So I had abandoned the blog for a while...but I'm picking it up again!
Dan and I continue to have a great time here in Korea. We're getting much more comfortable with the place and have met some really cool people lately. Daejeon is a great city, relatively quiet, and the pulse of lively Seoul - and its super crowded subway system- are only a short KTX ride away. Yesterday I had a great day trip to Seoul with a couple friends. We visited the War Memorial Museum (fantastic, a little exhausting), went shopping in fabulous, artsy Insadong and filled up on all the 'foreign food' we could find: tortilla soup and quesadillas for lunch, an Indian food buffet for dinner and Tim-Tams(Australian cookies) for dessert. We nearly jumped for joy when we arrived in Daejeon to find snow on the ground. We finally had our first real snow and it is beautiful...it feels like a proper winter now. It may be gone by the morning but I'm crossing my fingers for a blizzard one of these days!
Christmas in Korea was a lot of fun. We missed our families, but it was interesting to experience Christmas in a new place, and to spend it together for the first time. We were spoiled with cookies and enormous packages of gifts from home (I guess they missed us too)! We had a bunch of friends and strangers over for a Christmas Eve party (picture below). It was great to mingle and everyone seemed to enjoy the huge batch of eggnog and the makeshift Christmas decor (like our paper tree and Dan's 3-d snowflake - he taught all of his students to make them too)! In a way it feels like Christmas didn't really happen, but I think I'm okay with that.
So...we're looking forward to another eventful, interesting year. Dan and I are planning a short ski trip on the East Coast in late January (again, crossing my fingers for a blizzard)! I'm hoping to get to China on Lunar New Year in February and we'll continue to see as much of Korea as we can in our 'new'/well-loved car. Which has been great, by the way. The standard driving lessons are going well so far and hopefully I'll be able to drive with other cars on the road sometime soon...hahaha. Dan and I are looking forward to the big parental visit in May and I'm hoping to make a quick visit to Japan with Mom and Dad for a few days during that time.
Tomorrow we'll be having another little soiree for New Year's Eve and then out to downtown Daejeon to ring in 2008.
Happy New Year everyone!

November and December in a Nutshell