We spent a lovely day at the Aquarium for her first birthday in September. She was a little wary of the tanks at first but the wily acrobatic sea otters finally won her over. She really enoyed looking at the fish and seals and penguins and spending time with her two friends Evie and Oliver!
She also had her first birthday party the following weekend. She loved spending time with all her friends, opening gifts and eating her first cake. I tried to make this very natural, low sugar cake from the back of what to expect the first year. It is a horrible recipe! Well, maybe it would be better as a cake but we tried making it into cupcakes. It was just too dense and heavy and didn't taste all that great. The babies didn't seem to mind, but the adults sure did!
Madeline has also progressed from crawling to walking. It's great to see her toddle around. She's getting pretty good but she still falls a bit.
Graham is in the thick of his work schedule. Midterms are coming up for all his classes and he's hitting some deadlines for a textbook project he's working on.
I am deep into my internship and have totalled over a hundred hours now. Only three hundred or so more to go!
Madeline also had a one year photo shoot a few weeks ago. We're hoping to post new pics soon!
We love and miss you all and will see you all Stateside soon!
Madeline and I arrive in Michigan on December 21st and Graham will arrive on the 27th. We take off again February 7th, so hopefully we can find time to visit all of our much missed friends and family!
--Rachel
Graham started his new job at Sogang University in March and is really enjoying his less hectic schedule and being treated like a professional educator.
I completed my fall and spring classes and am now in the middle of my summer classes. I am currently working on setting up my field placement that I will hopefully start in the next month or so.
Madeline and I also visited the U.S.A. in April and May and she really enjoyed meeting her grandpparents for the first time. We will post pictures from that trip soon! Please check her blog for photo updats on her. I know, I know, they haven't been posted yet, but they will be!
--Rachel
Thus, our blog fell by the wayside. Rachel also started a graduate program located here through the University of South Carolina to obtain her Master's Degree in Social Work. Needless to say, that left her very busy working and studying until our daughter was born.
Our daughter, Madeline Rose Reeves, was born at 6:15 p.m. on September 1, 2008. She weighed in at 8 lbs 11 oz and was 20.5 inches long.
She is now 6 weeks old and weighs 11 lbs and is 24 inches long. Oh, How she is growing!!!
We are hoping to blog much more regularly now and hopefully you will check it regularly for updates. We are also going to start a photo blog for Maddie and we will add a link to that soon!
Here are a few pictures from over the last year. We love you all and hope you enjoy them!
grad school prof and colleague
two weeks before Maddie was born
pics from our baby shower in Korea
about a week before Madeline was borngrad-school prof and colleague
Dear Everyone,
Sorry it has been so long since our last update. We had about eight weeks of no computer and very limited computer access due to a nasty virus we acquired because we forgot to update our virus scan. However, while we were unable to communicate fall has come and gone in Seoul. The fall leaves are so beautiful here, especially because the Seoul parks association plans the tree layout in the parks well so that every color is represented in a beautiful display that rivals fall in Michigan. The brick wall that hugs the army base in our neighborhood is the perfect shade to really highlight the trees and vines that grow around it.
We are very busy, but adjusting to life without each other (except for the weekends). We really guard our weekends though and it never seems as if there is enough time to do all of the errands we need to do together and to spend some quality time. Just last week the trees finally lost all of their leaves and we had our first snows!! It snowed on both November 19th and Novembe 20th in the evening. It's quite early for snow here and, of course, in the city it didn't last long but the paper printed some beautiful pictures of snowfall in the north. Here is a view from our near our house.
Of course, we had to work on Thanksgiving but I was able to go with some of my friends to a local restaurant that was serving a special Thanksgiving dinner that you had to buy tickets to in advance. It was also one of my coworkers birthdays this past Monday so on Saturday she threw a Thanksgiving dinner/ birthday party that was a LOT of fun complete with a turkey from the base and homemade stuffing and cranberry sauce. Graham and I were able to cook a little dinner of our own on Sunday complete with pumpkin pie courtesy of Costco.
~Adalia~ (Rachel's Coworker and Friend aka the Birthday Girl)
It's hard to believe that it's almost December and the holidays will soon be upon us. The lights are already up at the shopping malls and Starbucks is swathed in holiday decor. Chrismas decorations are appearing in the stores but the holiday spirit isn't quite in the air yet. As many Koreans are Buddhists or shamanists, Christmas isn't such a big deal and we only get the actual dayoff, but we will try to celebrate as well as we can, just the same.
Some of you may be wondering what our address is so I will give you both of our current addresses:
Graham Reeves
56-6 2nd Street
Pagoda Tower
Jongno, Jongno-gu
Seoul, Republic of Korea 110-062
**(use this if sending a package)**
Graham and Rachel Reeves
Building 712
Apartment 201
Itaewon 2-dong
Yongsan-gu
Seoul, Republic of Korea 146-801
**(use if sending a card or letter)**
Some people have asked what we would like in the way of Christmas gifts. We don't expect anything from anyone, but if you are wondering, we would appreciate gift cards to old navy or amazon.com to be used on their websites. We would also appreciate tea from Celestial Seasonings, especially Bengal Spice, Chai, or Peppermint tea.
I hope you enjoy this. More to come soon
*Rachel and Graham*
We are readjusting nicely to life in Seoul. Our apartment isn't quite home yet but it is definetely getting there. I am really glad that Graham found us an apartment (he was the only one with free daytime hours to look at apartments) but I just wish it hadn't been one that had about 24 roach traps in it. We did some hard core cleaning and removed most of the roach traps and haven't had any problems so far. They were there probably just as a precaution because the apartment was vacant for a while. At any rate, it's slowly becoming our comfortable little corner of the city. It is in the foreigner's district, however, which means that some of our fellow building tenants are
American and we here English spoken in the streets by native speakers daily in our neighborhood which is very strange after already being here for a year and not really experiencing that.
I am settling nicely into my job. It's going so much better than I feared and I have two amazing coworkers one of who is a fervent salsa dancer and one of whom is getting married in Hawaii this week and is expecting an addition to the family in December. It's a bit of a commute there and back but it's great working hours and a great environment. Graham is also enjoying his new gig but hates the split shifts. Hopefully, he will be able to get a better schedule soon.
On a more fun note: I CAN BARGAIN IN KOREAN!! I had to go to our local big box store--or mart as they are called here-- to pick up some things for the house. When checking out at the cash register, one of my items rang up for more than $10 more than the price on the sign. I was able to explain in my limited Korean that the sign had advertised a different price and the cashier sent someone back to check. Yay me! The sign WAS incorrect but they don't give you the advertised price here if that happens. IF you buy it for the amount that is correct in the computer, you get a slip that you take to customer service and get half of your money back in the form of a store coupon.. So, I got a $5 coupon back give or take some cents. I wasn't able to explain that in Korean however, so the checkout girl had to accompany me for that one but I felt pretty darn proud of myself! Catch you all later!
*Rachel
Here is schedule for our visit at home:
August 8th--Fly into Chicago
August 9th-11th--Graham's Mom's house/Bridgeman
August 12-13th--Hillsdale area.
August 14-16th--Grand Rapids area
August 17th--Lunch with Graham's dad, sister, and grandparents??Lansing
August 18th-19th Visiting St. Herman's
August 20-25th--Hillsdale area again
Augst 26-27th--Graham's Mom's in Bridgman again
August 28th--Chicago--flying back to Korea
this is a must better Sunkist commercial from Korea. It was on last summer. Notice the bhangra influence in this one and the Thai influence in the other:)
This is one of the most annoying commercials on right now but it has been playing all summer:)
We're currently racing against time to find the best job that we can start in September. There are lots of great jobs out there, all we have to do is narrow them down and show them what we can do. The web has been a great help, but there needs to be a lot of weeding out. Here are some links to let you know what we're looking at as far as jobs.
http://www.eslcafe.com/jobs/korea
http://hiteacher.com/
Some of the jobs are unbelievable, others are very poorly written. The standard offer is 2,000,000 Korean Won ($2000) or just a little bit more a month + housing + airfare and national holidays. The working conditions vary, but most afterschool institutes start at 2:00pm and go until 10:00pm. There are also jobs which teach days, they are mostly kindergartens or corporate teaching jobs. Rachel just had an interesting interview at an insurance company where she would lecture in the morning and have 1on 1 conversations in English with executives all day. I'm currently about to interview with a "cyber-university" and a school for "returnees" (students who have studied in North America and have returned to Korea).
We could use some prayers for guidance and also that we take care of our apartment and other details before we come back to the U.S. on August 8th.
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