tree? The younger sister looked at the sign, looked at her sister, and said "Onnie (older sister), what's a choori?" I was glad she asked, because I didn't know either. The older sister explained to us and we laughed. More examples of Konglish here and here.

a lovely morning

It's Sunday morning. I've got biscuits in the oven, hot coffee from my coffee press, some good music on, my skin smells so good with the bergamot coriander lotion my sister brought me, and it's SNOWING! I mean, could it get any better? Well, I guess I could think of a few things I could add, but let's just enjoy this.

It's a habit of mine to look out the window when I get up. This morning when I did, I tried to discern whether it was snow or rain. When I got out of the shower, it was definitely snow. It's not sticking or anything, and it still has the weight of rain instead of being able to drift around a little before it hits the ground, but it's officially our first snow! Not quite as dramatic as last year's, but still lovely.

Well, I have biscuits to eat and need to get ready for the day. More later.

i could post more snow pictures,

but I won't. It snowed again on Sunday afternoon, on into the night, and was beautiful, but not as spectacular as the last one, so I didn't take any new pictures for you. It melted pretty quickly yesterday and now it's back to relatively warm and sunny skies! Saturday it was so warm that I went downtown in only a long sleeved t-shirt and jeans...this weather is so confusing, but kinda fun anyhow.

The weekend flew by and was so packed with stuff that I was glad for the week to start again. I had three students over for breakfast on Saturday. I asked what time they wanted to come over and they agreed on 8 am. I didn't tell them until later, but I was thinking that 8am on a Saturday was pretty early. They told me later it was early for them too, but they thought they should come early for breakfast. I then taught them the idea of brunch and that it's OK to have a late breakfast on the weekends. Anyhow, it was good for me to get an early start. I made them breakfast casserole, apricot white chocolate scones, and homemade granola. I don't know if they really appreciated it, but I sure enjoyed it. I think they mostly appreciated the real coffee.

Saturday afternoon, I went shopping, bought myself some roses, veggies for dinner, and other stuff. It was a beautiful day. I got back just in time to get the beans on to cook for dinner at five. I made my own ranchero sauce for beef enchiladas (with corn tortillas and pepper jack cheese from home), beans and mexican rice. It was pretty tasty. I had three Koreans over and another teacher from the English office to help with conversation since my Korean needs some support. I also made a super yummy chocolate caramel cake. It was all received well, and even though it took a lot of time to make, it was worth it.

I had another group over for tea, coffee, and the rest of the apricot scones on Sunday afternoon. It's good to get all your invitations done in one weekend, I think, because I got to use leftovers and kept my room in order the whole weekend. I sure had to do a lot of dishes over and over though.

Now we're in the middle of speaking tests for the midterm, so that makes for a busy week. This Friday, we're going to Dalian, a city on the coast, for our five day May holiday. I'm very ready for some down time on the train and time away from school!

I know i'm sounding like a broken record...

but we had the most amazing snow last night! Light snow started in the morning and continued most of the day, and then into the night, so this morning we woke up to the most snow we've had at one time this year! I wore my boots, hat, and gloves so I could walk outside to the office to experience it. The others thought I was a little off to walk outside in it when I don't have to, but it was fun and I got better pictures that way.
Everyone says this weather isn't normal. I guess since Yanji is usually pretty dry in the winter, it's hard to get such a beautiful snow, but now that "spring" is coming, we have enough moisture to make it happen. It was up to my knees and it has snowed even more since then. I think this is the most snow I've ever experienced at one time! It's starting to feel like Christmas again...like I should make some gingerbread cookies or something.

a nice weekend

We got a nice surprise on Easter morning...snow! I know, I've posted about a million pictures of snow on this site, but I can't help it. Snow makes for the best pictures. Actually, Saturday night it was raining up until about 11 and then it turned into snow (or so I hear... I was really surprised to see the snow on Sunday morning!). We were very excited to see rain, because that's a sign of spring, whereas snow sure doesn't conjure up images of spring...

It made for a fun walk down to the valley where we meet on Sunday mornings. These are two ladies who were making sure they didn't slip. I got out my new waterproof hiking boots for the trek.


The weather here is actually quite fickle these days. (I just learned the Korean word for fickle and it's a fun one to use.) On Saturday, I barely even needed a jacket. I went shopping with a new teacher to show her the fruit, vegetable, and meat markets. It was kinda fun to be on the showing end. It was just a few months ago that people were having to show me! (Actually, I still have to be shown a lot of things.) I can now understand when people ask me what country I'm from (and give them a real full sentence answer), but I'm not capable of much more than that in Chinese. In the meat market, we bought our chicken breasts (to get that accomplished, I say the word for chicken, then point to that part of the body... I'm sure that's a funny picture for you!) and we bought a slab of beef. We had taken it over to a different corner of the market to get it ground and the lady behind the counter was asking us some questions. She asked us where we were from, and we told her in Chinese. Then, she was asking us some other stuff we didn't know. We finally asked her if she spoke Korean (you're lucky if you get someone at the market who does) and she did! So, we figured out what she was asking. She was asking if we could understand each other when we speak (the friend is from England). We laughed and told her that yes, we usually can.

We were buying all this meat for a mini Tex-Mex night! I brought back some tortillas and cheese from home, so my other Texan friend and I decided to cook up some meat and make some other stuff to put in the tortillas. I had some taco seasoning for the ground meat and she had a can of refried beans. Something that's so simple at home is really an exciting evening in China. We had a few people over to her house (she has an actual table and chairs in her room) and had a lovely little dinner.

an amazing snow

You can't really understand how impressive this snow was by looking at the picture, but you have to try to imagine this:
Yesterday, it was snowing small flakes as I walked to the office before my 8:00 class. During my 9:00 class, it turned into rain, then at about 11:00, it began snowing these HUGE flakes of snow. All of us who were in the English conversation office lined up at the windows to watch it.
Here were some of the comments:
"If you wanted to have a snowball fight with this, all you'd have to do is catch one flake and throw it!"
"What kind of environmental conditions would cause the snow to come down in such large clumps?"
"I've never seen anything like this before!"

It was all gone an hour or so after lunch, because the temperature has really warmed up in the past week, but it was amazing while it lasted.

Yesterday afternoon, I went on an adventure to try to get a return ticket from Korea to Yanji. I am planning on going for just the weekend, so I booked my return flight on the ticket that I used to get here last summer. Since one way tickets are not that much more expensive than round trip tickets, I just planned on getting a ticket from Seoul to Yanji. I called the three companies that run these flights and found that Korean air had the cheapest price. So, I went to their office and waited for fifteen minutes or so for the ticket to be booked at another office and then was going to pay for it, but it turned out to be much more expensive than the price they quoted to me. They said it was because of oil taxes. Well, why couldn't they tell me that before I withdraw the cash to pay for it? I didn't have enough cash on me, and cash was all they were able to take. So, I went to another company to purchase the same flight from them, because it turned out to be cheaper, but they couldn't book me a ticket that began in Seoul.

A bit frustrated with all this, I walked to the gym to get in a short workout before a scheduled meeting with someone in the evening. I was hungry, because I'd had only a little roll of kimbap for lunch, so I stopped by a Korean style snack vendor for some spicy rice patty on a stick to give me some fuel for my workout. I asked for what I wanted in Korean, because I figured someone selling Korean snacks would speak Korean. She told me how much it was in Chinese, and I thought she said 5 yuan. I thought she was ripping me off because I was a foreigner, so I looked at the little girl next to me with a confused look, and then the little girl translated the price into Korean. Then I realized that she'd said 5 mao (6 cents) and not 5 yuan (6o cents). It's kinda funny that I would even consider paying 54 cents more for a rice patty a rip off.

what's up

I got to teach that to my beginner students yesterday. There's not a real translation into Korean, but I tried to show them different situations where they would hear it or use it. They thought it was fun. We're learning about how to decline invitations, and how to give excuses, so I also taught them about how a girl can refuse a date by saying that she has to wash her hair (and that's not a good signal for the boy) and how an excuse for kids who don't do their homework is to say "my dog ate it." They found that one especially funny.

Anyhow. The semester is winding down and I am finding out how much I love my students! I just want to keep teaching the same ones and not lose them next semester. I'll probably get some of the same ones, and I'll learn to love new ones.

Monday was a friend's birthday. A big group of us braved the cold in our multiple layers, scarves over our mouths and noses, caps on, hoods over those. We might as well be wearing burqas with as much skin as we're showing. With all this on, I stay warm when I go out, but my toes and hands feel the cold. I've got good gloves, but my hands only stay warm if they're inside my pockets. I can't walk around with them in my pockets, though, because I'm afraid I might slip and fall on the ice. One person I know slipped and fell flat back on her head yesterday. I've always enjoyed cold weather, though, and this is still a little bit of an adventure for me. This morning, I left my warm room before it was light and walked across campus outside to grab a taxi to a friend's house downtown. I couldn't see where the snow was deep or not, and I found myself walking in a spot off the beaten track where it was a foot or so deep even though it hasn't snowed in a few weeks. The fact that we can still walk on snow, even so long after a snow, is kinda fun. Last week, I made my first snowman in a few years with two of my younger (not yet teenager) friends. It was a cute little guy.

I started making Christmas cookies (thanks to the vanilla and shortening my mom sent me!) last night. I put them in the freezer to keep until next week, and then I'll make little packages to give out to my students and friends. Yay for Christmas!

more snow

I thought you guys needed to see some more snow scenes, mostly because I'm so fascinated by snow that I can't stop taking pictures of it when I go out. When we went to the gym again on Thursday, it was snowing again and we slipped and slid down the hill to get a bus. These pics are from that day. The second one is of a bunch of students out on the basketball court outside my dorm scraping ice and snow so it's not so slippery. The third one is a popular picture spot on our campus, and the rest are just random scenes on the way down the hill and downtown on the way to the gym.

It snowed again this morning, and as I was walking through the halls, there was actually snow coming in through the roof in the hallway! I have certainly never seen it snow inside before, but this morning I did. I didn't put on my long johns, because I planned on walking the halls to go to our meeting, but I was wishing I had. Even the room we were meeting in, sitting all close together, and the cafeteria were so cold that with my long coat on, I could still feel a chill. So many people got serious colds this week, but I'm really blessed to be free of sickness.

Yesterday, I had most of my intermediate students over for cake and coffee at my apartment in four shifts. They loved the cake (chocolate, banana, and cranberry pumpkin), having a chance to see my room, and we had a good time talking. It also made me feel warmer with groups of visitors coming into my little room. Yay for snow! Yay for yummy cake and having people over!

a beautiful week

So, it snowed Monday morning and then again Monday evening. We went out for pizza on Monday night, then some of us went to the sauna afterwards. We went to a newly remodeled Korean-owned Western style food restaurant and it was so good. They also recently added frozen yogurt to the menu, so we ordered a big bowl and shared. It was expensive for Yanji (pizza, dessert, and drink turned out to be about 40 yuan each, which isn't expensive by most people's standards, but it is for us.) What a great evening.

Tuesday, I went to the gym that a few teachers found and have been going to. It's so much cleaner and well-equipped than I expected. It felt really good to work out for a while. Since the weather has been cold and the swimming pool closed for the winter, my workouts have been few and far between. After working out, we went to a stationery store where I bought a bunch of envelopes to send Christmas cards in. A friend of mine is visiting the States and offered to mail some for me. (If you don't get one soon and you want an update, shoot me an e-mail...I only had a limited number of stamps.) After buying stationery, four of us ate at a cheap Korean food restaurant. This meal was only 9 yuan each, and healthier than pizza. We got kimbap, cold noodles, fried rice, dduk bokki (one of my favorite Korean dishes- rice cakes cooked in spicy sauce), and fried squid, and ate it "family style" so we could taste everything.

I've been able to get caught up on some things. My desk is clear, homework is graded, socks are mended, dishes are washed, and my room is pretty clean. Plus, I got all those cards written. I have to admit, I did skip Korean class to go to the gym, but it was worth it. I'm so thankful for weeks when I can rest and do things I want to do. Now, it's snowing again and has been all morning. The first snow this week didn't melt because our highs have been at or under freezing, so it looks like we can have some fun in the snow today and tomorrow! Yay!

second snow!

When I woke up this morning, it hadn't started to snow yet, but around 7, huge, fluffy flakes were falling. Yay! Most on the ground had melted by lunch, but then around 1, it started again! I love snow... but my Korean tutor warned me that soon it won't melt, but it'll turn to ice on the ground and stay there. I'm gonna enjoy it while it's not slippery. (The first picture isn't real people...it's a sculpture in front of our building.)

can you believe it?

I can't! It's OCTOBER 21st and it snowed this morning! I had absolutely no idea that this was coming, but one of my friends said that it was forecasted on the internet. Anyhow, I was super happy to be surprised this morning. The first words out of my mouth (I don't usually talk to myself, this is reserved for special occasions such as an early snow) were OH MY GOSH!

So, I snapped a few pictures from my window for your viewing pleasure...not that they are great landscapes, or anything, but just to prove to you that it did in fact happen. Now, it's almost 11am and it's not melting. Wow! This ain't Texas!

I took the long way to the office this morning so I could walk outside and feel the snow hit my face. (It actually felt a little more like ice falling instead of snow.) Lovely. I got to the office and one of the teachers there shared my fascination with the snow, but most of the others sort of had a bah-humbug-i-have-to-walk-around-in-this-and-this-is-the-beginning-of-a-long-winter sort of attitude.

The weird thing is that the past few days, it's been warmer. Yesterday afternoon, I took a long walk in only pants and a long sleeved t-shirt, and now sitting in the office, I'm not cold at all (I have a shirt, sweater, and down vest on, though).

I know it will be a long winter, but snow is beautiful.