Haven't written much lately, and I really don't have much to write about now!  However, we have lots of pictures that deserve a little spotlight!
On Wednesday, Drew's squadron took a trip to the Korean War Memorial Museum in Seoul, and I was fortunate enough to be able to tag along.  Unfortunately, we weren't able to stay long and tour the whole place, but we will keep it on our list of places to go and eventually get through the whole thing.  We saw a lot of neat stuff while we were there!

"The Statue of Brothers is an 18 meter wide and 11-meter high symbol of the Korean War. It consists of the upper part, lower part and inner part. The upper part of the statue depicts a scene where a family's older brother, an ROK officer, and his younger brother, a North Korean soldier, meet in a battlefield and express reconciliation, love, and forgiveness. The lower tomb-shaped dome was built with pieces of granite collected from nationwide locations symbolizing the sacrifices made by our patriots. The crack in the dome stands for the division of Korea and the hope for reunification. Objects inside the dome include a mosaic wall painting that expresses the spirit of the Korean people to overcome the national tragedy and a map plate of the 16 UN Allied Nations that dispatched troops to the war. The links of iron chain on the ceiling signify the unbreakable bonds of a unified Korea."

Drew had a LOT of fun playing in the tanks and guns and whatever they were ;)

In addition to going to the museum, I also started teaching this past week!  Lots of easy review, but we are knocking that out of the way so we can start learning some fun stuff!  This week we are learning about volcanoes, at the request of 6 year old Lucia!

It was also Rooney's birthday last Sunday!  He's a big, bad, two year old now!  

Now, some random pictures that don't have to do with anything really.  ENJOY!

And, it wouldn't be right if I ended a post without a cute picture of Rooney!

This is SO GOOD.  Tastes like twice baked potatoes, but healthy (i

Probably the BEST new recipe I've tried!!  Drew and I couldn't stop eating this.  The chicken is delicious, and the sauce is almost even better!  (I used the leftover sauce as dressing on a salad and that was good too!)  Drew says this meal is like a tropical paradise.  Just add a rum and coke and you are set!

I was so excited, nervous, scared, happy about my appointment today!  I was SO ready to get my stitches out and be that much closer to getting my cast off, but I'm the biggest baby EVER, so I was so scared; I KNEW it was going to hurt!  Unfortunately, Drew wasn't able to come with me to the hospital today because of work.  I thought I would be just fine by myself; I've been trying to tell myself I'm independent through this, but I have to admit, I love having Drew by my side to help me.  Whether he's helping me clean, cook, get dressed, wash my hair, paint my nails, CURL MY HAIR (yes it happened I swear!), or just sit next to me and let me squeeze the crap out of his hand while I'm in pain, I LOVE the support he's offered though this whole situation.  So anyway, I ventured out alone, without him... on our scooter!

I'm so dumb, but I was running late and didn't want to wait for a cab.  I hopped on our scooter and drove the 10 minute drive to Songtan Station with one hand.  I got some looks, but I freaking made it!  I bought my ticket, waited for the train, and hopped on.  
Okay, so whenever we ride the train, everyone stares at us.  It makes sense; we look different.  However, it's not something I can get used to!  Everyone on the train stares at you!  Some people are nice and try to show off their English skills, but most people just stare like, "why the hell are you here?!"  This is uncomfortable enough when I'm with Drew, but it was so much worse by myself!!

When I arrived at Suwon Station, I remembered where to go since I'd done it before with Drew.  I grabbed a cab and figured since the name of the hospital is Ajou University Hospital, that the cab driver would know exactly where to take me... WRONG.  He had no idea.  I finally just pointed to my cast and said, "hospital!"  Apparently there are two hospitals in Suwon, and he didn't take me to the right one!  We pulled up to a Catholic hospital, and I finally realized I had paperwork from Ajou that was written in Korean.  I showed that to the cabbie, and 7,800 KRW later, I was dropped off at the CORRECT hospital.       15 minutes late!  Whoops.

As soon as I walked in I instantly regretted telling Drew not to ask his supervisor if he could come with me.  That hospital just exhausts me.  There are SO MANY people, I can't understand or talk to almost ANYONE, and plus it brings back all the bad memories of surgery!  

My doctor finally called me back at about 4:30.  He took off my cast and started messing with my hand.  He straightened my fingers out one by one, which sent tingly shocks all the way through my hand.  Then, he flattened my hand over and over.  I think that hurt more than cutting my hand initially!  It was so painful, and he kept doing it.. over and over and over.  "Does it hurt?"  I wanted to say, "No... I'm just bawling my eyes out because it feels so good...  YES IT HURTS CRAZY!"  At one point, I almost kicked him because the shocks that were going through my hand hurt so much that I couldn't control it!!

The doctor told me he wanted me to keep my cast off from now on.  Originally he wanted me to keep it on for at least another week after the stitches were removed, but he decided to leave it off.  I actually wish I could have worn it a little longer!  I don't feel safe without it on my hand, but I know this will help me heal faster.  He told me to start trying to use my hand for little tasks like doing my hair, putting on make up, cooking (he clearly doesn't realize how this whole thing happened), and typing.  Finally I can type blog posts with more than one hand!  I have only been using my thumb and index finger to type this, but hopefully soon I can start using all of them.  I'm still not supposed to lift anything with my hand, or do any exercise (yeah right).  Sorry Doc, but Drew and I started T25 today.  I just use one hand though!

After talking to my doctor more, I was sent to another room to have my stitches removed.  SO many people told me this was not going to hurt at all, so I actually wasn't too worried.  WAH THEY WERE WRONG! :(  It freaking SUCKED.  The guy was not very good at taking them out haha.  It took at least 10 minutes to remove 15 stitches.  He cut me a few times too! Not badly, but enough to make me cry more than I already was!  Once they were out, he gave me a nifty bandaid fit perfectly to go around my fingers, and wrapped me up.  

I took a video of the doctor taking some of my stitches out.  After this, it got too painful to do anything but squeeze a wad of Kleenex and cry haha!  Ignore the poor baby boy crying in the background; he was NOT pleased to be there.

After all of that trauma, I paid and got my new at home pharmacy...

And that was that.  (Well besides getting on the wrong train on the way home hahaha.  Yet another reason I need Drew!)  Anyway, I go back to see the surgeon again in 3 weeks.  Until then, I am supposed to use my hand as much as possible and start to get my range of motion back.  Meanwhile, hopefully my nerves will continue to regenerate and get back to normal.  Fingers crossed!!!

You are about to see pictures of the INSIDE of my hand.  Like, hand cut open.. skin peeled back.. nerves exposed.. BLOOOOOOOOODY hand.




You can still turn back now!

This picture was taken before any repairs had been done.  You can see in the middle of the nerves, there are dark spots.  That is where I cut the nerve.  Obviously, it's unbelievable, and totally lucky, that I only cut them that much!!
Also, notice that they stitched my flaps of skin to my palm and finger to keep them out of the way during surgery!  Yes, I still have little scars from those stitches!
***The blue thing is a tiny plate that they put under my nerves to isolate the two they were working with during the surgery.  They removed it before sewing me up!

This is a picture of the surgeon actually repairing the nerve.  I truly have no idea what they did to patch it up, but I just know it was patched!  

This is right before they took out the blue plate and stitched me up!  You can still see the part of the nerve that was damaged, but it doesn't look the same as before.  You can see a difference in its appearance because it is patched in this picture.

Now that I'm out of commission in the babysitting world, we are taking advantage of Drew's long weekends and doing some adventuring!  On Friday, we decided to take a little day trip to Seoul.  It was so much fun to get out of Songtan and start seeing new things.  We left the house with no plans other than making it to Seoul.  We had no idea which train station to ride to and no idea what things to go see.  We took the almost 2 hour train ride from Songtan Station to Seoul Station, seemed like a good one to choose, and began our adventure! :)

Right outside of the train station was a BIG city and LOTS of people! (shocking.)  We walked down the side walk next to the giant buildings and ran into this beautiful piece of history!

Across the street from the gate was Namdaemun Market.  Saying it was huge is an understatement.  There were streets and streets and more streets filled with shops, stands, and hundreds of people.  You could buy whatever you wanted; socks, underwear, blankets, towels, food, souvenirs, purses, shoes, clothes, and SO MUCH MORE! I LOVE exploring the markets in Korea!  This was like a dream world for me!  We walked through the streets and looked through everything we could!  We found some little gifts to send home and some delicious snacks!

Okay the next thing we saw was the highlight of not only Drew's day, but will probably be the highlight of his entire year in Korea.  When we first started dating, Drew found a video on Reddit of a guy in Korea making a honey candy called Kkultarae.  They start with a block of sold honey and turn it into 16,000 strands of honey.  Drew was absolutely obsessed with this video.  He showed it to me so many times and thought it was the coolest thing ever.  Keep in mind, this was before he had even enlisted in the Air Force, let alone gotten his assignment to Korea.  
Here is the original video he watched.   

Once we found out that we were coming to Korea, Drew said he HAD to find one of these guys and try this candy for himself!  We knew there had to be a stand in Seoul, so we kept our eyes peeled.  As we were walking, I saw a booth and said, "Drew.. look!"  You would have thought he won a million dollars!  He was the happiest person EVER.  I took a video of our "live show" the guy saud he'd give us, but unfortunately it doesn't have sound due to my new phone case :(  We will take another video next time we visit Seoul!!!

After more walking, we found a place to eat lunch.  We usually base our decision on the pictures of the food that most restaurants have in the windows.  And, we've realized the cheap places usually advertise their prices out front, so we look for that too!  I'm sure we were the only Americans that ate at this restaurant all day, maybe all week!  It was so tiny, but the food.. ohhhhhh the food was delicious!  (AND I ate my whole meal, noodles included, with chopsticks!)

After eating, we walked around the market a little more and then headed back to the train station.  On the way back, we passed some produce stands and I saw the most beautiful, amazing, awesome thing ever...

It was such a fun day in Seoul!  We are planning to go back to another part of the city this coming weekend!  We're trying to get as many trips in as possible this month!  

In other news, I have a few random pictures that I want to add.

Look how expensive produce is here! :(  $9.83 for a pound of green onions, which was around $5.60 for one bunch,  and the worst, $12 for a watermelon!!!!!  I want to cry.

And that's all!  My stitches come out TOMORROW!!!!  So don't you worry, I'll have a lovely video of that to upload! :)

First, an obligatory update on my hand.  I went to the doctor on base yesterday, the one who referred me to the surgeon off base.  He checked out my incision and changed my bandages.  He said everything looked good and it appeared to be healing well.  He tested my range of motion, which is still pretty stiff.  
Next Monday I will return to Ajou University hospital to have my stitches removed.  Then the surgeon will give me an idea of how much longer I'll have to wear this cast!  (Hopefully not too long)  After that, I'll start therapy!  I can't wait to be able to use my hand.  I've been trying to do too much with it, and now I'm paying for it with lots of pain!

Next are a few random pictures that don't require a whole paragraph of explanation!

With all of the time I've spent at home, I had to start crafting again!  Yesterday, I make a menu board for the kitchen.  I got tired of keeping track of a piece of paper with our meals for the week written down on it.  I found this white board with a cork board border at the BX for $9.  I used permanent marker to write "What's for Dinner?" and the days of the week.  Drew helped me put the purple washi tape (actually colored scotch tape) on the board.  It was way too hard to do with one hand!  Then, I found chalk markers to write the meals on the board.  I got this board with the cork border so I could pin recipes for the week to it!  Pretty proud of my first one-handed craft!

I've been doing a LOT of cooking since getting to Korea.  I've tried some Korean recipes, recipes from home, tons of Asian-inspired recipes, and recipes people here have shared with me.  I am going to add ones that we love to the blog so I can share them with all of you!  Here is the first one I'm going to add.  This was dinner last night: