The weekend in black and white

Itaewon

Hi Guys!

SLEEPLESS IN SEOUL
Back to work tomorrow! We thought we would start out the week rested and recovered from our month of traveling in August and adjusting in September, but it seems to be otherwise. For some unknown reason, we were completely unable to sleep last night. We tried everything, spent hours tossing and turning until we finally gave up. We started working on a puzzle that we bought this weekend. We made great progress at 3am. Around 6am we put in Planet Earth and finally found sleep thanks to the great voice of the BBC guy. 8:30am came way too early this morning. Derek had to be at church early to practice for the worship team. We both found ourselves falling asleep during the sermon. After an afternoon of rest, we are anticipating our self-imposed 8:30pm bedtime tonight.

Our holiday was a great time. We both came to realize some amazing blessings in marriage and how the Lord uses this relationship to love us and guide us closer to himself.

Two weeks until our trip to Busan for PIFF 2010! This trip will take us back to where we really got to know each other for the first time! More details to come later in the week.

His love and ours,
D&A

He's a sweetie!

Happy Chuseok!

Wednesday: Happy Chuseok friends and family. The holiday is here today! And with the holiday, fall arrived. We woke up this morning and we were actually cold! Can you believe it? Fall is almost a month late and is only here now thanks to the latest monsoon circling the country. We have lost count on how many monsoons since we have been back. Either way, we are thankful for the cooler weather.


We continued our season of American food today with some amazing shrimp quesadilla's made by chef Derek and sous chef Anlee. We took them over to our friend's AP and Dennis' house for Chuseok (Thanksgiving) dinner with many other foreign friends. Everyone enjoyed AP's delicious smelling chicken spaghetti. Anlee was sidelined from taste-tasting due to her mushroom allergy, but Derek reported that it was quite amazing! Deviled eggs, macaroni salad, mashed potatoes, rolls with butter, macadamia nut cookies and brownies with milk rounded out the scrumptious meal. Here are all of our friends!

Joey and Mia'

Adam & Melidy - recently engaged friends!

AP with the brownie spoon! YEP!
Real brownies from Trader Joes! Thank Jesus for imports!

The dudes - Dennis, Joey, Adam and Mia'

Baby Michelle and me, her honorary aunt!
If you are wondering how old she is, she was born on our wedding day!

On Thursday, Derek and I went to the park for the first day of sunshine in over a week. It was a beautiful day, but required a sweater for riding the bikes. (We are so thankful we live in a bike friendly city.) We took a couple of books, a blanket and pillows and enjoyed the lazy day. I was in a sweatshirt and Derek was in shorts...poor Derek is now sunburnt. Poor guy has a sock and short line on both legs. We finished the day off with finding sour cream and bread at a Russian owned store in town, grilled some turkey burgers and added some kettle chips. We enjoyed Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and Harry Potter #6. We can now officially stay up past 11! Progress has been made this week. So, the books we are reading are pretty bomb dot com and we suggest you check them out!

Tonight is Anlee's night to plan a date for the two of us. We'll let you know how that goes later! Thanks to everyone we've been able to skype with this week! We've had many blessings from good talks with all of you! PEACE!

Day 2 & 3 - Discs and McD's

(Derek and Dennis - Team Shake and Bake)

Day two of our vacation found us traveling into Seoul in hammering rain anticipating Derek's ultimate Frisbee match to be canceled, (a repeat of two weeks ago when his game was rained out). But, the game must go on...Derek and Dennis, another foreign married friend here in Korea, played hard and they tasted both victory and "acid" rain. Final score 13-5! Team Shake and Bake completely dominated their opponents. Here are some snap shots from the smack down in the rain.



After the rainy match, we caught the train to our favorite Mexican restaurant, TomaTillo for some delicious burritos! Western style food continues! Stuffed, we decided to try our luck with the Seoul bus system instead of taking the train. Derek spent a couple of minutes trying to interpret the Korean bus routes (and he did brilliantly) while I found the English electronic version where you input exactly where you want to go and it tells you exactly which bus to take. My way won, but we had to rely on his "spidy sense" and an English speaking Korean man to find our way to Itaewon where we enjoyed Key Lime pie at our favorite bakery (for $5 a slice!) We are honeymooning! We picked up some books from What the Book, the English bookstore, went shopping in the foreign food store and picked up some BBQ sauce, bought Derek a sweater from a street vendor and me a hat. We boarded the train again for our 1.5 hour train ride back home, hopped on our bikes from the station and rode home in the rain.

Day three of our holiday found us riding our bikes again on our way to McDonald's. For those of you who know me well, you know that I absolutely DO NOT eat McDonald's! I have probably gone longer than five years without entering a McDonald's, but marriage definitely changes you! I crave hot cakes on a daily basis and Derek has no qualms about this! He's excited and wakes up faster if I say, "Hey, how about McDonald's for breakfast?" So, we rode in misty rain to McDonald's this morning and had our first of three uniquely American meals. This will only continue with pulled BBQ chicken sandwiches for lunch with french fries and clam chowder and crusty bread for dinner! OHH and did I mention Krispy Kremes? Yep! The hourly rate for dog sitting in Korea is donuts (Korean spelling)! YES for dog sitting!

(Happy Derek!!!!)

In the midst of all this great food, we were able to skype with friends, email, take in an episode of John Stewart, take a nap, watch planet earth, listen to a sermon, watch a documentary on WWII and read. It's been a great day. Best Monday yet! Ohh, and I'm STILL in my pj's!

Vacation Time!

Today, we began out 10 day vacation from work! Aka...second honeymoon! YEP! Happy Chuseok to you! Chuseok is the Korean version of Thanksgiving Day, much like our American holiday. On Chuseok, families travel to be with their distant relatives. If you are somehow related, you are eating Kimchi dinner with each other this week. For us foreigners, it means a week without lesson planning, students or sitting aimlessly at work waiting to be told your class is canceled.

So, we started off our Chuseok holiday with a bang! This morning we went on a nice, cool bike ride into town to enjoy some hot cakes and an egg McMuffin - that's right - at McDonald's! American food, take one!

For lunch, we had some delicious beef stroganoff that Derek made. American style food - take two!

We babysat a couple's dog, Jack, for the evening and enjoyed Turkey burgers and french fries - all from Costco! American food - take three!

YEP! Day one of our holiday was a celebration to American food and we plan on this being a daily way to join in the festivities throughout the week.

Derek has an ultimate Frisbee match tomorrow, so we are going into Seoul to Anlee's favorite bakery and to stop by TomaTillo - our favorite Mexican restaurant!

Much love from The Fekkes' on our Chuseok holiday! -Derek & Anlee

Last night we said goodbye to our lovely and dear friend Cam and happy birthday to our Korean brother Micah.

Cam is at this exact moment on a plane headed back to Seattle. Her year in Korea is up. She lived, learned and loved while she was here. We met Cam through Derek's school. She taught in the Adult English classroom. We became close friends with Cam and invited her to stand with us in our wedding. She flew all the way from Korea to be with us. She's pretty much amazing. And single...and looking for her husband....so if you think you might be him...email me!

Micah celebrated his birthday on Saturday. Derek originally met Micah, (I'm not sure how,) and became close friends with him. It wasn't too long into our Bible Study meetings that Micah joined us as a refreshing new perspective on faith in Jesus.

Together, these are two really special people in our lives here in Korea.

Here's a look at their party and a sneak peak at our house!

Our Wedding Day...

continued

This weekend, Derek and I went on our first date as newlyweds in SoKo. Derek took us to a fancy "western" buffet with endless crab legs and 2 tables full of "desserts."

We seem to have a monsoon a couple of times a week, but we have embraced the cooler air thanks to the storms. "Fall" appears to be showing its pretty face.

Saturday we cleaned the house together. (I have a great husband!) We divided up the house and split the chores. We make a pretty great team if I do say so myself. We rode our bikes into town to a local market and picked up a few things for our housewarming party.

Later in the evening, friends, pets and newborn babies came over to bless our new home. It was refreshing to hangout with our friends here in Korea and to remember the great and abundant blessings that we have here. Our friends Adam and Melidy are recently engaged and brought over their sweet puppy, Jack. Bola and Badejo, our friends from Nigeria, brought a beautiful baby girl into the world on our wedding day, August 14th. (I predicted her birthdate, just so you know.) Needless to say, we had a full house.

Like an old married couple, we went to bed by 10:30.

Sunday, Derek helped lead worship while I was on baby duty! (Self-imposed, mind you.) I was the lucky girl that got to hold baby Michelle most of the morning. Michelle was dedicated Sunday. It was such a sweet service to watch Bola and Badejo commit their baby girl to Jesus!

We enjoyed lunch with Adam, Melidy and Jack, rode our bikes for a while and finished off the evening with a documentary on Bonheffer and When Harry Met Sally.

Good weekend!

More to come later in the week!

Our wedding day

Our Wedding Day

Hope you enjoyed the glimpse at our special day.

More photos to come tomorrow!