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| You are looking at our apartment, 20 floors.... it's facing us - on the right side of front building - and on the 14th floor! Each row you see here is an individual apartment. We all have the full set of windows across - very nice! If you look on the right side of the apartment building you will see a circle at the top of the building. Then 2 wide stripes of color going from one side to the other..... we should be the apartment just under that bottom stripe! There is another set of buildings like this on the back side giving each floor 3 apartments; 3 apartments x 20 floors; 60 apartments per building x 2 buildings so there's a 120 units per building, and this complex has 2 buildings. Some are more, others less, but they hold a lot of people in very tight areas. Everything in Korea is basically land-locked. Vertical living and working areas as well. We go to the downtown area and up and down the streets you see all the buildings with their windows all decorated, like the states. However, you have to remember to look UP as there are usually at least 4 floors on top of that with shops and great places of interest as well. |
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| This is walking out the front and looking to the south, down our street. 3 lanes each way with lots of other high rises and small shops and lots of mom and pop restaurants. I have to share.... there's a place close to us that we walk by whenever we go to post, cause we need to go to the subway station. Here's this small place with the female owner out front and a HUGE HUGE pot boiling away.... Didn't think much of it until one day we got there earlier than usual and she had pig's heads with the outside skin off, putting them in the pots. That was 'interesting' enough but over to the side she was chopping up the ears. They utilize ALL of the animal. Yes, these kind of 'local' places we tend to stay away from... We have gone to some biger and nicer places with the missionaries (and we have pictures of that, too) where we've had great soup with pork in it, but we haven't watched them make it..... |
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| This would be at the same street in front of our building looking right straight across the street from us. It bugs the cab drivers as they can't come from the south and make a left-hand turn into our place. You can see the dividers in the street that make that impossible. The brown building is a restauant (fairly close to an American restaurant; hamburgers and french fries - but pretty expensive!). The other smaller and tightly spaced shops are individual fruits and vegetable stands. On the back side of this area has interesting meat (non-USDA inspected....) and fish markets. Some of the wierdest fish we've seen and most all of them are alive! |
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| Here we are at one of those type of restaurants I mentioned above. Yes, we are on the floor; on cushions! Getting down wasn't as bad as I thought. Sitting there trying to figure out what to do with my legs is another story... Once down you have to get up again! Notice there are no pictures of that! |
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| This is swine spine soup! You can see the bowl in the left it came it - sitting on top of a really good broth with vegetables. You take the pork out and place it in this smaller bowl and 'pick' the meat off. Notice the one chopstick on the left? There was another one somewhere..... removing meat with chopsticks is an extra bonus. Once deboned, you place the meat as you do the deboning back in the soup. A bowl of rice is given also and we all added that right to the broth. It was really very good! We would do this in the kitchen prior to serving it but the Koreans feel it an honor to allow the customer to see the meat and where it comes from. It also allows for one to have a lot of meat or as little as the patron chooses. My glasses are laying there because I couldn't decide how much I need to see well..... |
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| This is out of placement. I should have the next picture here but hey! we have a picture..... This is the group of missionaries in our district and a district meeting prior to all of us going to the restauant above. We had 3 sister missionaries that lived together. Sister Culver in the front is from California. The other 2 help each other a lot! The one closest is from Korea and the furthest away is a new sister who just arrived from the MTC. She's from Mongolia and is attempting to learn Korean. She doesn't speak English either so she has a harder time but she has a great attitude! |
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| Here we are back at the restauant again. The missionaries love this place! I am amazed at how they speak the language and love the people and the country. The Koreans truly like Americans. Some have literally stopped Elder Howerton and myself and reached for our hands to shake (with both of their's - thats the polite way) and say 'Thank You', ' Thank You....' it's all some seem to know how to say! We assume it's because of us helping them during the Korean War. They know all too well that they do NOT want to be in the North! |
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| This is Sister Lee (pronounced 'EEE') on the left. She is a doll and has been such a help to us! The sister on the right is our new sister; Sister Chuluunkhou from Mongolia. She is so pretty and has the best attitude you could imagine. Unfortunatley I can't say to you how to pronounce her name! I struggle with it myself. We are sitting in the church building on the 2nd floor where many of the individual rooms used each Sunday for classes are located. |
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| Here is Elder Green. He's from Utah; Fruit Heights. He's our District Leader and a very good one at that! You want to hear someone speak Korean?! He's amazing. I swear he doesn't know a stranger. Talks to anyone and everyone. We're very impressed with him as we are with all of them. So young yet so able. It truly testifies to the strength of the church in the future. Elder Howerton and I both feel it's one thing to speak and understand the language, it's quite another to teach a class to others! He does that. He reads, writes, and understand why something is and can explain it. As I said; impressive. He has been here a year and a half and goes home this December. I don't know what we'll do without him! |
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| Another shot of us in the classroom for our meeting. We so enjoy being with the missionaries and we are constantly amazed at them. On the left is Elder Olsen from Alaska. He's Elder Green's companion and has been here about 5 days longer than us!!! Super young man that we love. Next to him is Elder Harris from Colorado. We have always loved Colorado and he is all the more reason to feel that way. Truly a great and very thoughtful young man. He and Olsen were in the MTC together and are best of friends. Next is Elder Kaing. This young man is amazing; been in the church all of 3 years! He is the most upbeat and positive individual I've met. You have to love Elder Kaing. Only out over 6 months or so I think but is teaching Korean and everyone loves to get him as their companion. We are blessed to be in such a great district!! You can see me just sitting there... I do that a lot as they are all working on something in Korean. |
That's a start. I will add more in a couple of days. We are taking pictures and we enjoy sharing them with you. If you know of anyone that would like to see these, please pass our site on to them. Love to hear from you so please stay in touch.
Elder and Sister Howerton
Daegu Military Mission
Daegu, South Korea
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