Settling in

We have been here for 3 weeks and are settling in bit by bit. We got a puppy! There were 7 to choose from and we picked this one. What do you think?
I think we made a fine choice! Her name is Roxy and she is adorable but has made the last 3 weeks very hectic as we are potty training and teacher her that she CAN in fact occasionally be left alone in her little bathroom.
She had a fun first week playing with the kids and romping all over the yard.
Sash and her pup:
Adorable girl:
Asleep on Mom's lap:
Teddy and Roxy have good snuggle time on this fuzzy red blanket that they both love:
We have 2 lemon trees in our yard and they are FULL of lemons!
We bought a juice squeezer and have been making home-made lemonade. What else can we do with lemons? They're falling off the tree!!
Sasha is a pro at juicing...
And we put up a tree swing. This is version #1 as we actually ended up taking it down and securing it to a much higher branch:

 The first week we had a lot of fun just hanging out nearby the tree swing taking turns while Mom worked on the garden.

Speaking of gardens, I got one all dug out and planted. Expect fresh produce by Christmas!

 Now in all the above pics it looks nice and warm outside due to the kid's attire but it's actually pretty cold - in the 60's. It's just that we're used to summer and the kids are hopeless optimists. I keep telling them to go change but some times I just give up and let them freeze. They gotta learn sometime right? But Teddy and Roxy have discovered that when you get chilly you can warm up nicely on the bricks:

Jeff and the kids spent the first weekend making a home-made bow and arrows. I think they were inspired by "Brave" and all the space around them. I was pretty skeptical but they made a set that actually works!

 

 They even stick into the ground if you shoot it right. Perfect shot!

The yard is a great place to hang out. So far we have seen monkeys, a mongoose, HUGE snails, and lots of really interesting birds. Here's 2 of our favorites. The big one has a few babies in her nest and if you zoom in close on the picture you can probably see one. The other hanging basket nests are built by these very bright yellow birds. In the picture you can see 2 completed nests to the left and center high a ring that is a partially completed nest. There are also some large flightless birds but of course Maximus is making quick work of those suckers. He has my blessing... they eat my beans.

Here's my little hero. He's killed every last mouse in the house and has taken to killing them outside and bringing them to me as presents. Except for the flightless birds.... we only know about those because their numbers are diminishing and we find large piles of feathers here and there. After 2.5 years of being trapped inside, my guy is more than earning his keep.

 By about 7:30 Roxy is done for the day and will sleep just about anywhere but prefers to be held. Thankfully for her there is no shortage of volunteers for this job!

 The kids take turns getting to start out with her in their beds until they fall asleep and then Jeff and I get her and snuggle her on the couch. Finally she goes to sleep in her little crate between the kids beds.

All these pictures are from our first week. In the last 2 weeks it has rained constantly. I mean every. single. day. Not sprinkles, but torrential sheets of water. We're about to be flooded out and there is more rain in the forecast! It's really quite depressing and sad but looking at the pictures in this post has reminded me that this will once again be a nice place to be if the sun ever shows it's face again!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

I'm over it

So I'm back in Korea. And I'm over it. REALLY over it. But I'd like to think that I'm over it for all the right reasons....
First of all I'd like to say that being done with being here has nothing to do with Korea or the Korean people. They have been the most lovely, gracious host nation to us in our 2.5 years here. I'm just burnt out on being a foreigner and being different and not being able to communicate and that would be the same no matter what homogeneous non-English speaking country I was in.
For those who don't know the story I will catch you up.... We're moving to South Africa. And we have to get our visas for SA here in Korea because Jeff can't take a month+ off from work (which is how long it takes in the States) and wait around for a visa. So the kids and I FedEx'ed our passports to Korea so we could all apply together. But then the visas for the kids and I were denied because we were not in the country with a current entry stamp on our passports. So Jeff FedEx'ed all the passports back to Korea, the kids and I flew here on Wed, arrived on Thursday, went to the SA embassy in Seoul, reapplied for our visas, and then took the bullet train to Ulsan to hang out with our friends and wait for 2 weeks for the visas to be processed. Meanwhile Jeff had to leave for SA so he is gone (we missed him by 2 days...2 DAYS!!!) and so are the cats and all our stuff. So I was expecting the apartment to look like the Who's houses after the Grinch comes: empty except for Y block furniture, a sad picture hanging wire left on the wall and a lone cheerio in the corner. What we actually came back to was fresh groceries for the morning and a beautiful vase of flowers cheering up the place. Because we have awesome friends here. And that is something I WILL miss about Korea.
I will also miss the safety factor. Leaving my iPad on a park bench and going off to play with the kids or going for a run and leaving the two of them at home for an hour is not something you can do in almost any other country on earth.
But then I venture out of the HFC to go shopping and once again I am over it. Here's why...
Korea is full of Koreans. End of list. So it's not like the UK, or the US where you would see people of every race and it would be unremarkable. I stand out like Shrek the ogre in the middle of a victorian ladies tea. Little children point at me and jump up and down and say "Wegugin!!" (foreigner) to their mother's who, to their credit try to shush them and direct their attention elsewhere, but it really does make you feel like a freak after a while. People stare and at Costco, they sometimes physically grab my cart and impede my progress so they can call their friends over to examine the contents. This apparently is endlessly entertaining. What DO Wegugins buy at Costco? The Koreans want to know. I am so looking forward to being in a country where no one will know that I am a foreigner until I open my mouth. (Which takes about 5 seconds I know, I know.... but those 5 seconds will be really enjoyable)
Speaking of opening my mouth, I am excited to get into conversations with random strangers. Those of you who know me know that this is something I do all. day. long. It drives Jeff crazy. On the beach, in the check-out line, at the hardware store, you name it, I am probably chatting someone up. And I love it. And here I just sadly shop in silence for hours with no one to talk to. (cue violin music....) It's like being isolated in your own little bubble. Over it.
Speaking of shopping, here's something I'm over that is unique to Korea. Hangul. Living here is not like living in Germany or France where it's all in a different language but you can figure it out. It's like living with the Mayans (language only). There is no reading labels or descriptions in the grocery store. Shoot, there's no telling what your buying! Picture the dairy section....all those little tubs of dairy products on their little shelves. Now picture them covered in hieroglyphics. You have no idea what's in the tub. It may be yogurt, butter, cream cheese, or some kind of fermented bean curd that you didn't even know existed. So many times I have gotten home from the grocery store and opened up purchases and discovered that I bought something totally different than what I intended. Over it.
You know the Ogre comparison? I wasn't exaggerating.... I can't buy anything here. The way it goes down usually is that I see something cute and make the exception to try to go for it. There is then a 15-20 minute scurry among the staff trying to find someone that can speak English. Someone always draws the short straw and they are then pushed to the front to engage me. I ask about the item and am then told that I am some kind of amazon and if they DID make that object in my size it would have to be special ordered. Just what every woman longs to hear. In the US I wear shirts that are size small. Just sayin'.
Now what I cannot overlook is the remarkable way the Korean people always go out of their way to TRY to find that English speaker and help me. In Seoul there was a member of the hotel staff that went out of his way to help us in a way that I have only experienced from Walt Disney World cast members. And that's saying something. That's the norm here too. People are so anxious to try to help and to try to figure out what you are asking. They really are the nicest people on the planet. If only I spoke Hovitos....
So I will enjoy their smiles and smile back and wish that I could talk to them for 2 more weeks. And I will eat Kimchee and pretend that I really do like it and I will run at all times of the day and night alone and be totally safe. And I will enjoy the awesome company of our HFC companions and be so glad that I get to see them again for 2 more weeks. But we haven't seen Max since June, and we haven't seen Jeff since Aug 4th and we are so ready to be together as a family again. And when those visas come through you just may hear me "WooHoo'ing" all the way back in the States.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

A big announcement...

After 2.5 years our time in Korea is coming to an end. It's been a fun adventure and Korea has been a wonderful host country. We will miss it!

 

We've been on a mission to do all our favorite things "one last time". So we went on our last Hash and it turned out to be the exact same Hash as our first one that we did in the middle of winter when we arrived!

We've eaten one last time at our favorite Moroccan and Indian restaurants:

And we headed back to California Beach because Teddy is tall enough to ride it all!

We played in one last soccer game:

And the girls threw me a surprise going-away lunch!

Having "one last play" with really good friends is the hardest part of the whole thing.

Love these boys!

We have made some life-long friends here in Korea and we will miss them all but the upside is that we now have friends in so many different countries that we can couch-surf across the globe. So be warned all you HFC peeps, we may at some point in the future be crashing in your spare bedroom....

So that's it! We are off on our next adventure to Port Elizabeth, South Africa! We don't have a lot of details to share about this new location yet, and we're not exactly sure when we'll get there - in fact as of right now the kids and I have round trip tickets back to Korea at the end of the summer! But something tells me those tickets are going to have to be changed. So we'll update you all with info as we get it and in the mean time we are so excited to come home to the States in 4 more sleeps! WooHoo!!! By the way, this is what $7 of blueberries looks like in Korea. Can't wait to get to North Carolina and eat our fill every day!

Spring in Korea...

What a busy Spring! I've been so busy trying to write about China that I have tons to catch you up on. So this is going to be a whirlwind report! The weekend after we came back from China we had 2 days of races! On Saturday we took park in the yearly Dragon Boat races down on the Tae-hwa river. We had a bunch of great heats but messed up on our last one. We came in 4th out of 15 teams so we just missed the podium.

What a team!

The next day was the Hyundai Climbathon. This is an 11k+ run through the mountains that is pretty darn tough. Cora and I both ran it. I wanted to finish in 1:10 and I did 1:06 so I was pretty stoked. Those hills were tough!

After the race Jeff and I built a tree-fort up at Y-Block:

It's bomber and one of the best things this spring has been being able to hear the voices of all the Y-Block kids playing in the tree-fort just outside our windows. Ok, sometimes the Mom's play up there too..

We brought our kite back from China and thought we would give it a go with Korean wind. It went right up at Ilsan beach and then dove into the sea and snapped in two! We're gonna need a better kite.

And Teddy finally got to celebrate his Birthday with all his friends! We had a bottle-rocket party and we launched a bunch of rockets and ate rocket cake-pops.

His friends all pooled their money and got him the LEGO Star Wars Millennium Falcon. What a gift! He was amazed!!

Next up was Croatian night. We had an incredible evening celebrating the music, customs, and mostly the food of this amazing country. These guys pulled out all the stops!! I am so glad no one is asking us to host an American Night next. This will be a tough act to follow....

And then we had the school talent show. After 2 years I still have 9 fiddlers in the HFS fiddle club. They are all amazing and I love playing with them!

They played a tune together and then the played and danced a very hard tune called Money Musk. I was so proud!

The week after that Cora, Karen and I helped lead a school-wide hiking day. The kids were split into 2 groups and one group went up into the mountains and the other group took a slightly easier path. Both hikes ended at the same place though so we could all hang out and have lunch together. It was  great day!

Then Jeff had to go to Houston for a business trip. So the kids decided to have a big sleep-over night. Kid dinner!

Sasha and the girls. They stayed up waaay too late talking!

Teddy and Raphael on the other hand played so hard that they were out like a light!

Our next big event was the Solar Eclipse. We felt very lucky to be in a place where we got to see it! We made a pin-hole camera and went up early in the morning to the roof of X-block where we had a perfect view.

Eclipse projection:

 

I see it!

Then the compound team got invited to a soccer tournament! I thought they looked quite smart in their uniforms.

Jeff came back from Houston and Karen, Cora, Allison and I took off for a girl's weekend in Seoul. It was very kid-free and VERY relaxing!

We had a party for the Queen's Jubilee. There were lots of scones and biscuits and all things British. It's always so fun when you get to celebrate all your holidays plus everyone else's!

And the girls and I got our Yellow Belts in Tae Kwon Do! Our TKD master was so proud of us that he cooked us all breakfast and then gave us shots of some milky, strange Korean alcohol. Because there's nothing like celebrating athletic achievements with shots (?!?!)

Proud Yellow-Belt masters!

2 Astronomical events in one Month?!? We're gonna need a bigger pin-hole camera. Because to see the transit of Venus you need a pretty big image. We saw it. It ruled.

Teddy is now missing both top front teeth and is going to have one heck of a time eating corn on the cob this summer.

And we had another great international week. The kids did fantastic activities all week long and then on Friday we had Sports Day. Here's all the teams lined up and ready to rumble:

The yellow team does a cool challenge:

And the Green Team gets their whole squad across a "bridge"

The final event of the week was the international food faire. We all dressed up and brought in food from our home countries. The food was AMAZING! We all ate waaay too much. It's always so interesting to see other people's national dress and favorite dishes. Here's me and my girl. I'm just red white and blue but Sasha wanted to dress like a pioneer so that's what she did. WHEW! So that's been May and 1/2 of June in a nutshell.