FMM IS BACK!!!

I freaking love FMM. :) It's been awhile. If you want to join, head over to Amber's blog.

This week, it's 20 questions!!

1. Do you cook every night?
Do you include peanut butter and jelly? Or a bottle of wine and anything you can find in the fridge? My husband and I have those nights every once in awhile...okay. Fine. More often then not. Especially when we're trying to get rid of the food in the house because we're going to be at weddings in Ohio. ;)


2. What kind of laundry detergent do you use & why?
I try to use Seventh Generation, but I'll use anything as long as it's unscented.


3. Do you do laundry every day or loads at a time?
We do laundry every two weeks. It's hard to get it down to the laundromat. It's over 10 blocks away and we don't like to lug it there too too often.


4. How often do you eat out per week?
We've gotten better about it! We actually haven't eaten out in a week or two. It used to be like three times a week.

5. Where do you usually eat out?
Nomado 33 (it's our favorite sushi place, but a little bit far away)...otherwise...umm...Well, I guess that's about it. There aren't too many fast food places near us.

6. What is your favorite retail store?
There are no retail stores in Manhattan!! But if I were in Ohio, it would be Target.

7. What's your favorite thing to drink?
Orange juice

8. Do you take vitamins? What kind?
I should


9. What percentage of the household chores to you do?
Umm...this is iffy. It depends. It goes anywhere from 0% (this is bad, but I rarely do the laundry) to 100% (I'm the only one that cleans the bathroom). Otherwise, it depends on the week.


10. Do your children do chores? {Or will they, did they, etc}
If I had kids, yes. And I'd actually pick up my clothes off the floor (a bad habit I picked up from my husband!)


11. Do you go to church?
Yes! We've found a church that we love and that has been helping us really grow in our faith. I love it. :)

12. Do you have a housework schedule?
Absolutely not.

13. Do you keep a working budget?
Umm...we pretend to. We're okay with our money...kind of. Rent really kills our bank account.

14. What do you do at night as a family?
We eat dinner together, watch Spongebob or bad horror films, we read the Bible together before we go to bed.

15. How do you prepare yourself for a new week?
I bake! I try and have a bake sale on Mondays for Project O. I just got back into it so that makes me happy!! This week is chocolate chip cookies, double chocolate cookies (also known as World Peace cookies), snickerdoodles, and peanut butter cookies with chocolate chips. :) Then I made biscuits for dinner.

16. What do your mornings look like?
I get up around 8:00am, barely get ready, and then head to work early so that I can check all my e-mail and everything.

17. What time do you get up in the mornings?
8:00am :)

18. What time do you go to bed at night?
It depends. Lately, it's been 10:30am on the weekdays and 1am on the weekends.

19. How do you manage all of the paperwork that floods into your household? {bills, school work, magazines, ads, etc}
It's ALL over the table. All over it. Then, about once a month, we recycle almost everything and then put the bills on the desk that we then organize once every three months (we will have a LOT to change when we have kids!!!)

20. How do you keep your household organized? {calendars, charts, etc}
I have a calender in my purse. And on my wall at work. Otherwise, I have post-it notes all over our apartment. In my mind, I'm organized!! I swear!!

God is Good!!

Steve is officially a Certified Public Accountant!! They've approved his paperwork and we're just waiting for the little slip of paper that proves it. :)

Waiting

My mom volunteered me to go on stage in Seoul at a place called Korea House. I didn't know what I was doing and I feared that my clothes were see through. This is what ensued!

I really have no excuses for how long it's been since I've posted. :) I'm not doing anything, really. Just waiting.

Maybe I'm supposed to be learning patience.

I'm waiting for Steve to get his license, waiting to see if we should get a new apartment, waiting to visit family and friends (both new and old!!), and just generally waiting.

I don't mind so much anymore...it just doesn't make for a compelling blog, right?

And I'm waiting for inspiration, divine touch. Something of the sort that will help me raise money for a school. There's been the Uniform Project, Invisible Children, Givoooogle... Don't get me wrong! I'm loving the bake sale thing. I wish I could do that all the time from an apartment with air conditioning where the oven didn't make the apartment 89 degrees (I'm waiting to continue baking until I can breathe when I bake!!). I'm just looking for something...bigger? I'm not entirely sure.

Which makes things even more difficult. When do you know what you really should be doing?

That's okay though. Maybe by learning patience, I'll learn some other things.

What are you waiting for?

South Korea

This is me, eating a traditional Korean meal at Korea House in Seoul. We ate on the floor. Well, we were sitting on the floor. It was really good.


Red Mango! It's frozen yogurt and it originated in Korea. Though it's now competing with Pinkberry in the US. My husband prefers Red Mango, so I had to get him this picture.


That...is North Korea. But I couldn't take any closer pictures. There's a line where you can't take pictures in front of. You can't see much, but that's okay. You can see enough. ;)


This is a vat of bugs. For sale. For lunch.


In Korea, during the Autumn Moon Festival, it's a tradition to go to your hometown and make a meal for your dead ancestors. After the Korea war, many people couldn't go back to their hometowns. So this is an altar that points to the North. South Koreans come here to remember their dead family members since they can't honor them in their hometowns.


(That's my dad) Look at that wad of cash! Actually, it's about US$200. The exchange rate is 1,200 wan to the dollar. It's always a little nerve-wracking to see that amount of cash. 10,000 wan for a taxi ride?! Wait. That's $8.

Welcome Back!

Hi everyone,
Sorry I've been gone. I just got back from Hong Kong/South Korea yesterday afternoon and I haven't had time to get much done.

But it was a great trip! Met a business partner of my dad and the partner's wife. Actually SAW North Korea, though did not enter it. Crawled through a tunnel that the North Koreans built to march into South Korea. Ate TONS of Bulgogi and kimchi (even if my sister and mom hated it). Also, ever had Red Mango? The frozen yogurt? So started in South Korea! So we got that there too.

And it made me love Hong Kong even more!! I wasn't there long enough. Fortunately, we'll be in Hong Kong for about 10 days for Christmas, so I'll get to do all the favorites: Modern Toilet (the toilet diner, where you sit on toilets to eat and everything is shaped like urinals and such), Solo Mio (our favorite Italian), etc. I love HK!!!

I need to post some pictures. Hopefully I can do that tonight. How's your summer going?

나는 남한에 있고 지금 싶다!

(This is the view from my parents' apartment in Hong Kong. It looks towards Kowloon. If you've seen the movie The Dark Knight (the new Batman), you'll recognize the tallest building in the picture. It's the building Batman jumps from into the other building. It's called IFC. And it used to be where my dad worked until they moved into a different building.)

In about 5 days, I am going to be on a plane to see my family in Hong Kong. Then we're going to go to South Korea for a few days (which is what the title is about). And I am already shutting down. All I want to do is board the plane, wait those 17 hours, and step off to see my family!

I see my family about every 6 months now, but we're still ridiculously close. It's definitely hard though. For my bridal shower, people asked if my mom was going to come. It's hard to tell people that with the cost of tickets and the fact that it's a 17 HOUR flight, they can't make it to some things - really, most things. They weren't at my college graduation, but that's okay because I didn't really to be there either. ;)

The hard things have never been the small holidays, but that I can't just call my mom if I'm having a bad day. Or that I can't share something ridiculous that has happened to me, like dancing to a Kletzmer band in the East Village at the Egg Roll and Egg Cream Festival and, because I was brave enough to go up and dance, about 20 other women felt they could come dance too. Or opening up my mother's gift to me at my bridal shower. She had helped me pick out my registries by phone. We sat at our computers and on the phone and e-mailed each other back and forth. On the day of my bridal shower, my sister put my mom's gift last and I burst into tears as I was opening it. I really missed her.

My brother was my best friend growing up. We're 10 years apart, but he was my little buddy. I taught him Hamlet's soliloquoy when he was 3-years-old and he STILL remembers it 11 years later. We used to go to plays and musicals together and almost EVERYONE thought I was his mom because they couldn't believe that a teenage girl would be taking her little brother to musical theatre or out to dinner. I miss him so much at times. He's still my buddy. I want to go to the Toilet Diner with him when I get there.







(The first picture is old. I was 16 in that picture and that was our first trip out of the country. We were in Tokyo - that's why there's the peace signs and such. The second photo is my brother and I before my wedding in France. He's a cutie. :) Even from the back.

My sister and I never really got along well, but I love her. We've put aside our differences and we have so much fun together. And she's so, so good to me. Like you wouldn't believe. She helped me make penis cupcakes for my friend's bachelorette party. I wish I could have spent more time with her then, but we're going out together in Hong Kong. And possibly getting dog meat soup together in Korea. ;)

My dad is a wonderful man. He's a businessman and always intimated people, but he is THE goofiest guy I know. He was jumping on the trampoline in his dress suit at my husband's (then boyfriend's) graduation party. He's always been there for me and I don't know what I'd do without him. He used to take my friends and I to haunted houses and even dressed up as Gomez so that my friends and I could go trick-or-treating as the Addam's Family. Most of my personality comes from him. :)

I know that I probably shouldn't have checked out already, but I can't help it!! I can't wait to leave!! Do you do the same thing?