Water Rations

Yesterday we got a note on our door that they will be working on the water tower that supplies water to our housing. We are not allowed to drink the water (but we can shower) until August 1st. Lovely. Each day we all get to walk across the base to collect our allotted water bottle rations. Fun fun fun! Can you guess who gets to lug all that water back across the base and up two flight of stairs????? That's right, me! It would not be so awful, but Marley walks at the speed of smell. Oh well, it gives us something to do each day and I am sure going to get my exercise.

I registered Jackson for school today. He has a new student orientation on August 28th that we are both looking forward to. I made sure to give them copies of his perfect score on the reading part of the TAKS test and the paper that shows he only missed two on the math portion. I gave them copies of his intelligence tests and acceptance into TAG. If they try to give me any crap about putting him in the accelerated class I am going to have to throw a fit!

While we were at the school I confirmed the fact that they do offer a specials program that includes music, art, and Korean culture. His last school did not offer art and I really think that is a shame.

I found a place around the corner that does Tae Kwon Do and a few other martial arts that I need to check out next week. Korea is the birthplace of Tae Kwon Do (Uncle Scott has a black belt in it) and I really want him to have an awesome teacher.

Movies

It has been pretty boring around here the last couple of days. We have been to the DVD place like three times to buy more movies. I love these DVD places, everything is $5 (including copies of movies that are still in theaters). The children and I have been chilling and watching movies while Jason continues to inprocess at work. Jason passed his Korean drivers license test today, so now we can buy a car. Tomorrow, after transportation brings all his military stuff that we shipped, we will head over to the other post to look at used cars. Around here you are able to find good used cars for between $500 and $1500. We have our fingers crossed that we can find a reliable car pretty soon so that Jason can get to and from work everyday. Now that he has his licence I can finally take my test to get one too. Eventually we will find me a hoopty to drive around so that the kids and I can stop riding the bus and taking taxis everywhere. I cannot tell you how much I miss my car. I miss the freedom that it provides. It is sad when you are out of bread and milk and you spend 20 minutes debating (with yourself) how necessary they really are. The bus is terribly inconvenient since it only runs every hour, and taxis can get expensive.

Pictures of our house

This is the living room and the furniture that they provide. Sorry about the clutter, but every time I clean somehow everything gets messed up again. The messy trolls love to play at my house, but the clean ones never seem to show up.

This is the dinning room. It is also the first thing you see when you walk in the door. That is a china cabinet and another display cabinet that we are given to use during our stay.

This is our front door on the right and the left is the smaller of our two storage closets. the other one is a deep walk in closet.

Here are the pictures of the kitchen. Yes, the washer and dryer are in the kitchen. We are also responsible for recycling all of our stuff.

Marley and Jackson each have desks, twin beds, a nightstand, and a chest of drawers.

This is the master bedroom. The pictures don't show it, but there is quite a lot of space.

This is the master bathroom. I have no idea why they have a shower head with no shower, but we think it is funny. It is like the whole bathroom was meant to be used as a shower. there is tile on the floor and a drain by the toilet. Your guess is as good as mine!

this is a picture of the balcony we have. they are basically a sun room with a sliding glass and screen door for fresh air. I would say they are about 3x8.

Fabric Market

Yesterday one of the ladies here took me to a fabric market. OMG it was amazing. We are talking three story warehouse filled with 10x10 stalls of vendors. Each vendor had fabric stacked everywhere. It was awesome! The fabric was amazing quality and I swear I literally did a happy dance every time someone told me a price. I got 4 yards of fabric, 4 pillow forms, and paid a lady to make the pillows (zipper and all) all for about 20 dollars. Last time I recovered my couch it cost me about $500 (that was doing it myself), this time I bet I can do it for under $100. Oh when my embroidery and sewing machine get here Jason is going to be in trouble.

Burnt Hair

We finally are in our new house and have internet again! The houses at Camp George are set up in 5 story buildings with 4 condos on each floor. We are on the 2nd floor and were lucky enough to get a 4 bedroom 1 1/2 bath style home. I think it is around 1650 sq ft of space (bigger than our house in Killeen). Each condo has a glassed in porch with sliding glass doors that open to the outside for fresh air. The condos are definitely older, but pretty standard as far as military housing is concerned. The kids are pretty happy with their new rooms and I love that I have a craft room for all my stuff. I am working on pictures of the house, but I have to declutter first.

Wednesday was our first day in the new place and we were all pretty excited. Since there was already furniture (and we borrowed kitchen stuff) I decided that the children and I would head to the PX (military walmart without the groceries) to get some things that we would need. We get home and I light the candle that I have just purchased so that the house will smell nice when Jason gets home. Now that I finally have a moment to myself I head to the bathroom. The kids are playing so this should be safe right?? Wrong! As soon as I sit down I hear Marley calling for me. I ignore her. She continues to get louder and louder and finally starts yelling, "hot mommy, too hot mommy." I run down the hall with my pants around my ankles only to be smacked in the face by the smell of burnt hair. I look over in the corner and there is my daughter with ashes all in her hair. I immediately check for any burns on her body and she is fine. I was able to piece together that she had crawled up on top of my dining room table and decided she was going to blow out the candle and instead caught a small portion of her hair on fire. Lovely. Off comes her clothing and I throw her into the bath. After washing her hair I am finally able to assess the damage. From what I can see she must have only singed the little fine hairs that stick out of the side of her head, so no real damage. My whole point in lighting the candle was to have a nice fragrance in the air when Jason came home, instead he came home to the smell of burnt hair. Gotta love toddlers, turn your back for a minute and they are tearing something up.

Final Destination

I cannot tell you how happy we all were to be checking out of the Dragon Hill Lodge yesterday. I also have to give Jason his props for buying those luggage dollies, they were worth their weight in gold yesterday. We were able to get two huge duffel bags onto each of them which made all the difference in the world. After we checked out of the hotel and drug all our luggage up a huge hill, the Army put us on a bus with a few other soldiers and we headed out for the Seoul train station to catch the bullet train. Once we get to the train station we see that we have to take an escalator up to get to the actual station. Normally this would not have been a problem, but leave it to me and my family to find one. Let me give you a mental picture here: Jason has a HUGE military duffel bag on his back, a large military backpack on his front, a very large golf bag (with all kinds of crap in it) on his shoulder, and he is dragging a luggage dolly with two duffel bags. I have a very heavy backpack on my back, my purse (anyone who knows me knows this is heavy), a bag with all the crap for the children, and Marley (who I swear is the laziest child) on my hip. Jackson has a light backpack and is dragging the other luggage dolly. After about 20 feet Jackson has flipped the luggage dolly 5 times and I have decided that he is an idiot and can in no way maneuver this thing up an escalator. I then add this to my list of crap to drag and we head to get on. Mind you I have completely forgotten about the laws of gravity at this point. Just as the escalator starts to go from flat to steps I realize I do not have the luggage dolly tilted toward me. The dolly proceeds to start falling down the escalator and the baby and I are following suit. Gotta love solders, cause one of them caught me mid fall and I was able to right myself and the luggage. Finally off the escalator and we are able to relax and wait for our train. Poor Marley spent the better part of that hour fending off Koreans who wanted to touch her. Some of the other soldiers with us were teasing that we should start charging admission. The bullet train was pretty cool. We made it from the middle of the country to very close to the coast in 1 hour. Yeah and Marley slept the whole way!! Our escort took us straight to the housing office and we found out that our place would be ready this morning. As soon as the children get up we will be headed over to pick up our keys and see our new place. I will send post pics tomorrow.

Observations

My family and I have not done much in the last few days other than play on the playground (during intermittent dry spells) and swim at the pool because of all the rain here in Korea. While I was talking to my mother this morning I told her that I was at a loss for something interesting to say on my blog. She pointed out that she was interested in my interactions with the Korean people, and thought that others would be interested too. Though we have only been here a week, I have come to believe that the Korean people are the most polite, good natured people on the planet. Everyone smiles and seems to genuinely care that you are having a nice day. The women are fascinated with Marley and her hair. They want to touch her and I hate that she gives them all the stink-eye.

I have noticed that the Korean people dress differently than Americans. In Korea it is common practice for people to dress up for everything, including a hike in the parks. The majority of the women wear high heals and men wear slacks and a tie. When we were at the Korean Folk Museum there were women in cocktail dresses and heals taking in the sights. If I could have found a way to take their picture without offending them I would have.

While we were shopping in Itaewon the other day we were stopped by a Korean woman and a group of children. Each of the children were carrying paper and pencils and seemed to be on a type of scavenger hunt. The lady asked me if the children could as me a few questions and I said yes. The littlest of the girls looks at me and asks me where I am from, what Korean food I like to eat, and do I speak any Korean. I answered her and her teacher told her what I said. As they walked off Jason and I both looked at each other and commented on what a great way for those kids to practice their English.

Last night the kids and I were outside the hotel and a Korean man and his family past us on their way to their car. He stopped and came back to talk to me. I could tell as he started to talk that he knew very little English, but his question was important enough to him to try to ask anyway. The man pointed to the flag and said, "why down?" He wanted to know why the American flag was at half mast. In as basic English as I could I told him that soldiers had died in Afghanistan. He thanked me and went to explain to his family what I had told him. I was so moved to know that they are as interested in learning about us as we are about them.