WWSPD?

This is me, Carol and Ms. Chang at a farewell function for the Ambassador. Ms. Chang is a member of my staff and a very wonderful person. The Ambassador really liked the eagle ice sculpture that I carved for him.



On the left is Ms. Kang, our new Admin Assistant. Next to her is Lieutenant Commander Ray Franklin, my Executive Officer, or XO in Navy talk. As you can see, I am a normal-sized person in Korea while Ray is freakishly huge. His hugeness comes in handy when I need to be left alone to finish ice sculptures.

Here is the Cruz family enjoying Gwangalli beach. Jake is checking out a three year old hottie. There was an art thing happening in Busan at the time. The red and silver thing to the right is one of several living art displays on the beach.


I honestly wasn't sure whether this was a living art display. I don't smoke by the way, but I do extinguish entire books of lit matches on my tongue.

Can you tell that we like Busan?

This is one of the potential nurseries for Jake that we decided not to go with.


Well, it's me again. I hope you enjoyed CJ and Jake's blog entries. I know I cracked up typing them. I definitely see a potential writer in CJ. His new teacher thinks so too. Speaking of his new teacher, Carol and I are ecstatic that CJ is in Ms. Taylor's class. She is such a nice and impressive individual. As CJ mentioned earlier, she was in the Olympics when she was younger as a synchronized swimmer. The only problem is that I feel obligated to suck in my gut every time I'm around her.

I greatly overestimated the amount of time I'd have to blog. Work has been extremely busy. Like I've told folks before, with most jobs, the workload never really changes. There's always going to be something after you complete that big project. What does change is our ability to handle that workload. Maybe a few years ago when you were trying to juggle multiple high level taskers, you might've stressed out, curled up in the fetal position and shoved your thumb into your pie hole. Fast forward a few years. Now that same workload doesn't seem so bad. My work days really do fly by here in Korea. Some days, I peek at my watch and realize I've missed lunch by a couple of hours again - which isn't such a bad thing, especially when I'm looking to trim my gut.

Time to say good night to the boys. Just one last thing while I'm on the work topic. When you're faced with difficult decisions and things seem overwhelming - just do what I do and ask yourself, "What would Sarah Palin do?" Non-partisanally yours - C2

Not To Be Outdone - Jake's First Blog Entry!

From Jake, with typing assistance from Dad:

My teacher is very good. I have some CDs. I have Bob the Builder and Thomas. My Dad gave me his old MP3 player because I couldn't leave my big brother's alone. I like playing with Charlene at school. I got my name written on the board because I pulled Hannah's hair. And then Hannah got in trouble. Actually, just me. Someone gave me some dried fish on the train. I don't like to rest at school. I like to rest at home. I want them to get the car seats back in the bus. My splinter grew out and Mommy pulled it. I got a spanking yesterday because I runned away, almost in the street. I have a bus at school. I like my CDs. How is the weather? It's sunny here, at school and at home. I love my brother. This email is done. Bye bye! J-A-K-E spells Jake.

CJ's First Blog Entry!

The first picture is of us at Gwangalli beach. Jake hasn't quite got the posing thing down yet.

The second picture is me and my Dad with the Gwangan bridge (or G bridge) in the background. My Dad takes that bridge to work everyday. The toll is 1000 Won which is about the same as $1. He doesn't mind the toll cause the toll people are nice.

The last picture is me on my first day in Korea. Me and my Dad visited the orphanage that his work does volunteer stuff with. We had a picnic with them and I got to swim in a really cold pool. The kids were all really nice to me. I had my first Korean ice cream here which was awesome. It was a hunk of frozen coffee goodness.

Greetings everyone! This is CJ, the 10 year old wonder. As you probably guessed, this is my first blog entry ever. Korea feels very homey. Like Mom says, if I knew the language, it would be perfectly fine here. Jail, I mean school has started and I can tell it's going to be a good year. I have a teacher that used to be an Olympic athlete and has been to all 50 states. Most everyone in my class is Korean. I have a friend who is Australian and there's one Indian girl. Her name is Hershida but we call her Hershey, like the chocolate bar. The Korean books are very interesting. It's almost like some native language. It was a gift from above that my favorite toys are here in Korea, like Transformers and Legos. Well, I've stumbled across one of the most crazy foods that you'll ever imagine. It's a little thing I call fast food at this place called McDonald's. There's also the Lotteria which has shake shake chicken, which is little popcorn chicken that you put flavor powders in a bag and shake. I don't really shake it. I just eat it. We ride the subway and the taxi a lot since my Mom hasn't gotten her driver's license yet and my Dad's usually at work and cause we only have one car. I've seen some very strange things here such as live octopus getting their heads turned inside out to roasted pig's feet. The strangest thing I've seen here has got to be when I went into the steam room on the way to visit a water park. The man in the steam room was yelling at us, "Take clothes off! Take clothes off!" and there were naked dudes everywhere. My Mom was supposed to go through the women's steam room but she got too freaked out because of all the nakedness that she just didn't go. My Dad wanted me to mention that I did not see any ding dongs. Whew! I don't know why Mom and Dad won't let me see the Dark Knight movie. It couldn't scar me any more than the walk through the steam room. That's all for now. I hope you liked my blog entry as much as my Dad's. ---CJ