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!  :)