A typical day...

Usually we wake up around 7am (Jeff already looong gone) and the kids have hot milk and watch a show while I make school lunch for Sash and make sure the right homework stuff gets put in the right backpack for the day. Each day one of them has library or PE or show and tell or HW due or SOMETHING so there's always something to remember. Then we eat b-fast together. Here's Sasha in the am, already has her hat on, PJ's, crocks on the wrong feet, mouth full, I tell ya, she's the whole package:
After B-fast we try to knock something out, either HW or fiddling or else we end up with too much to do at the end of the day. We leave about 8:45 and walk down the hill to the school. Usually Teddy and I stay with Sasha until the bell rings since she is still settling in. Here is the stage one class lining up:
Then Teddy and I walk about 10 minutes to get to the Early Years Centre where the Kindy class is held. One of the funniest things about the Kindy location is that it's right next to the Hyundai Guard Dog shack so all these tiny children have to march past the dogs each day:


Being a huge fan of the "Far Side" I always remember that series of strips the guy did called "Trouble Brewing" where 2 very incompatible businesses were next to each other like Stan's Skydiving School next to Edna's Gator Land. There was one with Sue's daycare next to Bob's Dingo Farm and in the picture all the Dingos are up on the fence drooling at the playing babies in the next yard. Hysterical. And here we are living the reality:
I am always ready to tackle some kid to prevent them from running up to the dogs and gettin' mauled. My crazy ninja skills always at the ready....

Teddy goes to school from 9-12 each day and comes home for lunch. He really likes school!
"C'mon Mom, stop taking pictures, we gotta get to school!"
Putting his things in his tray:
Usually after dropping Teddy off I run screaming down the hill "FREEDOM!" and then decide what to do for 2.5 blissful hours. We have a walking group that hikes in the mountains M, W and F and there is a Pilates Class Tues and Thursday, and also lots of other activities like Korean Tea ceremonies or Bingo or whatever. It's like living on a cruise ship. Here's my pals Kari and Zoe at a tea ceremony:
They served rice "cakes" - little gelatinous balls made with rice powder and filled with cinnamon and sugar. They were actually pretty good!
My turn to drink some tea. The lady that showed us the ceremony was a Korean tea ceremony expert and even her outfit has meaning, for example there are colors on her Hanbok (traditional clothes) that tell if her parents, husband, and children are living or deceased.
I pick up Teddy at noon and sometimes we ride the bike or walk, but we can also take a bus which is Teddy's favorite:
We go home for lunch and a nap or lunch and a playdate and then we walk back down the hill to pick up Sasha at 3. Here's Sasha and Ingrid walking home:We have met tons of awesome people so often times we have a playdate or something in the afternoon, but we have to keep it short because we have homework every day trying to keep up! Here's Ted and Øyvind playin' Dinosaur adventurer!

In the evening I make whatever I can out of the mystery items I have bought at the grocery store. I even made Bulgogi one night. That's Korean BBQ that you wrap in lettuce with whatever you want. Rock-Star!
The cats in the meantime have had a terrible day trying to adjust to their new surroundings. It's just trying AND stressful to have so many sunny places to get to in a single afternoon:
We finally get to eat dinner when Jeff comes home around 6:45. He has been bombarded with platters of gelatinous things lately. He brought this one home to show us. Apparently his co-workers think they are giving him a luscious platter of yummy treats. YAY! Thankfully, Jeff is the master of false enthusiasm:


Go in for a closer look, breathe deeply. PS: I'm sending all of you a plate just like this one for Christmas next year. Get Psyched!

On the weekends we hike or try to explore new places and Sasha has been invited to 3 B-day parties already! Here is the stage one gang celebrating Soobin's 6th B-day. You can really see what a diverse community we are living in!So on the whole, at the one month mark (today!) I have to say we have settled in nicely and I feel very fortunate to live in the foreign community where everyone speaks English. Many of my friends from Norway, Japan, Croatia, ect. came here and had to learn to adapt to Korea AND life in the Foreigners Compound in English so for them it was like adapting to 2 strange cultures and languages at the same time. THAT would be tough...

Our First "Hash" (no drugs involved...)

This Sunday we had our first "Hash". A Hash is when you have a group of hiking enthusiasts who all get together like a club. Everyone gets a hash name after their third hash that's like their nickname. Someone is in charge of "setting" the hash, or laying out the route, and someone else is in charge of cooking for the group - usually a big pot of soup. Sasha and Teddy were quite thrilled to go on their first hash as their current BFF "crushes" also went on the hash. Øyvind is the most adorable, inquisitive, funny, and competitive 6 year old ever, and Teddy thinks he is the bomb. Ingrid is almost 9 and Sasha worships the ground she walks on. Literally. On this hash, I barely had to listen to any complaining from "the bean" as she was hiking to keep up with Ingrid and chatting the whole way. Did I mention that Ingrid also plays the fiddle? SWEET!

We climbed up a HUGE hill and got to this amazing fire look-out station on top, which Teddy thought was awesome:
4 Kids on the top of the tower:
The Boys!
The trail was a nice mix of open wide trail, much wider that single-track, but not as wide as a road. It's really nice because you can walk two or three across and have a conversation.
A view back toward the look-out tower. What a beautiful day we had!
We got to another viewpoint and got to look down on Ulsan (part of it anyway) which in our area means looking down at Hyundai. You can see how massive the shipyard here really is. Our apt would be just out of the shot to the right.
One of the best things for me about Korean hiking trails is that they are meticulously engineered and there are stairs almost anywhere there is a steep slope. This keeps you from that horrible sliding out sensation that causes you to look like an idiot at best and fall on your ass at worst.
There was a little temple up the hill:
Had to explain to the kids that these things are not part of OUR religion, but are part of someone elses' religion and we have to not touch them and be respectful.
Another amazing, long stairway:
Our hike wound up one side of a mountain and down another and finished up down at the beach. There were some memorial sites but I was unable to tell if they were WWII or Korean War memorials...
The coast here is really beautiful where it hasn't been taken over by Hyundai. Incredibly rugged headlands interspersed with little pocket beaches. I will NOT go into a Geologic ramble here, but I want to.....
Jeff and the girls head up the beach and back to the cars:
At the end of the hash, any 1st timers had to introduce themselves, sing a song from their own country, and chug a beer out of these pottery bowls. We sang "The Texas Song" that Sasha taught us from school. One of the Maori dudes from New Zealand did an Awesome Maori song/chant/intimidation dance that was totally sweet and I wish I got it on tape but I wasn't fast enough.
When we went back to the clubhouse we had a FEAST! It was an Australian national day so they put on a full Aussie BBQ for all the hashers. Sausages, chicken, steaks, shrimp, you name it plus all the sides and dessert! It will be quite a let-down when we get soup after our next hash!
Here is Ted and I with (clockwise) Kari and Terje (Øyvind and Indrid's parents - they are as awesome as their kids) and Zoe, one of the first people I met on the compound who has made me feel incredible welcome and linked me up with numerous activities. She's like the cruise director....

So we had a really fun Sunday and are looking forward to the next hike. Actually the next 2 so we can get our official "Hasher" names!

Home Sweet Home!

Ok, so maybe I will only get to update the Blog once a week. We are BUSY!! Whew! School, homework, playdates, Korean Tea Ceremonies, Bingo, Hiking, I tell you, it's like living on a cruise ship. For those of you not on FB, the latest news is that the Koreans that Jeff works with told us this week that they are all coming over for a dinner party at our place this Thursday to welcome us (!) 7+ of them and their spouses. Ok, I have like 6 plates and we did have 4 wine glasses but we already broke one so now we have 3. Are you kidding me?!? So I know what I will be doing this week - buying plates, glasses, and figuring out what I am going to cook. They are all bringing a dish thank goodness. I expect this means we will be left with a fridge full of very marginal leftovers. The kind where you want to eat it so you don't waste food, but dear Lord, what IS THIS? Yeah, that kind of leftovers. PSYCHED!

I told the kids that they should each pick their fav American thing and we will have it out and Teddy promptly told me that his pick is a dish of M&M's. Sasha hasn't gotten back to me yet. I would serve them pretzels but the only ones I have found are the mega bag at Costco. You know the ones they serve at huge gatherings that are little, too crunchy and always slightly stale. I am going to inport Rold Golds and change everyones lives. (BTW, any care packages sent our way needs to include some Rold Golds - even if it's the little 99 cent gas station size. Use a bunch of 'em for packing material you guys, I'm serious...)

Ok, so I promised you a tour of the place now that we are all settled in. This is home sweet home:

Our complex is high on a hill and you can see it from all over town so it's always easy to navigate home. Our building has peek-a-boo views of the ocean and the Hyundai cranes, but it faces in a fantastic direction, so we get amazing sunlight all day long which is great.
Many of you will see this and wonder how I (hates cities, loves green space, hates crowds, loves wilderness) am dealing mentally with living in a high rise and many of you have already asked. I am just fine with it folks, because I know it's temporary. It's kind of like trying on someone else's life and it's kind of fun. Also there is no yard work and no fire ants! Seriously though, I told Jeff that for the kids' sake I hope that each experience we have of living in a too big house with a swimming pool is balanced out by some time in a small apartment. They need to get that most of the world does not live like that.
Our building is very cold and stark all the way up to the door of the apartment. So I hate it on the outside but love it on the inside.

Once you get inside the main door, we have a little vestibule with a coat rack and a ton of cabinets and some Japanese-style sliding doors. It's like a little transition area from the industrial feel of the elevator and hallway to the cozy interior of the place. We all keep all of our shoes here since we have much less closet space in the bedrooms and no one wears shoes in their house so it's great that this little room is literally lined with cabinets from floor to ceiling.

When you go thru the sliders, the kid's bathroom is to your left:

And their bedroom is straight ahead:
We brought these loft beds from IKEA anticipating much smaller spaces. They barely fit in the room, but they were SUCH a good call. The kids have the entire floor space of the bedroom to play. As you can see, under Teddy's bed is Dinoland USA:
And under Sasha's bed is Kit and Emily's house. She goes in there and I just hear her chatting away with the "girls" and their dogs. Max likes it under there too..
Next door to their bedroom is their playroom. It is really, really sunny. The camera kept making the picture dark so the sunroom wouldn't be overexposed, so you'll have to take my word for it.
Ted loves coming in here to spread out his train set or Playmobil. It's a fun space.
Then we go down the hall (it's not dark like this) to the living room on the left, Kitchen on the right, and at the end of the hall, our bedroom (left) and study (right).
This is our living room and again it seems very bright and open with sun streaming in all day. Looking forward to sitting out on the "veranda" when the weather gets warmer.

This is our Kitchen. Very functional, but NO workspace. Especially after the counter space I got used to in TX. Very spoiled....

Our Bedroom. Note the awesome mirror I got from mousesurplus.com that originally hung at Disney World. Oh yeah baby!

We have this little dressing area/closet area on the way to our bathroom which is nice when Jeff gets up in the morning. He can go in here and close the slider and get dressed and not wake me up.
The think-tank. Always a disaster, but what haven of productivity isn't my friends - am I right?

This is our little dining area attached to the kitchen. Love the sliding doors. We had friends over for dinner Friday night and when the adults were having conversation and the kids got too loud we just shut the doors.

This little speaker is on the wall in the hallway. Several times a week a little chime will go off and someone makes an announcement in Korean for anywhere from 1 - 5 minutes. All I can do is stand and listen and hope that the message is not "the building is on fire, please exit via the stairs in an orderly fashion" or "North Korea has invaded. Grab your children and get out while you still can!".
Usually after one of these messages I run to the window to make sure that people are not fleeing the building like rats leaving a sinking ship. After a few minutes, if nothing has happened, I go back to what I was doing. I have GOT to start learning Korean....
The rice cooker. Waaaay too many options.
The washing machine. I have after 3 weeks I have sucessfully found a washer setting AND a dryer setting that results in clean, dry clothes. Jeff used the Ipod translator to try to figure out the drier settings and is pretty sure that one of the options is "fire lip". He is lobbying heavily for this to be his new Korean name.
So there you have it. You can picture us in our little abode, all snug, comfortable and happy and hopefully (grandparents) worry less. We are all settled in and it's hard to believe we have only been here 3 weeks. We are off to go on a "Hash" this morning, it's something organized by the Aussies, Kiwi's and Brits: everyone goes on a hike and then shares a community feast. My kind of outing. I will take lots of pictures. So have a great weekend yourselves, and please, if North Korea DOES invade, somebody send me a text; You'll probably know about it before I do....