The life and times of The Archuleta's

Friday, August 7, 2009

Springville World Folkfest - Day 4

Thursday, July 30

No rehearsals today, yeehaw! We got to sleep in and it felt WONDERFUL. We were informed on Tuesday that all groups had to have their own potluck with the host families and participants from each country. I think our group was just about the only one who actually did this, and it was so lame. Since we slept in(me until 8:00 and the girls until 9:30) we did not eat breakfast until 10:00. The potluck was scheduled for noon. I was excited FOR the potluck so I would not have to come up with lunch ideas today, boy was I WRONG! Because of the late breakfast, they did not eat anything at the potluck, and as soon as we got home, they were hungry. So white rice and kimchi today, and they cooked it, because I did not know how. I had no idea what to do today to kill 3 hours between lunch and time to leave for the evening. I asked them what would they like to do and they said "SWIMMING". Malinda and I took them to the Scera Pool. They were so cute - when I pulled into the parking lot, they asked "THIS POOL?" and I replied in the affirmative, then they said "THIS FUN". They seemed to have a good time. Malinda's babies had a great time. Little K loves the water and although at first hesitant about the slide, actually found that she loved it and kept going down it all by herself. Baby A loved it until she got sleepy, then the fussiness began. The Korean girls did not ACT like they were having fun, at least not the way American kids act. But they kept assuring me that they were having fun.
Apparently they didn't bring swim suits with them, so they wore some of their clothes.

They had to be at the Arts Park at 6:30 again tonight. So did Amanda's Mexicans, and she volunteered to take my girls down with her. It was HEAVENLY to have an extra hour and a half to do dishes and take a short breather before going to the performances (which start at 8:00 pm). THANK YOU AMANDA!!!

Springville World Folkfest - Day 3

Wednesday, July 29

Today I had to have the girls to another 9:00 am rehearsal. It lasted 3/12 hours. Amanda had to have the Mexicans to a rehearsal also, so we sat and talked until her people were ready to leave. When my girls were done, we stopped by the grocery store on the way home to pick up a few things, plus I wanted them to experience an American grocery store. The sad thing was I couldn't ask them how they felt about it. So many things I wanted to ask them and I couldn't, darn language barrier. While in the grocery store I had a really random experience. A college age girl came up and asked me if I knew what to buy to make strawberry pie. I told her, and then we each went our separate way. Later I turned the corner of an aisle and found her talking to "my girls" in KOREAN!!! I could not believe it! I wanted to take her home with me for the rest of the week and have her be my personal translator, but I didn't. I just asked her to ask the girls what they like to eat. I don't know if they told her or not, but she just said that on her mission she found that Korean's ate rice for almost every meal - plain white rice - and sometimes they had fried egg on top. So guess what we had for lunch. Plain white rice, with egg on top. But not fried eggs, the girls wanted to do the eggs, and they broke open 2 eggs, scrambled them with a spoon (weird, but they would not use the fork), then cooked it in a pan like we would an omelet, except rather than turning it over to cook the other side, they rolled it, then continued cooking it. When it was done, they put it on a plate, cut it into small bite size pieces with scissors. They poured catsup on the side of the plate and each girl ate their rice on their own little plates, but each would just take a piece of egg from the serving plate, dip it into catsup and eat. It was fun to watch them. They had asked me on Tuesday night for chopsticks, but I didn't have any just lying around, so we looked at the grocery store while there today, but they didn't have any either. I should have thought about it while at the Oriental market, because I know they had them there. Silly me!

After lunch, I took them to Bridal Veil Falls. They asked me what was Utah famous for and I could think of several things, but none of them within driving distance with our time schedule. So I came up with the Falls. It has been years since I have actually visited the falls. The water was SO SO COLD. But we walked around in it for awhile, then the girls just sat on some little rocks in the middle of the pool out in the middle of the sun, and make piles with the small rocks in the water. I sat on a large rock off to the side and watched their little shoulder bags that held their money and cameras (and was in the shade). My poor head got so sun burnt during the whole week.
Hye Jin, Hye Ji, Se Hyun

6:30 back to the Arts Park. Don't know why they had to be there early as they did not play drums tonight. Only the Korean dancers performed.
They were so cute. On the drive home at 11:00 at night they would fall asleep and I thought they would go home and go right to bed. But Oh No, was I wrong. They would groggily get out of the car, but by the time they reached the house, they were wide awake and rarin' to go, plus very hungry, so time to fix a snack. Can't remember what they had though. Finally, we went to bed at midnight and I have no idea how late they stayed up, doing who knows what.

Sunday, August 2, 2009

Springville World Folkfest - Day 2

Tuesday, July 28 2009

All performers had to be at a rehearsal at the Springville Arts Park from 9:00 - 11:30. I sat in the car and read, while I waited. At noon there was a picnic in Kelly's Grove up Hobble Creek Canyon for all performing groups and host families. There was hamburgers, hotdogs, watermelon & cantaloupe, chips and cookies. I noticed that my 3 Korean girls ate the meat without buns, some watermelon and chips. No soda, even though it was available. While at the picnic we found out that the group from Mexico were all staying at one home - 23 of them, so the Folkfest was asking people if they knew anyone who would be willing to take some in. Amanda volunteered and after the performance that night she picked up Tomas and Luis. After the picnic we (the Korean girls, Amanda with her kids and Malinda and her kids) came home and the girls had so much fun playing with my little grandkids. After a dinner of Korean ramen noodles and Kimchi for them, and tacos for us, we headed back to Springville for the opening night performances.

Hye Jin, Se Hyun, Hye Ji, two of their friends holding Baby A at Kelly's Grove

Hye Ji , I called her the studious one. She always looked so serious, like she was concentrating so hard on her performance.

Se Hyun, I called her the natural. She always smiled while playing, and seemed like she loved what she was doing.

Hye Jin, I called her the young one, as she looked younger than the other two.

David from Belgiium (whom Alisha hosted)

Annalynne also from Belgium (whom Alisha also hosted). The Belgium group were flag twirlers and did some impressive routines.

These Chinese girls were awesome. It was the most amazing performance during the whole folkfest.

The whole night was so good that even the kids were mesmerized and sat still for most all 2 1/2 hours.

Springville World Folkfest - Day 1

We had the unique and wonderful opportunity to host foreigners for the Springville World Folkfest for the week of July 27 - Aug 2. It was an amazing experience. I have heard about the Folkfest from advertising for years, but never attended. Earlier this summer Alisha told me that she was going to be a host for Belgium. She had heard about the opportunity from Trudy whom she sits next to in a choral group she belongs to in Payson. She chose Belgium because her sister in law Caryn served a mission to the area several years ago, and spoke the language, and so if there was a language barrier Alisha would have someone to help translate. Alisha hosted Annalynne (not sure of the spelling)and her boyfriend David. I decided it would be a fun experience and signed up to host Koreans. Of the countries I could choose from: Korea, Poland, Hungary, Belgium, Mexico and China, I chose Korea because I did not know anyone that spoke any of the other languages except Mexico and Korea. I figured there would be tons of people who spoke Spanish that would want to host Mexico and since I have a friend that is from Korea (Yeong-mi) I knew she would help me through any language barriers.

Monday, July 27
5:45 pm pick up 3 Korean 13 year olds: Se Hyun Go(pronounced Say Hyun Go), Hey ui Kim (pronounced Hay Chi Kim), and Hye Jin Lee (prounced Hay ghin Lee).

I have to admit at first I was terrified. I spoke no Korean and I was in my car with 3 girls that spoke no English. Yeong-mi had suggested I take them to the Korean market and let them pick out some food they would like to eat. I took them to First Oriental Market in Orem and spoke with the cashier there and told her what I wanted to do and asked her to translate to the girls. After she spoke to them they all stared at each other without speaking, looking dumbfounded, so I called Yeong-mi and asked for HELP!!!!! She spoke to the cashier and the cashier went around the store picking out things for the girls: Korean ramen, Kimchi, and Korean type potato chips. A HUGE THANK YOU TO YEONG-MI FOR HELPING DURING THE FIRST 2 DAYS!

When I got home Dennis helped bring in their luggage and then we showed them around the house and where they would sleep. Dennis is so much better than I at these sort of things. I clam up when I am in an unfamiliar settings and this was no difference. I didn't know how to communicate so I spoke very little. Thank goodness Dennis is not like that. I asked them if they were hungry and they said no. It was 7:30 at night by this time and I really thought they should be hungry as they had been on airplanes for the past 16 hours. Again, I called Yeong-mi and asked for her to talk to the girls. She said they usually eat around 8:30 pm so to ask them again later. For me the first night was so scary, but it didn't bother Dennis at all. Finally around 8:30 I asked again, and this time they were hungry. I did not know what to fix them so I put a variety of food out and let them choose. I had stew, tortillas, lettuce salad, cut up veggies, watermelon, plums and orange soda. They ate stew, tortillas, watermelon, plums and drank the soda. Se Hyun ate a little lettuce salad, but would not eat ranch dressing (I put out every bottle of dressing I had), she had lemon, herb vinaigrette. After dishes we took pictures and off to bed for everyone.

Hye Jin Lee, Se Hyun Go, Hye ui Kim

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Really bummed.....lesson learned, I hope!?!

Our external hard drive and wireless router crashed last week. We had a few power surges go through our house (not sure why, probably power related, as it was cloudy and rainy) and that is the only thing we can figure caused both items to fail. I just want to cry. I did take the hard drive to our computer repair shop and they got about 1/2 of it copied before it totally died on them. I should be grateful they were able to recover that much, because it was the really important stuff. But they were not able to recover our pictures (and yes, they are very important, just not as much so as my budget). We had gotten really complacent the last few years, and just a few months ago we talked to a friend about what is the best way to back up our stuff so this sort of thing didn't happen. He said to get another hard drive and just copy everything once a week. He actually has 3 hard drives and alternates saving to 2 of them. We thought that was a great idea, and had an extra hard drive sitting around, so we started backing up our "main" hard drive, but somehow we got lax, and didn't get much backed up. SO STUPID OF US:(

Sunday, July 5, 2009

I need to apologize that these next few posts are out of order. I explain in a later post why.

This cool tree thing was in the picnic area and we had to pass it every time we left or camp. We all wanted a picture of it, so on the last day we stopped and got some.