Six in Seoul

Happy 5th Birthday to Boy 2!!!!

So, I have come to realize that Korea is the land of the not quite right.  Everything just seems to be a little off.  Don't get me wrong, I am not complaining.  I really love it here; things are just a little different.  I believe the language barrier is most of the problem.  And speaking of language barrier, I started Hongul classes last night.  I think learning the language might be a little easier to learn than I had anticipated.  Back to the not quite right, first of all forget about "lefty Lucy, righty tighty" it is opposite here.  Righty Lucy, lefty tighty....just doesn't ring right, but that is Korea for you.  I have discovered most things have to be done at minimum 2 times before they are right.  Like our furniture, when they delivered our furniture, they delivered twin beds instead of bunk beds.  I thought this was going to be a problem when I signed up for it, and tried very hard to let them know I wanted bunk beds.  I think I will get the bunk beds today.  Another thing is our phone/internet service.  The phone has tons of static in it.  I called for a work order, the service man came out and told me it was because I was using the internet and phone at the same time.  This is Korea, they are more technically advanced than most places, so I know this should not be a problem.  The internet guy is coming today to put in something so I can use both the internet and the phone at the same time.  

Remember when I was taking about patience before?  I am learning.

Remember when I told you my children have never been so dirty?

Before moving here hubby decided Saturday night would be date night for us.  This was the first of our Saturday night date night.  Of course, I forgot the camera, so I have no pictures to share with you this time.  We used a young girl from the neighborhood as a sitter, & it was very last minute, so our date was not too exciting for you guys, but it was nice for us.  We went to this little Sushi place in Iteawon, which was fabulous!  We ate far too much.   After dinner we just walked around did a little shopping and just checked out what was going on.  You know how I mentioned we thought the paint shop keeper was sleeping when we went in?  Well, I find it is not that unusual.  As we were walking along, several people were sleeping.  The man selling watermelons out of the back of his truck was sleeping.  Oh, by the way, watermelon is SO expensive here.  At the commissary, a half a watermelon is $8 and it is not even organic!  Next person we saw sleeping was a lady that sells street food, she had no customers.  It is strange to me to see sleeping people on the side of the road - I have no idea how they do it.  I have a hard time sleeping in my bed.   After walking & shopping for a while we stopped at Starbucks, I have been looking for a frothing cup since we have been here because I forgot mine, but none of the Starbucks seem to carry them around here.  Mine will get here soon enough.  Anyway, I was still too full to even get a Java-chip frappuccino, no whip no drizzle.  (I put the name in here for S, who never knows what she orders at Starbucks, because I would always do it for her)

Answers to some questions:

Hubby's brothers ask: Do the kids have many Korean peers in their classes?

The answer, yes.  Boy is in the minority; about 3/4th of his class is Korean. 
Girl's class has about 1/2 Koreans.  Just on a side note, both of their piano teachers are Korean.

Have you found most Koreans to be friendly toward Americans or just friendly in general?

Honestly I have found them to be friendly in general.  I feel very welcome here. 

Next, you ask if I needed anything from the Mexican market - dude, any thing you can send here from the Mexican market would be great, although you probably already went.  I know green chili's are going to be hard to come by, so if you would like to send them out that would be nice, of course it would have to be the canned ones.   We have found a couple of Mexican food restaurants here & plan on trying Taco Chili, Chili soon.  Wish us luck.

I have been having technical difficulties.  My computer decided to stop working yesterday.  It has been having problems since we got the internet here at home.   So yesterday while I tried to write my blog, it just quit.  It was done.  It wouldn't let me post the picture of the paint pigment, and it wouldn't let my thumb drive retreive my pictures.    So, after a hour or two of working on it hubby got the kinks out of it, and it is working great today, I think.  Time will tell.

So, back to the paint.  You guys will die.  As I stated, we found the paint pigment in a store in Seoul, I should have taken a picture.  I would guess the store would be no bigger than a 12x16 room, very small, and what made it seem smaller is there were paint cans stacked from the floor to almost the ceiling.  From the door to the desk in the back was a skinny aisle lined with paint cans, if you were a large person, you would not have been able to fit in this store. There were also paint splatters all over the floor and open containers of paint around the small room.  After we got our point across, we bought some paint pigment,  we had the store owner (who we think was asleep in the back when we arrived) make 2 gallons of a golden yellow paint for us.  He pulled out the pigment, started finger painting with the pigment on the lid, then started mixing paint BY HAND.  He did this while squatting on the floor.  Feet on floor, bottom almost touching the floor, and just squat there and mixed.  It was truly amazing how easy he made this look.  Hubby and I took our 2 gallons of paint (which was not good quality and cost a over $50)  and pigment home.  We painted our dinning room and most of our living room the golden yellow.  We still have one big wall in the living room not painted, but there is no way we will ever get it the same color, so I am painting it another color.....which lead me to our next painting adventure.   As you know, we have the paint pigment.  Since the owner of the store made it look so easy to mix paint, we tried mixing it ourselves.  The self help store gives us free white paint here on post, thank goodness.  We set everything up on our back porch, how hard can it be to make brown - right? The owner of the paint store told us to use a little red and a little black.   Our first can of paint was very promising. We started mixing, at first we got a really nice pink, then it turned into a nice shade of lilac, then just as I thought we were getting brown, it turned gray!  Aughh.....we tried again.  This time hubby did a little research on the computer (his computer, not mine), the internet told us to make green first, then add a little red.  After about an hour of mixing, we did it!!  We got brown!!   It is a pretty dark mocha brown, which is nice, but a little dark for military housing (if we paint too dark we have to paint the walls back to white when we leave & we are trying to avoid that), so we are going to add another gallon of white paint to it today to soften it up.  Now, how many of you can say you have mixed paint and made your own color by hand?   We rock.  :)

This is paint pigment!  We found it off post in a tiny paint store where the owner spoke no english at all.  It all worked out though.  We now have a golden color dinning room.  When I am done with this blog I am going to start taping my living room.  The color makes us feel so much better! 

Right now I am sitting under a tree at “white park”.  Our neighborhood has at least 4 parks, all color coded.  The older kids just tell me what color park they are going to.   Yes, Kathie, it is springtime here.  All the flowers are in bloom & the weather is beautiful.  Just like everywhere else we lived, the weather changes on the drop of a dime.  One day it will be in the high 80’s, and the next day it will be in the 50’s.  Today it feels like 80’s.  

Last night we went to Mongolian BBQ night at the Navy Club.  I tried it because my best friend S. LOVES Mongolian BBQ.  I thought it was ok, I liked the free beer that came with it better than the M. BBQ.  Sorry S.  I will take you there when you come.  It is all you can eat, free beer & kids eat free.  Many of you know how I am, if kids eat free, I am there. Most of the buffets here have kids eat free.  

 So, we still don’t have any of our things.  I have bought several items to get by for the time being.  I have one large pan, aluminum disposable pans, some cheap knives ( I can’t wait for my Wusthof knives to get here), a small food prep, and a plastic spoon and spatula.  We are eating on paper plates and with plastic ware.  I have been cooking most night.  I am very impressed with how creative I have been with the few items I have to work with.  I have made lasagna, orange chicken stir fry, a chicken pasta dish, steaks and baked potatoes.  But what I am most impressed with is I made Basil-Lime Martini’s!  L, you would be proud.  I should have taken pictures of the process, but thought about it too late, next time.  I squeezed the limes by hand – I forgot how time consuming this part is.  I don’t have measuring spoons, or a muddler.  I used a plastic fork to muddle my basil.  All in all they turned out pretty good.  Other than the fact that I am SPOILED to Tito's! I used Skyy vodka, it is not anywhere close to as good as Tito's.  I will try a different vodka when this one is all gone.  I ask at the Class 6 (military version of a liquor store) if I they could order Tito's for me, but they said no.  I also went to Tito's website to see if I could special order, but I didn’t see where I could do that.  So, L, if you have good connections, I would love to be hooked up.   Maybe you could pass my sob story on to Mr. Tito.  

 I finally got the kids registered at the CDC, child development center, here on post.  This is where I can take them for hourly care.  I really needed a break, so after registration I put the little boys in for 2 hours.  It was nice for me and they really enjoyed it and they cannot wait to go back.

  I have been waiting for today all week.  Two ladies from the neighborhood came over for coffee (they had to bring their own coffee mugs, because we only have 2 right now).  We had breakfast cookies and home made bread.  This is going to be a Friday morning tradition, it will always be at my house because of our coffee machine, and everyone is going to trade off baking each week.  We are also going to invite more women from the neighborhood.  

For those of you that have ask and for those of you just curious, my mom was in the hospital with phneumonia.  This is her 2nd time in the hospital with it.  She is now out of the hospital and staying with my sister.  She is doing much better.

Well, I’m going to sign off now….they kids are ready to move parks!  Have a great day!

 

 

Archives

May 2008
April 2008

This is the playground right outside our back door.  It is wonderful, my kids always have someone to play with.

Girl & boy's 2 & 3 were very excited about their first subway ride.  Girl has been asking since we got here 2 weeks ago to ride the subway.  Boy 3 is totally fascinated by trains, so the whole ride he was talking about how he was ridding a choo-choo.

Boy 2 just thought it was totally cool to be ridding in a moving vehicle while standing up!

We rode the subway to E-Mart. E-mart would be our version of Super Target.  We went here to find...you guessed it paint pigment, however we failed, they have no paint pigment. E-mart has this very cool escalator thing that you take your shopping cart on (pictured) once your shopping cart is on this escalator, you can let go & your shopping cart won't move.   

PS.....Boy 1 broke up with his girlfriend.

Before moving here hubby dubbed Sunday "brunch day".  There are tons of places to have brunch here on post, so we are going to try them all.  This Sunday we went to the Navy Club (pictured above), yes, I said Navy Club, no, I am not sure why the Navy club is on an Army post...did you call catch that - ARMY POST.  This is a little pet peeve of mine, especially among soldiers that should know better.  For you civilians, it doesn't bother me as much, but now you know.  The army has POST and CAMPS, not BASES.  Anyway back to brunch.  The Navy Club actually does not have brunch, so we just had a late breakfast, which was pretty good.  Boy 1 decided this is his favorite restaurant here on post and told us this is where he would like to have his birthday dinner.  This is an American restaurant.  Ok, so this leads me to the food here....from some of the comments you guys have left I tend to think you guys think we do not like the food here.  Hubby and I are enjoying it VERY MUCH, I guess I have only been telling you all about the bad stuff.  Most of it is really good.  I'll try to be more positive from here on out.

After brunch we went into the city.  Our quest for today was to find paint pigment.  We would really like to paint our house, housing allows it here, and they don't even make you return your walls to white.  The problem: finding paint pigment!  Self help will even give you the paint, and mix your paint, once you have the pigment.  The problem (again):  have any of you ever looked for paint pigment?  Much less in a different country where you don't speak the language.  It is quite humorous.  Where is a Home Depot when you need one? If any of you out there have some paint pigment laying around, or know where to find it, please advise me!  I can't live with white walls for 2-4 years!!!  Help me!! :) 

This picture is for Molly.....this is the subway.  Look at the floors.