So Much To Blog, So Little Time...

I've fallen behind on my blog.  Yikes!  We've been so busy with moving into our new apartment and getting ready for Christmas, that I've missed writing about a few fun things here.  So here's my catch-up.

We're FINALLY all moved in to our apartment.  

I forgot to take pictures of the place after furniture, so I'll have to do that and get them up on the blog, but it's nice to finally have our things.  After being without them for over 5 months (3 months on the US side and 2 months on the Korea side), it's amazing how much you miss the simple things -- like your bed and pillows.  Since we only brought a small amount of our furniture and household goods (a majority of it is in the Air Force storage facility), we've gotten a good laugh at some of the things that made it to Korea, and some of the things that didn't.  Like our entertainment center for example.  It made it here.  The shelves that go inside, however, did not.  We also brought one lone sofa pillow.  We didn't bring the sofa, just a pillow.  Unpacking was quite comical.  With all the boxes empty now, though, I think we have everything we need.  It feels good.

With moving in, one thing that was incredibly different from the US and Korea was getting the furniture and boxes into the apartment.  We were a little curious how they would do this, since the elevator in our place is quite small.  Here's the answer:

I was absolutely amazed!  I'm sure people in NYC have seen this before, but for this suburban girl, this was a first.  They brought this lift up to our balcony and simply loaded it with boxes and furniture and brought it right in through our sliding glass door.  

How brilliant!  I love Korea.

A Korean Christmas Party

For Peter's work party we were treated to a traditional Korean band.  It was so interesting to see the different instruments and see how they were played.  

We loved listening to Canon in D.  Amazing.  

I even found another Korean friend from the band to trade language skills with.  We're going to start meeting in January.  

Using Korean

So I've been really trying to learn Korean.  Everywhere I go I try to put myself in situations where I'll have to use my Korean.  I really can't say much still, but I've had a few funny experiences.  The first is with my friend Kiho.  I was asking him some phrases to use in conversations  for example, after I say hi to someone in the elevator or on the street.  He started laughing out loud.  "You say hi to people on the street!?!"  "Yeah, why," I asked.  He continued to laugh.  "We don't do that here!  Maybe in the elevator in your apartment building, but definitely NOT on the street."  Oops!  Maybe that's why I kept getting strange looks.  :)

My other funny experience was with our water cooler in our apartment.  Koreans don't drink city water, so everyone has a water cooler, including us.  The first week we had it, it started to leak.  There's a phone number to call if you need anything, so I called it up.  Here's where the funny part starts.  They said, "안녕하세요 (Hello)."  I said, "안녕하세요" back and then asked if he spoke English.  His response was no.  I proceeded to tell him in Korean (via Google translate) that our water cooler was leaking.  Either the translation wasn't very good or my pronunciation (probably the later), because he could not understand me. He asked me, "One bottle or two."  In other words, do I want him to deliver more water to our house.  I told him, "아니요 (no)" and again tried with my pathetic Korean phrase.  He put his wife on the phone who I guess speaks better English. I tried to tell her my Goggle translate phrase.  Her response to me was, "I'll bring one bottle of water tomorrow," and she hung up.  I laughed!  The next day the man showed up with our one bottle of water and I showed him the leaking water cooler.  He nodded and laughed because he finally understood.  He quickly replaced it, but then asked me for "오천원 (5000 won) for the bottle of water he delivered.  I froze!  I had not expected to have to pay for the bottle of water I didn't want.  I didn't have any cash and I didn't know how to tell him this!  I asked him to hold on and started digging through my wallet and all the kids' change.  I finally found enough change to pour into his hands.  He smiled.  I know he left feeling sorry for the poor American girl!

Korean German Pizza

So we found a favorite pizza place just down the street from us.  They have "normal" pizza -- cheese and pepperoni -- but they also have these awesome pizzas I've never seen before.  We ordered the Deutsche Bite Pizza.  

It was awesome.  It had little hot dogs and spicy mustard.  I love that I came to Korea to get German pizza -- especially since I never saw this pizza in Germany!  :)

Home Sweet Korean Home

So, we've been in Korea for two months now.  We have loved everything about Korea so far, except our living situation.  We've been staying in the base hotel called the Dragon Hill Lodge.  It's a very nice hotel, but not for two months.  We've been crammed into two small rooms with twelve pieces of luggage.  Needless to say, we were ready to get out of there.  Unfortunately for us, we had to wait until a house came available on the military base.  So we waited.  And we waited.  And we waited some more.  Finally, the military decided there weren't any available houses so they said we could find something suitable in the city.  Yeah!  

We started calling realtors and looked at what felt like a million apartments.  We looked at high rises, villas (apartments buildings that are only up to about 5 stories high), places near the base, places far from the base.  We could not find anything we liked.  Finally, when I was beyond frustrated, we found our home.  It's perfect for our family.  It's a four bedroom villa right at the base of Seoul Tower.  Seoul Tower has been one of the highlights of living here for our family.  Every night before going to bed the kids run down the hall in the hotel to see what color the tower is that night.  So finding this apartment that sits right in the shadow of the tower was a fun find for us.  Not to mention the fact that the tower is on a mountain (Namsan Mountain) covered with running trails.  Score!  Living in the second largest city in the world, it's hard to find a square inch of grass.  We have an entire mountain within walking distance from our house.  

Here are a few pictures.  This is the view toward the mountain from our balcony. 

 This is the living room.

 This is the hallway connecting the living room to the rest of the house.

 Here is the kitchen and dining room.

 This is the master bedroom that also has a balcony.

 Here's the master bathroom.

 There will be a few things that take a while to get used to...mainly the Korean oven.  It's comically small.  Here's one of my smaller cookie sheets that won't even fit inside.  

We had to bake Christmas cookies the other day on a pizza pan!  Not to mention the fact that it's in Celsius.  Thank heavens for google so I could figure out how what 375 degrees Fahrenheit converts to in Celsius.  

But, that's all part of living in a different country.  It's so fun to have these experiences. 

I think my absolute favorite part of our house, though, is the rooftop.  It's awesome!  I can't wait until it warms up a bit so we can have picnics and parties up there.  I think we could even camp on it!  For now though, it was the perfect place to play in the snow.  

Ahhh, it's nice to be home.  

Best Craigslist Find Ever

This is Kiho.

I found him on Craigslist.  I know that sounds a little weird, but right after we moved here I wanted to find a Korean tutor.  I wasn't really sure how to go about this, so I started looking on Craigslist.  The very first post I found was looking for English grammar help in exchange for either Korean tutoring or photography lessons.  Perfect.  I replied immediately.  

I met Kiho for the first time at a local Burger King four days after we landed in Korea.  I was a little nervous about meeting a complete stranger in a country I had just arrived in, however, was quickly impressed by who he was.  I learned that Kiho is a very talented photographer.  He has worked for Time, Newsweek, & Forbes, having his photographs on the cover of each of these magazines.  As he showed me his work, I began to feel slightly inadequate about being his tutor.  He asked me about myself and I sheepishly replied that I'm a former teacher and now a stay-at-home mom.  Somehow my resume didn't quite have the same wow-factor as his.  :)  It was perfect for what he was looking for though.  While Kiho's English is amazing, he struggles with his writing, so he was looking for someone who could not only correct what he had written, but also tell him why it was wrong and what he could do to fix it in the future.  We've been meeting now for almost two months.  It's been such a fun experience for me.  I've loved learning the Korean language and culture.  While I am far from being able to hold a conversation, I can do some basic things like order a drink at a restaurant, ask for the check, tell people I'm American, etc.  I can also read anything in Hangul (the Korea language).  Now, while that may seem impressive, I can't understand what I'm reading.  I can only sound it out.  This is a big step for me though. It's fun to be able to read signs and bus stops.

So last month, our family headed down to Insa-dong.  Insa-dong is a shopping district in Seoul. 

It's a "must-do" for anyone visiting this area.  Here are the kids watching some traditional Korean candy being made.  

While we were shopping, Kiho called to see if I could look at a grant he had typed up in English.  When I mentioned we were in Insa-dong, he decided to come down and give us a tour.  What a fun day!  What I didn't know about this area is it was traditionally a center for the arts.  In fact, until recently, it was mostly art galleries, pottery stores, antiques, etc.  Since Kiho is fairly well known among these people, he was the perfect person to give us a tour.  He even gave us a private tour of one of the galleries that is owned by his friend.  We felt pretty special.  He would stop at different vendors and buy us different foods we had to try. 

The picture above has Ali holding some kind of rice snack.  I think it had honey in the middle and was rolled in sesame seeds.  The picture below shows Ryan eating a doughy type food filled with a sweet potato jam.  

We also had to stop and try some of the food we thought looked interesting too.  Here are the kids eating a rice stick.  It wasn't our favorite!

And here is an interesting version of an ice cream cone.  It's filled from both ends.  Very fun!

 

After we finished in Insa-dong, he took us over to a Korean bookstore where they have a large selection of books in English.  The kids were excited about this.  We browsed the store for a while and finished with Kiho buying us a Korean alphabet poster to hang up in our house.

For someone who has rarely used Craiglist, I must say, I'm pretty happy with the website!