KAIAC Tournament

Today Rachel is playing in the her first game of the KAIAC ("kayak") tournament. It's kinda like State, I guess-these are schools from all over Korea competing. I was looking up subway directions for myself and Chris to Seoul Foreign School, the private British school where the tournament is held, and I ran across this interesting web page. Here's the link: Sinchon
There is a video on the right side of the page that is pretty cool-it shows the surrounding neighborhood, with its shops and universities. Check it out-and you'll get to see where the three of us are spending our afternoon!

Ozzy

Well, we picked up Ozzy a couple weeks ago from the Incheon Airport. Lucky for the kitty, he flew a straight flight from Dallas, and passed through the cold state of Alaska, so they kept him in the cabin for the entire trip! He spent a couple hours in the storage warehouse here before we finished all the customs paperwork and picked him up, but he didn't seem upset in the least. In fact, he was so calm, I opened up his carrier when we got home and he just waltzed right out and looked around. Ten minutes later, I was cooking dinner and looked around to find him sprawled out on the kitchen floor behind me. So he felt at home from the start. He especially loves the hardwood floors here-he chases his balls around, sliding all over the place. He drives Rachel crazy by stealing her chair in the living room every time she gets up for some reason :). I'm sure he misses his grandma though, because we aren't giving him cream every morning! In fact, Chris bought him the fat kitty food, so I imagine by the time our bathroom scale gets here, he should have lost some weight! Hopefully anyway...

Volleyball game on Wednesday

Wow, what a game on Wednesday! The girls played the number 2 team-Seoul Foreign School. It's a private, British, Christian school here in Seoul. They ended up playing 5 games-SFS winning the first 2, our girls winning the next 2, and then SFS won the last one. Rachel's coach is back in the States right now for his father's funeral-I think this had an effect on the girls, because they just couldn't seem to pull it together. It was a very intense game-they stayed within a couple points of each other throughout. Rachel and her teammate Shariah played extremely well-but it seemed the rest of the girls were having an off-day-something wasn't working...and they were disappointed with their lost. SAHS and SFS are now tied for first-with losses only to each other. So they will battle it out in the KAIAC tournament in 2 weeks. I went home feeling exhausted, it was such a stressful game!

Volleyball at Osan

Last Saturday, Rachel had an away game at Osan Air Force Base about an hour south of Seoul. The girls took it to 4 games before winning, and they played well! Rachel especially-she was outstanding-she had a serving streak of 10 serves in a row (or more, I can't remember exactly), and she stuffed so many of the other team's spikes that they were getting frustrated. A lot of the parents watching remarked on how well she played-how confident and calm she was. As James said, "Rachel seems to be the "finesse" player on the team". She always seems to keep it together and that helps the team stay strong. Every single volley it seemed the crowd was yelling "Good job, Rachel!" I am getting the game tapes from one of the moms and making copies :). Unfortunately her battery ran out right before Rachel's serving streak at the end of the game, so we won't be able to watch that again.
After the game, Rachel rode back to Seoul with the team and James, Chris and I went shopping outside the base at Osan. It's a very interesting part of town-more Americanized than Itaewon even. You can pay with dollars instead of won! In fact they prefer it. Weird...but we looked around and ended up buying a beautiful piece of furniture. A Korean bar-a cabinet with 2 doors and a marble top with 2 wooden pieces that fold out to make the top longer. I'll post a picture up when it's delivered in a couple weeks. The hardware on the front is brass-the wood has a dark finish-brown with a bit of red.

A little clarification...

I forgot to mention before that James is a friend of ours. He and Chris have been Army buddies for 5 or 6 years now. In fact, I've known James as long as I've known my husband. Our first date was a double date with James and my friend Becky :). So to clear things up-he's not one of Rachel's high school friends, or boyfriends. He's been in Korea for about a year now-so he knows his way around pretty well, and since we don't have a car yet, he's been chauffering us around everywhere. What a sweetie!

Rachel's Senior Year

Rachel's senior class gets to decorate their hallway-and they picked the theme a couple days ago-Harry Potter. I wonder how they came up with that one? (haha) Rachel is excited, because next Thursday is "dress like your hall" day for Homecoming week, and she and I are going shopping at Dongdaemun tomorrow for fabric for a cloak. That should be fun. Of course, we never really need an excuse to buy fabric :).

Yeoju Pottery and Rachel

Saturday I went with some of the wives from the 524th Spouses Club to Yeoju to shop for pottery. It was about an hour and a half drive south of Seoul, and we stopped at a rest area to eat before we got down there. Unlike the U.S., the rest stops here offer very tasty, hot meals-a lot of variety, too. I ate a Japanese noodle bowl, and some Korean gimbop (seaweed wrapped rice rolled with pickled radish, egg, carrot, etc.). It was yummy! Oh, I forgot to mention previously that every time I go to the store or am around a vending machine, I try a new drink. So after picking out a Sunny 10 (basically carbonated lemon-lime gatorade), we headed down to the pottery factories. All around Yeoju are hundreds (or scores) of stores selling the pottery made in that very towns factories. Some of the stores we went into actually made the pottery below the showroom-and you had to walk through the workroom to see the stuff they were selling. Of course, I forgot a camera, but this won't be the last time I visit there-don't worry. We saw artists molding the pots with pottery wheels, then holding the pot in one hand and carving the designs out with the other. So very precise, and beautiful-I'm sure they could do some of the traditional patterns in their sleep, though! I bought a vase about 14" high and 29" around for 15,000 won (about 12 dollars), and one about 8" high and 20" around for 10,000 won (about 8 dollars). When I get my camera working, I'll post a picture up here. They're very pretty!
Chris didn't come along-he visited Yongsan Electronics market again with some friends. It's probably better, since he would have been the only guy there.
Rachel didn't want to go with me that day either because she was at a volleyball team sleepover the night before. The girls took pictures together- and I can't wait to put those up as well-very, very cute. Speaking of pictures, Rachel got her picture in the paper as Athlete of the Week in the Stars and Strips (Asia)- a military daily newspaper. She had a lovely little bit written about her-the school posted it up at the front office, and kids have been asking her since if she's "the one from the newspaper". A little bit of celebrity there :).
In other news-our friend James recently returned from a three week trip to the States. Rachel had a countdown running-she missed him. And the sweetheart that he is-he brought back a present for her-an Orlando Bloom calendar! As if she didn't adore James already...
She had jokingly tried to get him to bring back the standup, cardboard cut-out of the actor, so he compromised with the less obvious, but still embarrassing purchase of the calendar.