Sunday Funday

I slept in on Sunday morning and it was really nice not worrying about being late for anything. Dallas and I went to brunch at Sommertisch and I changed it up by ordering pancakes. They were good, but I miss the thin-style ones we make in the US.

This is a Kia Sky. There are a few similar cars here too. I hate them because they look like boxes on wheels. So Dallas and I have added them to the traditional "punchbuggy" game. I asked if this one counts as two hits since it's multicolored.

Brunch plate. They didn't give me syrup so I had to use Dallas's. The potatoes were the best part.

After eating we walked to get coffee. I wore my new cute summer shoes and made the dumb mistake of not pre-bandaiding my heels. Thus, by the end of the morning I already had blisters forming. Still, they are cute.

D liked this picture better than the one I took of just my toes because you can see the bottoms and my tattoos. You can also see my cankles which is why I like the other one better, but oh well.

As we were walking to get coffee, we passed an ally that had an arbor with this roses on it. They looked fake they were so pretty (and I've seen fake ones before here too), but they were real.

After coffee, we made a pit stop at Dallas's apartment for some band-aids and his Bible, then went to church. We had a guest speaker that day, Pastor Tim Dillmuth, who was there to talk about Seoul USA. It's a ministry that helps spread the Gospel into North Korea and offers support to defectors. They also have an underground university, where they teach people, mainly North Koreans, how to disciple. Often these people go back into North Korea to help. His message was pretty eye-opening. He talked about how even though we (general people) feel "free" compared to North Koreans, our freedom is really about comfort and stuff, whereas they are "free in Christ" in that they have complete faith. So we really don't need to be praying for them, we should be acting as they do. It was a very informative and interesting perspective.

After church, I had a planning team meeting. On the way to Brandon and Jamie's, Olivia fell and scraped her knee. It was the first time she had done something like that, so she was surprised and cried, especially when Jamie had to clean them. She relaxed though and spent most of the rest of the meeting playing with me and Jungwha reading books and jumping on us. Two-year olds are fun but energetic!

After the meeting, I met up with Dallas, who was riding his bike. I changed shoes and then we went to dinner at Papiati - our new favorite place. We got a free salad and split a radicchio pizza - it was good, but I prefer the other 2 I've had there. They have a new waitress for the summer. I forgot her name, but she's studying pharmacy at Toledo University in Ohio and her English is really good. She's on summer break now and we told her we'd see her again.

It also had mushrooms, bacon and black olives (which I promptly removed - blech).

After dinner, we walked down to the river because we saw signs saying something about lanterns for that evening at 7. Buddha's birthday is this upcoming Friday, so we assumed it had something to do with that. We walked around for a bit and got Popsicles, but couldn't find it. Dallas asked someone who said there would be a parade and that it would pass Emart, so we went there and bought a deck of cards. We waited for a bit, then I called a friend who said that it was really a small thing, but that it was at the sports stadium. So we took a bus over to the stadium and looked in. There were a bunch of speeches (since it started at 7 and it was now almost 8:30), ladies in traditional clothes and monks. There were a couple of trucks with lanterns on the back of them and some lanterns with candles in them.

Lantern fest lanterns waiting for October

Kids preparing for the "parade"

A huge group of women wearing hanbok. Not sure what they did since we didn't watch the speeches.

Lantern on the back of a flatbed truck

Lanterns with candles. I wanted to see if I could get one, but I couldn't figure out where/how.

We waited for about 10-15 minutes, but nothing was happening, so we decided to go get coffee and sit on the porch at the coffee shop and play rummy. Dallas won :( I like Sunday night walks better than playing cards, but his ankle was hurting a bit and I still had a good time. Then I went home and played two games of Catan with my brother - I lost one and won one. Then I finished my weekly Bible reading for 180 and went to bed. It was a relaxing and fun weekend!