So living overseas lends its fair share of funny sightings. From signs to statutes to people it seems that not a day goes by without seeing something out of the "ordinary". See for yourself:
Well we have finally made it and we definitely feel like we are starting all over again! We are excited for this new adventure, but as those of you who have moved any where know, there is always an adjustment period. Moving internationally is just a bigger adjustment. Of course there are the usuals...
(Now of course we are not opposed to some unique furniture, after all, it can be quite fun. But in order to make it feel more homey to us we like to try and find more modern furniture. Everyone has their own style and for expats finding just enough of that style is important. In China we had IKEA... what a blessing in disguise!)
Those are just a few things to help you get an idea of how it's been since we have gotten here. We have been super blessed by the company we are now working for. When we got off the plane we were taken straight to our new 3 bedroom apartment. It was much more spacious than we were expecting! It was already furnished with a couch, chair, coffee table, bed, dresser, dining table and a few kitchen utensils to get us started. They even had a few groceries to welcome us since we didn't pack things like toilet paper. Oh yeah and how could I forget! The already had our home phone and internet hooked up for us! The HR director has been so courteous of his time with us and has taken us walking around our neighborhood, down to the street of restaurants, to see our new school, and on a ride in his car to show us where some places are including the nearest mall. This was so helpful to see some places where we could purchase different items. We have already made it successfully, on our own, to the dentist and to COSTCO. Oh yes... you heard right! there is a COSTCO here and we were able to get a lot of things. It is very much like a COSTCO in America except a little more expensive; mainly because a lot of things have to be imported. We are lucky to have just come from Shanghai where we had to use the different methods of transportation to find things, but it's a little harder here because neither one of us speak Korean. The most we can say is "hello" and "thank you". Yikes! We should get to work on that! I will leave you today with some pictures of our new home and random pictures of our short time here. So it's been a couple of months since Matthew's birthday, but I wanted to share the fun we had with some friends for his birthday. We had a couples game night competition with some games from the TV show "Minute to Win It". If you haven't seen the show it's basically a competition where the contestants have a series of tasks to do, but each task must be completed in under 1 minute. The games we played were:~Keep it Up: Each couple had to keep up 3 feathers using the breath of their mouth (no hands) for 1 minute. This was impossible with the feathers I used, so nobody was successful. Sorry no pictures of this one either. ~Face the Cookie: Each couple has 1 minute to move a cookie from their forehead and into their mouth without using their hands. Some couples were successful with this one and watching the facial muscles work gave everyone quite a laugh. ~Noodling Around: Each couple held one spaghetti noodle in their mouth while trying to string 6 penne pasta noodles on to the spaghetti noodle. No hands of course. ~Office Tennis: Each couple used clipboards to volley a ball of paper from one end of the room to another and eventually land the paper ball in a trashcan at the opposite end of the room. ~Junk in the Trunk: Each couple strapped an empty Kleenex box to their backside and attempted to get 6 tennis balls out of the box without using their hands. This challenge was by far the most entertaining. Some of the techniques are a bit inappropriate, so I will spare you :-) However, it provided many laughs!! ~Ka-broom: In this final challenge the couple had to work together to drop a broom handle on to a plate hanging off the end of a table and launch a marshmallow on the plate into a cup. We had so much fun with these little challenges! I got the idea for the party from The Dating Divas if any of you want to have some fun of your own! They have lots of other ideas on their site as well. I'll leave you with a few more pictures from the evening. For fear of getting to far behind on my events to post about I will fill this post with the many events that have gone on over the last few weeks. I may not be as elaborate with explaining things on this one, but at least I will feel caught up and you won't miss out! Packages are fun no matter if they are from someone in the same city or someone halfway across the world! Being in Shanghai, Matthew and I can get almost anything we need. However, most of you have heard me say that it can sometimes come at quite a high price. Yes, that means that for some things we will buy them in the US then ship them to China and that total cost will still be cheaper than purchasing the item in China! The ironic part is that as you all know most of the things are "made in China" :-)
So today we got a package from my mom. This one was fast and made it here in like 7 days. The swiftness of this package was wonderful, but don't be fooled. We got lucky on that one. Matthews Mom mailed a package about 4 days before my mom and we have yet to get that one. Yes, we have a tracking number and the tracking says it has made it through China customs. But again, don't be fooled! The tracking number only works up until that point. After that it's a guessing game and a matter of how much experience do you have in China! Luckily we have some experience in this area. Or next step is to go to the Chinese post office where sometimes they just get lazy and decide not to deliver packages. We get the privilege of entering through the back doors of what you would call a warehouse that is the post office and we don't go through the front doors because, we'll at this point, they have "lost" the package. Really they are just too lazy to go look for the package so its up to me to go walking through the back rooms of the post office digging through boxes. The easy part... we're looking for English writing. The hard part... trying to communicate what you are looking for to all of the workers lounging in their chairs. It's really quite comical and I probably haven't done the situation any justice. When I go I'll try to get some pictures so you can get a better idea. For now here is a picture of our goodies and some of Henley doing a trick to get one of her goodies! So today was our kindergarten field trip and it was oh so much fun! I say that in all honesty because after living here for almost 2 years and taking other school fields trips as well as my own field trips the whole idea of a "trip" always has the potential to turn out horribly. On any "trip" here you never truly know what you are getting yourself in to because of the lack of explanation of anything. Even if you ask all of the right questions people just tend to tell you what they think you want to hear rather than what you need to hear. I'm sure you can see how that would be less than ideal when planning a trip, much less a trip involving over 100 people. However, this was not the case for our field trip today and all in all everything ran quiet smoothly! Thanks to my fabulous team and some very involved parents we had a great time! We went to a place that was basically a huge space turned into a city. The city had streets and side walks as well as lot of store fronts. When the kids entered they were given some fake money. With this money they could go to one of the stores and either pay to buy something or work to earn more money. It was fabulous and the kids had a great time. Here are a few pictures. Welcome to our new website. Hopefully between the two of us we can update more regularly for your viewing/reading pleasure! As many of you know when we got married we immediately began an adventure by moving across the world to Shanghai, China. We have truly loved our time in China and all of the experiences living here has brought to us. We have met great people from China as well as many other parts of the world, and now it's time to end this chapter...
THE BIG NEWS: The Millers are moving to Seoul, South Korea!!! We are both very excited for this new adventure and ready to move. Shanghai has been a good international transitional experience, but it is time to move on. We will be working at Yongsan International School Seoul and I will be teaching 1st grade while Matthew will be teaching 5th grade math. This will be a great opportunity for us and we are excited to work with the NICS (Network of International Christian School) organization of schools. We are praying that this will be a good move for our marriage, our social life and our professional life. Feel free to pray along with us! When moving to China I had never been before, but Matthew had. Now we get to take a leap of faith together and share in the unknown as neither of us have been to South Korea! This will be fun and we have no doubt that the Lord will take care of us and continue to mold us into his image. As the international world is becoming more and more familiar to us we can easily forget to mention or explain thing well. If you have any questions about anything we mention please feel free to comment and ask and we will do our best to answer for all to see! *Update on professional life: Since being in Shanghai Matthew has become a certified teacher and is ready to look in to getting his masters and hopefully go in to school counseling in the future. We are praying that the NICS community of schools will be a place where we can achieve these goals! **Oh and don't worry... Henley will most definitely be coming with us! And if you have any ideas for a catchy site title send them my way :-) ~Brittany |