Not My Home

Hi all,
I'm going to preface this post by saying it may sound cheesy or cliche but I wanna talk about it anyway!

Lately, I have had some amazing and freeing time with God. Sometimes when I walk on the streets going from one lesson to another, I will listen to music on my ipod, and all i feel like doing is Worshiping the Lord! There's a gravel road that is near our home. It goes behind a school. One night I took our dog out for a walk and took my ipod along. As we walked and played i was overcome with the Beauty of God. It being night time and darker out I felt the freedom to sing out as loud as i could, and I lifted my arms to heaven and danced around in the cool night air. It was wonderful.

I have never known before now what the words "This world is not my home" meant. Now, living in a foreign land, I know how it feels to be alien. In the states, as a young, white, female it is easy to fit in! Easy to feel like you belong. However, I now know what it feels like to long for home, a true home. But now, the desiring is not for Tennessee, or for my parents, but for my heavenly home. It's an amazing feeling to know that you do not belong here. I also feel a great dependance on The Father. Sometimes when I am sad or alone, I can remember that He is all I need and i honestly believe it. You know many times we say "Jesus is all I need" but in all honesty you don't believe what you say. I have never felt it more than now.
God is Great.
Peace and Love to you all,
Amanda Larsen Wells

More Stroking, Less Poking

a bullet point of the sermon today at the church we've been attending! Not unlike the time Brian and i were first married and were sitting in a SMALL ( i mean maybe 10 people there) Lutheran church and "Dr. Crack" was going to be guest speaking the next sunday...i could barely keep in my giggles! Though the point of the comment was to be more affectionate with our children (not so mean and demanding) i couldn't help but identifying just a little!

Today, brian and i just laid around the apt, watched some of our downloaded Dragnet and got "the best of Christopher Walken" and also "the best of Dana Carvey" SNL DVDs...itunes is the best...mom and dad if you're looking for a gift *wink wink* itunes giftcards are SWEEEEEET! LOL just kidding. We also watched The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles trilogy! OH YEAH! So we decided it was time to get up and do some work about an hour ago...i started on the dishes. Just as i was getting into my groove, i hear brian's all to familiar "oh no..."

Mold had grown all over the wall behind our wardrobe. It was disgusting. Brian grabbed a bowl of warm soapy water and set to work scraping it off...but we found out that there were about 3 layers of wallpaper (apparently it was too much work for them to tear it down first). So brian decided to rip off that section of wallpaper. The mold went all the way to the concrete. She he's spent the past hour gettin all that taken care of and it's all back in place. This made me want to come home...i'm tired of living in the basement of an apt building...we get no ventalation, we get everyones bugs that decide to migrate down...it sucks. I tried to talk him into letting us come home on our first return date, but he doesn't seem to be that convinced yet.
"That's when i go to work, I carry a badge" -Agent Friday Dragnet Season 1

The Real Body!

Ridin on a bus

WHOA! Yesterday we went to an exhibit at a childrens park. The exibit was about 20 cadavers all disected and posed in different poses...like a football player, a conductor, etc. It was really really awesome. Brian took his kids on Wednesday for a field trip. He came home all excited about it and wanted to take me, I wasn't too keen on the idea. I was a little sceptical but it really was amazing. They were real bodies, brian said they did a better job than most medical students probably have seen. It was amazing! The sad part was they did weekly stages of babys (and they were real fetuses) so that made me sad...but it was so cool...at 10 weeks you can see fingers! WOW. We couldn't touch anthing but at the end of the exhibit they had a bran and a liver that you could touch! We couldn't take pictures. I wish i could've b/c i would love to show some.

After the exhibit we walked to where they had a little zoo area. It was so sad...i dont' think there are regulations like there are in the states. they had 3 tigers in this small pen. They had like these huge vultures all in a pen together. The animals fur was all matted and clumping off from stress and not enough space. It made me really sad...

Then we went up to Insadong to do some shopping for our siblings who are having birthdays, went to the big mall place to walk around for a while....Here's some great news!!! We walked past a underware store a Japnesse store...i read on someone elses blog that there was a japanesse underware store in this mall that sold bigger bras and stuff...Koreans are so teenie, but the japanesse sizes went up to size H! It was the most crazy experience of my life! We were walking in the store and a lady approached us. This is really normal in Korea, to have someone follow you around the whole time you're in the store to help you..they aren't suspicious..they're just big on customer care i guess. Anyway...she measured me and checked my cup size...with her hands! LOL...well measured me with a measuring tape but the other size she just guessed by the way the felt! So she picked me out some bras and sent me into the dressing room. SHe told me to call her when i got one on. Well she came in...poked and prodded all my goodies into place. Then she took off the bra....got another one and put it on me...from behind...pushing and moving everything to fit just right...buckled it up...i was like her little american doll! It was really funny. Anyways...i was really impressed with the quality and feel and prettieness of the stuff they had...alot of times in the states...us bigger women have to take what we can get but here they have awesome stuff. and the price was cheaper than in the states too! We didn't buy any b/c we have to budget it in but next month we will be DEBT FREE!!! and we get to spend some money on ourselves!

DEBT FREE DATE IS MARCH 11th! we're so pumped.
Anyway, enough about all that stuff...here's some pics i took this weekend...you can check out more if you click our "online photo" button on the sidebar.
laters!
Amanda

new pictures....

Just a quick post today...one of the puppy..a picture of our favorite candy bar that we share...it's wrapped in a gold wrapper...i always feel like Charlie Bucket from Willy Wonka...and Brian taking pictures of himself...again.
Later!

OK....:) they're not prisoners!

Got this comment...thought i'd post it so that everyone could know what was goin on!
Jay Lee said...
Hi, first of all, they're not prisoners. They're demonstrators. The reason they're in the same unifrom is I think it's either because it's a work(factory?) uniform.

They're protesting about the company (Hyundai Hi-sco) not fulfilling the agreements that contains the clauses that guarantees the re-employment of the workers that lost the job due to the close down of the sub-branches. I won't go in to details since that should give you a picture. My 2 cents

What are these people doing???

So on my drive to my lesson yesterday i looked over and saw these people walking. I'm not sure if it's a demonstration or something like community service for small time convicts. Before i saw these guys walking i saw about 3 buses that looked like prison buses with bars on the windows. They would walk five steps and then bend down and do a full bow. The police are holding the barrier thing so i can't tell if it's prisoners or protestors. They had flags with pictures of some of the bad protesting that has gone on here. Anyway, so i was very confused. The reason i think it's prisoners is because everyone is wearing the same thing. I don't know....it was lucky though b/c i brought my camera...usually I don't take it with me but it snowed a few inches yesterday and i wanted to take pictures of the snow. So i'll post those pictures after this post...






PICTURES OF THE SNOW.

These are all taken from my walk from our house to the bus stop. Beautiful huh!?

same as anywhere...

So, Brian and I decided that life here is just the same as anywhere else, just on a different continent. Things are relatively normal here. Workin, Eatin, Sleepin, do it all again. Now that the holidays are all over the homesickness is not as bad...and we've now been here for about 8 months! Crazy huh?! Hard to believe for me too. We're almost half way done...one more month..For those of you who don't know, brian and I have decided to stay for about 6 months longer than planned earlier, just for financial reasons.

There has been craziness at home, a friend of ours, a girl i used to babysit got in a really bad car accident. She's doing better now, but has to relearn how to swallow and stuff like that...But God has really pulled her through. She still has a lot of recovering to do, but it seems that it's only up from here...

Sorry I'm so boring today, Maybe next post i'll have some cool pics to post.

Later
Amanda