By God's grace, we made it through this year of separation and are finally living together in Tacoma, Washington! One of our dear friends, a sister by virtue of also being an army wife, gave us this pair of Korean wedding ducks when we left Korea. In traditional Korean weddings, the groom gave the bride's parents a pair of ducks or geese to symbolize lifelong commitment because these birds mate for life.
These wooden ducks have the same meaning, and our friend gave them to us knowing that we would be separated for a time. I took mine to Kansas City and Seong kept his in our home in Washington. We have been waiting, working hard on our own, and traveling a lot to be together as much as possible during this year. Well, now these ducks are safely reunited, and so are we.
Seeing was stationed in Korea again! This time it was for 3 months, and I missed him so much! So, I skipped a few classes to take an extended spring break trip. Here the fun activities we fit in between Seong working and our laying around the hotel!
- Movies and shopping. Typical date stuff.
- Eating out at our favorite restaurants.
- Trip to Gyeongju: We went on a historically-important 2-day getaway to the capital of the kingdom of Silla, which was the main kingdom on the peninsula of Korea from 57 BC to 935 AD. We traveled by train and stayed overnight at the Kolon hotel (hehe). The first day we walked to Bulguksa, a famous temple, and then took a night bus tour to Cheomseongdae observatory and Wolji, a historical palace. The next day, we took a longer day bus tour back to Wolji, Bunhwatgsa pagoda (the oldest Silla pagoda), and the Daerungwon tombs. The tours were completely in Korean, but they had short videos on the bus in English too! I would highly recommend Gyeongju City Bus Tours, especially if you are traveling with a Korean who can translate the important points ;).
- Visiting with family! It was so wonderful to see our cousins again. We went to the park, ate black bean noodles, and met the newest member of the family! You can see our family members in the slide show, including our cousin Tae-jun and his girlfriend, and our cute young cousins performing to the KT Wizards (baseball team) theme song.
- I spent time with my sweet friend Grace. We used to live in the same apartment building with Grace and her family, and her friendship means so much to me. We went to the 고속터미널 (Express Bus Terminal) for shopping and sushi.
- We took the English-language 비원 (Secret Garden) walking tour at 창덕궁 (Changdeokgung Palace). Our Korean hanbok-wearing tour guide gave us excellent and funny information about the garden, which was a private respite for the royal family of the Joseon dynasty.
I hope you enjoy the slideshow! I recommend watching in high-definition :)
It has been a long time since I posted on here, but I have been posting on Instagram. Since last checking in, I successfully completed another semester of Pharmacy school and Seong was accepted to an online Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner program. Right now it feels like we are being pulled in different directions, but we take every opportunity to be together. Our hope is that we will be able to settle down in a few years, but right now we are relying on God for the big picture and our daily lives.
Wasn't our tree so cute? It's our first real tree, so we had tons of fun picking out the gold and red ornaments and finding a topper. At first I thought the bird was strange, but Seong reminded me that the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus "like a dove", so I thought that was cool. Anyway, we don't have very many Christmas traditions, except Christmas cookies!
In the middle of December, the ladies in my family got together to make cookies to last through the season. It's our tradition to make certain cookies, including Russian Tea Balls, Struffoli, Cartellate, Pecan Cracker Cookies, and Tassies. This year we tried to make some of them with natural sweeteners, and were very successful with the Russian Tea Balls and Tassies! Instead of cracker cookies, we just made candied pecans. But we just couldn't alter the Italian fried dough cookies at all, although we did use slightly different ingredients for the honey glaze. We used doTerra Wild Orange essential oil instead of orange peels and some delicious honey from Seong's grandma in Korea! 할머니, 감사합니다!
Oh my, they were so yummy. Our standard Christmas season breakfast became eggs, coffee, and cookies!
For Christmas this year, we stayed in our home in Washington, and were so blessed to have Seong's parents join us! Never were there more relaxing days. We ate such delicious, homemade Korean food!
I hope you too had a fantastic holiday season! Now it's back to the grind.
