traveling with sick kids

{Part TWO} Did we survive? The conclusion of our trip to Jeju island.

/ Ali Craft / 1 Comment

Day 2 of our trip: ~2am in a dark hotel room in Jeju island, Korea:

Isaac- “Are you shaking the bed?”

Ali- “What?? Huh?? No…”

(we were both confused but fell right back to sleep)

It was only when we woke up to a text from my dad asking if we had heard about the earthquake in Japan that it all came together. Luckily we were far enough away to only feel the small tremors, but it was certainly erie to realize that we are all at the mercy of “mother nature”. Anyways, let’s just say that the tone had been set for a day full of unexpected moments…

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Site of the 7.0-magnitude earthquake- Japan’s Kyushu Island

We were up early and headed back to the hotel restaurant for a buffet breakfast, thankfully with plenty of “western options”. You guys, if I have not mentioned before, let me just tell you, of all the things we love about Korea, Korean breakfast is not one of them. Basically, Korean breakfast looks the same as Korean lunch and Korean dinner, and 8am is just a little too early for these people to be eating kimchi.

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After breakfast, we loaded up the vans and were off to a day of adventuring and hiking. Rain had been forecasted so our faithful tour guide suggested that we follow the planned schedule as long as we could, and reevaluate if it started raining. Cue rain.

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Our new plans were announced within minutes and we were off to Aqua Planet: Jeju. Going to the largest aquarium in all of Asia as your back-up plan isn’t too shabby. It was Judah first visit to the aquarium out of utero (and let’s be honest, that view wasn’t the best), so we were excited to take him. We also made it the whole way to the end with Judah and Asher in there respective carriers, which was a major victory; we got to actually look at fish as opposed to herding kiddos.

Luckily, we beat most of the crowds by going first thing in the morning; as we left I am confident that no less than 75% of the population of Korea had shown up.

Then is was lunch time, our favorite. We had our pick of two of Jeju’s most popular foods, black pork (from a kind of pig native to Jeju) or fish. I will say that while in the States, Isaac and I are huge fans of seafood, we generally steer clear of it here as it often refers to squid (don’t think yummy calamari) or “fishy” fish that we have never heard of served with bones. While in America we almost always eat our fish filleted, it is said that Koreans like to eat it on the bone as it seems more fresh. Well, you do you, Korea. So we, and all the rest of our group chose pork which came with a variety of other proteins. It was served in the traditional Korean barbecue style, around a small grill with a retractable vent hood, where we cook the food ourselves.

Sweet baby Asher had fallen fast asleep right as we pulled up to lunch, in true baby form. I just planned to do the mom thing and eat with one arm, but our tour guide asked the waiters if we could make a pallet for him out of the floor cushions in the floor dining section. They happily obliged. When we sat down to eat, all the tables around him were empty, but they quickly filled, and as the ajummas (the name for older ladies in Korean) got seated at the tables near him they couldn’t help but crowd around to take a look and readjust his blanket. It was all in good nature, but thankfully our tour guide made sure that they didn’t disturb him (other wise I would have had to go all mama bear “DO YOU KNOW WHEN THE LAST TIME HE TOOK A GOOD NAP WAS” on them). Crisis averted.

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Next up was the Haenyeo Museum. The term haenyeo refers to female divers that dive for shellfish, seaweed, etc., without the use of diving equipment (their only tools are googles, a basket for their catch, and something to help them balance). This is a tradition that has been practiced for hundreds of years.

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To this day, although the tradition is dying out, there are still many women that continue the trade. The funny thing is that since this kind of work is becoming less popular, the ladies that still participate are even as old as 80+ years. Our tour guide’s aunt is a haenyeo that still practices at the age of almost 70. These women are basically rockstars.

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Sorry, I couldn’t help but put that gif there. Moving right along. By the time we left the museum, it was a full on downpour outside. We bundled up the kids in their carriers, and made a mad dash for the bus, the kids laughing hysterically as they bounced around. We were wet and tired and all ready to be on a plane headed back home. HA. Ha. ha.

We loaded up the bus and were headed to the airport, until the bus pulled over unexpectedly. Everyone began to murmur, wondering why we had stopped. Then there was a quiet announcement at the front of the bus, our flight had been cancelled due to weather. Cue one of the funniest parts of the trip. I turned around to make sure that the people behind me had heard the news; we would not be sleeping in our own beds that night.

Me: “did you guys hear the news?”

Ladies: with two thumbs up and big smiles “ya, we are stopping to get coffee!”

Me: “uhh, ya, but did you hear about our flights?”

Ladies: “wait, what???”

Needless to say I had to be their bearer of bad news, but on the other hand, we now had plenty of time to kill at a coffee shop while people tried to make us new arrangements. Our colleagues and their caffeine habits have certainly helped fuel our “coffee is life” fire.

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Our hosts made us new arrangements near the airport, so off we went to grab a few snacks and dinner before dropping off us at the hotel.

We got to our hotel feeling especially exhausted and whiney, only to find our previous night’s spacious accommodations were a thing of the past; we would be sleeping Lucy and Ricky style in separate twin beds. We made a bed for Judah halfway in the closet, and called for a crib to be sent up, only for them to send the world’s largest porta-crib to our world’s smallest room. The air in the room had also not been switched over from heat to cool yet, so it was a balmy 83 degrees. Opening the window was also not an option because the bad weather brought wind gusts over 50 mph, and the window would just slam shut. We thought we could out smart the wind by propping open the window, only to create a room sized whistle as we channeled that 50 mph wind through our room and under the crack of our front door.

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I only considered breaking the window and using this 5 times.

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You are likely looking for the escape hatch from this post, I too feel your pain. I will stop for now, and if you are looking to put off doing something you hate more than reading this story that will never end, stop on by next time for the real conclusion of our trip to Jeju.

 

P.S. I’m not sure where this should logically go in the story, but it is worth mentioning that as we entered our hotel, we were greeted by a family of giant Asian teddy bears. Ali out. *Mic drop*

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Spring Break: A Story in Pictures (and words)

/ Ali Craft / 2 Comments

We had a great trip to the Philippines a couple weeks ago. We went with 7 high school students, 4 teachers, and our two kiddos; sadly, we were supposed to take two more students but one ended up with the flu and another one’s grandma passed away. They were missed!IMG_6636

Needless to say we were a little anxious to wake our two cherubs up at 3:30am, load them in a car to the school, a bus for an hour to the airport, a plane for four hours, and then another bus for eight and a half hours to our final destination. Hear this people, there is no surer sign that God is good than us making that voyage without mental breakdown. Hooray.

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Waiting on our bus in Manila to Baguio. It was hot, especially compared to the Korean winter we had come from.

 

 

Our days were filled with breakfast at the seminary we were staying at, vacation bible school in the morning at a local school, lunch provided by the wonderful staff, then back to the seminary for Bible time and then some good old fashioned manual labor. The days were long but obviously worth it. In the evenings we would either order food in or clean up and head into town via a jeepney (the most common means of transportation in the Philippines) to grab dinner. We would come back and get our kiddos in “bed” just in time to debrief our day with the team.

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Isaac and I feel very strongly that the main benefit of short term mission trips are to expose the people on the trip to cultures outside of their own, as well as a different way of life, and even just a reminder that we don’t serve an American (or Korean) God, as opposed to the idea that we are providing some sort of life changing aid or spiritual enlightenment. There were even many times this trip as we were teaching VBS that the Filipino kids would finish our sentences during the Bible story. The real value we saw was the impact the trip had on our students. They are very privileged and they were able to witness people satisfied without material things. It was also a great time while they were out of their normal routine and comfort zone to talk more about the role that God plays in their personal life. And not to go unmentioned, the obvious impact of short term missions in our family was to broaden our horizons and to give us a heart to share Jesus with rest of the world.


Being my first mission trip as a mama, the best part for me was watching my kids interact with our students, the fellow leaders, and the local Philippine people. Needless to say, they were the stars of the show. I was told as we said goodbye on the last day, “We will miss…Judah and Asher”. All week the awesome ladies from the school watched our kiddos while Isaac and I taught bible stories. At one point one our VBS students came to me and said, “Mrs. Craft, can I hold your baby?”, I told her that I didn’t even know where he was, to which she replied, “oh, he’s with the security guard.” Well, at least he’s safe, right?

On Monday of our trip, our sweet Judah turned the big T-W-O. We celebrated in style with lots of balloons, love, and cake. Lots of cake. Our awesome co-leaders and the ladies at the school had coordinated to get Judah an awesome double layer birthday cake to celebrate.

This post would not be complete without a proper shoutout to our fellow trip leaders. These rockstar ladies kept all the balls in the air while we changed diapers, feed kids, and coordinated naps/betimes. Not to mention they did more than their fair share of Craft child herding/holding. We humbly refer to ourselves as the Dream Team, but really, we are awesome. (It is critical to know that the sign they are pointing at says DANGER: HOT WORK IN PROGRESS KEEP OUT) It is photos like this that need posting to the internet that validate all my hard blogging work.

Our team was plagued with something resembling the flu and threats of getting acquainted with Philippine hospitals kept things interesting. Four out of our seven students ended up sick but luckily the leaders dodged the bullet. During our last day we stopped off at a local market for a few souvenirs. Naturally the guys on the team had no interest in getting out so they got put on kid duty. Much to their chagrin, moments after we left them alone Judah started throwing up. Bless their high school boy hearts. One of the students managed to find us to deliver the message, “Judah just threw up massively”. Massively; great word choice. The next words out of his mouth were, “I tried to entertain him (the child that had just thrown up) but it didn’t work.” How bizarre, usually you can joke a toddler right out of the stomach flu…bless. Bless. BLESS. We got him home and cleaned up (with our precious driver buying Judah two brand new “I-love-the-Phillipines”-esque  t-shirts so he had clothes to change into. He got sick one more time as we somberly packed up for our 3am departure for our voyage back to Seoul.

We braced for the long travel day ahead, packing extra outfits for Judah, a t-shirt for me, and plenty of barf bags. The vans pulled up at 2:45am and we loaded up, Judah burning with a 102 degree fever. Praise God that his fever broke somewhere between Isaac and I almost throwing up ourselves from our driver’s enthusiastic maneuvering through the mountains and our arrival in Manila. We ended up at the airport with plenty of time to spare, so we set up shop for the next 5 hours.


Finally, we boarded our plane and thought we were home free. In case you didn’t know that God has a sense of humor, as the wheels left the ground I was graced with the sound of not Judah, but sweet baby Asher (the child with only one set of extra clothes) throwing up on Isaac (the parent with no extra clothes). We survived with only one more round of vomiting; I can’t say as much for the handy airplane blankets.

We landed in Korea a little worse for wear but so happy to be home. Let’s just say that when we approached the customs line that ended up taking our friends two hours to clear, I took it upon myself to take my foul smelling and acting children directly to the line reserved for more important people than us and dared someone to stop me. They didn’t. We got through, grabbed our bags and a taxi home, stepping foot into our apartment 20 hours after leaving that morning.

And I know I’m crazy because I would do it all again.