spring again

I can't believe it is April already and a year has gone by since I last spoke of springtime. The weeks just seem to fly by.

One day the trees are bare and the next day they are dressed in pink

or purple



or white.





It is still not really warm yet - the wind still has a nip to it at times. But we have had some beautiful days lately. I will be going to the Cherry Blossom Festival again this week. Hopefully the weather will be nice to us this year, last year it rained some of the day we went.

On another note - we are moving out of the row house to an apartment. We really hadn't thought of moving but I was at a friend's apartment and fell in love with it. My main complaint about where we live is how dark it is. I need alot of sunlight in my home and this place can be a cave (especially in the afternoons). We (mainly I) deliberated for awhile because it is nice not to have to take an elevator and such. But this place is brand new and is on the 17th floor with a wonderful view of the water. So here we go - probably sometime this week!

shopping around

Well, the fog from all the travel has finally lifted and I feel more like myself. Since I have been here I have had Domino's Pizza (which was very good), almost finished a book, gone to the grocery store with Ken (examined everything), made spaghetti (from a jar of Classico that cost almost $5), and about died walking up the hills around here.

Everywhere you go (which you mainly walk) you encounter a hill somewhere. I have come to realize that whenever you walk down a hill, you eventually have to walk up that hill sometime or other. Okpo is not that large, I think it is around 30,000 people. But alot of the buildings are highrise apartments, so it sort of has a bigger city feel. We are nestled in a cove of sorts with mountains all around. Not Rockie Mountain kind of mountains, but mountains no less. In fact, our apartment is nestled on the side of one. So anytime I go somewhere, my last trek is upwards. Surely it will get easier over time!

Photo#1 going downhill from our apartment
Photo #2 going uphill - we are on the corner
Photo #3 our building is the middle brown one