Textures on Achasan

Getting Crafty

Good Morning - or good evening, depending on where in the world you are. I thought I would share a little project I have been working on with Miss Mila. A few days ago I got out all my fabric bits and bobs, including some pre-cut quilting squares. I have very good intentions, but often they don't pan out, for obvious lazy reasons. So, I have all this lovely fabric littered around the room, and lovely Mila comes to show me a picture she had drawn, on one of the little squares. Rather than waste it, and seeing as my embroidery thread was also out and about (Miss Trinity was sewing things) I made this little cushion to keep forever. What do you think?

Crikey, two in one day?

Hello again - just thought I would give you a design update. Firstly, I went yesterday to buy the last of the fabric I need to make curtains for the apartment. I also bought blackout lining, but of a kind you have never seen before. It is the most beautiful woven quality, and could easily be used as curtains rather than just lining. And, the best part, it was only 4000 won per yard, which is less than $US4 per yard. Oh, and it also comes in 12 colours.
Anyhoo, I too some pics, so here we go. The flowers are for the lounge, and the dolls are for the girls room.
I also have a pic of our TV cabinet that I am in love with. John loves it as it holds up the TV.

May 27 - A morning on the mountain

Hello to all my faithful and very patient blog followers - all 6 of you. Sorry for the silence. Some of you will have been sent the 'Missives' from John and so will know the strange goings-on that we have been dealing with. Others won't, and you are the lucky ones.

Today we ran out of drinking water, so the three of us (P, T & M) took a trek up the mountain to the spring to collect some. It is quite fun, although schlepping the full bottles home is not so much.

I took lots of photos as it is a lovely day here - 27 degrees celcius at 11am. I will try to post them here, but am still a bit challenged by all this stuff.

Apartment 202

Yay, we have moved. I have never lived in a house that had new floor and walls before we moved in, so it is an incentive to keep things looking nice from the start. Our boxes from arrived on Thursday, and were unpacked by the lovely men from Crown Relocations, who then took away the mess. LOVE Crown. The apartment is still in a bit of chaos because we have no drawers to put things in, or shelves to put things on, so the dining table resembles a yard sale table, and the floor in the bedrooms resembles ... well, the usual floor in the bedrooms to be honest.
I want to get a couple of chests of drawers for the girls room, just plain white, like the Malm ones from Ikea. Unfortunately, there is no Ikea in Korea. For our spare/office/sewing room I want to get a big cube bookcase that basically takes up a whole wall, and can have all our books, toys, sewing stuff on it and still look neat.
For our room we already have a hanging rack down one wall, and we could probably do with one more to take all the long stuff (translation: my dresses). We also need drawers. Did I mention that there is no Ikea here?
The lounge at the moment has a very old uncomfortable brown leather couch, which will have to do for now, as we need a rug more. Mostly for noise so we don't annoy the downstairs neighbours, but also to make the space a bit more cosy.
I will try to post more photos, but honestly, I am a bit confused as to how to load them, arrange them and so on on this blog. I know it can be done, as I have discovered the world of online design blogs, and they look lovely on their blogspots.
For now, words will have to do. Sorry.

Renovation & Moving Update

Today is cleaning day in our new apartment, and we start moving in tomorrow. The most excellent news is that we are not doing the cleaning!

Since my last I have picked the wallpaper three times (first the company was too expensive, second there wasn't enough for the lounge, and third time was a charm). The girls picked their own wallpaper, so as expected, they have pink and white stripes. We also got to pick a new floor, which is quite a lovely deep greyish brown. I am very happy with the colours as they now appear on the walls, but I must say that the wall prep under the paper isn't the best. Still, we didn't have to pay for any of it, so can't complain too loudly.

I will try to remember to take photos this afternoon so you can see the rooms all finished before all our personal junk messes up the space.

So, we move downstairs starting tomorrow, and hopefully our things from the US get delivered on Thursday.

I am excited.

Renovations

Seeing as I have been updating here, as well as Facebook, I can't remember if I have said anything here about our new apartment, that is supposed to be ready for us next week.
The story so far ... (or for BSG fans, "previously on Kiwis in Korea...")
We arrived here, and our apartment wasn't ready, so we go moved into temporary accommodations. We are currently still in 301, and our new apartment is 202. There are only 8 apartments in this building, so we will be moving downstairs, and along one. Any-hoo, apartment 301 is owned by PCUSA, and so is wired for 110V, so all our misc electrical goods we left in the US would have worked here. Our new apartment will be wired for 240V.
There was a visiting professor staying in 201, and he got moved out a couple of weeks ago. We then got the keys, and took a look.
The floor was all bubbled (cheap flooring laid over underfloor heating), and all the wallpaper was white, so we picked new floor and wallpaper (out of one book) and it should all be completed by this coming Sunday.
John leaves on Monday for NZ, so we hope to have our things from the US arrive and be unpacked while he is away, and then we can move ourselves in.
Will keep you posted!

Things I have learned in Korea - so far.

1. Not to wear suede shoes on the subway - you get impressions of everyone elses shoes embossed into your ones.

2. What it feels like to be a celebrity - everyone looking at you all the time, and not being subtle about it.

3. I can cook without an oven.

4. You can lose weight only eating Special K.

5. A rice cooker is a most wonderful invention.

6. If you click buttons long enough on a furniture website, you eventually find what you were looking for.

7. Having no torrent laws is indeed a blessing.

8. Living on a seriously dry campus is not.

9. Having a label machine is invaluable = to having someone translate for you what the buttons mean on the washing machine and then covering them up with labels in English.

10. Having a combo washer/dryer makes all clothes come out like those twisted skirts we used to wear when we thought we were cool.

11. Yellow sand tastes awful.

12. Aloe drink tastes like Fijoas.

13. Road rules are optional.

14. There are an unlimited number of things that are described as food that you really don't want to put in your mouth.

15. Living on the side of a mountain involves LOTS of stairs.

Is it March already?

I am sitting here, waiting for the final episode of Battlestar Galactica EVER to download so, thought that as the computer was on, why not update you all. So, greetings to those of you who still bother to visit this blog. I had every good intention of blogging on a regular basis, but have already fallen into my usual slovenly blogging ways. Apologies.
So, it is nearing the end of March, so that means Spring is here. We have only been in Seoul for 4 weeks, and have noticed even in that short time that the weather has warmed up considerably. We started off in heavy coats, scarves and boots, and today went out in t-shirts and jeans.
On Mt Achasan, which we visit most days, there are lots of little shoots appearing out of the ground, and in the next few weeks all the cherry blossoms are expected to arrive in unseen before quantities. It is quite fun to see the mountain come alive after winter killed everything off (above ground). Mila has been climbing with John a couple of times, and Trinity and I tend to cry off if we can.
Our new apartment will be ready within the next 2 weeks, with new flooring and wallpaper throughout. I had to choose all the wallpaper from one book, so the results will be interesting. The timing of the place being ready is perfect as our things from America arrive by sea on March 28th, and the shipping company are going to hold them for free until April 10th. We hope to move in around April 2nd. John will be in New Zealand that week fulfilling his duty as best man for his cousin Matt, so we hope to get sorted while he is away.
We celebrated John's birthday on March 16th with a special cake that the girls designed. We don't have an oven so bought on at a small shop near here. The girls couldn't decide whether it should be pink, or blue, have a rainbow or flowers ... anyway, as you can see the results were perfect for a 37 year old man with 2 young daughters.
I seem to be updating my Facebook page much more regularly than this blog, so is you want you can pop over to Facebook and become my friend, then take a look at the rest of my stuff.
I will try to be more diligent here for those of you who are allergic to Facebook.

Yongsan v Dondaemun

Or, rather, Boy v Girl.

Today we trekked across Seoul to Yongsan Electronics Market to look at the largest electronic market in the world. Every electronic gadget, humidifier, dehumidifier, fridge (blinged out fridges), teeny pieces of computer stuff (to build your own), DVD's, Games - you name it, big or small, if it could be plugged in, it was there.

A total boy's paradise.

Dongdaemun by comparison, is shoes, bags, clothes, fabric ...

Thus, Boy v Girl.

Friday Night

We went out on the town last night for dinner. Well, actually, we just walked down the road. Went to a really nice restaurant and had Shaboo Shaboo. This is what we called a Steamboat in NZ - a big pot of broth bubbling in the middle of the table, and then thin sliced beef, a huge number of leafy greens, rice balls, mini meatballs, tapioca (which is like chewing elastic bands). It was delicious. After we ate that, they added noodles, which we ate, then put in some rice and an egg and made a risotto kind of thing. By that time we were a bit full.

After, we went to Haagen Dazs for icecream.

The icecream cost more than dinner.

One More Thing ...

Logging onto Google and finding it in Korean. Then hitting buttons until I get to the right place. I did this for 4 days, then John showed me a button right at the bottom that said "Google in English". Grrr.

Unexpected Korea

We have now been here 5 days, and so far I feel good, apart from waking EVERY day at 4am. There are things we expected to find when we arrived: not being understood, people looking and touching the little blonde girls, lots and lots of cars, very helpful people ... But we are also finding other things that we had not even considered or even knew about. The best way I can do this is a list (sorry).

Not finding tea (regular, English-type tea) except in the international section.

Taking the girls up the Mt Achasan (meaning Mt Oops!) to the playground, and having them play with the sound of chanting Monks in the background.

Also up the mountain (when I say mountain, I really mean about the size of Mt Kaukau in Wellington) finding a huge number of Koreans decked out in full-on tramping gear - backpacks, hiking gear, boots, walking sticks and facemasks.

Not seeing blue sky.

This I think is funny - for those 'serious' mountain climbers, there is a station where they can clean themselves off with compressed air. I am not sure of the reason for this, but I think it is because a lot of the mountaineers catch the subway here, then climb, then have to subway back.

I was worried that there might not be any fabric stores in Seoul, but Dongdaemun Market is a sewing girls dream. Fabric for miles (quite literally), buttons to reach the moon, buckles, ribbons, lace, trims galore. I will have to get the girls into school so I can go shopping for days!

Cell phones and TVs that work in the subway.

Going down 107 steps to get to the first level of the subway.

Having someone at the market actually read and understand my attempt to write the word BREAD.

Mila not punching everyone who touchs her - although she is perfecting her "don't you dare" look.

Realising that we all need non-lace-up shoes otherwise we spend too long taking our shoes on and off.

Finding out that because we are in a PCUSA apartment, it is wired for 120V, so we could have bought some of our American stuff over here, but none of our new stuff works except in one Korean outlet, which is wired for 240V. Hopefully when we move downstairs to our new apartment in a few weeks it will be 240V.

Realising that I do need a hairdryer to feel human (and pretty!).

There will be many more things to come, I am certain. Today we go into the heart of the beast (Seoul), to get our Alien Registration Cards (eat your heart out Jen - not Cylon, but close), which will take most of the day. Wish us well.

We Have Landed

Entry number 3. We arrived in Korea yesterday morning at 5am. It was still dark, and on the car ride into Seoul (1 hr) it seemed that we could have been in any Western country. The girls even asked at one point as we were about to go into a tunnel if we were going to Pittsburgh. Only once we got closer to the city and saw hundreds of highrise apartment blocks did it seem a bit more foreign.

We saw none of the famed traffic congestion, but admittedly it was 5am on a Sunday morning. John had met us at Incheon airport with 2 of his faculty colleagues. Our bags (only 9) went in one car and we went in the other. Unloading them at this end was a bit of a task as we are currently living on the 3rd floor.

The flight itself, and leaving the US was pain-free - not tear-free. Karen and Iris drove us from Princeton to JFK. Mila was pleased to see NY city at night, before she fell asleep in the car. We flew Asiana Airlines, which I highly recommend. We had signed up for Family Assistance, which you can get if you are flying with children under 7. This was a GREAT idea. We were helped onto the plane, just after the First Class passengers. This was really helpful, as the majority of travellers (mostly Koreans) had started to line up for boarding 1 1/2 hours before we started boarding. Both girls slept at least half of the flight - I think leaving at midnight helped!

Arriving in Korea we were helped off the plane, then whisked through all the restricted areas, taken to the front of the line in customs, then and 2 staff help us with our bags, which came off the carousel straight after the First class bags. We were out of there within 1/2 hr!

We got to the apartment which is furnished in what I would call retro/junk/left-over/yuck style. Still it is furnished. Our final home will be an identical apartment (in layout, not decor) on the 2nd floor. It is currently being refurbished, and should be ready at the beginning of April, which coincides with when our things arrive that were shipped.

So, back to yesterday - we had a snack, then all went to bed, woke 4 hours later and then John gave us our first experience on the Seoul Subway. We went to church, then I was given the task of finding our way back home. Subway on the green line, transfer to the purple line, then finding our way back to our apartment through all the tiny little winding streets. Obviously we made it. John made us a Korean dinner, then all back to bed. I woke at 3am this morning, which is 5pm in Princeton, and the girls woke at 5.30am, so I think we are in good shape to survive the day.

Today John is taking us to the Dongdaemun market, which is legendary, and huge. I hope to tell you of our adventures there later.

Second Entry

I will have to think of new titles, but for now my brain is busy with other stuff. Yesterday I sold our dining room table and chairs (for those of you who know my dining room table fetish, understand this was a difficult thing to do), painting easel, kitchen clock, chest of drawers (now the TV is on a coffee table, unless I sell that soon too), our computer and screen, Mila's bike (unknown to her), my overlocker/serger, quilting table and almost sold the car. I still have to sell the TV, DVD player, stereo, iPod dock, breadmaker, Ikea Poang chair and lots of other blah blah blah junk collected over the past 5 years.
To make me happy, I am going to New York tomorrow with Iris, Karen, Maria and Sarah. I will definitely visit PurlSoho (fabric store), Arcadia (gift store on 8th), probably Anthropologie (not much of a surprise) and various other stops along the way. Dinner will be at Babbo (Mario Batelli's restaurant) where we will have to return the silver fork that fell into my bag last time we were there. Hope it doesn't snow.

First Entry

Hi

This is my first entry on my new blog. Hopefully I will be a bit more organised this time, and write fairly often so you can all keep up with our adventures.

We will have been in the USA for 5 years, 5 months and change when we move from Princeton to Seoul, South Korea in February.

John is very excited, I am not sure, and the girls want to take our toilet with us! I think my uncertainty is a combination of not knowing what is there for us, not knowing what to take, not knowing what to leave behind, donate, give away etc. I guess NOT KNOWING would sum it up.

Currently, I am loading things onto the give-away table in the laundry room, inviting people over to take what they want, selling stuff on craigslist.com, and generally making a huge mess. This is a different huge mess from the usual one we live in.

I would like to set myself a goal of not living in a mess anymore, but am a bit scared to make such a goal as I know that living up to it would be next to impossible.

So, lots to do, lots to think about, and please, lots to pray about.