E-PICS!

Toby was able to finish going through the pictures earlier than expected, and we got the pictures back last night! It was super exciting!

Matt actually got to look at the 35 edited pictures that Toby chose to work on before I could. Toby emailed them to Matt, and so when I got home from work Matt had a surprise to show me! It was really sweet to go through them together.

Here are a few of my personal favorites. Some have been edited while others are in their raw format. We are REALLY pleased with how they turned out!

At the entrance to one of our favorite temples: Gapsa

Looking out over our city (Daejeon)

At Gapsa Temple

Cute, eh?

I really like the colors in this picture

At Hanbat Botanical Gardens

Lotus pond

I love you/ Sa-rang Hae (Korean)

Thanks again to Toby (and Soyeon!) for the amazing shots, and for taking time out of their weekend to accommodate us, two days in a row!

Sneak Peek: PAPER

No, it's not an engagement shoot sneak peek, although that would be fantastic! I have never been so anxious to see pictures in my entire life! It was the first time I've ever been photographed semi-professionally. I mean, how often do you have a legit photo-shoot, especially one where you don't get to see the pictures automatically when you're done? I am going nuts! I suppose I am guilty as charged as being one with my generation: needing instant gratification.

Instead of a snapshot or two of our amazing photo shoots (yes, we did TWO!), I have a picture of a package that came to my school today from my mom:

Exciting, HUH?! This is the background color of the save-the-dates, as well as the envelopes. This color is the closest blue I could find to what I was going for, and Matt and I are both really happy with it.

As if we didn't already have awesome friends in Korea (re: Toby, our photographer for the engagement shoot), our South African friend Claire is a graphic designer and is putting together a design for our save-the-dates! We're meeting with her and her sister (who is also a designer) this coming weekend to see what ideas they've come up with. While Matt and I had a good idea of what we wanted, these girls know the programs and have the creative, designer flare that we need to make them look more professional. If not for them, our save-the-dates would have looked rather elementary. Thank goodness for talented friends!

So things are looking REALLY good in the stationary department. After months (seriously) of talking about these darn things, we're finally getting them off the ground. Paper is here, envelopes are here, pictures have been taken (we'll be using one from the shoot in our save-the-dates) and the design will soon be finalized. Awesome!

It feels incredibly good to get going on the actual nit and grit of wedding planning. You can only make so many lists, draw so many sketches, calculate so many numbers on so many excel spreadsheets before you just want to explode with frustration. Let's just get this show on the road already! Next week we should have an ACTUAL save-the-date that we'll get printed, with hopes of getting them off and mailed before November. Here's to wishing!

Another awesome thing: our 3 year anniversary is 2 weeks from today! 

Engagement Photo Shoot!

Today is the day. Our friend, Tobi, has graciously agreed to photograph us for our engagement pictures. Although I am super excited, I'm a little nervous as well. What if we don't look romantic? What if it's super awkward? Matt and I are very close, but we don't normally show it in public, let alone in front of friends! We're hoping that after a few shots we'll relax into it. Fingers crossed!


Tobi, who is an amataur photographer, will take a variety of pictures using his digital DSLR, as well as his new (to him) 1950's medium film camera. We're really excited to get some actual film prints, especially from someone who is going to develop them himself! The camera is one of those ones you look down into from the top, how cool is that?!

Last night we went shoe shopping for me and found a nice pair of slacks for Matt, which completes our outfits for the day. Who knew there was this much work involved?

Can my tomboy self pull off a dress and heels? Only one way to find out!

While most of the prints won't be available for a while, when Tobi gives us a few samplers I will make sure to post ASAP! :)

Post Hike

So, 5 minutes before we were about to leave our apartment to catch a train to Seoul, I got an email: "Sorry everyone, the shelter is being renovated and is closed. We can't stay there during the hike. You will all have to complete the entire two-day hike in 14 hours."

AWESOME.

The reason why we decided to do this crazy hike was because we would be stopping early on the first day at a shelter where we could take a much needed nap, relax, play games, enjoy the scenery, etc. Instead, we'd have to endure one of Korea's most arduous treks all in one day, on little sleep. Zero sleep for me, actually.


Well, we did it. Now I am in a TON of pain, probably more pain in my legs than I have ever had. But, I'm recovering and hopefully within the next week will be fully functioning again!

Crossing My Fingers

I didn't plan on getting political on this blog, but I can't help but release some of the emotions I've been feeling in the past week.

 People are marching on Wall St in NYC with further plans to march across the nation and my heart pangs from wanting to be there with them. I am crossing my fingers that change is really going to happen, the only way that it has successfully in history: through a revolution by the people.

If you want to feel  angered, ashamed, outraged, or sympathetic for 30 minutes, read the posts here:

http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com


While downright depressing, it's empowering to know that so many people are in the same boat (99% of us Americans) and ready to do something about it. While I count my lucky stars every day for my life in Korea, I can relate to so many people who have spoken out on this website. Graduating in spring of 2008 right before the financial crisis, I had no idea how hard it would be to survive. After my first summer of applying to every teaching, ed-teching, and substitute job I could find with no luck, reality set in. It just got worse from there. I struggled to pay my monthly student loan payments on top of my car payments and living expenses, and this was when I was living at home! I have memories of scrounging around in the backseat of my car trying to find spare change to pay for gas to get me to my job cashiering at the grocery store. Many months went by where I was late paying my loans or didn't pay them at all.

The time I spent after college before coming here to Korea was the scariest year and a half of my life. I can't imagine being in that position for years and years on end, with much less.

I respect all of these Americans to the highest degree, who have worked so hard to provide for their families. Many hard-skinned people have the mindset that the majority of those protesting are fat, lazy hippies who want to live off of free government money, and to that I am so disgusted.

Here is a quote from the website I listed above, that speaks out to me:

“This is about people who have done nothing but bust their asses and it has gotten them nowhere because they are busting their asses for a false promise, getting nothing they are told they will get. They have the education, the work ethic, and receive nothing but the bare minimum needed to survive for it, or less. They are indeed slaves to the noble class. You can’t “work your way up” if there is no way up.

But there is. And it requires a lot more bravery and a lot more work and a lot more sacrifice. If everyone in the United States were to turn off their televisions and walk outside today and chant in unison and refuse to comply until a simple demand is met, they would either have to arrest everyone (impossible) or agree to change.

We aren’t lazy hippies asking for handouts. We are tired and sore and beaten down and angry because we do exactly as we’re told, and receive nothing but the minimum amount of money for room and board for it, the very definition of a slave.

Even people with higher powered jobs are losing any hope of retiring, their pensions taken, and any hope to receive what they are entitled to for THEIR HARD WORK is dwindling. The top 1% act with impunity and the 99% are punished for even the slightest infraction, sometimes just for fun or “because we can”.

And most importantly, voting will not and does not work, because they own the politicians too. They fund the campaigns (most of the Dem/Rep campaign funds are from corporations), so you only ever see _their_ picks on TV, and then they buy them off on every important issue through lobbying, and they own the news, so you hear what they want you too. This isn’t even about getting a cut. NO ONE SHOULD HAVE THAT MUCH POWER.

Why do you think this hasn’t been covered by the news hardly at all, while a bullshit tea party protest of half the size with no spread to any other cities with a confused and irrational message was front page shit on just about every rag and news channel in the US?

I’m hopeful because people are starting to realize that freedom is about freedom, not about working forever until you die with a vague promise that you might get to do some cool stuff eventually someday, when you pay off that student loan debt. Which is impossible.

Oh. And you don’t own anything. The bank owns your house, your car, and all of your money in the bank. And now that they have person-hood, they can and will take it all when the coup is ready to go.

And the world banks own them.

In effect by transition, the world banks own you. And they are biding their time. And we are going to lose.

The only time anything has ever changed, ever REALLY changed, it changed with a revolution, and sometimes it was bloody, but it has never, EVER, in the known history of human civilization, when people mostly consented to the establishment for now, biding their time, “busting their asses,” and then losing hope, and then dying that way.

If you don’t act right this second, with God as your witness, justice on your side, and the willing spirit to die for a cause, who will? There has to be a beginning. There has to be a first. And we will be the first. And more are following. I don’t want a handout. I want a life.I am the 99 percent.”

Kudos to these brave people who are fighting the good fight. It makes me want to rush home and march on Washington. If things haven't changed by the time we go home in early 2013, then I certainly will.

I Wanna Live in a Small Town

Here is a new music video by the Mallett Brothers, a local Maine band. The song is not only awesome and inspiring with amazing harmonizing and spot on guitar picking, but my first cousin Nick is the bassist, which makes it that more personal and meaningful to me.

The song talks about moving to a small town, ("far away from the pavement") and about living a simpler life. It's fitting since for the last few months Matt and I have really focused a lot of our what-comes-after-korea conversations around buying an old farmhouse in the countryside. Regardless of whether or not that happens in the first few years of being home, it has become a goal of ours for sometime in the future.

Living in Daejeon, a smallish city of 1.5 million, and weekending in Seoul (a city of 20 million), we've come to have some serious opinions about city living and have realized that city life is not for us. While we appreciate it here in Korea, the public transportation, the proximity of everything, and the ease of travel, we know it's not meant to be for us. We spend our days daydreaming of land, space, flowers, gardens, an old barn to store hay in.  That probably won't change.

We have 17 months before heading home and starting another life, which means we have 17 months to hone in on what our goals and aspirations are, what means a lot to us, and what doesn't. What kind of life do we want to live in Maine, and how do we achieve it? In some respects, having the time here to sort through these topics is a Godsend. I can't imagine being home right now, stressed, planning and wedding and thinking about jobs and affording a loan for our first house. All of it just seems like too much. But thankfully we have time to sift through our thoughts and come up with a loose plan that we can change and adapt throughout the next 17 months.

Fall is Here

Koreans have a saying about fall: "The horses are fat and the sky is high". They say it as a kind of greeting during this time of year, when the horses are fat with summer grass and the sky is vividly blue. Why focus on the blue sky in fall? Because every other time of year the sky here is a drab white. Whether it's haze in the summer or yellow dust from China in the spring, it's true when they say that it's only blue in fall. This was hard to adjust to at first, coming from Maine where the sky is always blue. But once fall arrives, the sky not only appears bright blue, but the weather turns gorgeous and life is good. The first week of fall has rewarded us with cool, crisp mornings, highs midday in the 70's, blue skies, bright sun, dry air and comfortable sleeping weather. Perfection!

What better way to enjoy fall then to jump in head first. Last October we busied ourselves with so many trips we didn't have a single weekend where we weren't off doing something. It appears that we have done the same thing for this year without even trying. The awesome weather and good mood sneaks up on you and all of a sudden you've booked trips for nearly every weekend until Thanksgiving.


So, what's in store for us this coming month?

This coming weekend just so happens to be a nice 3-day weekend due to a national holiday here in Korea. We are taking full advantage and have booked a trip through a foreigner travel company to Seoraksan, Korea's most famous national park. We have been wanting to go since arriving here, but unfortunately Seoraksan is located in the northeastern province of the country and is not as accessible as other places in Korea. Lucky for us,  the Discover Korea group is leading a trip there, and so we finally get to hike one of the most talked about hikes in the country: The Dragon Tooth trail. It's going to be arduous to say the least, but I am so excited for a hard, 2 day hike in the most beautiful park in the country. The bonus is spending the following day at the beach before heading back!

The weekend after that, we are planning our engagement photo shoot. So even though we won't be going far, we'll be busy around Daejeon.

After that is the Daejeon Balloon festival, which we enjoyed last year with our friend Katrina who visited from Seoul. Maybe her and Justin will be able to make it down for this year's festivities?

The weekend of October 22nd is our anniversary weekend and we are headed down to Busan to enjoy the International Fireworks festival. We are excited to explore Korea's second largest city and to hopefully see a great fireworks display over a bridge across the water. A trip to an oceanside temple is also in the plans.

That leaves one more fun-filled weekend in October, just when the leaves are starting to change. We'll most likely do our favorite hike close to home: Gapsa Temple to Donghaksa Temple in Gyeryeong National Park. We've done it 4 times now and it never disappoints.

Wow! So much awesomeness coming up, I can't wait! October is going to fly, with all of these fun-packed weekend, midterm exams, school festivals, sports days and field trips. It's my favorite time of year here in Korea for sure.