Water Dragon

Water Dragon, originally uploaded by JR-Mississippi.

Where has the time gone..............

It has been awhile since I sat down to write a post about what has been going here in Dongtan.

On June the 6th, JJ's mother came in to Suwon bus terminal. I met her at the bus station around 4. Since JJ had to work until 10, I needed to entertain mom till she got home. We got in the taxi and made our way to Dongtan. She explained who I was to the taxi driver and went on to explain how these days international marriages are acceptable. She went on to tell him that a few years ago it would have never been possible. The taxi driver either agreed with her or is a really good liar..... We got to Dongtan and even though JJ and I had cleaned the house she went through and decided that she would spend the her time cleaning. Maybe, I bored her into cleaning! She cleaned for a few hours and would ask me to get her various items that she needed, but wouldn't let me help her. She told me I needed to rest since I had been working so hard.(SWEET) After a few hours we went to the local super market and then made our way through the park. JJ got home around 10 and we ended up staying up late chatting.

On Sunday June the 7th, we headed into Gangnam to take mom to JJ's oldest sister's house. We decided that we would take her to VIPS for lunch. She had never visited and was quite impressed with the selection and more with the number of people that would pay 20,000 for lunch. We took mom all the way to the sister's house and hung out for about an hour or so. Which was long enough for JJ's mom to convince the sister to give me some of her extra whiskey. (SWEET)

JJ and I have also been planning our wedding which will be the Saturday after Thanksgiving. We are still at the beginning of the planning and have a lot of work to do. Wedding dress has been bought, Hanboks ordered, priest scheduled, church reserved and that is about it. We got a long way to go.

We are also working on JJ's visa. We have filed the DS230 part 1 and are now gathering all of the information that we need to apply for our interview. I have to work with my dad to cosponsor JJ since my income in Korea is not counted. I have a lot of evidence to produce and not a lot of time to get it all ready. JJ booked her medical check for this week, so that is one more thing that will be out of the way. I set a goal of applying for the interview by July 10th. I hope that we can have everything ready by that time.

I have not had that much time to go out and take pictures, but I did get to go to the Hwaseong Fortress on Sunday the 14th and I think some of them came out pretty good. I am currently reading a couple of Scott Kelby's books. I started with his Digital Photography Book 1 and now am reading CS4 for Photographers. Both of these are very cool and his humor is interesting/annoying...I really like the way he explains everything in a down to earth sense.

I also spend a pretty good amount of time trying to get our newest hire ready to come to Korea. Ironing out all the last mintue visa problems and what not. I honestly hate recruiting new teachers and have been lucky that we have gotten such good teachers to work at our school. Our newest teacher will arrive in a couple of weeks and seems like she is going to be a perfect fit for our school.

We are currently throwing around the idea of making an extended lay-over on our way back to Mississippi. We were leaning towards Honolulu, but I think we have come to the conclusion that for a couple of extra dollars we can visit Paris. So that may be a possibility as well. We are also supposed to travel with JJ's parents before we head to Mississippi and we are trying to figure out just where to go on that trip as well.

4 months and 15 days left....but who's counting?