A day in the life of us...: June 2007

Monsoon hype?

The rain has been off and on, mostly off. It is very similar to the summer rain in Georgia except much less. The heat is in the mid 80's to low 90's causing high humidity levels. I'm a little disappointed in the anticipation of being nearly washed away. My interpretation of rain; if you can walk and see, your doing good. If your worried about your hair, look into a new style. If your pants are wet, wear shorts. If your feet are wet, retire the Birkenstock and put on your hiking boots. If you feel a chill, get a parka with a hood. Simplify.

Summer Vacation

Summer Vacation has finally arrived and I'm thrilled! The girls have had a very busy year and deserve some time to have a little fun. I will give a brief update, looking down it seems anything but brief. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to read.

Last Monday:

Sophia had a hard time going to school, knowing her sisters are at home. Around 11 in the afternoon I received a phone call from Sophia's school, she had an upset stomach and wanted to call me to pick her up. Sophia had a theory that it was the strawberry milk at school that made her tummy hurt. We picked her up and went to lunch at the Katusa snack bar (little dinner on post that specializes in Korean food ) After watching her eat kimchee and bean paste soup, I had my suspicions of the real culprit behind the cause of her tummy ache.

Later at the PX Chris noticed that one of the bikes that they had on display was assembled incorrectly. We pointed the error to one of the employees. After 20 minutes of trying to correct the problem (unsuccessfully), they said we could have the bike at a 10% discount. The bike came home and Chris had it fixed in 10 minutes! Isabelle finally had a bike. We have tried to graduate her to a multi speed bike, all we get are frumpy faces. Izzy, true to nature. We gave the bike to her as a reward to her report card.

Tuesday: Our neighbor upstairs had to go to her husbands graduation from PLDC (not sure what the revised acronym is) and her kids stayed the night at our house. She has three kids, Tyler 11 (6th grade going into 7th), Madison 7 (2nd grade going into 3rd) and Twyla 5. It was a perfect match for all my kiddos, not one person felt left out that night and everyone got along beautifully.

Wednesday: We had a little surprise. The contractors arrived to clean out the air conditioners. The catch was, they were only doing the 3rd -5th floor, so our house was not on the schedule. I stayed home all day to supervise that the neighbors above us had their AC cleaned.

Thursday: With a little pro-active resourcing, housing sent over a crew to clean our AC. This took only an hour v.s. the 5 hrs. that it took for the upstairs AC. After talking to housing, the first and second floor are slotted to have the "professional AC cleaners" come in a year. Their reason was that the 1st and 2nd floor have had frequent maintenance over the years and the other floors have been neglected. Hmm, not sure if I'm sold on this explanation.

later...

The girls and I went to the Youth Center to see what activities were available over the summer. We signed Haley up with the Swim Team and found that they had a summer "teen program" at the teen center. The schedule is incredible. All she has to do is catch the bus to the center and participate. They have at least 3 activities per day to choose from and a weekly field trip! The fee was a minimal $18.00 for the entire summer.

Practice was later that day and I could tell that Haley's conditioning was in need of a tune up. This conclusion left me thinking that it might be a good idea to enroll Isabelle in the same program.

Friday: Haley had an end of year sleepover at a friends house. The rest of us stayed at home. Chris and I stayed up and watched, "Peaceful Warrior".

Saturday: Our weekly grocery shopping trip to Home Plus. This is where I get all of my spices and vegetables to cook Korean food. The smaller store that we go to is 2 floors, each floor is about the size of your traditional American supermarket. It is very similar to a "Super Wallmart" and very clean. They have stands set up throughout the store that you can try featured items. This is another way that I have learned how to make Korean food. Last week we had made a late night trip to the store, this is the best time to go. With the day coming to a close, even though they are open 24hrs a day, they offer "discounts" on many items.

We were on our way out the door when I heard someone shouting over the intercom and a rush towards the produce section. My curiosity got the best of me, Chris had already left the building and Haley was with me. We walked over and they had full size watermelons for 4,500 won each! This was a deal, we haven't seen a watermelon less than 9,000 won and high as 15,000. We grabbed our lucky melon and walked to the checkout, by the time we made it to the checkout line all the melons were gone. Haley held the melon in the car as if it were a fragile piece of glass. If you ask us how the watermelon tasted, it was the best watermelon we have ever had. It's been a week since the watermelon experience and now you can find them on the street for 3,000 won. We haven't bought one yet, I don't think it will taste as good as the first.

We had dinner in the food court of Home Plus, always a treat. Chris and the girls decided to order the "western" meal. This consisted of a pork cutlets fried in a tempura, spaghetti, salad with strawberry yogurt for dressing and a baked potato with whipped cream. We giggled at the slight changes made to the menu but the girls thought it was wonderful. I had the traditional Korean cold noodle soup.

We finished out the night with a movie at home, "Everyones Hero".

Sunday: With monsoon season just beginning, we set out to find a raincoat for Sophia. This took us to a part of town that we had gone to when we first arrived. Its set up similar to a German Walkstrasse, the street is nearly vacant of cars and highly populated with people and stores. This is where the "Hello Kitty" store is where we found her raincoat.

Haley found a t-shirt that was only 7,000 won ($7.77), all the t-shirts in the store were 7,000 won!.

The store, "Style Lab" was such a nice change from the open markets. It was very similar to a store that you might find in a mall and all the prices can be found on the label. To make it even better, they accepted Haley's Credit Card (allowance tool). One curious rule about the store was that you weren't allowed to try on any of the shirts but only the pants, of course we found this out the hard way. When Haley came out of the dressing room one of the employees walked up to me, pointed to a shirt and made an X with her arms, pointed to the shirt and the dressing room and made another X. Over time we have figured out that the X with arms means "no" in Korean. They never use one finger to give any direction, it is found rude, so is accepting or taking anything with one hand. Better have your hands free when traveling in Korea.

Chris did catch a girl taking Sophia's picture, this happens often when we go out on the economy. Later Haley was able to buy her first Carmel Machaitto from the ,"Sleepless In Seattle Coffee Shop".

At home the girls watched "Mirror Mask"(Izzy gives this movie 10,000 stars) while Chris and I went downtown for a walk/run with the dogs. This was awesome, 2 foreigners running downtown with their dogs. I have never seen anyone do this, it was so fun.

I stopped in a store to price a traditional Korean blanket for the bed while Chris was outside with the dogs making friends with a Korean girl, about 4 years old. There was another girl taking pictures of him with the dogs. I find this very endearing. We try very hard to make it off post to places that we may not find many Americans. This brings me current to the present day...

Monday: The girls had their first day of Korean immersion summer school. The class is from 8:30 to 11:30 and offered to the military school children at no cost. Haley was hesitant to attend while Isabelle was enthusiastic. Both came home their first day excited for the next day. The packet that they brought home was titled, "Beginning Korean, Korean Language Class". This is the first academic class that the girls have taken together and they appear to love it. Something that Haley and I noticed was Isabelle's handwriting, it was beautiful. She is very committed to assimilating to the culture and amazes me with her dedication. If only I could see things through her eyes. She is having the time of her life, I haven't seen her glow like this since she was 3 years old on the soccer field.

Today is Ta Kwon Do from 3-4 and then Swim Team from 5-6:30. We squeeze in dinner between the 2 events. They have swim team slots open for 5 year olds. I'm going to see if Sophia is ready for this or if we need to look into further lessons. This is where the endless summers swimming in Georgia have paid off.

I finished a book, finally. I wouldn't say that I recommend the book, although it was entertaining.

Title: Boomsday, for those of you who might be interested. It's written by the same author who wrote, "Thank You For Smoking".

I have started another book by Elfried Jelinek, "Women As Lovers". I'm not sure what I find more interesting, the author or the book. She had written another novel "The Piano Teacher", that was made into a movie. The one word I have to describe the author is, angst.

Thanks again to all who have kept up with our blog, it is appreciated!

Last day of school & Fathers Day

Thursday was the last day of school for the girls and we couldn't be more excited. The school year has been nearly 4 weeks longer than usual. Ft.Gordon school year starts a month earlier than the DOD's schools.
We decided to have a mellow Fathers Day and keep it slow. We started off with sleeping in. Later, Chris took the ladies to the pool while I went to the gym. We then went to a movie called, "Are we done yet", (filmed in Oregon). I decided to leave the movie early and get dinner started, Curry with rice (one of Chris's favorites).

Hot in the City!

This was an incredibly hot day!

After dropping Sophia off at her bus stop, I went with my neighbor to an "Obesity Clinic". I had seen these clinics around town but didn't really know what went on inside. Could it be a Korean version of Jenny Craig or Curves? My curiosity got the best of me and I had to see for myself, I asked if she could take me when she was taking another neighbor, to get her moles removed.

The clinic was within walking distance from our house and no appointment needed. A drive through cosmetic surgery clinic! You walk in, pointed to what you wanted removed, sit down, wait a couple of minutes for the nurse to call you back. All communication between the doctor and patient was done through body language and an abundant amount of faith. When the procedure was complete, the nurse wrote down the amount owed (5-10,000 won per mole depending on size) and we were out the door in less than 20 minutes and 2 moles short. I was amazed how simple it was to have this done!
While I was waiting in the office I saw another patient sitting with dots of cream all over her face. I pointed to her dots and shook my head in question. She took her arm and pointed to her freckles. She was having the freckles removed from her face. As she became a little more comfortable with her English, she asked me how old I was and then proceeded to tell me how old she was...52! She looked not a day close to 40.

later that day...

I was almost done with dinner and my pie was on its last 15 minutes, Chris had come home early and the girls were in the house around when the fire alarm sounded (the fire alarm is frequently set off from excess of smoke or a child pulling the alarm). Chris and I went out the front door to make sure it wasn't an actual fire. I couldn't see any smoke and asked the neighbor, coming up the stairs, if it was coming from our building. It didn't seem that the sound was coming from our building but the neighboring building. I went back into the house and looked out the patio to make sure. As I look out... I see the Korean construction workers pointing up toward our building, yelling and running to toward us. There was an actual fire but I had no idea where it was coming from. I yelled to Isabelle to take Sophia out to the playground and yelled to Haley to grab my purse with my ID , as I was scooping up both dogs in each arm. We had made it out to the playground while Chris had gone up the stairs with another neighbor. As people were "slowly" evacuating the building, I could see smoke billowing out of the window on the 4th floor and smell burning plastic. Chris finally came out to the playground to tell us that the construction workers had run up to the apartment and help put out the fire. Chris and 2 other neighbors were trying to contain the fire until the fire department arrived arrived (within 10 min). The fire began in an apartment on the fourth floor and did not spread to any other apartments. The fire started in the kitchen and was caused by grease. The mother and children were able to safely evacuate the building while dad arrived as the fire department was extinguishing the fire. I have not heard how much if the house was damaged. Housing immediately relocated the family to a fully furnished apartment.

We are very thankful that everything worked out as it had.

The Hamster Sport

Up the street from our house is a store that changes its material every couple of weeks. Over a 2 day period all the contents of the store are removed and replaced with other merchandise.

This week they have an assortment of graphic tees and coats. Korea has the best "fake" name brands I have ever seen. This jacket has been the best one so far. The other coat that they had was "the huge mountain", all similar to "The North Face".

Chris and I tried to negotiate a price for both jackets and a shirt...They wanted 55,000 won (equivalent to $61). This transaction did not complete.

One of the bonuses in buying the Korean clothing, Koreans are very small compared to Americans, so there is an abundant amount of LG and XLG. I have passed the store many times in the last week and it's never open. I hope to catch them open before they change the merchandise again, Id like to sport a fancy "hamster" jacket by the end of the week.

Friday, Haley's class took a field trip to Woobang Land. She had a great time but not enough time to see everything. Chris has suggested that we visit the park in the evening so we can see it with the lights.

We had a mellow weekend (much needed). Friday night was family movie night, we watched "Duma", excellent movie. On Saturday Haley went to a birthday party at the post swimming pool and Sunday she caught the shuttle bus, with her friend Yumi, back to the pool. Later we walked to the military theater and watched Shrek 3. Some of the perks about the military posts in Korea is, all movies shown at the theater are free and so is the admission to the pools.

Hair Affair!

Its a hard life...

Many older women pull carts along the roads and collect recyclables that can be turned in for cash. Outside our gate is a collection point.

Standing, she is bent at a 90 degree angle.

If these women take too long to cross a road, cars will edge up on them and honk for them to hurry.

I find this picture and situation very upsetting. This is a very common scene.

With the amount of pollution and temperatures rising, it has been very hard to consciously get in the car to drive. We are trying very hard to not contribute to the pollution problem, we are down to using one tank of gas every 2 weeks, my goal is once a month.

By walking everywhere, we have exposed Sophia to the pollution/yellow dust and it doesn't help with her chronic cough. We use the mask daily but on days that the yellow dust is high, we drive or stay inside.

The transition to city life has been very hard.

Field Day for Izzy!

Today was Isabelle's field day event.

Isabelle continues to prove herself as a strong individual.

I was lucky enough to observe Isabelle in her element of confidence.

Isabelle stood by Sophia's side in line, assuring her that no one would be taking any cuts. All attempts of such behavior were immediately dealt with. Sophia is very lucky to have Izzy as a big sister. Mess with the little sister and you'll answer to the "tank".