Paradise in Namhae

All to often I forget that gorgeous landscapes, warmhearted country folk and peace and quiet are not a far drive away from where we live in Daejeon. This weekend I was reminded of the quaintness that is the Korean countryside. Not only were we in a rural setting, we were on an island covered in mountains, lush greenery and mind-boggingly beautiful coastline.

Here are some pictures of our weekend trip away in Namhae:

kayaking out of Dumo Village

breakfast spot on a small island overlooking Namhae 

taking a break in a small cove

camping on Sangju Beach

admiring the coastline views on an afternoon drive

lush forest at the base of Geum Mountain

Blue Crane.

Just a few of the cranes we've managed to fold so far at home and at school!

D'oh!

Ever have one of those Homer moments, when you think "I'm such an idiot"? Of course you have, haven't we all? Well yesterday was a huge D'oh! moment for me.

I decided after some hesitation to bring in my origami paper to school so I could work on the cranes. While we originally wanted to do all 1000 together, we realized that wasn't realistic and so I figured getting a few done at school each day would add up over time. This week was especially perfect since my students have midterm exams and so I am stuck at my desk all day for 4 days straight. Perfect!

Well, after folding almost 20 on Monday, the teachers finally asked me what I was doing yesterday. I explained the situation, and they all happily wanted to help. Score! Now living in Korea is a plus because almost all Koreans know how to fold paper cranes, unlike a lot of Americans. So I gave them paper and off they went to their desks. After a few minutes I am handed immaculate cranes...not even joking. Their folds are perfect, their heads are angled in just the right way, their tails tall and unwrinkled.

WHAT?! Am I missing something? So these teachers who haven't folded cranes in years whip up the most beautiful ones I've ever seen, while I've folded around 50 so far and they all look terrible!

Come to find out, we're been doing it wrong. Now, although I feel ridiculous about this, it's also not entirely our fault since we went online and read/watched a lot of instructions and they all told us to fold the way we have been. But once my co-teacher went through the process step by step I realized that we were ADDING 4 additional steps and that the way she did it was not only so much faster, but the heads and tails were thicker and so much easier to fold.

Thank GOODNESS we figured this out 85 cranes in instead of 800! Now we've decided to start again, considering there is such a huge difference between our crappy cranes and the new ones.

You live and you learn, as my mom would say :)

Savior Sister

When people here in Korea find out we're getting married in Maine during summer vacation, they always ask us "So, how is THAT going?". It's true, planning any wedding is hard enough, and living abroad while planning definitely has some of its challenges. We always respond with "Well, it's not as bad/hard as you would think", which is mostly true.

Email has revolutionized the way we do everything, and that's certainly no different with wedding planning. I am in close contact with the tent rental company, the farmer/florist, the caterer, photographer,DJ, and even the retired priest who is marrying us.

While contacting people is easy from Korea, ordering items for the various projects and getting organized is not. That's where our "savior sister" comes in. Heather, Matt's sister, has been our go-to girl on the ground in Maine. She has helped us in so many ways thus far.

She created a Google doc spreadsheet of all of the wedding projects so that we can update whenever things are purchased, to keep us on track and organized.

 She offered to store all of the items we'll be purchasing for the projects, including 18 (!) lbs of Chinese lanterns! Not only is she collecting, counting and storing, she but is taking pictures of each item as they come in so we can see what everything looks like.

120 Chinese lanterns! So pretty!

upside down picture, but you get the idea!

 She has volunteered to plant wildflowers for the ceremony. We will use them to decorate the pews at the church, which I think will be really beautiful.

 

   She is also making our guest book, which is going to look awesome! She's going to cut out cranes from a variety of different blues and natural tones and then guests will write well wishes on them. We will display them on twine with clothespins during the reception and then we will make a scrapbook out of them afterwards. (here are some inspiration photos)

 

 Oh, and did I mention that she works like 50 hours a week and is 4 months pregnant?! YEAH! She is wonder woman. We are so appreciative of everything she does. We're so happy that she offered to help so much with the wedding planning. It's a great way to bring us together despite being so far apart, and she is so organized and focused, which is exactly what we need when trying to get all of this stuff together.

So a big shout out to my future sis-in-law, Heather. Despite being so busy and getting ready for the baby, she is invested in our wedding day which makes us so happy and blessed. We're so excited for the new addition to the family.... I can't WAIT to be an aunt! While it's hard being away from home during these monumental events, I hope she realizes how happy we are for her and how much we're looking forward to not only sharing our wedding day with her, but of the baby that will arrive in October who we'll get to meet in March.

Yay to family :)

15 down, 985 to go..

Well, it's official. We started folding the cranes last night! First we went to our favorite coffee shop and made a bunch of practice cranes using different paper. Matt had never made a crane before, so it took a few tries to get it down.

Then we went home, turned on some Yo-Yo Ma, sat our butts down on the floor and folded cranes together on the coffee table. I can see where people say it's therapeutic! We had great conversation, and the act of folding and refolding is oddly soothing.

While we only finished 15 between us, we were happy. We know it's going to take a while to get faster, and for now we are trying so hard to get every crane right, which we know is a lost cause. They all look fine except for their heads, which are so hard to fold because of how small they are. We're getting there, though! If I don't try to make every fold perfect, then I can complete a crane in under two minutes, which is apparently the norm.

Once we get going we have a plan to sit and make 20 each at a time. Let's see if that actually happens!

Along with starting the cranes, we accomplished a lot this "wedding Sunday":

-printed out all of the invitations (not the other pieces, just the invitation card itself)
-cut all of the blue paper
-cut 1/4 of the pockets for the pocketfold
-cut more white paper for printing
-worked on the wedding website
-completed our registries (for now)

A good 5 hours of work, it feels good! From now on we'll have to work on something wedding related most nights of the week if we want to finish everything on time.


 OH and my maid of honor, Sarah, just got her dress this past weekend! How exciting! She sent me a few pictures and she looks fabulous! We're so excited! The color is perfect and she looks terrific. It's so crazy real now, with my bridesmaids ordering their dresses and Matt searching for suit options. After 15 months this wedding is finally coming!! :)

Wedding Projects Sneek Peak

Sorry for the lack of wedding planning updates lately! Spring has sprung here and Matt and I have spent all of our free time outdoors enjoying the amazing weather and our new driveway garden! We are super excited to be growing some of our own flowers and veggies this year.

Here are a few snapshots of some recent projects we've started:

We start folding 1,000 paper cranes this weekend!

The first coats of our reception chair signs: "Nam-Pyeon" and "Bu-Een" (Husband and Wife in Korean)

some of the cut outs for the invitations, which we'll start assembling this weekend as well!

Less than 4 months to go until the WEDDING! We are back in Maine in 98 days! Can't believe how fast the time is flying!

Cherry Blossom Gorgeousness

Here are a few shots of our mid-week day off, due to elections held here in Korea. We drove 2 hours southeast of here to view the BEST cherry blossoms we've ever seen!

Week 4 Complete

Another week done!

Did 5 Turbo-fire workouts, then spent Saturday hiking up and down God knows how many stairs. We went on a road trip to Danyang with our friend Tobi, and ended up climbing stairs at every place we went to.First we climbed a hill to catch a glimpse of a really cool natural stone arch, then we explored a cave that was all stairs, then we wandered up into this AMAZING temple, my favorite one in Korea so far. All in all I walked up like dozens of flights of stairs. My calves hurt for a few days afterwards!

So because of this, I'd say week 4 was pretty successful ^^

Taking Care of Business

This past weekend was deemed by Matt: "Wedding Weekend #1". While it only ended up being "Wedding Saturday", we still were able to accomplish a lot. Not a lot feels as good as checking things off a huge, ever growing list!

We are getting more and more excited as the days roll by and the countdown gets smaller and smaller. We are now less than 140 days from the wedding, which means we have 120 or so days until we head back to Maine! To give this some perspective, we have been engaged for 441 days now, (out of 578 total).

To give you an idea of some of the things we have checked off:

1. We painted two small wooden signs for the back of the bride and groom chairs at the reception. I will post pics of the finished product! While this was something we didn't have to do right away, we had all of the materials, so we went at it. It felt good to get crafty!

2. We finished the gift registries. We ended up registering for three different stores since we have lots of people coming from all over, and wanted to give them options. While we technically haven't filled the recommended quota (at least 2 items for every guest/couple/family), we are close enough and figure we can add more if it seems we need to.

3. Worked on the wedding website. Because we will be in Korea when our guests need to RSVP, we are going to have a website with tons of details and information. So far we have a page about how we met/our engagement story, the ceremony and reception directions and details, and a link to our registries. We still need to add travel information, things to do around Southern Maine, and hotel/restaurant info. Hopefully the website will go live within a few weeks.

4. Printed receipts and contract. My wedding binder has just gotten a whole lot bigger now that I have printed out all of the paperwork from the last few months. Now everything is all organized!

5. Ordered the Chinese lanterns. 120 of them to be exact. While it's going to be a total pain to put them up, it will be so worth it! I know what we'll be doing before the rehearsal on Friday afternoon! :) The lanterns will be shipped to Matt's sister Heather, who is our go-to organizer at home in Maine. She will receive all shipments, organize them and keep them safe until we arrive home.

6. Ordered fun straws. Ok, it doesn't sound like a big deal, but I had a lot of fun picking out funky stripped and polka dotted blue straws for the mason jars. I think it will look super cute!

7. We have chosen our WEDDING BANDS!!! Yahoo! Now that we've chosen them, we will be ordering them within the next few days. We are ordering through jamesallen.com which is where Matt bought my engagement ring. I am SUPER excited and will be posting pictures and details soon as well! We figured we would order them now since that is one big item we can't pay with cash. In the next few months we will be stockpiling cash to pay for all of vendors come August.

8. We have chosen our readings for the wedding. While it wasn't too difficult, having 5-10 different readings for each of the different parts of the ceremony made it tougher than I thought it would be. After reflecting for a while, we've decided on some good ones and have contacted the people we would like to read for us.

That's all I can think of right now, although I know there was more!
I will post pics soon of the signs as well as the wedding bands :D

Week 3 Complete

A quick update for week 3. While I did great during the week, I skipped all 3 workouts on the weekend. Oops. Although I did walk a few miles around a fortress wall with Matt on Sunday, which had a few strenuous sections, so it wasn't a complete loss.

I just have to find the willpower to push on through the weekends. During the week I have a routine, but it's hard on the weekends when we have other plans. Must work harder at it!

This week I totaled 4 Turbo Fire workouts and 1 small hike.

This coming weekend will be the end of 4 weeks so I will go to the spa and weigh myself. I have noticed a few inches lost, but probably not a lot of weight. We'll see. Staying optimistic. I have 17 weeks left before I go home!