My 1st Trip/ Tour in Korea

My first tour that I got to take here in Korea took me to a couple of different places. We started at the Chikso Waterfall, or more specifically the trail head to the waterfall. There was a lot of beautiful mountains that surrounded us the whole way there as we hiked in, as well as a frozen over lake at about the half way point.

Some of the trail was more finished and had steps the other areas you had to watch your step a little bit to not trip over roots or broken rocks.

After about 20 minutes or so of hiking in we arrived at the view point of the waterfall. I took a few pictures then I saw a trail that led up to the top of the waterfall and got all the way to the head of it.

On the hike back to the bus I could hear some chanting echoing through the mountains. That really made me feel like I was in a oriental film. :)

Just outside of our next destination was a bunch of shops and some restaurants. This was my lunch (green onion pancake). It had squid, sliced carrots, green onions and scrambled eggs cooked on top of a pancake batter. It as Really Good!

The second place we got to see was the Neso-sa temple. Here are two of the guardians near the entrance.

Some of the temple housing. I wasn't allowed to take any good pictures of the actual Buddha temple, but the architecture of the buildings is beautiful. If you look really close the is another house up in the hills in the background too.

Some people were drinking the crystal clear and very cold water from this fountain, I'm not sure what it was for (good luck maybe).

Our final tour spot for the day was at Pyonsan Beach. There really wasn't much there to see or do, but I skipped a few rock, which is a lot easier to do on a lake or somewhere without the waves. :)

And since I was missing Britta and so I could have at least one cute picture I could show her, I wrote my love for her in the sand.

YAY for Matt!

In all his humble brilliance, Matt pulled off a 121/124- 98% on his test.

He told his supervisor, who is stoked because he gets a day off for Matt getting a high score.

He told some of his co-workers, one of whom said 'Yea, you probably chose to get those three wrong too!'

And he told me, who said 'told you!'

Congrats Matt! I knew you could do it! Thanks for trying so hard and opening so many doors for our future. You are amazing!

It was supposed to happen...

Matt was supposed to take his test three weeks ago but after a glitch in the system, a basewide lock down and then rescheduling, it was pushed up to tomorrow. This test is a pretty big deal- if he gets a 95% or better he'll get three days off as a reward! If he gets above a 90% he'll get one day off. Needless to say, we are both looking for him to get a 95%. He asked his supervisor if he could take those three days when the girls and I come visit and it looks like they'll let him. So fingers are crossed and prayers are being said!

All of July he was on swing shift, technically. Because they go by the start of each week, not by the actual date, he didn't start swing shift until July 7 (he also had two days off for 5th of July in there!). He worked for three days on Swing shift before being switched to night shift for the basewide lockdown! Then he had a few days that he was required to work day shift, because they needed something important done I guess. And then he was back to swing. So in all 4 weeks he was supposed to work swing shift he actually only worked 11 days!

He is excited about a new prospect: he's been signed up for a class to learn how to shoot handguns. He is hoping he'll get marksman on this as well because then he'll be able to wear a star on his ribbon. And I guess thats pretty cool. After taking this class he'll be qualified to act as gate guard for the bomb dump. Its a shake up in the normal routine and he's looking forward to the possibility of doing that.

We are getting closer to when the girls and I will go visit. At this point Matt is busy getting information gathered to make sure everything connected to us visiting is approved and goes smoothly. Its only 9 weeks now! (You know, last year at this time I was freaking out at how long 9 weeks was...now 9 weeks seems so short in comparison to the year!)

We've both started getting ready for the move to Guam. He is in the process of putting in the all-important paperwork and setting dates for coming home. I am in the process of making lists. Lots of lists. After coming back from S Korea I'll have about 8 weeks to be completely ready to move. And as I just said, 8 weeks seems like nothing in comparison to the year we've already been through!

It will be exciting to update everyone on Matt's test scores in a few days...so check back!

New Work Schedule

So this month Matt's schedule is changing up. Rather than working days (typically 7-3, sometimes later) he'll be working swing shift. That'll be from 3-11pm. It might make communication a little more difficult because the he'll be able to talk in the middle of my morning and the middle of the evening- right in the middle of commonly planned activities. But we'll sacrifice because its always SO good to talk to him!

This is only for one month though so whether its good or bad it'll be short.

Matt is nearly done with his first set of CDCs. Have I explained them before? In order to go from level 3 to level 5 certification he has to complete this extra training. I don't actually know what the acronym stands for though. He is taking the first big test this week and will then start on the second and last set of books. I'm not too worried about how he'll do though, in order to even schedule the tests they had him talking to all his upline supervisors, so about 4 or 5 different people, who all quized him on the information. That was after taking 6 pretests as well. So I'm positive he knows the material.

The military also just reinstated the Patriot Express. This is a flight that flies free (except some port fees) from Seattle, through Japan, and onto Korea. Its a Space-A flight. This means that Matt might get three visitors later this year. :) He's allowed to have people stay for up to 30 days during his tour so we are going to attempt to take advantage of that. We'll stay in his dorm room- which is really actually small for 4 people. But he also has a common room and a kitchen that we can use during the day so it won't be too bad. He still has to do some paperwork to get that to happen but we are all stoked to be able to see him sooner than expected. It makes the next 7 months seem a lot shorter!

Matt is also thinking about career changes. Not out of the military but within. We keep batting around the idea of him becoming an officer and a few different jobs that he might change to later. But its all just ideas and talk so I won't mention specifically what jobs we are talking about. When it stops being just talk I'll mention it again.

This 4th weekend he is running a 5k (actually, he's getting ready to run it as I write this blog!) and there'll be fireworks and a bit of a festival going on. Its nice that they try to make things as much like home as possible. Although nothing will ever be as much like home as the Strawberry shortcake we got while watching the Strawberry Festival parade at home... :)

Lately

Matt arrived back in Korea 2.5 weeks ago. He had the pleasure of working for 3 days before he had a weekend- but it was Memorial day, so he got it off, and then the base was given an extra day off that was considered a 'family day' for other bases but just a day off for this base because no one has family with them.

But! Matt ended up getting pretty sick on Monday and by Tuesday night was throwing up. He went to sick call and was quartered to his rooms for 48 hours. By the time he went back to work on friday he had had 29 days off, 3 days on, 6 days off and 1 day on. Then it was the weekend again with another 2 days off. Pretty nice work schedule, huh?

So far he has been plugging away at his CDCs (the program that he has to finish before he'll get a higher experience level) and working on inventorying the fire extinguishers. He has also been concentrating on exercizing because his physical tests are coming up in a few weeks and he's not doing as well as they want him to be doing on his push-ups and sit-ups.

He is looking forward to going on another tour around Korea in the next few weeks as well as the weather getting nicer and being able to spend more time outside on a regular basis.

He is excited about the fact that he's more than halfway done with the nightmare of being away from home. He's been gone (with basic, tech school and Korea) for 9 and a half months and only has about 7 left!

Mid Tour

Everyone that goes to Korea gets a guaranteed 2 week mid tour. Matt just happened to be able to take his paternity leave along with his midtour and is being able to come home for 4 weeks.

The process to get permission to come home was long and drawn out and he had to fill out about a million different forms and send them to a million different people. It came down to this week and he still hadn't gotten everything 100% approved and he'd been working on paper work for 6 weeks! But he got the total okay on Thursday and has all the correct paperwork in hand to get to the US on Tuesday!

So, Matt leaves Korea on Monday afternoon (Our time, its Tuesday morning for him) and will arrive in the states on Tuesday around noon. He has a flight from New Jersey and he'll finally arrive in St louis at 10:50 pm. We are planning on picking him up and going to get icecream cones and going to a park for a little while before we head home. I want Emmaline to have a chance to talk to her daddy before she goes back to bed- and- our dating anniversary was April 22 and he missed being home for that by only 5 days. Every year we go to the park and reminice about our very short courtship. Cant break tradition if we can help it!

His departure date back to Korea is May 25 and until then there wont be much, if anything, to update on this blog. Check our other blog out for all things family related! Happy May!

Satisfactory is good!

Matt has finally ended his torturous work schedule. For the past month he has been working 12 hour days. He worked 13 days in a row, had a day off then worked another 12 days in a row before finally getting his full weekend! He was so exhausted he slept late both Saturday and Sunday.

The reason he was working so much was for an inspection of the base. He was informed on Friday that the base received a Satisfactory overall. This is actually really good. According to what Matt told me, each shop gets graded individually but the base gets one score overall- generally the lowest score given to any of the shops. So where his shop did really really well, the general consensus on base was a Satisfactory. Matt said its extremely difficult to receive an Excellent or Outstanding on a base wide inspection.

His Easter was less than exciting as he wasn't with family. I did send him some Easter treats in two little baskets that he enjoyed opening. And he took a walk in very plesant weather before going to church.

Here are two of the pictures he took!