Church Video

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Thanks, James

Marching on.....

Howdy all,

Just dropping another note to bring you up to speed a little with our busy existence......

We have all ventured out into the land of Korean food. Some of us more willingly than others. We had a great dinner out with the Branch President and his girls as well as the Missionaries. We ate a little bit of everything. I won't try to explain, I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves.

We had the opportunity to ride the bullet train up to Seoul last weekend as attend District Conference. We had a great time except that we didn't have time to get out and see anything. We stayed at the Dragon Hill Lodge at Yongsan garrison and had a great time. We also ran into one of Tracy's brother's wife best friends......Tracy met her at his wedding in Utah last August! Small world I guess. The talks at Conference were very good and even though we had some subway navigation challenges with 5 kids and the stroller we made it back to Seoul station for the return trip just in time.

I'm busy the next two weeks....suited up in uniform supporting the warfighter!

Pretty much all this week (or month) ;-).

Bye, James

Scouting

Well, I never promised I'd blog on a regular basis.....

I can't believe that February is almost gone. Seems like we just got here and it's been 3 months already. Time flies I guess. We are settling in better and have found a groove so I guess all is well. James Dean and I attended our first Boy Scout campout here in Korea this last weekend.....the infamous Klondike Derby. We didn't have any snow unfortunately but it was COLD. Highs around 25 degrees would be my guess. Anyway, we had a good time and we did have heated tents so we didn't freeze at night. I've been trying to post a bunch of pics to my Facebook but for some reason it is locking up on me. Ryan started Tiger Cubs this month so we now have 3 Scouts in the house. James Dean is now serving as the Librarian/Historian for the Order of the Arrow in our Troop. I am serving as an Assistant Scoutmaster in the Troop and also as the Cub Master for the Pack.....needless to say I'm busy.

On a sour note Tracy is fighting with the symptoms of Bells Palsy again. She is going in to see a doctor (Korean) this week. Please hold a good thought for her!

Jordan and Paris are both doing good in school and are making friends. Kylee is loving her Thursday story time's with Mom at the Library on post. We are missing you all and think of you often!

God Bless!

Moving forward!

Another week come and gone.....or is it 2 weeks. I don't know, just so busy that I can't keep track. Well, life is improving. We are starting to get our collective feet on the ground and are staying very busy. James Dean is hooked up with Boy Scouts, and Ryan just started Tiger Cubs this last weekend, so he is happy. Jordan had a cool field trip up to some caves with some ice sculptures...it was pretty neat. Paris is trying to stay busy with the Young Women at church and Kylee just loves spending her days with her mama. Tracy has got her driver's license and is venturing out some now....Thursday's are story time at the library on post so her and Kylee have been hitting that every week.

We had our first mingle with the natives tonight.....pretty cool. We had 3 glass shelves broken inside of Tracy's china cabinet during the move, and right down the street from us I found a glass shop, so off we went. For those of you that don't know, Microsoft Word has a cool feature: Open up a blank Word document, type out your message, highlight it, right click and choose translate.....this will open a toolbar on the right side that will take you out to a different website that will translate the entire document into the language of your choice. I typed out my questions about the glass, had it translated and off we went. Worked like a champ.....the glass guy could read my note and was able to write out the cost, etc. for me. The people here have been extremely nice and are truly forgiving of us foreigner's that don't know their language. Oh, buy the way.....3 large pieces of heavy glass shelves will cost us 15,000 won, which is just under $11.00. This glass would cost triple that in the states.

We also had the opportunity to go out last Saturday with our Korean landlord and his wife.....they are helping us try to find an entertainment center for the apartment. Trust me when I say communicating on issues like this are impossible without some translators present. After our running around all afternoon we decided to grab something to eat.....this is where Tracy starts to get a little nervous! We went to a Korean food court and they ordered kind of a sampler plate for us to all share......it was very hot; i.e.; spicy but it was delicious. I think he called in tapoki and mondu.....I'm sure that I'm not saying/spelling it right but let me try to explain. First of all everything is in a red sauce, there was noodles, fish cakes, cabbage, and large rice noodles that were more like dumplings. We also had Japanese pickled radish on the side. It was all very good but I would have never known because it truly looks disgusting. Oh, yeah, I forgot the hard boiled egg that was in the middle of all of it.

We plan on getting together with them again hopefully this week and taking them out to eat on post.....unfortunately I think they will be disappointed! We had a great time with them!

Wow, all for now.

Love to all, James

Another busy week....

Howdy all,
Sorry I'm so slow to post (told ya). It has been a busy couple of weeks.

I have started attending a Korean language class.....very difficult to learn. Tracy is on my back to start taking college classes and work towards a degree while I'm here. It just seems very important to me that since I'm the foreigner I should learn their language. Not sure what I'm going to do yet.....may just start using the Rosetta Stone program, it is free as well.

We have finally received our household goods this week and we, i.e. Tracy has been busy getting things unpacked. Jordan, Kylee and Tracy all battled the stomach flu last week, spending most of the time in bed sleeping with the trash can.

We spent the MLK holiday up in Osan shopping at the Air Force Base and out in town. Osan is about 3 hours north of us. It was truly an incredible drive up.....reminded me of driving I-70 west from Denver minus the snow. Large mountains with lots of timber.
Oh, yeah.....the shopping trip also landed me a 52" flat screen TV. Good times. Now if we can just find an entertainment center to put in in we will be set.

James Dean spent tonight and will spend all day tomorrow at the Troop's Boy Scout Merit Badge Conference. He is very close to his Eagle Scout Award!

This weekend is the Korean Lunar New Year, so Monday is a holiday for us Army folks as well. The advice given for this holiday is to stay indoors and not attempt to drive ANYWHERE. Of course I don't listen real well so....when I left to take James Dean over to scouts tonight the traffic was truly incredible.....it took me about 35 minutes to get the 3-4 miles to Camp Walker.
The Korean tradition is for everyone to go home for family reunions at the Lunar New Year.
Korea is about the size of Indiana with 600% more population....you do the math.

Also noteworthy news this week: The Hardy's are headed for Korea YEAAAHHHH! Even though they will be 3 hours away it is nice to know that friends are on the way!

One sad note for me: I missed my Aunt Sis getting married this month. This makes me sad. She is a little over 80 years young. I truly wish that we could have been there to support her. She deserves to be happy and I pray that she is. She is an awesome lady that we really do love and miss!!! RC is a lucky man.

Off and running......

Well, another busy week. James Dean, Paris and I traveled to Seoul for Youth Conference this last weekend. Was a pretty good trip. Had about 60 kids there from all over the peninsula.

Some highlights would of course be the Temple (they have a dorm where you can over night at the Temple.....only a few in the world). The bullet train was pretty cool as well.....travels at 188 miles per hour and feels like you are sitting on the couch at home. There were 11 total in our group, 8 youth, me and our senior missionaries, Bro/Sis Egbert. They are an amazing asset to our little branch.

We have hit some snags in the health care options offered us here so beware. Little things like disposable gloves and tongue depressors are not really requirements here in the land of the morning calm......you can bet it was not calm while Kylee was getting blood drawn. She can only use the "butterfly strips" which is a very small needle....let's just say that she is bruised up badly in both arms and still didn't get any blood drawn. They (the only provider approved by my BCBS insurance) don't have any of the small needles. Good times.

I found out that my truck has made it to Korea so maybe I'll get it this week.

Also, Tracy called me at work today and said our apartment complex was surrounded by Korean police and that people were screaming and running all over the place. Sounded like a riot to me but my landlord told me that it was "hard to explain" and to "not worry about it"........

Alrighty then.......till next time.

Love to all, James

Tollett Kids

Our pride and joy. We are truly grateful for the blessing that our kids have been to us. We couldn't ask for better, nor do we (i.e. me) deserve them.