Our Home Away From Home

After being in a hotel since May 27th, July 16th was moving day!

Elcru Aparements ~ building 105

No, the building is not on fire. I told them to wave their hands out the window so we could see what floor was ours.

Our first few weeks of apartment life had a different set of delivery men almost daily, none of whom spoke English. We just looked at each other and smiled and said, "Kom-sah-ni-da" (thank you) when they left. Notice they all took their shoes off.

Living out of suitcases was finally about to come to an end.

Here we are getting our garbage disposal installed. They have some pretty specific rules about using it that kind of scared me, i.e. don't put too large of pieces down it, if it gets stuck use this special tool, after putting food down turn off the water and run it dry for a few seconds, put cleaner type A down it one month and cleaner type B down it then next, for ever.  Disposals are not super common here. Most people set aside their scraps and dispose of them at the dumpsters in the special food scraps container down at the recycling bins. (More on recycling later.) But some American friends assured me I could use it without breaking it so I've been going at it like the American I am.

Finally getting a couch!

This was how the boys played their xbox before the couches arrived.

When my Brother and my Mom moved me to Texas, Steve couldn't get over how many shoes he helped me move. Before the move here I thought I had cut back on my shoes. However, I'm pretty sure the moving guys did not agree. In their broken English, they informed me they were putting all my shoe boxes right there. Brought back good memories of Steve. The reason the boxes are there in the hallway and not in my closet is because there is a shoe closet in the entry way. You know, because you don't wear shoes in the house.

My favorite person and I found a moment to sneak out for a mini date amidst all the chaos while the kids were playing with their new apartment friends. {Super awesome that they already have friends to hang with, right?! Plus fun to have a mini date.}

Anyway, the Cass beer was good. Not so much the snacks. They were 'service,' which means free, which was nice. But, in typical Korean fashion, there were oddly sweet pretzel bites; the Koreans have this weird thing where food that you do not expect to be sweet is. I think it is because they do not have a lot of baked desserts so they sweeten other things. But it's odd when you bite into something you don't expect to be sweet, like garlic bread and it's weirdly sweet. And then there were these bug things with garlic.

Our first grocery shopping in our new home. We just walked down the block to the Woori Mart. No plastic bags. If you need a bag, you buy a trash bag to carry your purchases. Once again, more on trash/recycling in a later post. We just bring the wagon to carry stuff home.

This was our first lunch. Ramen and hot dogs. It's kind of difficult knowing exactly what you are buying in a foreign country, so we were glad we could make something that we liked.

When our doggies finally arrived in Korea we were still in the hotel. We were told it was OK to have dogs in the hotel. The hotel guy took one look at Frito and said NO. I was like, we shipped her from America and we're here now, so can't we bring her in? He was like NO. We called a couple pet boarding places but they wouldn't take her because of her large size.  They only have little dogs here and are scared of Frito. Thankfully, Abe called his American counterpart from the lab and they agreed to keep Frito until we moved into the apartment. Once we finally got her back, she was so relieved to be with us, she would have slept anywhere. But this pile of pillows was her favorite spot for the first few days.

This little thing is happy as long as she is near somebody.

Here is the view from our living room window. It's a beauty, isn't it?!

[mid-July]