Last night, there was a particular notable moment. I got a question asking me what the name was of the Naked Chef. Me being the cooking amateur that I am of course own his cookbook. So I screamed at the top of my lungs, “JAMIE OLIVER!” and proceeded to take the point. Then I was so excited that I owned the cookbook that I went and got it and brought it back to the table to show Rob. He, of course, could have cared less. So, I put the cookbook on the chair next to me and we continued on with the game.

In our next round, Rob ended up getting the question about the Naked Chef. Once he realized that the book was next to me, I had to sit on top of it and kick Rob away to keep from trying to cheat. The whole time I kept telling him, “If only you would have listened to begin with you would know!” After a good fight, which I won, he guessed James Dean. I then got the point again for knowing the answer because he didn’t.

It really just goes to show that it is important to learn about your spouse’s interests. Not just because it might get you a random point in Trivial Pursuit or on a game show if you are lucky, but because it means a lot to your spouse. Not everyone automatically shares the same interests. My husband is interested in movies and politics, and I am a fan of cooking and working out. Someone could easily look at that and say, “Oh well. Guess we will just do our own thing.” But in reality, I think it means so much more when you have to go the extra mile to participate in your spouse’s interest. It shows that you are making an effort and that you truly care. You shouldn’t spend your time doing different things. That isn’t what builds a marriage. Quite the contrary, that’s what tears a marriage down.

Rob and I made a list of six things we want to do together every week. I got to pick three and Rob got to pick three. Of course we can do more than these six things, but these particular six are our favorite things to do and what we would like our spouse to participate in with us. I must say that it is going pretty well. It helps for us to continually spend time together and keep each of us satisfied so that we don’t feel like we are ‘always doing what the other person wants to do.’

 On the seventh day of the week, we try to always have a date night. We may not always go out and spend money, but we will always do something together. Sometimes the weeks are too busy and date night gets overlooked, but we try to not let this happen.

Keeping interest in your marriage is crucial. It helps you to communicate with each other better, have fun, and not stress. I suggest you give it a try.

Friends and family,

I have decided to start a new adventure today.

Baking.

This is uncharted territory. With spoon and mixer in hand, I will venture into this unknown land where milk and egg whites flow.

As a health concious wife and family caretaker, I have successfully thrown away all ice cream and chips. This is however somewhat negated by the fact that I am starting to bake…but I digress. It is a good first step though…right?

So I was determined to find another grocery store other than Walmart. So I went to Kroger.com to see if there were any Krogers nearby…and it said there was a Tom Thumb not too far away…about twenty minutes…in Enterprise. So I figured I would try it out. So I drive twenty minutes to Enterprise to find that Tom Thumb is a gas station. Why Kroger had it listed on their website, I have no idea. So, back to Walmart I went.

It took me two hours to find all the ingredients I needed for cupcakes. TWO HOURS! I truly am not the go-to girl for grocery shopping. I have no clue where anything is, and I change my mind about 50 times trying to find the best deals/prices. But two hours and 22 dollars later, I got all the ingredients needed to make ducky cupcakes

So I start off on my adventure. First, I made tomato basil pasta. Turned out absolutely delicious. Then, I started my cupcake festivities.

The recipe called for four eggs. Being the penny pincher that I am, I really didn’t want to use four. I thought three would suffice. But then I noticed in the corner pocket of the egg carton was an egg that had a small crack in it. So I figured I would go ahead and use that one. Come to find out, just enough of the goopy stuff inside the egg had leaked out that the egg was stuck to the carton. But that wasn’t about to stop me! So I started pulling to get the egg out and next thing I knew, not only was there egg all over my hand, but the other six eggs from the carton were ALL OVER the counter.

But still salvagable.

In an attempt to save the 33 cents vested per egg, I decided I would hurry and back ANOTHER cake so that I wouldn’t be wasteful! So now there is another chocolate cake in the oven. I’m turning into Izzy from Grey’s Anatomy. Baking all the time!

Rob passed his check ride! I met him at the door with a duck cupcake! I was so proud! And so excited! Rob was more excited about eating and clearly not as enamoured by the inginuity of the cupcake as I was because the next thing I know he’s already eaten the whole thing!

Another successful day in the life of Kimberly.

For the next two weeks, I have picked up a job substitute teaching English in Korea. For my very first class on my very first day of work, I had a brand new class that didn’t know a word of English. And I was the first teacher they ever had.  And I only know three words in Korean: hello, yes, and no. That wasn’t going to help me out very much. I found out very quickly that the three words I really needed to know was “repeat after me.”

I stood in front of this group of children saying, “Hello!” over and over again. I tried to get them to repeat me for a good five minutes. Finally one of them that I named Mark caught on and said “hello.” I jumped for joy! Soon after, then the other kids caught on too.

I am not any kind of teacher, but I got on a roll in our fifty minute class period. Maybe I got too carried away. I taught them how to say and write their names and hello in English – from memory! And I taught them what a board, marker, eraser, door, chair, table, bookbag, and book were also. We even learned and sang a song together. Now, I know that they probably won’t remember all of that by tomorrow. But it was a good start. And it was such a rewarding feeling. I have a newfound appreciation for teachers.

The other four classes of the day were not as precious and well-behaved as the first class. They knew lots of English, and they liked to talk. A lot. Loudly. Very loudly. It reminded me of when I was in school. Except I tried to be a perfect little angel. At least at school…

I was a little hellion child at home. I threw temper tantrums. Probably until I was way older than I should have been to be throwing fits. Sometimes when I think back on it, I’m surprised my parents didn’t send me to a boarding school. But they didn’t, because I have the best parents in the world. Sometimes I wonder if I will be able to be as good of a parent as they are to me. Not that we want children anytime soon, but when that time comes, it’s a scary thing to think about. How do you raise a child? How did they raise me and my sisters to be such great people? Well of course, my parents are wonderful people and I am sure that had a lot to do with it, but there are other wonderful people who have children who don’t turn out quite as wonderfully…

One thing that I have noticed that my parents did is that they trusted me. They trusted me so much that I never wanted to break their trust. And in the few instances that I did break their trust…well those were the worst feelings I have ever felt in my life.

I think that one important part of my relationship with my parents was and is my relationship with God. Once I had an intimate relationship with God, I realized the weight of my actions. Once I realized how things I did affected God, I also saw how much it hurt my own parents.

I hope to be a patient and loving parent one day, just like mine are to me. Just like God has taught His children to raise children. But until that day comes, I will work on my patience and be grateful and thankful for the wonderful family I have had and the wonderful Savior that God is. But when that day comes, God will be saying, “repeat after me.”

We started our trip on Saturday morning following some very vague directions from the internet and having never driven further than 30 miles from our house. No GPS. No maps. No nothing. Just me, Rob, and the radio for four and a half hours.

Everything was fine until the directions started getting a little more vague and we ended up getting lost…and I mean extremely lost…for three hours. And of course we had absolutely no idea where we were. And it’s not like we could easily stop and ask for directions because no one speaks English. The one guy that did somewhat understand English only knew enough to tell us that “it was too far and over the mountain.” So then we spent about an hour trying to figure out how to get over the mountain. Finally, we stopped at a gas station to see if they could help us out. One of the girls there tried to make us a hand drawn map, complete with Korean landmarks written in Hangul. Needless to say, that wasn’t going to help us out very much. However, we did finally get there. But only to find out that our hotel room was mistakenly booked for two single beds instead of a double bed. I was livid. We had paid a pretty penny for that room, and I wanted to get my money’s worth! I’m definitely going to work on that this week.

Busan was amazing. The beach was beautiful. The air was clean. It was so spacious. And the food was delicious! We had such a great time. We walked along the beach and trekked to a lighthouse on the shoreline. We also ate some Korean fish sticks and some odd food where you slurp something out of a spiral shaped shell. We had gelato and waffles, honey pancakes, and even had the pleasure of watching a Korean dance competition.

Monday, as we were leaving our destination, we packed everything in our car only to realize that our car battery was dead. Dead as a doornail. This put us in the same predicament as when we got lost – we are in a different country, nobody speaks our language, and not even the front desk of our hotel has jumper cables to help us out.

We finally got home. I missed Busan. It was so relaxing and beautiful, even with all of the getting lost and the car dying. It made me wonder how odd it is that sometimes you have to go so far away from home to find tranquility. What does that say about the way we live today? Everything is stressful. Everyone is always on the go. And we surely don’t have the kind of money to be going to Busan every weekend to relax.

Rob and I started this devotional book recently. It’s for couples and we read it every night. Tonight’s lesson had to do with being in a happy marriage and what a happy marriage means to you. Both of us mentioned spending more time together and relaxing. No stress. It’s essential for a marriage to thrive. It’s essential to make time for each other and just enjoy each other’s company.

Start doing that tonight.

For our social, all of us spouses went to a place where they make tea. We went and picked our own tea leaves, helped to dehydrate them in a large, stifling hot, black cauldron over a fire, and got to take a bag of leaves home with us to steep in hot water and make our own tea. I was super excited! Until I got home and smelled the leaves…and they smelled like old kimchi (which is fermented cabbage).  The best part of making the tea was actually eating the fried tea leaves. They were delicious. I truly felt like I was back in the south.

However, the best part of my day is still yet to come. So we go from making tea to a really great Korean restaurant. But that was not the best part. From the restaurant we went to a Korean performance. There were four guys playing the drums and then two other guys who kept doing these flips. I really didn’t understand any of it since it was all in Korean.  But there was one thing I did understand. I could tell that the guy who acted as the ringmaster was about to give away something for free and everyone was raising their hands. And of course I am all over free things like white on rice. So I raised my hand high. I may have even jumped up and down a little. I’m not embarrassed. In the end, I was picked! He started speaking to me in Korean, but luckily one of the wives with us is Korean herself so she helped me understand some of the things he was saying. When I told him I was from Tennessee in America, he said he didn’t know where that was because it was too countryside. Then he proceeded to give me a free cell phone charm.

But the story doesn’t end there. The performance continued. The lights dimmed, and they brought out Beonas (Korean spinning wheel). The ringmaster was choosing people out of the audience to come up and try spinning these discs on a wooden stick. So he chose me and another Korean guy to go up in front of everyone to spin the Beonas. I don’t know anything else he said, but all I know is that I spun that disc and succeeded! I was spinning that Beona in front of everyone! I was so excited that I wanted to jump up and down, but I held back remembering that I had a large spinning piece of wood above my head and didn’t want it to fall on me. But after the ringmaster put me and the other Korean man in the middle of a literal spotlight, I did accidently drop it on me. Alas, I still got a prize of a Korean Lotto ticket.

A man interviewed me afterwards about the experience, and he said that he would send me a video of the whole thing. I can’t wait to see it. It was so much fun!

Well, now I am going to get back to watching Friends. I am on season 4 after about a week and a half. It might be addiction. I wish my addiction was cleaning…but maybe that will come after I finish seasons 1 through 10 of Friends.

We are settling in here nicely in Korea. We have seen some beautiful palaces, eaten some very odd food, and made some really great friends. Last night, we went out with two other couples to see a free comedy show on the military base. There were three comedians that were performing. One of the guys, Scott Kennedy, goes to military bases all around, including Afghanistan and Iraq 43 times, to entertain troops. He even has all four branches of the military tattooed on his arms. Talk about dedication.

Out of these three guys, only two of them were good. The second guy, however, I really did not like. Not only did I just simply not think he was funny, but I also thought his jokes were extremely offensive. His main subjects of humor involved drugs, porn, and Jerry Springer. To top this story off, I must include that I was sitting at the very front and right in front of the comedians. Let me give you an example. One time, he was telling a joke consisting of watching pornography with your spouse and how his wife has only watched it with him five times since they have been married. At this point, the man made eye contact with me and could see the disgust in my face. All I could think of in my mind was a research paper that I wrote in my Human Sexuality class in college where I researched the effects of pornography in a marriage. The research concluded that it leads to violent sexual acts, a decrease in pleasure in sex in marriage, divorce, and many other terrible things. All of which are statistically proven.

As if this wasn’t enough to make me angry, especially considering that I come from a family who has devoted their lives to save marriages in crisis and we know how lethal pornography is to relationships, at one point during the routine I decided to go get up and talk to Rob who was in the back of the room waiting for a Sprite. So, as I get up to walk back there (and it was a very laid back setting) the comedian says to me, “Yeah, get the hell out of here.” I was infuriated. I was already angry, but now I was furious. Apparently I gave him this look (me and my sister call it ‘the Beam look’) which was just a mixture of these two thoughts: “Oh, no you didn’t” and “Let me give you a piece of my mind.” One guy that saw it as I was passing said, “It was just a joke!” But I was already infuriated, and no one deserves to be talked to like that. Even if his intent was to be funny, he just really struck a nerve.

So I went to talk to Rob and then I sat back down. The man finished out his routine, and at the very end he handed me a free shirt and walked away. He clearly knew that he had offended me and he wanted to try and make it right. I really appreciated the shirt. And I understand his intent of being there was to be funny and light-hearted, but there are plenty of other things in life that bring joy and laughter…not just laughter at somebody else’s sake.

Looking back at the end of the night, I don’t know if I necessarily did the right thing. I am a Christian, so I didn’t want to encourage the kind of humor he was portraying, but I also didn’t want to portray an image like I hated him. I feel like so many things have happened lately where I have seen my lack of patience and knowledge.

I will always put in a plug for Joe Beam’s LovePath 911 seminars. They are the absolute best seminar that anyone could go through for their marriage. Rob and I did it in February, and it has given us priceless tools to use with each other. (find out more at www.joebeam.com) However, in addition to that, I recently ordered us a book called Night Light Devotionals by Dr. James Dobson for us to read together and grow closer to God together. I am excited about starting it. Because not only do I need to be closer to God to benefit my marriage, but I need to be closer to God to benefit myself so that it can shine through to other people.

Even people that may make me mad.

So today, I decided to check Target.com like I usually do every week.  While there, I decided to just see if they had any kind of Cars baking supplies. Lo and behold, they had the SAME pan for 15 dollars cheaper!  Amusingly enough, this has been one of the most exciting things that has happened to me this week.

This past Tuesday was Buddha’s birthday, and they celebrate it big time here in Korea. They decorate the whole city, and probably country, with hundreds and thousands of lanterns. Everywhere. People put these up weeks before the actual birthday.  His birthday is even a national holiday. Businesses close and people parade in the streets. It’s like Thanksgiving or Christmas.  Last weekend in Seoul, they had a whole festival dedicated to Buddha’s birthday that was 5 days long. I got the chance to go, and it was pretty fun. On Tuesday (the actual birthday) one of my friends and I decided we would go to the Buddhist temple nearby to see what festivities were going on.  

We got to see inside of the temple, and inside there were people praying to him and bringing him sacrifices. I also got to have a very interesting conversation with one of the monks there. He spoke very good English, and so we had sort of a theological discussion for an hour or so. He said that he had studied Christianity and Islam, but in the end he chose Buddhism because of the freedom.  As he continued he said that with Buddhism, Buddha just suggests whether or not you should do something but there are no laws.  It is all up to the person to control themselves and make decisions for themselves in the end.

As I sat there and listened to him, I just wanted the right words to say to show him that there was so much he was missing. I just wanted to tell him that Buddha wasn’t going to be there for him when things fall apart, and that if all you do is depend on your mind, then where do you turn when that fails you too? My heart broke for this man. My heart broke for all of the people there to worship Buddha.  Because he was just a man. He offers no hope for the future. And he doesn’t have an unending love for those who follow him.

I have made it my goal to study up on Buddhism and read works of how to talk to Buddhists about Christianity and to go back and talk to the monk about Jesus. And not in a “I’m right and you are wrong” kind of way – because I don’t want to push him away. I just really don’t want him to live an empty life anymore. Shoot. There are so many times that I don’t want to live an empty life anymore. It can get so hard to become distant from God when it becomes your responsibility to take your faith into your own hands. The monk told me to come back anytime and talk to him, and I am going to take him up on that.

I will let you know how it goes. Please pray for me to be able to show God through my words and actions.

The past few weeks have been a blast, in the middle of all the stress and not getting anything done. A couple of weeks ago, Rob and I went up to Seoul for the weekend.  We just wanted to explore and see everything that Seoul had to offer.  Well, me being the financially savvy wife that I am, I decided that it would be fun for us to go to the Seoul Tower and eat at the revolving restaurant on top because we had heard that if you eat there (even though we heard it was expensive).  But I figured we could just eat dessert and it would cost about the same as the admission into the tower.

So, we get to the tower and we were treated like royalty. They put us in line in front of tons of people waiting, escorted us on and off the elevator, and at 9 pm they took us right up to our table.  This restaurant was beautiful.  It looked over the whole city of Seoul at night, and it ROTATED! It was awesome. At least for the 3 minutes before they handed us the menu and noticed that it was $110 per person. I mean, I know they said it was a little bit expensive, but I was thinking maybe $50 a person…maybe. And they definitely did not sell dessert separately. So we had to come up with a plan b. Rob was going to just suck it up and pay the $220, but all I could think about was all of the dresses and shoes I could buy with that $220. So, Rob and I put on our best thespian faces while I proceeded to fake sick and dizzy from the heights while Rob acted out the part of the concerned husband to a tee. I even topped off my debut by holding on to Rob’s arm and hiding my face in his chest (which was supposed to show how dizzy I was, but in reality it’s because I couldn’t stop laughing).

One hostess and two waiters escorted us to the elevator, which took us and only us all the way back down to the lobby. And to top the night off to be even better, we hadn’t eaten in hours to save up for our dessert and by the time we got back onto the military base we were staying on, everything was closed. So our nice evening of having dessert at the top of the Seoul Tower turned into heating up some Raman noodles and drinking mango juice in our hotel room.

It just goes to show that date nights, or time together, doesn’t always have to cost an arm and a leg. Or in this case 2 pairs of shoes and 5 dresses. And I guess it’s true that money can’t buy happiness. We could have had the nice dessert in the tower, but honestly, I would not have such a memorable story as what did end up happening.

I have so many more stories, but I will have to get to them later. Like I said, I have tons of things to do. Like watch seasons 1-10 of Friends, do some homework, put off some more housework, and sleep somewhere in between. But most importantly, I need to spend some good quality time with my husband.

Korea is starting to grow on me a little.  Probably because the sun is actually starting to shine and warm everything up.  Life is just happier when it’s warm, you can tan, and things start to smell like coconuts (mostly from tanning lotion).  I absolutely love summer.  I just wish it was summer year round.  Actually, I just think that I wish I lived in Hawaii.  I think that I might just love the Army for once if they would station us in Honolulu. 

But, Korea is good for now.  I’ve realized that I miss having a garbage disposal.  I have also realized that I cannot for the life of me make my electric can opener work when I need it to.  I don’t know what the secret is.  I puncture the top of the can, but so many times it just doesn’t want to continue opening it!  But hey, if this is the worst thing that can happen in a day, then life must be pretty good.

Yesterday, I started my first day volunteering at an orphanage.  I took a bus to get there thinking that it wouldn’t be that hard to find.  I knew which stop it was, so I would just count the number of stops and when it got to 33 I would get off! It didn’t take me long to realize that the bus only stopped at a stop if there were people there or if someone pressed the stop button wanting to get off.  This put a slight dent in my plans.  I had never been anywhere near where this orphanage was located, and I had no idea what the stop looked like to get off.  And, as always, everything was in Korean.

Thankfully, I used some observation skills and some communication skills and got off at the right stop.  I found my way to the orphanage and was warmly welcomed.  I took my shoes off at the door, and was introduced to the babies there.  I was really surprised at how many women were there volunteering with the babies! There were about 10 children and about 7 volunteers. They were all extremely accommodating, and they even gave me a sweet and some tea to have for volunteering.  Now, I gave up sweets for Lent.  But I also knew how offensive it was to not eat something if a Korean gave it to you.  So I took a couple of bites.  It was definitely not a sweet.  It may have had chocolate chips in it, but the chocolate chips were mixed with peas.  Yes, the vegetable.  I discreetly hid the rest of the “sweet” in my purse.

With the high ratio of caregivers to children, I felt slightly in the way and not needed.  About an hour passed, and I started thinking that maybe this wasn’t the best thing for me.  I didn’t want to just be in everyone’s way…but then a woman took me up to where the 4 and 5 year olds were.  She decided it would be a good idea to put me in a playroom with 10 of them by myself.  They came in running and jumping on me.  One kid would not let go of my leg.  Another kid kept pulling at my bracelet.  Two other kids kept wanting me to jump with them and play ring-around-the-rosie, while about 7 other children hid giggling in a playhouse.  They were all so cute.  All of a sudden, I felt needed.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the show Modern Family, but there is this one episode where an adopted Vietnamese toddler has a problem with biting people. As hilarious as this episode was, it was even funnier when a little Korean boy bit me at the orphanage.  I told him, “ANEYO!” (which means no). And he just laughed and went back to crawling on me along with about two other children.  They kept talking to me like I knew exactly what they were saying.  They would just chatter, chatter, chatter.  And the fact of the matter is I don’t think that they cared that I didn’t understand them.  I think what they wanted was just somebody to listen.

I think I want that too sometimes.  There’s another episode of Modern Family (if you can’t tell, I love that show) where Phil (a husband) goes to a spa for a day.  While there, he learns from some other ladies there for their routine pedicures that when women tell you a problem that they have, they don’t always want you to fix it.  Many times, they just want you to listen and support them instead of just telling them what to do.  He tries to clarify what he has learned by saying, “So, if my wife says that she hates being stuck in traffic on the interstate, I shouldn’t say ‘well maybe that wouldn’t happen if you left 20 minutes earlier,’ but instead I should say, ‘I know, honey.  That is never fun.’” To which all of the women replied, “Exactly!”

I liked this episode.  Not just men, but people in general try to fix everyone’s problems.  Sometimes, people just want someone else to listen to them and support them while they try to figure things out for themselves.  And sometimes when people ask for help, then that’s when we should try to fix problems.