A White Weekend

While most people spent their Easter weekends visiting with family and friends and celebrating traditions, etc., we spent our Easter weekend painting our itty-bitty condo. 

Remember when Ken and I painted our place this awful brownish/mauve-ish color way back when? 

(The color itself wasn't awful; it just looked awful in our apartment, and we knew it as soon as we had passed the point of no return on the paint-scale.) 

We made do with these pukey walls for nearly two years until finally, last weekend, Ken and I decided it was time to pick a new color. Because we are renters, and because our rental agreement states that any color we may choose to paint the walls during our tenancy has to be covered with white again before our contract is terminated, we decided it would be a good idea to save ourselves another painting job down the road by choosing a white paint. White is the it color right now, anyway (thanks to the popularity of Scandinavian-influenced interior design, no doubt) so, really, we were being practical and cool with this little decision of ours. And how hard could it possibly be to paint our small space white?

Hard. 

First, we were met with roughly two hundred different shades of white upon our first visit to the local paint store. And I'm probably being quite conservative with that number. 

Second, we probably should have gone over our brown/mauve walls with primer before tackling them with white paint. We didn't. (I know. Dumb.)

We kicked off Friday morning with all of our supplies in order and feeling very optimistic about our painting project. Excited, even. 

After we went through the mundane task of taping-up everything we didn't want to paint, we happily set about spreading white paint along the corners and edges of our little apartment. 

Thirty minutes into the painting job, we were both commenting on how cathartic painting really is and how we should do stuff like this more often. Maybe we should even take a painting class so we can paint pictures to hang on our new white walls!

Three hours into the painting job, however, we were cursing our 29-year-old selves for being so stupid as to paint the apartment in the first place, way back when.

And here's a little bit of blunt honesty: Spending approximately 16+ hours painting your living space with your spouse (unsuccessfully, I might add, due to the aforementioned lack of primer) has a way of showing you what your marriage is truly made of.   

I'm very happy to report that both of us--and our relationship--came out of our painting project intact and in good health. There were only a few fleeting moments when I had the urge to dump the bucket of remaining paint over Ken's head, and Ken did a spectacular job of not reaming me out the third time (yes, three times) I bent over to pick up a paint brush only to have my full head of hair stick to a wall of fresh paint on the way down. 

I'm also happy to report that our apartment is now white, 16+ hours of labor and two gallons of paint later.  

We went to bed late Saturday night reeking of paint fumes, sweat and tears, but finished.  On Sunday we woke up, each of us aching in every muscle imaginable (including muscles I wasn't even aware I had), and we practically waddled into Burlington to have Easter dinner with Ken's brother and his mom. And, if you look closely, you can see I still had a fair bit of white paint glued to my hair, three washings after the fact:

(...and it's still there, making my pre-existing grays look far more dignified than they should.)

Here's to Two More Years!

It's our second wedding anniversary today. Yay! 

Ken surprised me with a flower delivery at work yesterday. Excuse me, they were roses. A whole dozen of them. And, as you may or may not be able to tell by the crappy picture from my crappy phone, I was one happy lady. 

And here they are up close:

Now we're off to a spa for the day for massages and such. (Because, you know, marriage can be stressful.... ;)

Happy Anniversary, Bean!

Note: The title of this post is actually the message Ken wrote on the card that came with the flowers, which left all of my coworkers scratching their heads. I had to explain multiple times that it was just Ken's idea of being funny, but I was the only one who laughed. (And that's how we know we were meant to be.)

We're Famous! (Kind Of)

Sweet ol' Ken had a little too much time on his hands at work a few weeks ago when he suddenly had an idea to write a little story about how the two of us met. He then submitted it to the Metro paper in hopes of it being selected to run in their "relationships" section. (He did this entirely on his own and I was none the wiser.)

Well, lucky, lucky us! Metro selected Ken's story (our story, really) to run in today's paper.

 You can read the story in its entirety here.

And, yes, Ken has officially bought himself a "get out of jail free" card for nearly every conflict we may have over the course of the next year, at least.

He done good.

P.S. The horrifically cheesy title was Metro's doing.

One year ago today....

Or at least one year ago today in Korea.... Tomorrow is September 3rd in North America, so we get two anniversaries whenever we're on the other side of the world from our original place of marriage! (And you'd better believe I'm going to milk it.)

Best. Year. Ever.

The "Wedding": Four Months After the Fact

Note: This post is probably only of interest to my mother.

I borrowed Ken's camera last week to take pictures of the furniture we're trying to sell off before leaving Korea, and I found a bunch of pictures and video from our "wedding" trip to Seoul still on the camera! That fateful trip was way back in September and I had apparently forgotten the photos even existed. Ken said he is going to put them together in one presentable movie but, impatient as I am, I decided to jump the gun and post a few of them here. (Note: This is only a preview of what might take years to finish.)

Pictures first. Here we are on the KTX train heading to Seoul, clearly feeling a little apprehensive about practically eloping:

And here are the mountains of paperwork we had to fill out for both of our embassies:

The number at the City Ward's Office that terminated our single-hood (dun dun dun!):

And this:

which resulted in this:

Now time for some exceptionally boring video. It should be noted that I have a bad habit of muttering, so don't even bother trying to understand what I'm saying (even I can't decipher what's coming out of my own mouth). It should also be noted that when the camera is turned on, we both suddenly feel like we have an audience and things immediately become awkward. So with that little disclaimer, here we go....

Wandering the streets of Seoul, trying to find the City Ward's Office:

Our impromptu attempt at the wedding march:

[Awkwardness Level: High]

*So embarrassing!*

Here we are, signing our lives away (this video is unnecessarily long, so feel free to skip it all together):

Oh my gosh, my fingernails are disgusting! Moving on....

Here is our comfortably modern W Hotel room, where our official honeymoon took place:

And I apparently wasn't paying attention to the fact that Ken was recording.

Here is a picture of the fridge in our room:

Please excuse my cheap side for just a moment: Do you see the blue bottles of water in the door? $14 a piece! And do you see the tiny bottles of mango juice above the water? $12! The small bottle of champagne was $85, and the Cafri beer (one of Korea's own) was something like $20 a bottle. Thank goodness I happened to look at the price list before thirstily opening one of the water bottles, otherwise we would have been in for a sore surprise upon receiving our final bill.

And last, but not least, a picture of our first wedding present ever, given to us by one of our least favorite students:

(Not sure why Ken is topless....)

And that's all for now, folks. Geez Louise, I don't think I'll ever put videos on my blog again, as it literally took 20 minutes for each one to upload. Did I do it the wrong way, or does it always take so long??

Cider, parties and cakes, oh my!

Fall is starting to make its somewhat welcome appearance here in the land of Busan. Normally, Fall is my absolute favorite season, but we had such a dreary, drizzly summer with only a few good beach days that it just doesn't seem like Fall should be creeping its way into the year yet. Regardless, I'm embracing it. I made my first soup of the season tonight (Thai Chicken Soup) and I'm already devising ways I can make homemade apple cider soon, which seems to be ridiculously hard at this point, but I've decided to make it happen even if it kills me (... which it just might).

A quick sidenote on why I should go to the trouble of making apple cider myself: After spending three Fall seasons in Korea, I've realized that apple cider (or even the concept of it) doesn't seem to exist here. SO, I've decided to take it upon myself to make it from scratch and introduce it to those under my influence. (Although, by the time I'm done with it, I might turn everyone off to it completely.)

The weekend before last, a few good friends of ours threw a small "Happy Marriage" party for Ken and me. The party was complete with homemade Indian food (yums!), a homemade wedding cake (yums again!) and an amazing night at the norae bhang (a singing room). It was a whole lot of fun and it made me extra thankful for the friends I have here (and for my recently acquired husband, of course!). One of my favorite things about the whole night was the cake topper my friends Andrea and Meaghan made out of marshmallows.

(You will notice that the marshmallow version of me is complete with a toilet paper veil and a cupcake paper skirt.)
(Here, Ken and I are taking turns being jerks while cutting our cake.)
My good friend from college, Mel, and her boyfriend, Gino, gave us these cute little ducks as a wedding present. Apparently this is a traditional Korean wedding gift, as ducks are monogamous (a fact I was not aware of prior to receiving the gift).

And while I'm posting pictures, I'm going to upload a photo I took of a carrot cake I made a couple of weeks ago. (Geez Louise, I seem to be turning into Betty Crocker!)
It's a healthy cake, made with almond flour and agave nectar, so it's bad-sugar and bad-flour free! Plus, it's the best darn carrot cake I've ever had. And, obviously, my amazing photography skills don't do it justice.

And, without further ramblings about parties and my kitchen experiments, I'm off to bed. I just realized I have to teach in eight hours (groan, moan, sigh).

Dun, dun, dun-dun!

On September 3rd, 2009, after months of thoroughly analyzing the pros and cons of marriage (let alone marriage in Korea), my bestest friend and I decided to officially end our engagement and just tie the knot. This decision, of course, was made about three days before the actual nuptials took place. We eloped.

We had to go to Seoul for the occasion, as America doesn't seem to find it necessary to have an embassy in Busan, and had an all day trek around the city in lieu of an actual ceremony. We started at the US embassy for me to sign an affidavit claiming I wasn't already married, then had to make our way over to the Canadian embassy to do the same for Ken (of course, we got ourselves and an unsuspecting taxi driver good and lost before we finally located Canada in Korea, which turned out to be a mere ten minute walk from the US embassy.... argh). After that bit of paperwork was taken care of, we had to make the trek to the city ward's office where the actual marriage was processed. I thought we would have to say vows in Korean or something, but instead they just called our number (34), told us to sign on this line and that line, stamped a stamp on the document and offered their blase congratulations. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what made us married. Lucky for us, the city ward's office happened to offer a service for newly weds only on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and September 3rd just happened to be a Thursday. This was their service:

When we were told about this opportunity we naturally assumed that they would pull us into a separate room to have all of this silliness done. But that didn't happen. Instead, they ushered us over to the corner of the busy ward's office and proceeded to dress us right there in front of about 40 people. Koreans are notorious for their bad staring/gawking habits as it is so, needless to say, this was a bit embarrassing.

After our "wedding" at the ward's office, we had to make it official with our own countries by going back to both embassies to have the wedding certificate looked at (I'm not really sure what they did with it, as no apparent changes were made to the document).

And that's what it took for Ken to become Mr. Elizabeth McClintic and for me to become an ajumma.