It's the Little Moments: Catching up...

When I started this blog nearly eleven months ago, it was a "New Year’s Resolution" which obviously failed terribly. It started as a way to journal what was going on in our little family…our adventures. At the time, little did I realize how big those adventures would be! As I sit here reflecting on the last eleven months of 2011, I realize, it has been full of lots of twists and turns which led us to where we are now, Uijeongbu, South Korea. That is right folks, we live in Korea! How insane is that?!

Braden and I have now been here fifteen days, and aside from the fact we are still living out of suitcases in a hotel (thank you Uncle Sam, you can sign that paper now!), we love it here. Which is good: considering we will be here about another ten months or so. We are settling in, well as much as we can. The Koreans love children. When I say Braden and I get stopped about every fifth step for someone to talk or play with him I am not even kidding! He has quickly made friends with the sweet girl at Dunkin’ Donuts, she meets him at the door every morning with a munchkin donut in hand, and he always flirts right back, if you can believe that.

I do have to say, the flight over was extremely long. Fortunately, Braden did amazing! When we left St. Louis he fell asleep before we even hit the runway and he slept until after we landed in Detroit. On the flight from Detroit to Seoul, he had about an hour or two where he was pretty crabby, mainly due to being overtired, but that was just about four hours before we landed. At that point we had been in the air for about ten hours straight. That does not include our hour long connection from St. Louis to Detroit or the hour long layover OR the drive to St. Louis at four in the morning. I think at that point he had the right to be crabby! From the time that we left Harrisburg to the time that we got into our hotel room in Uijeongbu, we had been traveling nearly twenty four hours. It was definitely a long day.

Now that we are here, we have been exploring a little bit. It is very overwhelming though. Uijongbu is definitely a lot bigger than Harrisburg, Illinois! My uncle was here back in I think the 80’s and he told my mom that Uijeongbu was about the size of Carbondale then, I would say that it is easily the size of St. Louis now, if not bigger. The traffic is definitely worse though. Drivers do not care who or what is in their way when they want to get somewhere, they are going however they want. It is nothing to see scooters racing down the sidewalks. It is an adventure, for sure.

Uijeongbu itself is amazing, we haven’t made it out very far past our hotel yet but we did discover an amazing open market with all types of fresh produce and meats. We will definitely be frequenting there once we get into our apartment. We will however be staying away from the seafood vendors! Ack! That is the biggest thing so far, all the seafood! Those who know me well know how much I despise seafood and it is EVERYWHERE, and it smells horrid!!

Also, about three blocks behind our hotel is an outdoor mall (I guess that is what it would be called). They have all types of stores and it goes for about five or so blocks, I am guessing, and it is not just the stores street level, these buildings are three to four stories high and there are different shops on every floor. If I knew how to read/understand their language I would probably really enjoy shopping there. But for now, I will stick to the street level stores which are mostly chain stores and are in English.

So far, Braden and I have not ventured too far into the Korean cuisine. Luckily for us, there is a Burger King, Pizza Hut, Cold Stone Creamery, Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin Robbins all within about a mile radius of the hotel! Stephen has of course been here longer so he enjoys Korean food. Come to think of it, I haven’t really seen a lot of food he doesn’t enjoy. We all ate at a little restaurant where your meat is cooked right at your table on a little grill and it was pretty good. Extremely overpriced, but looking back we decided that what we ordered was actually meant to feed two people and we ordered two servings. So really, our $62 meal was meant to feed four people… Braden seems to be loving the Korean food, which given his recent food strike, really surprises me.

We discovered this little restaurant about a block from the hotel that literally has six tables in the entire place but oh my goodness…SO GOOD! The name of the little place is Korean Barbeque, and that is all they have. The first time we went we did not really know what to get so we ordered two kinds of chicken. Again, another meal meant to feed four, but this time not nearly as pricy. Anyway, both types of chicken were really good, one did not have sauce and one did. They also serve you a little salad with what looked like thousand-island dressing, and then a bowl of something, some-type of vegetable we think, that is in a vinegar sauce. The first time we went there Braden ate nearly the entire bowl of the vinegar stuff. He loved it, saying "mmmm" the entire time he gobbled it down. We asked the waiter what it was but he couldn’t translate at all so we still do not know what we were eating, I didn’t think it was too bad, probably not something that I would go order on my own but Stephen and Braden both loved it. So far we have been to Korean Barbeque two times and I definitely see more in our future.

A lot of our adventures are just Braden and me as Stephen is generally at work. But then again, that is why we are here, so he can work! After we arrived, it took probably two or three days before I had the nerve to leave the hotel room by myself. I don’t know if I was afraid I would get attacked by the locals or what my thoughts were exactly. Korea seems to have a relatively low crime-rate. In general, I feel completely safe when Braden and I are out an about, which is becoming more frequently. Part of my fear initially was getting lost. This are is full of little alleys and nooks and crannies and seriously, there is something in everyone. I just want to see it all!

I also do not have a cell phone. My good ol’ Alltel phone will not work here and we are waiting until we get into the apartment before I get a Korean cell phone (hello, iPhone!). In the beginning I was also concerned about leaving the hotel room in case Stephen called, and in the first few days he did call several times needing information for forms or wanting to make sure we had brought specific paperwork, etc.

So, once I finally muster up enough courage to venture out into this city by myself, I decide that Braden and I would make our first (of many) trip to Dunkin’ Donuts. It is simply two blocks straight down the sidewalk from the hotel’s front door. The donut experience was so successful I decided to stop at the 7-11 on the way back to the hotel for some bottled water. Let’s just say 7-11 was not near as successful as Dunkin’ Donuts! I am pretty sure that I got cussed out by a little Korean lady; I could not get out of that place quick enough! To start with, it is TINY. I mean, I am fairly certain that my mom and dad’s bathroom back home is bigger than that place! Braden was in his stroller and she made me leave him by the front door, again, the place is maybe ten feet long from front to back so that wasn’t really a big deal, he was fine with it. So I run back to get a two liter bottle of water from the cooler and of course my sweet little monster starts grabbing at something that was within arms-reach of him (which was pretty much the entire front of the store) this is where the lady starts yelling. I tried to pay for the water so we can get the heck out of that place. The water was about 1,200 won; of course at this point I was solely relying on my trusty debit card since I did not have any Korean money yet. I hand her my card and again she starts yelling in Korean at me…by this time there are probably five other people in the store and I did not have the slightest bit clue what this lady was saying to me so we left…without water. Luckily, there is a little mini mart right next to the hotel so I stopped there, almost in tears after the 7-11 incident and bought water and a Snickers bar just for good measure. Looking back, I am fairly certain that the lady was trying to tell me that they did not accept cards for purchases under $10 because she kept saying nine over and over. But regardless, I have not been back to 7-11 and do all my shopping at the mini mart, well mostly on base of course.

Since we have been living in a hotel for two weeks, we have unfortunately been watching a lot of television. Most of Braden’s toys are still packed away in suitcases so he mostly has his "airplane" toys which are all quiet toys (mostly books) that he had on the plane ride. Korean cartoons are quite humorous though. There are two channels that are all cartoons then some of the other channels have them on randomly.

One of the regular channels is Nickelodeon which is the home of Dora the Explorer. I don’t know about everyone else, but I am not a fan of the English Dora but watching the Korean version is just funny. They take American cartoons and basically change the voices to Korean, so the normally bi-lingual Dora becomes tri-lingual and speaks English, Spanish and Korean, all in the same sentence. And they expect children to understand this?? And then you have Word World…I actually like Word World; it is fairly educational, as far as cartoons go. But again, translated to Korean becomes pretty amusing. The show’s characters build words out of letters (obviously) then squish the letters together and they become the object. Like I said the American version is pretty educational and I can tolerate it. However, like Dora, the Korean version takes the American cartoon and changes the voices to speak Korean but all the words that they are building are still English. Like I said before, we have been watching WAY too much television!

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Since I wrote this post, a lot has already changed. I wrote it sitting in our hotel room while Braden napped one day. Since I did not have an internet connection at the time, I could not post what I wrote. Since then, we have been busy getting settled into our new apartment. If I could, I think I would stuff it in a suitcase and move the entire thing back home! I really has more room than our house back in Harrisburg and WAY more storage!

So, we have gotten moved in, I finally got a phone to connect me to the outside world and we have started meeting new friends. Stephen introduced us to his friend and his family and I have enjoyed getting to know his wife and Braden has made a new playmate. It is so fun to watch the kids play together, they get along so well and are too funny!

I do not have a lot of time right now, but I will share a few recent pictures from our crazy life :-)

This is the view from our apartment. The moutains are absolutely gorgeous!

He just had to play in Daddy's boots :-)

I guess the sound of my camera is hilarious! I was taking pictures of the apartment and everytime I would press the shutter button he would just laugh so hard!

Uijeongbu Market, this was about 3-4 blocks behind the hotel we were staying at. They had just about all types of stores, the buildings are 3-4 stories high and there are different stores on every level. So what you see street level is only the beginning. We are learning that most restraunts are on the second floor which makes navigating with the stroller a bit tricky.