Tag: South Korea

Challenge Accepted Day 36

Well what a lovely day! I awoke feeling like rubbish still, but it was time to put the big girl panties on and get out and about. And out and about we got. My girls are on Spring break this week and today was a great start to it (other than my rubbish cold that is)! Our neighbor and newfound friend, Rachel put out last week that she wanted to go and check out this place called Anmyeondo island. I love the beach, I love water, I love the peaceful feeling I get when I’m near it and I needed to feel some of that. So I jumped at the chance to join in and travel there. We cancelled our dentist appointments and changed some other stuff around just so we could go. That’s how important it was to me. 
  
This past year has felt like a very long winter. We moved from Hawaii to Colorado in July, 2013 and although Colorado was in Summer at the time, it doesn’t really ever get over 80F in the Springs and that doesn’t qualify as Summer for me, just like Hawaii never got over 80 nor did it ever really get under 70F. So the weather suited me just fine because it was always semi-warm, whereas when it gets cold, I need it to get hot, just to balance me out. My friend Trine (Norwegian) doesn’t think it gets really cold in Colorado and perhaps compared to Norway it doesn’t, but it got down to -32C once (That’s -25.6F) aka bloody cold, too bloody cold for my liking! No one told me hair can freeze when it gets that cold, my hair was damp when I left the house and it froze almost immediately and a giant chunk snapped off, literally snapped. Goodbye hair, it was nice knowing you. No, thank you very much. I like my hair and I like my warmth and though she is one of my dearest friends, we shall always agree to disagree when it comes to Winter. It just doesn’t work for me. Off point, I know. 2015 was a year that seemed to me like perpetual cold. No, it wasn’t the coldest winter on record in Colorado, in fact it was a fairly warm winter, but it was still winter, then we went to Australia in July, my first time home in 5 years, almost to the day, and it’s winter, again. Yay (sarcasm) It hadn’t even gotten up to 80 in Colorado yet! The Sunshine Coast was ok, though I still desperately missed Summer, but Melbourne was absolutely freezing. By the time I get back to Colorado at the end of August, they have pretty much had 5 weeks straight of 80+F temps that all came to an end the week we arrived back, no I’m not kidding! We booked a cruise in January to try and locate some warmth, but even that only gave us one day of nice, warm, laying in the sun, weather and that was on our second last day.
  
We get to South Korea and it’s bleak and miserable and cold and we arrive in Seoul to -30C weather where we have to go and take our dog to play every day, at least twice a day and where the son does nothing but cry as soon as we head outside. It was truly miserable. The one thing about Colorado’s winter is that it is truly beautiful, picturesque probably better describes it. It may be cold and snowing but at least the sun comes out a lot and there’s beautiful mountains and scenery to look at, even on the coldest days. Not South Korea. The trees seem to all be deciduous, so everything looks dead in Winter. It’s cold and bleak with high rises and buildings and junk everywhere. The Koreans are extremely technologically advanced but they still don’t care about litter. I drove back from the beach today and watched car after car roll down their windows and throw stuff out. The beach was covered in trash in parts, just like the streets here. I hate it. I want to stop people in the street and say “what are you doing?” There are also no public rubbish bins (garbage bins) so what are people supposed to do with their garbage? I had two bags of garbage just after our picnic today, the first I left in the restrooms inside the garbage bin in there because I didn’t want to leave a bag of garbage in my car, the second, I took with us. 
Back to today; I would have liked to crawl back into bed, but my need for beach and fresh air was more important, even with an almost 2 hour drive each way! I get out of bed and get cracking early enough to get an esky (cooler) packed as well as our picnic, but not early enough to work out. I do my Rodan and Fields regimen and lavish my face with Reverse #4 sunscreen (my fave sunscreen ever) then have to get breakfast for all children whilst also getting the youngest two ready. I take lots of vitamin C and some medicine that will stop my nose from running. Then it’s time to drop hubby off at work before feeding the cats we are looking after and picking up hubby’s colleague’s teenage daughter whom I have asked to join us, then meeting with Rachel at 9am (0900 in military speak). Crazy start to the day, yes. 
We are off. It was a fairly easy drive given the Korean driving skills, no great drama on the roads, a couple of weird GPS turns, but I expect nothing less, and all goes smoothly. Rachel is leading the minivan convoy and does a great job. I’m a terrible driver/leader, I don’t know why but I always sit there and think the person behind me wants me to go faster or something, and here, all I want to do is go faster but apparently, the Korean speeding ticket is an absolute fortune and there are speed cameras everywhere, so I don’t take any chances. I actually led on the way back and my phone and my car GPS were going crazy with camera locations so it was really a matter of using my cruise control, but I probably also braked a lot and poor Rachel was probably like, “What are you doing?” But I’m not sure how anal they are with speeding tickets and I don’t want to take a chance, so if I thought there was a speed camera, I slowed down to the exact speed limit if not less. And it helped that my GPS lady shuts up when I slow down too!
There are 9 of us hitting the beach including 2 adults, two teens, one tween, and 4 kids all under 8. In our car, we are excited. I can tell you that we all looked at the scenery as we were driving through these regions and finally saw ‘beautiful’ South Korea. It was wonderful to see only green for a change, or green intermingled with flowering cherry blossoms. I wish I could share a photo of it with you, but unfortunately as the driver, there were no good photos. It didn’t help that I didn’t take my camera either! We crossed a number of large bridges to get to the island and it was truly magnificent. I go excited the minute I saw water! We had no idea which beach we should have chosen though, so it was a matter of guess work and between us, we ended up at a bit of a rocky cove, but it meant we found amazing shells! I have never seen so many shells in my life! It was truly amazing. And we collected a lot. Thank goodness Rachel had a spare ziplock bag for us to throw some cool shells in. 
Leaving my eldest on the beach with her teenage friend (because neither of them really felt like going for a walk) the rest of us did a short hike over to the next beach where we discovered some cool shells, tide pools and a big rock stack. A gorgeous scenic viewing area claimed some space at the top of a fairly steep (for my 3 yo) staircase, there were also bunkers (we think) in between. That was my guess anyway, perhaps dating back to the Korean War where sentries kept an eye out for invasion? If anyone can enlighten me further, I would appreciate it.

  
It was a very easy hike even with young kids and well worth it for what awaited us at beach number 3, Sambong. A real life beach, with sand, and few rocks but lots of shells and tide pools. My phone decided a good time to die was right before I got a great photo of the entire beach! What I did get a photo of and what excited me the most was when Rachel’s kids found starfish! Starfish! They were beautiful and they were everywhere. It was so exciting, possibly even more so for me than for the kids, I love starfish! I grew up next to the wate but starfish were something I remember from a kid in New Guinea, I saw some in Tahiti, I think, and some in Malaysia or Thailand (or both) and a couple snorkeling in Hawaii, but that was it. This was literally hundreds of starfish hanging out on the beach in tide pools. We spent a long time just rescuing some who were looking like they had been beached, were starting to curl up, that sort of stuff. I have tried to do some research on starfish rescue (or ‘sea stars’ as they are now known – Ally kept saying this all afternoon but I didn’t give her credit and yet she was 100% correct) but no one seems to know too much about them. Apparently many are committing suicide on the west coast of the United States??? Seriously! Who knew? But no one knows why! Maybe real estate prices? Very strange though considering they have no brain according to scientists. Anyway, the kids and I thought it better safe than sorry given sometimes starfish just have to roll with the surf and have no control over where they end up, better to end up in small tidal pools with access to mussels than not, I say. So that’s what we did. Between us, we must have rescued 50 starfish. And yes, we are sticking with rescued! My kids are heroes! Even Hunter who hates anything stick or gooey on his hands, was very happy to pick these babies up and deliver them to the nearest tidal pool – Hero! 😊
  
These following two photos are credited to Rachel White:

   
 We eventually decided, given the next beach was 10km away, to end the hike there and return to our original location, find my eldest, and let the kids just play for a while before making our way back. On the way back, it seemed like what was an empty path became filled with Korean tourists from a bus tour, all on the steep steps. After many ‘hello’s’ though we go to the lookout to see the last group trying to take a photo. I asked if I could help by taking a photo for them and they were very happy. Having no idea, I mean none whatsoever, what Koreans use to say smile in a photo, I used the go-to for any English speaking person, “Cheese!” But this one dude in the back row cracked me up when his response was: “Kim Cheeeeeese!” Kimchee, or kimchi is a well known Korean dish and this seriously made me laugh, just because I guess I was expecting something like it, but I wasn’t. Brilliant! Next time, that shall be my go-to line, not Kimchee, but kimcheeeese! 
Back to the beach we go where the kids get to play for a while and the weather has warmed up enough for us to remove sweaters for a short while. It was fun. Needing to use the toilet wasn’t mind you, given the barnacle/rock extravaganza that awaited us, but it was fun nonetheless. I took the lead as I previously mentioned, to drive home when Rachel’s app didn’t want to cooperate, and it was all good except for my speeding up/slowing down maneuvers of course. We got home at a more decent hour than I expected and hubby was actually in between (meaning he came home to change before going out again) so it all worked out as the kids got to tell him all about their awesome, amazing, wonderful day at the beach. 
Unfortunately, the minute I got home, it was like all the congestion that spent most of the day leaving my body, came back in full force, perhaps the ocean air was a big contributor, anyway, rubbish was how I felt! It was time to check on the kitties again and I was supposed to start T25 beta round but at 7pm (the time we were back in the house) all this body wanted to do was relax, instead, I had to get my kids the extremely gourmet meal of ramen (2minute) noodles – thank you noodle Monday and for the fact that sometimes I don’t have to be elaborate! I had leftover pasta, got everyone in respective showers, including myself. Did the night regimen, no AMP MD tonight either, and sat down to write this. There may have been some trashy Korean TV in between, a first for our family as we searched for something suitable for the kids to watch with us, and it may have involved ‘little people’, a video of my dog intently watching the show ‘Little People, Big World’ and I may have also let my girls watch that crazy show ‘Toddlers and Tiaras’ just to give them an idea about how I am a very normal mummy! But otherwise, a relatively quiet night! 
I hope your day and or night are magnificent, no matter where you are. For me, I just want to wake up without a sore, runny nose in the morning and be able to do a double Tuesday workout, given I didn’t do this one today! 
Happy trails! 😊

Challenge Accepted Day 35

Another interesting day in South Korea! I started out my day feeling like rubbish! Honestly, it was like my head had filled up with gunk overnight! Yuck. Not nice. We had a birthday party to get to and we didn’t get up until late, so it was a bit of a dash to ensure everyone was organized and ready to go. I forgot to buy a birthday card also, so the kiddos had to make one this morning as well. I hate buying birthday cards though. They are expensive, they get read then thrown away. I’d much prefer to just throw a small slip of paper into the bag/box/packaging and save a tree. Oh well, just personal preference. I had some cough/cold medicine that tasted awful and did nothing for me, followed with vitamin C and OJ, none of which did jack! Oh well, ‘big girl panties’ got put on and off we went. 
We headed off to the party which was to be followed by a work lunch for hubby. He had some VIPs who came in and they were trying to ensure they had a shopping and local dining experience that was relaxed and fun. The party was great. The kids had a blast and they had food, like real food. And good real food. We were full by the time we went to lunch with hubby’s VIPs. I was also starting to feel like rubbish again. We get to this all you can eat meat place where everything is so low key, they are not hounding us about the amount of food we are going to eat or anything! In fact, neither hubby nor I ate but I cooked Korean bbq style at the table for the kiddos and decided this was actually a good opportunity to try Soju! Actually, I thought it was more wine, but it wasn’t. It was straight Soju that I picked out. And no, not a midday drink. I tried to share it around but only two others would partake, so I packed the remainder of the bottle up in my bag and left it at that. It’s about the size of a mini wine bottle and it was just sitting there in the fridge; what’s one to expect? Not some sort of Korean vodka/whisky type thing anyway! 

  
I felt immediately better and told my hubby Soju worked much better than cough medicine any day! As I am writing, I am sneezing like a crazy woman! Not sure if tomorrow (our day at the beach) is going to pan out! We have a good time though wondering through the streets of the Osan ‘Ville’ – what makes it super interesting is I see this spa type store that has fish in it eating this girl’s dead skin! I’ve read about them but never actually seen one. How cool! Before I know it, I am saying, “Yea, I’m in!”

  
  
Very interesting! I’ve never felt anything quite like it. The fish tickled, felt revolting and amazing all at the same time! It was weird. They nibble away, they tickle, they feel refreshing, they tickle, they feel weird and revolting. That’s the best way I can explain it. When you get out (it’s a 10 minute thing) your feet and legs feel great! I would have liked something deeper that went about mid thigh. They really went crazy on my legs, perhaps because I had just shaved this morning? I don’t know. But my ankles/lower calves came out feeling amazing! And still look amazing 4 hours later. I may be on to something here. The legs rather than the feet needing the nurture? 😉
  

We came home and visited our temporary custodian cats; Luna still doesn’t like us but greeted us with joy nonetheless. Itty Bit (our 20 year old feline friend) was more enthusiastic and purred her love for us all. We spent a long time hanging out with them and showing them a bit of love, before heading back to the abode.

  
Tomorrow is still up in the air; With me feeling like rubbish, the lady who organized it concerned about air quality and various other ‘Korean’ factors coming in to play, I am still all a go right now but must hit the sack and attempt to get rid of this congestion! I shall keep you in the loop as far as everything unfolds!
Unfortunately there has been no T25 stretching today 😕 it just hasn’t happened and I haven’t pushed it given the crappiness that is filling my head right now. I hope you however, are feeling amazing and continue to do so! 

Have a wonderful day and or night no matter where in the worl you are!

Challenge Accepted Day 34

Hello and goodbye to Saturday! Not sure where you went, but you’ve gone! We had a busy, but not hectic day over here. It all started with my silly internal alarm knowing I could sleep in but not doing so. Awake at 0600, I was, not good! Dear son greeted me just after 7 and the day was off. Coffee, breakfast, washing, I thought about running and should have taken Luna for a run, but it just didn’t happen. We went and fed and hung out with the cats for a good half hour (we’re pet sitting for the next 10 days, and that was fun. They have a Luna too, but she’s not a big fan of little people unfortunately, unlike our Luna who loves everyone). It was all good though. One of the cats is 20 years old so she needs some special attention and Madison has taken it upon herself to make sure she gets it. She made her walk around, we fed them, the kids tried to get Luna to play a little with them, we made sure the old lady had her medication. It was all good, and the sweet lady we are looking after them for left all sorts of gifts on the counter. Individual gifts for each of my children and a bottle of vino for moi. I didn’t grab any of them though as I don’t think any of us should get anything until we’ve done a good job and until the job is finished. So I didn’t even show the kids anything. 
By the time we returned home, we had to head out. Hubby had to go to the airport at 1300 (also known as 1pm in the civilian world) and he had to pick up a suit he had made in the ville beforehand. Then everyone would need to eat and that would be our time with him today done. We parked and walked to the tailor shop and wow! That suit was perfect. The stitching on it was superb, the cut was identical to what we had picked out and it fit my husband like a glove (no, not a glove, like a Savile Row suit though) very impressive as was the price. If ever you need a suit, the quality here in South Korea is very good. Hubby had a suit made in Bahrain years ago and the quality of it was nothing on this one. I’m even thinking about getting them to make me a dress for the gala. Here’s one I found online: 

  

What do you think? I’m not sure of the dressmaking skills though, nor about how they would put together such an elaborate outfit so it’s probably not going to happen, but I can always ask and see what fabric/suggestions they’ve got. There’s a couple more that I have found too so it could be really fun. I’ll need to decide in time to buy some shoes though, can’t really get too much variety around here with a foot my size, so I either need to have shoes to match or need to order some online. God I sound like a bit of a diva! I’m not even really into all that stuff, more often then not you’ll find me walking around with ‘active wear’ (anytime I hear that I immediately think of the YouTube hit by the Australian women of the same title, if you haven’t seen it then it’s a must). Anyway, it’s either exercise gear because I’m about to exercise or have already (that’s my go-to outfit for the bus stop because I always work out in the morning) or it’s track suit pants and a shirt, soon it will probably be a pair of 3/4 pants or shorts, nothing remotely lovely. I also rarely wear makeup and like I told you in another blog, my hair is up in a ponytail or hidden under a hat, so that’s as far as my egocentric dress code goes. When I do have the opportunity to dress up, I take it. 

We ate lunch at an American style diner after checking out a South African place we had heard great things about but deciding hubby and I should return sans kids for date night there. It was literally called JJ’s American Diner. Well, I wasn’t too impressed. It was pricey for what you got, there were no drinks with kids meals (a normal thing Stateside) and my wrap did say tenders but I assumed that meant the cut of the chicken meat not actually chicken nugget tenders shoved inside a wrap with lettuce and tomato. And the avocado ranch was a little bit of avocado thrown into ranch dressing. I felt like I could have gone to the store and bought everything and made it for myself in a matter of minutes using all prepackaged store bought ingredients. Hubby had a panini melt and it looked good and he said it tasted great but it was basically a toasted sandwich with prosciutto, ham, and salami on it. Madison’s hot dog was awful! I’m not sure what meat they used on it but I would never again buy a Korean hotdog if that’s the standard to go buy. Yuck. We all broke a little off to taste it after she said it was disgusting and everyone agreed with her afterwards. We left there feeling ok to never return. 
We dropped hubby off, ran some errands then decided to check out the community activity center (CAC). Inside of there, Hunter guided us towards the pool (he had been there before with hubby) and we were all shocked at the size of the indoor pool. The kids begged me to take them swimming so how could I say no? Home we went to grab our gear and swimming it was. What fun, if a tad cold for my liking, but it was good for the kids and I to have some fun together. I’m normally the one who hangs out on the side whilst hubby plays with the kids in the water so it was good today for me to have to stay in there with them the entire time. We had a good time and I got a little bit of natural exercise in on my rest day. 

I made a concoction for dinner that turned out to be amazing! Yes, I shall give you my recipe though it’s definitely not a ‘healthy’ choice! 

Large pasta shells (entire box)

2 bottles of red pasta sauce – your choice

1 large can of white chicken breast meat – low fat

1 small container ricotta 

Other cheese (a couple of handfuls of the grated kind, I used 4 cheese Mexican mix) and about 1 cup mozzarella.

About half cup fresh Parmesan

Chicken salt or other seasoned salt, pepper to taste

Garlic powder

Parsley (fresh is best but jar will suffice)

Onion could be optional (I didn’t use it but had it just been me eating it, I would have)

Cook pasta shells about 9 mins as per directions. 

Get two large dishes and pour half a jar into the bottom of each dish (using and entire jar to do both).

Mix chicken, ricotta, half of 4 cheese blend (or equivalent), half of Parmesan and half mozzarella and parsley

Add salt and pepper to taste (literally taste it cold, you’ll know if you need more seasoning

Stuff shells with your mix filling up both dishes. Cover with remaining sauce (1/2 jar each) and sprinkle with remaining cheese.

Bake for 30 minutes in a medium to hot oven (400F/200C)

Yum! Enjoy

  

I haven’t really touched on the T25 or Rodan + Fields stuff today but I don’t want to bore you by repeating myself daily either. There was nothing new to report today. All went well with my face regime this morning, my skin is feeling really good, no sensitivity at all. And it was rest day prior to stretching tomorrow before beginning T25 Beta Monday! 
So, now I sit here, my eyes are closing, I am tired from my day of doing a lot but not doing too much. Tomorrow we have a birthday party to go to followed by who knows what other adventures! Have a wonderful day or night, wherever you are. 
If you would like to order your own products from Rodan + Fields (the number 2 Premium skincare Company in the USA mind you) then please go to my website:

http://www.slongmorescott.myrandf.com

If you want to email me directly then please email me at:

aussiemumsadventures@outlook.com

And remember to like aussiemumsadventures on Facebook. 

Challenge Accepted Day 33

Hello and happy Friday! First things first, today was supposed to be a sleep in day but instead I awoke before hubby’s alarm, needing to go to the toilet but not wanting to get up! Isn’t it crazy how we do that? You lay there thinking it might pass because you don’t want to get out of your warm, cozy bed, never fully comprehending (no matter how many years you’ve been on earth) that the urge isn’t going anywhere and eventually you will have to give in to it. Today I held out for over an hour! Unfortunately meaning I didn’t ever go back to sleep, but somehow won the battle with my bladder because I did stay in bed! So, got up to the pitter patter of little feet at about 7 and got on with our day, me in desperate need of coffee before being the nice Mummy I can be sometimes. Madison unfortunately tested me before coffee intake and lost that battle! I gave her two chocolate doughnuts, she wanted the last three, I told her she could have two, she went on about how unfair it was, I sent her to her room and told her to come back downstairs when she had lost the attitude and to start again, this time without any doughnuts! So she did. Seriously, pick your battles with Mummy! And don’t even begin them when Mummy hasn’t had coffee, on top of holding her bladder for forever! 😜

We breakfasted without further incident and I finally willed myself to go upstairs and work out leaving the children playing on their tablets. Again, I could have used any excuse under the sun not to workout and I was thinking of them all. Even when I pressed play on ‘Cardio’ (no TBC today) I was thinking of excuses as to why I couldn’t do a second workout today, but I ignored them and I did lower focus. I did have a little half-chuckle to myself at my very brief notion last night of doing some extra squats and lunges. Bwahaha! After lower focus, there was no way in hell this body was capable of any extra lunges or squats! But it was good, and I was thankful to have not listened to my inner voice and to have done both workouts today and, given I am now about halfway through the T25 challenge, I wanted to show you my results:

  
Well, what do you think? I’d love some feedback! Madison told me I look a lot more muscular in the after shots. So I’ll take that as a win. I know the scales are only saying about a one pound difference (that’s about half a kilo) but the body is actually speaking (minor changes, I know) in these pictures. Thank god! As far as my face is concerned, I know you really want to see some photos of me without makeup as a halfway point for the R+F challenge, but I’m just not sure the photos are capturing the differences so I’m going to keep you in suspense until the due date for those results. If you look closely on the body photos, I’m not wearing any makeup and there is definitely a difference, you may just have to trust me on that one for right now. 
I followed my workout with my morning regime with Rodan and Fields and guess what? No irritation after using the AMP MD last night! Please ignore everything I said about using the AMP MD in the morning, the ‘night’ renewing serum is meant for just that and my skin felt amazing again this morning when I awoke and amazing after my morning regime. Back on track, I am. Yes, please call me Yoda. 😆 
I walked out of the bathroom with fresh skin, knowing what I wanted to do today; I wanted to paint and I wanted to be inspired by nature and by beauty. I dragged the kids and the dog down to the rice paddies and snapped some photos and collected some small branches and got a little inspired. I really like the ‘Southwest’ (USA) painting style and I am ok at it, whereas water inspired stuff, doesn’t work for me, as much as I love it. Now, please understand, I am on painting number 5 in my life. I’ve never had any training, not even art in school after grade 8, so this is a reasonably new hobby. I’m practicing my painting of water scenes but I did one painting of a Southwest scene and gave it to a friend and their daughter-in-law wanted to commission me to paint something similar for her family once they bought a new house, unfortunately (or fortunately depending upon how one looks at it) we moved over here and they moved into their house at about the same time. Anyway, back to the painting today, I wanted to try something different. When we were in Australia, I saw a lot of 3D art and thought today I would attempt to make my own. It didn’t quite come out like I had pictured it, well no, let me rephrase, I had no idea what I was planning on so I guess it came out as it was meant to….

  
(This was my second painting ever (well aside from finger painting I guess).

  
My abstract 3D painting from today…..

The afternoon was followed with drawing another ‘Southwest’ picture, I may just start painting it shortly. We’ll see. I have to go with the vibe when it hits me and I know I’m accountable to all of you each and every day as far as my blog is concerned, so that takes priority, well, after my family of course. Our dinner was a wonderful roast beef, I’ve finally mastered the 110 voltage converters here we live out in town rather than on the base/post and there are 110v and 220v plugs with a built in converter somewhere), they aren’t very good and for whatever reason, the 110v are very slow, even the toaster spits out bread rather than toast. So the 110V slow cooker has to have a couple of hours added on to the time, today’s meal took 10 hours whereas stateside it would have taken 8 on low cook. At least I know and can be prepared from now on. Anyway, the dinner was wonderful, a very lean, tender roast beef, with a gravy made from tomatoes, onions, celery, carrot, organic chicken and beef stock as well as vegetable stock and a light red wine, actually ‘Le card Bordeaux’, Alessandra couldn’t stop saying how wonderful the gravy was! We had Costco bread rolls, broccoli, mashed potato and homemade oven chips (fries) with chicken salt. Wonderful. All five plates clean. So, it’s Friday night, and I am going to say adieu because I haven’t really seen my hubby for a few days and finally he is here and doesn’t have his nose buried in paperwork, have a great day or night depending upon where you are and I’ll see you on Saturday! I’ll leave you with some more photos from our walk today:

  
  
  
  
  

Challenge Accepted Day 33

Hello and happy Friday! First things first, today was supposed to be a sleep in day but instead I awoke before hubby’s alarm, needing to go to the toilet but not wanting to get up! Isn’t it crazy how we do that? You lay there thinking it might pass because you don’t want to get out of your warm, cozy bed, never fully comprehending (no matter how many years you’ve been on earth) that the urge isn’t going anywhere and eventually you will have to give in to it. Today I held out for over an hour! Unfortunately meaning I didn’t ever go back to sleep, but somehow won the battle with my bladder because I did stay in bed! So, got up to the pitter patter of little feet at about 7 and got on with our day, me in desperate need of coffee before being the nice Mummy I can be sometimes. Madison unfortunately tested me before coffee intake and lost that battle! I gave her two chocolate doughnuts, she wanted the last three, I told her she could have two, she went on about how unfair it was, I sent her to her room and told her to come back downstairs when she had lost the attitude and to start again, this time without any doughnuts! So she did. Seriously, pick your battles with Mummy! And don’t even begin them when Mummy hasn’t had coffee, on top of holding her bladder for forever! 😜

We breakfasted without further incident and I finally willed myself to go upstairs and work out leaving the children playing on their tablets. Again, I could have used any excuse under the sun not to workout and I was thinking of them all. Even when I pressed play on ‘Cardio’ (no TBC today) I was thinking of excuses as to why I couldn’t do a second workout today, but I ignored them and I did lower focus. I did have a little half-chuckle to myself at my very brief notion last night of doing some extra squats and lunges. Bwahaha! After lower focus, there was no way in hell this body was capable of any extra lunges or squats! But it was good, and I was thankful to have not listened to my inner voice and to have done both workouts today and, given I am now about halfway through the T25 challenge, I wanted to show you my results:

  
Well, what do you think? I’d love some feedback! Madison told me I look a lot more muscular in the after shots. So I’ll take that as a win. I know the scales are only saying about a one pound difference (that’s about half a kilo) but the body is actually speaking (minor changes, I know) in these pictures. Thank god! As far as my face is concerned, I know you really want to see some photos of me without makeup as a halfway point for the R+F challenge, but I’m just not sure the photos are capturing the differences so I’m going to keep you in suspense until the due date for those results. If you look closely on the body photos, I’m not wearing any makeup and there is definitely a difference, you may just have to trust me on that one for right now. 
I followed my workout with my morning regime with Rodan and Fields and guess what? No irritation after using the AMP MD last night! Please ignore everything I said about using the AMP MD in the morning, the ‘night’ renewing serum is meant for just that and my skin felt amazing again this morning when I awoke and amazing after my morning regime. Back on track, I am. Yes, please call me Yoda. 😆 
I walked out of the bathroom with fresh skin, knowing what I wanted to do today; I wanted to paint and I wanted to be inspired by nature and by beauty. I dragged the kids and the dog down to the rice paddies and snapped some photos and collected some small branches and got a little inspired. I really like the ‘Southwest’ (USA) painting style and I am ok at it, whereas water inspired stuff, doesn’t work for me, as much as I love it. Now, please understand, I am on painting number 5 in my life. I’ve never had any training, not even art in school after grade 8, so this is a reasonably new hobby. I’m practicing my painting of water scenes but I did one painting of a Southwest scene and gave it to a friend and their daughter-in-law wanted to commission me to paint something similar for her family once they bought a new house, unfortunately (or fortunately depending upon how one looks at it) we moved over here and they moved into their house at about the same time. Anyway, back to the painting today, I wanted to try something different. When we were in Australia, I saw a lot of 3D art and thought today I would attempt to make my own. It didn’t quite come out like I had pictured it, well no, let me rephrase, I had no idea what I was planning on so I guess it came out as it was meant to….

  
(This was my second painting ever (well aside from finger painting I guess).

  
My abstract 3D painting from today…..

The afternoon was followed with drawing another ‘Southwest’ picture, I may just start painting it shortly. We’ll see. I have to go with the vibe when it hits me and I know I’m accountable to all of you each and every day as far as my blog is concerned, so that takes priority, well, after my family of course. Our dinner was a wonderful roast beef, I’ve finally mastered the 110 voltage converters here we live out in town rather than on the base/post and there are 110v and 220v plugs with a built in converter somewhere), they aren’t very good and for whatever reason, the 110v are very slow, even the toaster spits out bread rather than toast. So the 110V slow cooker has to have a couple of hours added on to the time, today’s meal took 10 hours whereas stateside it would have taken 8 on low cook. At least I know and can be prepared from now on. Anyway, the dinner was wonderful, a very lean, tender roast beef, with a gravy made from tomatoes, onions, celery, carrot, organic chicken and beef stock as well as vegetable stock and a light red wine, actually ‘Le card Bordeaux’, Alessandra couldn’t stop saying how wonderful the gravy was! We had Costco bread rolls, broccoli, mashed potato and homemade oven chips (fries) with chicken salt. Wonderful. All five plates clean. So, it’s Friday night, and I am going to say adieu because I haven’t really seen my hubby for a few days and finally he is here and doesn’t have his nose buried in paperwork, have a great day or night depending upon where you are and I’ll see you on Saturday! I’ll leave you with some more photos from our walk today:

Challenge Accepted Day 31

Well what a lushful day! I have been nothing but a big lush all afternoon! I started off my morning in the right frame of mind; making my bed, cleaning, unpacking/packing the dishwasher etc, etc. I even did Total Body Circuit on T25, ok almost did it, the DVD cut out with 7 minutes to go and I’m not going to lie, this body was lying on the ground like a beached whale with Shawn T asking me to give a little more and do wide in/out abs with a squat and I pretty much wanted to tell him where he could shove those when the DVD cut out! What a shame! Oh well, sometimes one just has to go with it and listen to the body (& mind) & tell everything else where to go. Today was that day. I cleaned ferociously afterwards, so it’s not like I just sat around like a beached whale all day, it was only the one time with Shawn T watching…..
My friend Tawni came for lunch and lunch was wonderful, if I do say so myself. She too loves haloumi, so my balsamic vinegar chicken, avocado & haloumi salad went down really well. If I hadn’t been so hungry I would have taken a photo of just how awesome lunch looked, and tasted! I also introduced Tawni to ‘Le Card Bordeaux de Franzia rouge chillable’ or Franzia box wine Chillable Red’ it sounds so much nicer in French. I love red wine and white wine, in bottle form, in expensive bottle form, but this US box wine is scarily drinkable. They need to start paying me commission for the people I introduce to this very drinkable, very mild, very light, very refreshing, very summer, box wine. Seriously. Add new person today! And if any of you taste it just because of this blog then we need to start a new hashtag, possibly #Sheryn’sFranziaDrinkableRed ? Let me know what you think! 
So lunch was amazing. Don’t you just love it when you connect with someone immediately and it turns out all instincts are correct and you can connect with them immediately again and again? In military life, we need to speed up relationships because we’re always coming and going and so are other people, so we need to get right in there with people we connect with and enjoy their company whilst we can. That’s just how it is and any Mil Spouse who’s been doing this for long enough, understands those credentials. If they don’t, then they’re either new or have been lucky enough to be stationed in one place for so long they forgot what it’s like to move every two to three years or they’re just not worth being friends with. I sound harsh, but I’m telling the truth. This life is very unpredictable. We need to know what we want, know what we need, have our priorities in place (family first always) and get on with doing what we do and being completely and honestly ‘real’. It’s all about being real. No one wants to bullshit and most of us don’t have time for it. We like good old fashioned real people. Most of us don’t care about where you fit in to the military rank ‘spectrum’. We like you because we like you and nothing else matters. It’s our soldier spouses who have to worry about rank, not us. So today was once again refreshing because my gut instincts were correct (no that’s not why it was refreshing) and I met someone who was/is consistently real, consistently herself. 

My afternoon was almost over by the time Tawni left but what a lovely way to spend my day. I decided to go on strike as far as dinner was concerned, I guess hubby is just popping in to see us anyway before continuing his night at work, so leftover tacos will suffice for him and cheese pizza will do for the kiddos, as for me, well, perhaps, a taco also. I’ll go with the flow. 

Onto the Rodan + Fields side of things, well, my friend Sue enlightened me today by suggesting that my tenderness from using the AMP MD has stemmed from switching to the morning and following it with the ‘liquid velvet’ Night Renewing Serum. It’s called Night for a reason; You need the entire night to recover from using the AMP MD and the serum provides that overnight renewal, not necessarily your daytime benefits. She thinks my skin has become more sensitive because of this reason and that once I switch back to the night time regime, things will go back to normal. I should trust Doctors Rodan and Fields. Probably a good idea. Sometimes I try to make things fit in with me and it ‘ain’t necessarily so’. I need to be stricter with following directions and listen to the experts! 
Today’s blog is short and sweet. It was a wonderful day that ended with the not-so-great side of military life where hubby has to work into the wee hours of the morning. Kids are in bed. I am tired. Looking forward to the AMP MD tonight (with very light pressure of course) and to chilling by the tv with no interruption. I must say though, my kids all crack me up with their little stories/isms during the day and Hunter is obviously here with me the most, so I get to hear his more than anyone else’s. This morning he had his Avengers pjs on. I told him if he wanted to come to the bus stop, he would have to change, so he went upstairs and grabbed his Captain America track pants and gap sweatshirt, came down and took off his pjs and put those items on. I asked where his shirt was and he said he didn’t need one. I told him he would need a shirt as it was cold and he said and I quote, “Mummy, if I wear that pajama shirt underneath, I’m going to look like a weirdo!” Seriously! 😊
Have great day and or night! See you on the upside! Don’t forget you’ll never be as young as you are today, so make the most of it! 

Challenge Accepted Day 30

No run today but I did do abs, and that actually went really well. This was followed by a mad dash for the shower so I could drive hubby to work and have the car today. I picked up my friend Sara and we headed off to grocery shop (very exciting, I know) at both a local Korean store as well as at the commissary (the armed forces grocery store where you can get a lot of US staples). It was interesting. 
We started out the adventure at a place called Home Plus. Sara is of Korean heritage so even though she doesn’t speak the language fluently, she has a fairly good grasp of a lot of things, including foods. I ended up buying lots of amazing sweet Korean chips and a few other food items that I never would have tried had she not been with me, and having just opened a packet for Hunter to eat, I can rest assured they were really good. Honey chips. Yum. I bought a couple of bottles of Korean wine too, and something I guess is considered to be a whisky type drink but is very smooth going down. One day I’ll work up the courage to drink it all. Apparently that one sneaks up on you so we’ll see how it goes. 

  
We wandered around looking at cooking supplies and various other things, I even bought a set of chopsticks that are called learning chopsticks, so my kids can learn to use them and won’t look like crazy weirdo foreigners attempting (& failing) to use chopsticks. I’m excited for them to have a go. The only thing I didn’t think through was that I only bought one set, meaning fights are going to break out now whenever the chopsticks come out. Oh well, it was more for fun rather than serious learning so I didn’t want to spend another 5000 won on a second set. They’ll just have to take turns on different nights. 

  
We followed our sojourn to Home Plus with a visit to the Air Force Base, it was midweek lunchtime and the place was fairly busy but we got a carpark and were able to eat our lunch without much of a wait too, our only incident occurred when Hunter was in the little indoor play area and a little boy just pushed his head straight into a bar going across. I about lost my mind. I went and got Hunter, who was crying and said to this little boy, “That wasn’t very nice, in fact that was very mean!” I looked around trying to see a parent and couldn’t until eventually, the mother came over and told him to come and say sorry, he didn’t, but he did ask if Hunter was alright, so I let it go. I’m on kid number three, not too much is going to get me riled up, but I don’t like kids who are mean just for the sake of it and this kid was just that. 
Onto grocery shopping we went. My whole day has gone fairly smoothly and I think, I want to buy hubby a nice plant for his office. It’ll keep the air clean and give the place a little bit of life and just be nice. So I did. I picked out this really cute fern type thing. I put it in the trolley (cart) and went about shopping for fresh produce, next thing you know I can hear this really weird noise, I’m wondering what on earth it could be (Hunter has a miniature trolley so I’m looking to see if he has crashed into something) but no, it’s my newly picked out plant, it has fallen over and these large gravel bits are literally pouring out all over the floor. Crap! I go and try to pick up as many as I can but these things have gone everywhere! Hunter and I are down on the floor trying our best to put them back in the pot plant, when eventually I call it and say that’ll do. I should have known then that the plant was possibly jinxed as then they charged me twice for the thing and I didn’t even notice until I got all the way home! Bugger. Hubby had better appreciate it, that’s all I’m going to say. Honestly though, given the number of times Koreans tried to take us (or themselves) out on this trip, I’m going to thank my lucky stars! These people are wonderful, sweet, lovely, normal people, until you put them behind the wheel of a car, then they turn into these crazy, drag racer, speed demon, hellions, looking to risk life and limb to get down the road! Insane! 

 So what’s all this talk about Dolly Parton? Last night (as televised here in South Korea) Dolly performed with Katy Perry at the Country Music Awards. Dolly Parton and Katy Perry, and it wasn’t that bad. I love Dolly Parton. Coat of Many Colors has been a favourite of mine for many, many years and last year, the kids and I sat down and watched Dolly’s movie, they too now love the song because they saw new meaning behind it rather than just having Mummy playing it and singing in her best Dolly imitation! I sound amazing! Well, I do when no one else is in the car with me anyway! Actually even Hunter tells me how wonderful I sound, not anyone else, but at least I have one fan! 😜 So Dolly coming on last night and singing on a show I normally wouldn’t have watched (I’m not into singers, actors, etc awarding themselves for doing their jobs and getting a shit ton of money on top of that)! Anyway, I was looking for the show ‘The Good Wife’ and this was on instead and there were no other interesting options on our hugely diverse AFN (American Forces Network) with its 5 channel range, so I left it on whilst I finished my blog. Hearing in the meantime this crazy notion that Dolly & Katy were singing together. It wasn’t half bad either. I thought Katy Perry (though looking like she was taking the Mickey out of every Country fan but at the same time giving her own twist on traditional country garb) performed very well. When you’re up there on stage beside Dolly Parton, there’s some big boots to fill (figuratively of course). I wish I could see Dolly Parton perform live. My sister and my niece went and saw her and I was so envious! My friend in NZ went and saw her, again, feeling like I should have been there, but no. I guess Dolly and I are never destined to meet, even with me in the audience and Dolly on the stage! Each time I sing in my loud Dolly voice, I shall pretend I’m hearing the real deal! 😆 

  

My skincare regime wasn’t quite as normal after I finished watching them perform, I looked at my neck and it was very red and a bit sore to touch. I think I may have pressed too hard on the AMP MD or I may even have to face the fact that the AMP MD and I aren’t going to work well together anymore. I would have thought any tenderness would have shown it’s face in the early days, but I am no dermatologist and what I can tell you is that I could see marks on my neck from it and they were stinging. I know that doesn’t do much for the sales side of it, but I have really sensitive skin so I’m a little surprised I have been able to use it this long without incident. I also promised to be honest with you in this blog, always, even when things don’t necessarily go the way I want them to. I shall give the AMP MD a miss today and possibly tomorrow and use it very lightly on Thursday and see how I go and let you know then how it worked out. Today marks my halfway period with Rodan + Fields and I think my skin is looking and feeling better. I’m just trying to establish the reason behind this sudden tenderness. It may even be that diet is playing a role. Who knows. 

  

Some exciting news for the night is that we are heading to a place called Anmyeondo, it looks beautiful and it’s a beach! A real life beach! And it’s warming up! I may even be able to just sit down and enjoy it (ok that’s highly unlikely given I have a three year old but I can dream right). At least I will be able to go to this place and see if it’s somewhere we can go as a family one weekend. It looks amazing. One of the ladies in the ‘ville’ (what the little estate areas are called here where everyone lives and/or shops) is going and put it out there to see if anyone else wants to come and I saw the post and jumped at the chance. I have been so desperate for warm weather and water and beauty! To say I’m excited is a little bit of an understatement! Hubby can’t come but the kids and I are on Spring break, so we shall go and enjoy ourselves! I have even given him the heads up to not expect us home early and he’ll either have to find a ride or get a taxi home! 
Came to also find out upon hubby’s arrival home that we have a ‘Spring Gala’ to go to on May 6th. Here’s the crazy thing about the Military life, we may go through a lot of stuff and deal with hardships and adventures like very few other people but we also get to dress up and go to Cinderella type balls on a fairly frequent occasion. I couldn’t do it every day, but I do love dressing up every now and again like a princess. This one is a couple of hours away from us so we shall have to figure out some logistics but I think we’ve got most of it sorted out already. My goal to look fabulous before my next birthday just got real. Now I have a ball to dress for on the night before! The bison steak I just ate for dinner tonight along with the garlic bread and mashed potatoes and gravy had better come to a fast and firm end! 

As for everything else, well, it’s all good! I hope it’s all good in your neck of the woods too!

Challenge Accepted Day 29

Good Monday to you and yours. Awoke this morning feeling fabulous! I had a wonderful night’s sleep. Sent both children off on their respective buses when hubby came home so I took the opportunity to take Luna for a run as it was a beautiful day. Well, we got down into the rice paddies and I thought, “should I?” “Is it a good idea?” And, yes, yes it was! There was no one about so I let Luna go and oh how happy she was! I was really worried she would take off and chase the ducks or something but instead, she ventured out to see some white birds but she came straight back and from then on, she didn’t go far and kept looking behind her to make sure I was still there. How wonderful it was for us both, she not choking herself to death by pulling on her leash, me not feeling like I’m slowly Killing my dog because I cannot run a 4 minute mile! Seriously, you could see her smiling. We waved to farmers and had a great run! 

This was followed by a not-so-great workout. I’m not sure what it is about Total Body Circuit (& I have it 2 or 3 times this week) but we don’t mesh! I was exhausted about 3/4 of the way through! I literally had to stop the DVD and do the workout on my own time (fast forwarding to each move or skipping the parts on my DVD that are all messed up but trying to do them myself) in order to get it done! It was downright depressing! I’m on week 5 & still I have my struggle moments with T25! Especially after such a great fun. The day seemed to head on a downhill (soft) slope from there. 

I had to clean. The dust bunnies were taking over. It was a matter of life and death. I couldn’t shower and clean my face until I had finished cleaning the house; who wants to be all lovely and clean then have to vacuum and mop? Not me. I’ve set Robbie up to go daily at 10am but one still needs to use a regular vacuum to get to the nooks and crannies and the ‘oh-so-tedious’ stairs! Seriously when is some going to create a stair cleaning robot? It was a process and I didn’t even get to the dusting as such! I’m not sure how cleaning isn’t a full-time job in and of itself. Especially here! Luckily I’m not the OCD type and could call it when I needed to. And that was about 30 minutes before Madison’s bus arrived leaving just enough time to do my Rodan and Fields regimen and all the other stuff required on a Monday. There was a lot. I did it all including AMP MD. It felt good today. My skin was very much ready and I’m glad I took the break. I also didn’t do my moisturizer mojo over the weekend (you know where I use the leftover hotel lotions to massage those body bits that could do with some extra loving – read the entire blog if you’re sitting there clueless 😜) so I did that today and my bits literally jumped out and thanked me! 

I forgot to mention the incidents that happened in between! My phone rang, it was the elementary school nurse, (not good) she wanted to let me know that Madison had fallen over in the school hallway (no one else was involved in the incident was a point pushed home) and had smashed her chin so hard that it had bruised. Great, she’s a spastic like her mother and here I thought she was the coordinated child! I made sure she didn’t have a headache or anything that needed to be followed up and when given reassurance, hung up, chuckling a little at my ‘unco’ child. I then saw that one of the curtains wasn’t hanging on a little hook (curtains are a little different here in South Korea) & thought I should reattach it which meant some chair climbing/balancing/you know. As I was finally done, I tried to get down thinking that would be the easiest part, & honestly, I can’t really explain what happened next, but somehow my leg whacked the chair (it’s a robust chair as you can see in the photo) and got this giant knot on the inside of my knee. I didn’t even know that could happen! Anyway, it hurt like hell! I couldn’t really walk for a while and all I could think about was that it could finish this challenge midway! Thank god it got better throughout the afternoon with some ice and Hail Mary’s! It was not over…. Ally got home and shared with me that her middle right finger might be broken because a boy in school accidentally whacked her with a Lacrosse stick. What! I have a look at it as soon as we get inside and it looks bruised but ok. Again, thank god! There’s only three days of school left before Spring break but she has exams on Wednesday and Thursday. So Madison asks if she can go out on the street and skate after finishing her homework and I think, “No!” Too many injuries today. So I let her and Hunter go out into our little tiny yard and play together, just as I’m about to call them in Hunter starts screaming and Madison is in a bit of a panic too. “What happened?” I ask. Hunter fell down the stairs and landed flat on his face. Oh, yes, my regular, accident prone, uncoordinated kid has made an appearance today! Yes, I was wondering where he was! Luckily it was just some scrapes to the hands, the face and, somehow, the back of the thigh! It was bath time thereafter and everyone had to be wrapped in cotton wool. I couldn’t do anything more. Luckily, all incidents ended once they were in bed! 

We had tacos for dinner and I opted for lettuce tacos. If you haven’t seen these, they are literally tacos wrapped up using a lettuce leaf. Now the photo shows one but I ate 4. They weren’t that big….. But they were good. I thought I may have missed out by excluding the tortilla but it was honestly really great. I topped up with some baby carrots on the side, but honestly didn’t need to, I am still full, hours later. Tonight I shall endeavor to have another early night as I am taking hubby to work tomorrow so I can have the car and go grocery shopping/perhaps check out some other new Korean stores. Before going to bed, I shall definitely do my Redefine regimen and see you tomorrow on my 30th day (halfway point of the Rodan + Fields challenge & 5 days away from being the halfway point of my T25 challenge – I guess you’ll all want some photos this week) have a great day or night, wherever you may be! 

  
As always, like my Facebook page: aussiemumsadventures and if you’re interested in doing your own Rodan + Fields 60 day challenge, then please go to my website: http://www.slongmorescott.myrandf.com and ‘Get Advice’ on ‘What’s Right for You’ so you can get the perfect advice for your skincare concerns. 

Challenge Accepted Day 27 

Today has been fun, but not overly eventful. I didn’t work out. The idea of doing Total Body Circuit on what should have been my day off wasn’t overly appealing and we had to get to the bank before it closed, unfortunately, we didn’t make it because the last time they were open was yesterday! Oh hubby, check the times of the bank and don’t assume just because one bank is open, the other will be. We had to go on to the base anyway. Hubby had a lot of stuff that needed to go into his office and I couldn’t wait to get it out of the house. The amount of crap they have to carry with them just with their Army life, then the awards and other cool stuff they get down the line, all adds up. Needless to say, in this little tiny house, we needed the stuff gone ASAP. 

Off to his office we went and wow! Just wow. I took some basic cleaning stuff thinking it would be like his last office and need a bit of a clean but nothing major; I was wrong. Very wrong. It was pretty disgusting. I’m sure it hadn’t been cleaned in a couple of years and the layer of dust covering everything was somewhat overwhelming. The walls were dusty, the chairs were filthy, the whole place was just dirty. South Korea is amazingly bad for the amount of dust that seems to appear. I think I mentioned it the other day in my blog that it was just the worst I had ever seen. And this office was bad. I even had to clean the vacuum cleaner before I could use it. I wished I had another vacuum cleaner and could pull a Monica (Friends reference there), instead I got damp paper towel and cleaned the vacuum cleaner. Even after doing that, when I went to use the hand piece on it, I made a big mistake, dust went all over both myself and the carpet. Three hours later though, between hubby and I cleaning it together, we got it all looking nice, his stuff hung on the walls, the chairs all clean, the floor as clean as it would get given the vacuum cleaner situation, all in all, a successful afternoon.
It was a beautiful day here in SoKo too and we were stuck indoors for most of it. But on Monday when hubby goes into his office and it’s clean and his stuff is hung on the walls, it will be worth it. And tonight we went for our first dinner at someone else’s house. Someone who has nothing to do with my hubby, (I have to say that I love it when meals are shared and they’re not career related) and we had an amazing night! It was so much fun. We both had an amazing night. Hubby called it before we outstayed our welcome and with kids, and a wife who loves to have a good time (aka me) it was the perfect time to depart. We really did have a wonderful night and I think we could be couple friends, that’s always a nice thing particularly when you’re in the military because half the time that doesn’t happen. Seriously. I’m not sure how it works in the civilian world but in the military world it works like this; “I met this amazing woman, I really like her, her name is….” “I can’t be friends with them her husband is one of my soldiers.” Or…… “I met this amazing woman, she is awesome, her husband seems really nice…..” I’m not going to meet her husband sweety, that’s just weird….” Or “no!” 
So my husband met tonight with an open mind and I am so glad he did. I was a tad surprised when he met it with such an open mind, but he did. This all started with an ad about looking after cats, I’m a big cat person, my husband is not. My daughter’s are too. Son is not. I saw this ad and thought, you’re within walking distance, I’ve been there and needed someone to help me with my cat and had no one, so I want to help this woman with her cats. I responded to the ad and said yes we would help. It also added to bonus ad points that she said “will pay in wine.” What a fabulous woman to put that on a Facebook advertisement (just in our local village mind you). So we went and met her and she was frigging awesome, she’d also lived in Townsville, Australia for 6 years. Here I am in South Korea, understanding that I’m going to associate and live with both Americans and South Koreans but the chances of encountering an Australian or someone who has lived in Australia are minimal. First there was my cable guy (Aussie/Korean), who had never met another Aussie in the 8 years he had worked in Pyeongtaek (until me of course) and now this American who had live in Australia for so long! It was a sign. On top of that, I instantly liked her, so did my kids. Then she invited us for dinner and it just all seemed natural. And my husband went along with it. Definitely a sign. And what a wonderful night we had. I made pavlova because she had had it before and because my hubby is looking for any excuse to have it again. The kids had a great night, all in all, can’t imagine a better Saturday night, we really enjoyed ourselves and it makes for a better place when you find people you can relate to and enjoy their company and rank, place, position, whatever, doesn’t come into play. We also let our eldest sleep over at her friend’s house and this time I felt terrible for judging her dad when he can to my house as they both seemed like awesome people too. He’s just an extrovert, and the Mum/mom seems very cool and very nice, they just have that one car struggle too. All in all, a great day. The only thing that would make it better would be if my French friend answered her bloody phone, she asked me to call…. I want to speak to her 😊
Not too much to report on any front other than the night regimen went well. I used Redefine and all is good, having given AMP MD a miss today. Looking forward to stretching tomorrow with T 25, but otherwise all quiet on the front and as always, please like me on Facebook: aussiemumsadventures, and share my posts if you enjoy them. Also, if you want to try your own Rodan + Fields 60 day challenge, then go to slongmorescott.myrandf.com have a great night and/or Saturday! 

Challenge Accepted Day 26

April fool’s. I’m not very good at practical jokes. Never really have been. I always felt bad for lying. I tried to tell my kids this morning that we were going on holiday to Thailand and to pack their bags and neither of them believed me! “I don’t think you’re telling the truth Mummy.” “You’re being weird.” That’s how good I am at lying. I couldn’t even fool my kids. Last year I declared that I would get black garbage bags and wrap them up making it look like there was a dead body in them and put them out by the garbage bin. That was before we knew we were coming here of course. I thought about doing it last night, but somehow I don’t think the Koreans would find it funny. I’d probably end up in jail (did I mention there’s over 40,000 cctv cameras in South Korea, so you are always being watched). It’s a strange place this one. Very different to how I had imagined it. 
I wasn’t really thinking last night when I said I would make up for the lack of workout yesterday, today. It’s Friday! That means I already have two workouts to do today. I couldn’t possibly add a third. I don’t even think I can run today. I wore high heels yesterday, something I don’t do very often, and my calves, shins and feet are all sore. Not sure I’ve ever had that before! Does that come with age or am I just that out of practice? So today’s workouts are Speed 1.0 (that’s my favourite because you do intense stuff then stretch) and abs. Those damn abs are trying to kill me! Yuck! That’s my least favourite from Alpha round. I’ve never been one for ab exercises. But I want that nice belly that will look good in a bikini even after having three kids! So a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do, right! I told hubby today that I think we should actually go on a proper diet, just to lose 10lbs. I can maintain, especially when I’m back on my exercise bandwagon, but this losing weight isn’t working out so far. Oh how I’m regretting doing nothing but eating and drinking over the Christmas and New Year season! Now I’m going to have to really call upon some willpower and get my arse into gear! Do you know what else is weird, and let me know if this has happened to you too, I am now craving sweet stuff! I’ve always been one for a cheese platter over dessert, yet here I am looking longingly at dessert. All these amazing sweet dishes go through my newsfeed on Facebook and I want to make them and eat them! What has changed in me so much that I have gone from savoury to sweet? Anyway, back to the diet suggestion; I pretty much got this sort of death stare in response. I’m not really sure it’s going to happen but I do all the cooking so he may not have a choice. I may just make my tacos with lettuce wraps instead of tortillas (oh I can only imagine the hell I would get from all of them)! I guess I’ll just have to incorporate something. I find with so many ‘set’ diets that I don’t like a lot of the food. Every diet seems to have lots of zucchini, cucumber, egg plant, sweet potato and capsicum (what Americans call peppers), I don’t like any of them. The other thing is getting what’s available here, I love asparagus but I’m not paying US$6 for a small bunch, which is what I saw them for yesterday. I’m not into the whole shake thing either. I don’t mind adding a smuice (remember that mix between smoothie and juice) but I’m not all about living on drinks. I had actually made a smuice this morning. It was wonderful! I finally got cashew milk too, I really like that in my smuice. I also made scrambled eggs. They don’t look too appealing in the photo because I added home made salsa to 2 eggs prior to cooking it. It just gives them a really nice flavour, especially when you throw some avocado on top. On the side is a piece of grilled haloumi, it gave the whole dish the saltiness that it needed. Great breakfast and I was starving. 

   
 I did the ab workout and survived (barely) there was no way TBC could follow unfortunately, even with my little helper doing it with me! Then I procrastinated and played on Facebook for a while before showering and doing my morning regimen. I went back to the Redefine AMP MD regimen this morning, but found that tonight I needed to use the Smoothe regimen again as my skin was tingling a little bit. I’m wondering what it is I’m doing, perhaps I need to slow down on the AMP MD daily. Maybe it’s a little too much for my skin and I need to slow the pace. Everyone’s skin is different and different things effect different people in different ways. Perhaps my skin is saying that it just needs to slow down. I’ve all of a sudden been the most hard core with my skin regimen than I’ve ever been in my life and I think there might be a shock factor going on, even at day 26. I’ll take it down a notch and we’ll go from there. It’s not going to happen overnight and that’s what I need to keep remembering, a bit tough for someone with very little patience. 
Dear son and I hung out for a while today, how could I resist when he walked up to me and said, “Mummy, I want to snuggle with you.” Best words ever! He is my little snuggle bunny. So we snuggled, watched some tv, talked and laughed and before we knew it, it was time to pick up Madison from the bus stop. Well there was some drama there too. I guess there’s one lady who has a daughter but is always complaining about all the kids hanging out near her apartment (which is right at the bus stop). Unfortunately there is no playground here, something we are hoping to change, and there is no central ground for everyone to hang out, other than these lawns which back on to where the bus comes. She went on to the central page and whinged about everyone playing near her house (it’s not fenced and you can get it fenced if you want to). She had this tree outside with this weird buoy egg thing decorating it. I honestly just thought it was a junk thing so wasn’t too concerned about it in fact never gave it any thought. Well today the kids were all playing and I guess one or all of them knocked it down. And the other mums freaked out a little bit. Madison and two other girls then spent about 10 minutes trying to pick it up and put it back together, to no avail. Well above mentioned lady came out and was about to yell at them when I said “girls thank you so much for trying to put it back together, you are all trying really hard and doing the right thing.” She didn’t really know what to say then, but just told them to leave it alone and bring it to her, then her little dog came out, you know one of those little dogs with little dog syndrome, and started trying to bite my dog. I asked her to please take her dog inside or to put it on a leash. Well I guess that was pushing it because I got the death stare. Needless to say, I’m pretty sure we won’t be friends any time in the near future. Oh well. Luckily I’ll survive. There’s another woman in the block that has obviously taken an immense dislike to me, though I’m not sure why, I’m honestly not that bad. I guess I just rubbed her the wrong way the first time I met her when her dog tried to attack mine (again, not on a leash) & I was concerned for both the safety of my kids and my dog. Not sure that I said anything other than to tell my kids to back away, but I’m pretty sure I gave her a bit of a death stare, I don’t have a good poker face at all and I have a pet peeve for dogs who can turn vicious, to not be on a leash. Needless to say, she was downright rude to me today when I walked right past her and said hello, she looked up then purposely looked down at some other dogs in the neighbourhood. I mean, are we in kindergarten? Where did common courtesy go? Weird. 
That wasn’t the day over yet. We got to go to the dentist! Yay! It was actually a real yay. I had to get that tooth taken care of and so started the long journey to rectifying problems stemming from what was thought to be the right move when I was a young teenager. Anyway, there we were sitting at the dentist and my darling Madison had joined me tonight & she is certainly entertaining. She also happened to be with me the first time we came in and I had what I’m now calling ‘the bidet fiasco’. What is a bidet fiasco? I hear you ask. Well, having used bidets before, I thought I was a reasonably bidet-savvy woman. That wasn’t necessarily the case. I went in to use the toilet and wasn’t really paying very much attention to anything and flushed the toilet after being done, or so I thought. What happened next was water started spraying up in the air! I quickly jumped out of the way of the massive spray that shot up out of nowhere and started pressing every button in there trying to both stop the spray and flush the toilet. Surely logic would prevail and the button that jumped out at you the most was the flush button right? No, that wasn’t the case my friend. Now let me just say that we are inside a very busy dental clinic. Not too far from the eyes and ears of the busy waiting room and water is now everywhere inside the stall and pouring outside of the stall in the smallest bathroom I have ever been in to in my life. Dearest Madison is outside the stall yelling for me to stop the water from running whilst chaos is ensuing inside! Omg! I finally put the lid down and there it was, looking like the light at the end of the tunnel, the flush button! Thank god! The spraying, steaming, cleaning session, that erupted without a bottom in sight, came to an end. I opened the stall to find Madison standing there asking me what happened. I explained to her and we both started giggling hysterically. I cleaned up as best I could, not being able to do a whole lot with the water that had made its way outside of the bathroom. Luckily every Korean bathroom has a sloping floor leading to a drain. I may have then strongly encouraged my child not to speak of this incident again, particularly in the waiting room, held my head high and walked out. The receptionist has a direct line to the bathroom and gave a questioning look, but nothing further was said in English and I behaved like it was all very normal and that’s how we foreigners use our bidets. Since then, I have used the bidet without incident. 

    

After taking care of one tooth and setting up the appointment to take care of the next, (months long process unfortunately) we went to Outback – an American chain restaurant they happen to have here in SoKo (what we locals call South Korea 😉). It was very disappointing, hubby asked for a medium-well steak, it came out rare! And there wasn’t anything too appealing on the menu. We are both ok to never go back there, so that sums up just how good dinner was. We did wander through the streets and this one lady asked me if she could take Hunter’s photo (this actually happens more often than you think, yesterday this old Korean man was trying to hold Alessandra’s hand and she flipped out) it’s hard to know where to draw the line between the cultural differences, but I said no to this lady tonight. I don’t know where that photo of my 3yo son could end up, so no. And I’ll let Ally handle the situation with people wanting to hold her hand – obviously stepping in if necessary – but she can handle her own and isn’t a fan of strangers touching her, can’t say I blame her. It’s always interesting here. And definitely always an adventure! 
Happy Friday!