Liars!

It snowed today...

...in Yeosu!

...twice!
...three times!!!
...four times!!!!!

For the third and fourth times... and fifth times... and sixth times
This week!

And at least the fifth sixth  seventh time since we got here.


So, I just want to say, to all the people who told me it "almost never snows in Yeosu"... 

                           You Are Liars!!!


Although, honestly, if I wasn't working in a freezing cold sea can, I'd be pretty excited. 

Ok, so maybe I'm still a little excited anyway.  And maybe every time I see it snowing, I still have to go outside and try to catch some.  Even though I am cold.

Because, once again, we live in the Baton Rouge of South Korea.  So even though there's snow, it's not the nasty, inches deep, stick-to-the-ground-for-weeks, make-you-pray-for-summer kind of snow - these are light, fluffy flakes that float to the ground and melt almost immediately (unless it snows overnight, and then all traces are still most likely gone by lunch), carrying more wintry magic than cold, wet, frozen stuff.  These are Baton Rouge snow flakes.  And if I've got to be cold already, I might as well get to enjoy it, right?

And it looks like I will because, apparently, it does snow here.  Quite frequently.

Liars! 

Next you're going to tell me it's because of global warming!  Ha!

 

Jun, Blake, and Mr. Hun

Blake and the plant

cabbage with snow

Apparently they do eat "dawg" after all

We started our Korean lessons last week, and we now know about 50 Korean words.  We can say them and write them in Hangul, and we know what they mean in English.  Words like pig, apple, sit, parking lot, hello, etc.  Ok, so I don't know how to say "etc" in Korean, but you know what I mean...

Anyway, in our lesson today, we learned a new one that I really like.
Apparently, rice cake in Hangul is, which is basically pronounced "dawg." 

So, of course, Sadie has a new nickname.



Sadie "Rice Cake" Carville

 Ok, maybe you had to be there.  But we thought it was funny. 

It's ok.  Sadie doesn't think it's funny either.


 .

Costco, how I love thee...

 ...let me count the ways...

I've only been to Costco once before.  It was in Richmond, VA, and it wasn't exactly a life shattering event.  It's pretty much like Sam's.  Only northern-er.  Ok, I know, Richmond was the capital of the Confederacy and all that, but that was a long time ago.  I think the carpet baggers won them over or something.  I mean, I really like the city and everything, but it's pretty much the North now.  And besides, that wasn't my point...

A couple of weekends ago (ok, when I started this post it was a couple of weeks ago...just pretend like I posted this two weeks ago...), we took a day trip to Busan.  Busan is the largest port city in South Korea and the fifth largest port city in the world and has a population of about 4 million people.  It's supposed to have beautiful beaches, and it's the home of the largest department store in the world, Shinsegae Centum City (no, seriously, it's in the Guinness Book of World Records - you can look it up).  Oh, yeah, and I think maybe I heard there might be a Costco or something like that.

Ok, ok, you got me.  Yes, we drove (ok, rode, really) 3 hours EACH WAY just to go to Costco.  But we went to Shinsegae Centum City while we were there.  I mean, we weren't going to spend the whole day in Costco.

All three expat families went.  Our drivers (Did I mention we have drivers?  We don't have Korean drivers licenses yet, but we're working on it) picked us up at 8:00 am.  We all met up and tried to keep together on the drive, which, with the traffic, wasn't as difficult as you'd think.  The traffic was awful!  I mean, awful.  It was like rush hour in Baton Rouge on Friday afternoon when someone got in a wreck that's blocking a lane on the interstate.  Except that the drivers are worse than Baton Rouge drivers (didn't know that was possible), and you never got to a point where you saw why the traffic was so bad.  Never saw a wreck, never saw a closed lane.  You're driving really slowly, crawling really, in bumper-to-bumper traffic, and then out of nowhere, you're going the speed limit again.  I hate that!

Anyway, despite all of my strong-willed desires never to go to a Korean rest stop again, and against my better judgment, we did.  And lucky for you, I had the presence of mind to take pictures this time.  Aren't you so excited?  Ok, you're not, but you didn't have to be so emphatic about it.

 

Outside food vendor

 

Random things on sticks (don't get the "corn dog" - seriously, trust me on this, just don't.)

Order counter for "food court"

Plastic models for menu items



In the picture above is the water dispenser.  The cabinet on the right is the cup sanitizer.  You use the water dispenser on the left to fill your metal cup from a shelf in the cabinet, and then, when you've finished, you place the cup in hole of the sanitizer. That's right - no water, no soap.  A sanitizer.  Like my Sonicare toothbrush.  Which I still rinse with water. Oh, and the water dispenser...  do you see the pink and blue spigots?  Yeah, the blue one is cool water, and the pink one is hot water.  And I mean steaming hot water.  Seriously - you can make instant coffee with this stuff.  Except they usually don't.  They usually just drink it straight.  Hot water.  And, Preeti, I always thought you were crazy!

In these pictures is the convenience store at the rest stop, much like the one in which I had my first (and so far only) breakdown the first night we arrived in Korea.  The food doesn't look quite as unfamiliar as it did that night.  Not much more appetizing, mind you, but a little more familiar at least.  Check out the chips below.  Yeah, it says prawn chips, i.e., shrimp-flavored chips.  Don't ask me what they taste like.  I'm not trying that crap!  The Korean "Bugles" are pretty good, though.

This is Blake with our driver, Mr. Cheung.  His
English isn't that great, but it's infintely better
than our Korean, and he's a very nice guy.

Anyway, so eventually we all had our potty breaks and managed to find at least semi-edible snacks, and we continued the trek to Busan.  When we arrived, I finally grasped just how large the city was.  I don't know what I was expecting, but this place seemed huge.  I didn't actually know the population until I looked up a little information about Busan to write this post.  And it made me grateful that we live in Yeosu and not the sprawling metropolis of Busan.

These are all high-rise apartment
buildings (similar to ours but higher)
which are where most people in
South Korea live.

When we finally got close to the department store, our driver pointed it out.  And it really is huge.  I told you so.  See, they even have a banner, so it must be true!   



See the English written on the building?  I
will never again complain about things being
written in Spanish in the US again. 







Banner, which obviously
proves its legitimacy

So we actually went to this store because we knew that we could find Western food here.  And at this point, we were all craving some Western food.  The selection in Yeosu is fairly limited.  I mean, I love McDonald's chicken McNuggets as much as the next guy, but you can only eat them so many times a month, you know?  We were told specifically that this store contained a Macaroni Grill, which sounded great.  But when we finally reached the restaurant, this is what we found...

Not exactly what we were expecting, apparently the restaurant bears resemblance to the American chain of Italian restuarants in name only.  But not to worry - we quickly made our way to the food court, where we found several Western, fast food choices.  And I have to say, even though I don't particularly frequent Burger King in the States, that was the best burger I had eaten in quite a while.  One of the things I have learned is that everything's relative over here, and you can pout or be happy with what you can find.  Mom and Dad, do you remember the joke on our Montana mission trip years ago about "being flexible"?  Yeah, we had no idea...  Then again, after hearing about your recent trip to Haiti, I don't think we have any idea over here!

Anyway, so after eating a tasty lunch, we proceeded to paruse the "department store," which is really more of a mall. It has separate shops for the different brands and stores, so I'm not sure really what qualifies it to be anything other than a shopping mall.  We saw many brands we recognized - Gap, Banana Republic (no Old Navy, though... sigh), Chanel, Louis Vuitton, etc. - and plenty that we didn't.  We enjoyed window shopping for a while and then eventually wandered into a book store that had books in English!  We bought a Korean-English dictionary and a Korean phrase book, only one of which we've really used since then, and our purchase proffered us a free gift from the customer service counter.  You can't beat free souveneirs.

From the atrium below

The escalators

The ice rink







 











Our free souvenier - a canvas Hangul
(Korean writing) tiger bag

 


The tiger is made up of tiny Korean characters



And much to our delight, much of Centum City was decked out in wonderful, Western-commercialization Christmas splendor.  And normally, it annoys me when stores put out their Christmas displays before it's even Thanksgiving, but this time I didn't mind.  You know, the whole beggars can't be choosers thing.  Seems to be a recurring theme here.

The Yeosu Albemarle Wives Club

Christmas with Cinderella display in the atrium

 

 As we were about to leave the mall, we noticed a hallway near Starbucks, from an employee-only area of the mall.  And in keeping with the Korean culture of good service, they have the following instruction on the floor to remind the employees as they step back into the public area of the mall, crowded with money-carrying customers.  The guys stood there until we saw a couple employees come out - and yes, they actually turn on the smiles at the line, even bowing before they step over.



So we finally decided it was time to head to Costco.  And it was everything we hoped it would be!  Only, a little Korean-er.

But don't let the octopus fool you.  There was plenty of American stuff, too.  We stocked up on all the perishables that we couldn't ship over and can't find in Yeosu.  We found shredded mozzarella, shredded mild cheddar, blocks of sharp cheddar and colby jack, string cheese, Babybel, slices of pepper jack (Blake's favorite), cream cheese, and sour cream.  You don't realize how crucial cheese is to your diet until all you can find are rediculously over-priced slices of sandwhich cheese.  We loaded our carts (yes, I said cartS - we had 2) with boneless, skinless chicken breasts, ground beef, roast, and andouille sausage - all things we either can't get where we live or cost significantly less than they do here.  We found cherry Coca-Cola and, yes, even Dr. Pepper.  We even found some badminton rackets so that we can try out the courts at our apartment complex.  And so far, we've used those even less than the Korea phrases book we got at Centum City.  Oh well, it will get warm again someday.  And until then, we have enough cheese to last us... well, a while, at least.

But when we got to the checkout line, we realized we had a problem.  A big problem.  You see, Costco only takes cash, so we had brought some.  But as we did a quick tally of the items in our cart, we estimated that we weren't going to have enough.  So I stood in line with the carts, while Blake went to the ATM, just past the checkout area.  I got to the front of the checkout line, and the girl started running all my items across the scanner.  I kept shooting furtive glances at Blake, who had been at the ATM for what seemed like an eternity to me.  And as the people behind me got more annoyed, Blake kept moving from machine to machine.  And I kept getting more and more worried.  I looked at my carefully gathered piles of meat and cheese and couldn't bear the thought of leaving them in Busan.  Blake tried fruitlessly to reach the other families, to beg to borrow some cash, but if their experiences were anything like ours, they wouldn't have had any left anyway.  Finally (it's ok, you can exhale now, I know you've been holding your breath), after the cashier had found a way to pause our purchase and had begun checking out other customers, Blake finally found an ATM machine/correct card combination that gave us some cash.   And we were able to bring all of our glorious booty home! 

PPE

This is my PPE to go to the bathroom.

For all you laymen out there, like me, PPE is Personal Protective Equipment.  No, the bathroom isn’t that bad.  We even have toilet paper now (when the cleaning lady doesn’t hose it down, literally), which is a vast improvement from my first day here.  C’mon, guys.  Do you really NEVER need toilet paper?  Ever?  Ok, we won’t go there.

But the bathroom is in the one and only actual building (as opposed to the sea cans we work in) currently on our site, and there’s construction going on.  So I get to suit up to go to the bathroom.  It’s really not that bad.  I almost remember to put it on before I start walking to the building now.  Almost.

The fun part is that we only have one.  There aren’t many of us on site yet, so it’s not that big of a deal.  But somebody got locked in the bathroom the other day – I won’t name names, but I swear it wasn’t me and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t his fault – and they had to break the lock on the door to get them out.  So now Blake has to stand guard for me every time I use the bathroom.  Fun stuff!  That’s ok – it’s good fodder for the blog!

We're aliens!

 

We got our alien registration cards.

 So now whenever we go somewhere and someone asks, "Can I see your passport?"  I say, "Will my alien card do?"

How cool is that?



It's Here! (the Hamburger Helper, of course...)

...and the macaroni and cheese... and the cake mix... and the spices... and the instant oatmeal... and the Dr. Pepper... and the Pop Tarts...  and chips that don't taste sweet...  and dill pickles (seriously, they have TONS of pickles here, but I don't care what it looks like, it's NOT going to be dill - they're all sweet, like the chips)... and green beans (yeah, they're canned, but I like them)...  and...  Alright, you get the point.

Ok, so I haven't exactly posted anything in a while (sorry, Aunt Tootie!).  But, in my defense, our stuff is here!!!!  Thank God.  And I truly mean that with all sincerity.  I don't think all that dog food could have ever made it through customs without His help.  Seriously.  Did I tell you the box we shipped over in September so that we could have some of Sadie's food already here (and cat food and litter) until our boat shipment arrived is STILL in customs?  Yes, still.  Wow.  I mean, really?  I took my Starbucks frappuccino through airport security today (more on that later), and they won't let dog food in, seriously?  I just don't get this place.  Ok, but the point is, I have a really good excuse for not posting recently.  I HAD to unpack.  And I had to go to Seoul this week for work... and we went to Busan last weekend... and I've been working late a lot lately...  ok, ok, get off my back, I'm posting now, aren't I?


There are 6 bags of dog food under that sheet.

 But I can't tell you how excited I was when they brought in all of the not one, not two, not three, but eight (yes, eight) 40-lb bags of Purina One Lamb and Rice (easily digestible formula for dogs with sensitive stomachs... thank you, Sadie, because feeding an 80-lb dog isn't expensive enough in the first place) dog food.  I know, you think we're crazy.  But we're not.  Honestly.  We're just cheap.  Do you know how much dog food costs over here?  It's rediculous!  And that's just the regular kind!  It is literally more than double the price at home (like most things here actually).  I'm talking $40 for about 16 lbs (that buys you a 40-lb bag at Sam's, in case you were wondering).  Rediculous!  Did I mention that Sadie is an 80-lb dog?  That it takes only five or six weeks to go through a 35-lb bag of dog food?  And that she has to eat the expensive stuff?  And I mean HAS to.  I won't go into graphic details (you're welcome), but just suffice it say, if I pay extra for it, she HAS to.  Anyway, I think I've made my point.

And then there was the cat litter.  If you think the dog food is pricey, you don't even want to know about the cat litter.  But of course, I'm going to tell you anyway (Rodney, maybe I do complain too much, but then, if I didn't, how boring would this blog be?).  A Minute-Maid-orange-juice-jug-sized container (about 10 lbs) costs about $15 over here (and that was before the US$ started going down compared to the Won).  The stuff we brought from Sam's (40lb tubs) costs only $11 per container.  If you've ever been to our house, then you know Mo Cat goes through A LOT of litter.  Quickly.  So we brought 10.  Ten 40-lb containers of cat litter, so 400 lbs, for a year, which means 33 lbs a month or a little less than 8 lbs a week.  Good luck, Mo Cat.  Crap, good luck us!  No pun intended.  We also brought quite a few bags of cat food because - yes, you guessed it - the cat food costs a fortune here (are you noticing a trend?).  Although, now that I think about it, maybe if we hadn't brought so much cat food, we wouldn't need so much cat litter...

Moving on...  Equally exciting as the animals' food was OUR food.  I love our food.  It makes me genuinely happy when I walk into our third bedroom (AKA "the pantry" AKA "Sam's Korea") and see all of that wonderfully glorious American food.  I think Blake thought I was a little crazy when we bought all that stuff back in early September - me making, checking, and cross-checking 20 lists and him pushing thousand-pound carts around WalMart and Sam's (but he humored me because he's a great guy like that and hey, I was moving to Korea for him).  And I KNOW the people that watched us check out 3 and 4 carts of goods at a time thought we were crazy.  But we were here precisely 13 days before our sea shipment (and air shipment, for that matter) showed up, and I believe his exact words were, "We should have brought more!"  I mean, we did have extra room in the sea can after all.

The movers showed up a little before nine last Tuesday.  And Tuesday was a long and exhausting day.  The other expat families had warned us about how stressful it was having the movers unpack all of the boxes and just put your stuff away in random places.  So we asked them to just bring all of the boxes in and let us unpack them.  So that's what we did.  All day Tuesday.  And Wednesday night.  And Thursday night.  And Friday night.  But Tuesday was definitely the worst day.

By the evening, we were exhausted and sore and almost ready to stop, and then somehow Blake sliced his right index finger with the box cutter, trying to cut a piece of tape off of some heavily paper-wrapped kitchenware.  He instinctively put his finger in his mouth like you would with a paper cut as he rushed to the sink to run water over it, and when he turned to look at me, he had blood running down his chin.  At which point I'm not exactly sure how I didn't pass out.  Because I don't really like blood.  I don't like to watch the gory bits of TV shows and movies, and I've never given blood in my life.  And there was a lot of it.  And I was scared to death that he'd just chopped the top of his finger off.

But he tried to assure me that it was just a slit across the top of his finger, while I tried really hard not to panic.  I just stood there in our kitchen, trying to breathe deeply and not freak out too much about how we were going to find a cab, explain to the sure-to-be-non-English-speaking driver that we needed to go to the hospital (and the good hospital, not the one that I went to with Tiffany in August) without getting thrown out of the car for Blake bleeding all over it and without any cash, and communicate with the doctors and nurses at said hospital (ok, and yes, how on earth we were going to pay for it when we didn't have our international insurance cards yet).  I tried not to think about what they would have to do to help him.  How scary it would be to have them performing medical procedures that they couldn't explain to us.  Whether they even use any form of anesthetic before they give you stitches here.

That was really the worst part.  Because even more so than blood, I hate pain.  I have NO pain threshold whatsoever.  When I go to the dentist, they give me the gas mask just to give me the shots to numb me so they can drill.  Just thinking about how much Blake's finger must be hurting him from the cut alone was making me a little woozy.  I tried really hard not to think about stitches.  But it just wouldn't stop bleeding!

After about 20-30 minutes of Blake keeping pressure on the wound with a since retired kitchen towel, I tried to bandage it.  We waited that long because that's how long it took me to find the band-aids because, remember, quite a lot of our stuff was still in boxes scattered all over our apartment.  I threw stuff everywhere, anxiously rooting through boxes looking for our first aid kit.  As soon as he removed the towel, we had about 10 seconds of reprieve before it started gushing blood again, which was  pretty much just enough time for me to see how bad the cut looked.  It was a 3-sided cut.  Or half of a long oval.  Sure, it was a thin slice, but it was on the tip of his finger and swooped down on both sides, which meant it was bleeding like crazy and there's no band-aid in the world designed to cover a cut shaped and positioned like that.  At least, not that I'm aware of, and definitely not in our little apartment in Korea.

So he put the towel back on and applied pressure.  We then had an argument about whether he should go to the hospital.  I wanted him to go because I was worried about how much blood he was losing, and he didn't want to go (you thought I was going to say I didn't because of the no insurance yet thing, didn't you? Shame on you! I'm not that cheap).  And truthfully, if I was him, I wouldn't have wanted to go either.  So we finally agreed on calling one of the other families and borrowing some cash for cab fare (yeah, in Seoul, Koreans can pay for their cabs with their cell phones, but in Yeosu you have to have cash) just in case, by 7:30 or so, it hadn't stopped bleeding without having a kitchen towel pressed firmly against it.  I gave in because he wasn't continually bleeding while he held it and I couldn't blame him for not wanting stitches, and he gave in because I pretty much convinced him that if he bled to death and left me alone in Korea, I would find a way to bring him back to life and kill him. And that's what marriage is all about, right?  Compromise.  Anyway, so we shamefully called our site leader (i.e,. the boss) to ask if we could borrow some cash, and he not only walked out and met us in the cold and gave us all the cash in his wallet but also told us to call him back if we ended up going to the hospital because he wanted to go with us.  How nice is that?

Then his wife Erin called me a few minutes later and informed me that the wife of another couple that speaks English and lives in our apartment complex is a nurse (Gina's Korean, and Bob's American).  Anyway, so the third expat wife Tiffany knows Gina the best, so she called Gina for us and asked if she'd be willing to look at Blake's hand and tell us if we should go to the hospital or not.  She and Bob were on the way out to go somewhere with their little boy (who is so cute, by the way), but they stopped and came to our apartment to help.  We were hoping to meet them soon, but this wasn't exactly how we had planned it.  Regardless, Gina surveyed his hand, walked to her apartment to get supplies and then back to ours, and bandaged his hand very well.  Her bandaging skills utterly destroy mine, though, in my defense, the cut had finally started to clot by the time she got to it.  But she is a nurse, so I'm guessing she would have easily beat me out anyway.  I'm completely ok with that.  I think I did a decent job re-bandaging it for the next few days, even if it did still make me woozy to look at it.  But I definitely still owe Bob and Gina a tube of antibiotic ointment and some freshly baked cookies.

This is from a day or two later.  It looks much better now, I promise!

So, crisis averted, we turned back to survey the apartment, which of course was complete chaos.  It was late by then and we were pretty tired, so we basically just gave up for the night and cleared the bed of debris that I'd thrown on it while searching for the elusive band-aids.  I wouldn't let Blake help for fear that any unnecessary movement would make his finger start bleeding again.  After several days, though, it's been healing fairly well, and he's kept it really clean.  But he's still not allowed to use the box cutter yet, and he can only use the scissors with supervision.  Just kidding.  About the scissors.  Mostly.

It took us pretty much the rest of the week (at night after work) to unpack everything.  We spent hours putting together shelves, searching boxes for missing pieces of shelves, and getting everything out of the boxes and put away.  But somehow we managed to find a place for it all, and now we just have a mountain of boxes we need to break down and haul downstairs to the trash.

 
I have to admit the apartment definitely has started to feel a little more like home now with some of our stuff in it.  One of these days, we'll find time to put the curtains up, and I'll give you a pictorial tour of the place.  But for now, you can just have a tour of our favorite room...

 

  



This is a panoramic shot - the room's not really as big as it looks here.  But isn't it great?

 Don't laugh.  If you lived here, you'd want a room like this, too!



.