The New Homestead

Our dream home it is not.  But for the next two years, it's home.

Welcome to Hannam Village.

 In all fairness to the Army, Hannam Village recently underwent a major renovation and the upgrades are nice.  I appreciate my new dishwasher and my 'hard wood' floors.  But I can't help but be a tad homesick for our 3 bedroom townhouse in Maryland.  We're living apartment style in 1100 sq feet and you hear and smell everyone around you.  Hannam is gated and has its own gym, pool, playgrounds, grill/picnic areas, baseball field, library, and mini commissary. Although small, the commissary is very well stocked and only a five minute walk from our building!  Hannam is not on post like most military housing.  It's a mile or two away in Itaewon.  Itaewon is a very westernized area where almost everything is in English and you can find any kind of food you want. Mexican, Italian, KFC, desserts-it's all there!  There's a shuttle that runs hourly to Yongsan and the subway is right outside the gate.

 Moving on! Follow me on a tour inside our simple home.  Please bare in mind that we have not received any of our furniture so the furnishings you will see is loaner furniture issued by the Army. Also, it's hard to get pictures of the full room since there are lots of narrow turns and odd angles to shoot from.  I tried to get as much in the shot as possible. :)

This is our living room and dining room (notice dining room table to the left). There is a porch attached to the living room that is enclosed with glass. 

Next is our kitchen which is in its own little hallway at the other end of the dining room table.  Our washer and dryer is also in the kitchen.  Michael has planked for you to demonstrate the width of our laundry room/kitchen.

 

Next is the hall bathroom.  Notice there is absolutely zero storage space with the exception of the medicine cabinet.  The shower isn't bad though.  Great water pressure, a lower bidet-like massager that resembles a sprinkler when its on, and built in glass shelves!  The toilet  has two buttons on it...one for um...'small' messes and one for 'larger messes.'

 

The flower tile isn't so bad and I especially like that the toilet paper holder has a built in magazine rack. Haha!

This is the master bedroom.  There are built in book shelves to the right. This room is actually bigger than it looks.  We moved the bed to the wall on the left to open things up a bit and it looks great.  More pictures to come once we receive our furniture shipment!

 The picture above is the two closets in the master bedroom. In between the dresser and closet is the entrance to the master bathroom.

 Notice how there's no tub? It resembles a cruise ship bathroom. :) This is where Michael gets ready in the morning.  But he uses the shower in the hall bathroom.  I'm not sure that we'll ever use the shower in the master bedroom!

 This is bedroom #2. Pretty uneventful.  And there's a smaller third bedroom that I didn't take a picture of. 

 The inside our our closets. Ummm...yeah.  Thankful we have ample drawers and extra closets in other rooms.

The hallway. Bathroom is the first door on the left. Master bedroom is second door on left.  Bedroom 2 and 3 are directly in front and on the right.

    And finally our view.  It's a tad hard to see the Olympic size swimming pool that our porch faces because there is a moving truck blocking it.  But it's there!  And we can't wait to use it in the summer time! 

 Speaking of moving trucks, everyday I watch moving trucks loaded with crates pull up to my building with everyone's household shipment but mine.  You have no idea how frustrating this is.  We have been living out of a suitcase since early January and we're ready to settle in!  We do have our express baggage which included DVDs, a TV, blu-ray player, kitchen stuff, sheets, and towels.  But we're ready for our furniture so this can finally start to feel like home!  I'll take new pictures once we receive our stuff! But for now, I'll leave you with this....(I couldn't resist-fierce, isn't he?...bahahaha!)

Namdaewho? Namdaemun!

The first two nights of sleep were fantastic...until we woke up at 5am and couldn't get back to sleep.  Ahhh...the joys of jet lag.  But that's okay, because Michael had in-processing to do and I had a breakfast date with a wife who gave me beaucoups of tips and information while we were still in the States.  I was so excited to meet her finally!  She brought along another wife and we went to breakfast in a restaurant at the Dragon Hill Lodge (our hotel).  I can not stress how important it is to have friends when you're stationed overseas, because they're you're family away from family.  I may have only been here for two weeks but it didn't take me long to figure out that the women here are amazing!  As mentioned in my previous post, I had no makeup, no hair brushes, no shower stuff whatsoever.  I couldn't run to the PX for a quick shopping trip because you need a ration card before you're allowed in the door.  

What is a ration card?  It's another form of ID that you present at the PX and Commissary when you're stationed overseas for purchases and it tracks how much you're spending per month on groceries and enforces that you don't purchase more than what one needs of certain 'black market' items (alcohol, perfume, designer purses, etc).  

The Hair Dryer

I had women who I had never met Facebook me from the Spouse's Club and ask if I needed them to make a PX run for me.  It was truly humbling how quickly these women were there to help.  :)  But back to my delicious pancake breakfast with the wives.  They were so sweet to take me to breakfast-greasy hair, no makeup, and all.  They listened to me gripe about the trip over and shared their similar experiences.  It was great!  Luckily, the lady with the beaucoups of information also knows beaucoups of people on base!  And she knew just the right people to call and ask if I could shop at the PX if I presented my passport, military ID, and orders since my rations card wouldn't be available until later in the afternoon.  So off we went to the PX where I purchased a hair brush to get by because as you ladies with thick hair know, you can't wash your hair and dry it unless you have a hair brush!  Luckily, the hotel had a built in hair dryer that resembled a vacuum cleaner.  Whatever, it got the job done!

Around Sunday, Michael and I were itching to get out of the hotel and explore!  So, I went downstairs to the front desk and grabbed some brochures on places to visit.  We decided on the Namdaemun Market since it was a quick walk to the subway followed by a quick subway ride that emptied you in the middle of the market.  This was my first experience out and about in Korea; and what an experience it was.  The Namdaemun has everything you could possibly want:  purses, socks (not sure why, but everyone sells socks here), clothes, hair accessories, food vendors, etc.  

The food vendors were the most interesting because you certainly see a wide variety of 'tasty snacks and treats' that we do not typically eat in the good ol' USA.  Chicken feet, squid jerky, silkworm pupae, etc.  But let's stop and focus on the silkworms....

Beondegi is what the Korean's call silkworm pupae.  At first glance they look like pecans; but when you get a tad closer you realize that it is not pecans but rather a big ol' pan of roasted bugs.  The smell is awful.  It triggers your gag reflex.  Even my adventurous husband, who will try almost everything at least once, refuses to eat the Beondegi.  Yum....doesn't this look tasty?

We did, however, find something that looked quite scrumptious so we decided to try it.  It's called hoddeok and it's basically a Korean pancake with delicious goodness inside.  We tried two different varieties. One had sugar and brown sugar in the middle and the other had a mixture of vegetables and glass noodles.  

After a few hours, we were ready to wrap it up and go 'home' to the Dragon Hill Lodge. 

I'm Leaving.....On A Jet Plane!

Hello family and friends from freezing cold Korea!  Welcome to our blog where we hope to keep you up to date with our Korean Adventure!  Michael is stationed at Yongsan Garrison in Seoul.  This will be our home for the next two years.

Yongsan Garrison

February 8 at 4 am is when our journey began.  Our first leg of the trip was a cross-country flight from Charlotte to San Francisco at 7:30am.  Our parents drove us to the airport where we said our many tearful goodbyes on the curb of the departure terminal.  It's an eerie feeling knowing you might not see your loved ones for two years or even American soil for that matter, or that your furniture and car is somewhere in the Pacific Ocean on its way to Korea and you have absolutely zero control over anything at the moment. We've been planning for this adventure for months and thought we'd be ready for this day.  However, nothing can truly prepare for you saying, 'Goodbye,' or the twenty hours of flying to Korea.  :) 

We did have a few bumps in the road at the airport.  I was thoroughly searched by TSA at security (and I do mean thoroughly) and my carry-on luggage was too.  Everything was taken out of my luggage and left for me to squeeze back in including a ten pound bag of jewelry that a witch with a power trip felt the need to go through at DROP IT on the ground breaking two necklaces.  When I calmly pointed out to her that she broke two of my necklaces, she suggested that maybe they were broken before the fall.  Ummmm, yeah.  Because everyone packs broken necklaces for their trip. She then had the audacity to mumble, "Have a good flight," and sauntered off to snicker with her fellow TSA buddies.  Well, at that point my calmness melted.  There was NONE to be had.  I emptied every last broken bead into the tray my jewelry was left in and packed the non-broken necklaces.  I then stepped aside, grinned my, 'watch and see what happens' grin to Michael, and watched the witch with the power trip pick up the tray as she continued to snicker with her TSA buddy.  Beads EVERYWHERE.  It looked like something out of movie. Thirty or so marble sized beads scattered all over the TSA security check point.  I had vindication.  I had won!  And with that, I gave the witch one last smirk, zipped up my carry-on, and headed to Terminal B to catch my flight to San Francisco. Hey...it's the small victories, folks.

Moving on, as you know most airlines board by zones.  Michael and I were in the dreaded Zone 5 where you almost always have to check your luggage at the gate because they run out of overhead space; and as predicted, that's precisely what happened.  I honestly wasn't thrilled with the prospect of my carry-on going under the plane since I had in fact packed everything in it that I absolutely, positively, did not want to get lost or couldn't live without.  But, I conceded and confirmed with the gate attendant that I could pick up my bag plane side in San Francisco.  Everything was fine.....until...(insert evil witch music...da da dummmmmm) another witch on a power trip jerks the claim ticket off of my bag and informs the gate attendant that picking up bags plane side is a First Class privilege only.  Well, excuuuuuuuuuse me!  I begged this woman to let me pick it up in San Francisco by the plane.  I even pulled the military card; but she refused.  Policy is policy.  My options were check it all the way to Korea or pick it up in baggage claim in San Francisco.  Unfortunately, our layover didn't allow enough time to pick up the bag in San Francisco and catch our flight to Seoul, so I stuffed as much as I could into my purse and handed over the bag as she announced the final boarding call.  Thank you, US Air.

The flight to San Francisco was the hottest flight I've ever been on.  Beads of sweat dripped on every passenger's forehead and the flight attendants went about their business acting as if we weren't flying 25,000 feet high in a sauna.  We had our sweat pants rolled up to our knees and half way through the flight I went to the bathroom and took off every unnecessary layer of clothing on my body.  It was miserable.  Five and a half hours later, we arrive in San Francisco and make it to the International Terminal with just enough time to grab a sandwich to take on the plane and board.  Now, why this might seem insignificant to most people, let me point out that this was the last time for a long time that we would get to eat American food on American soil, and when there wasn't a single fast food restaurant in sight on the International Terminal,  I wanted to drop kick someone.  I was stuck with a pre-packaged tuna salad sandwich as my last meal.  Grrrrrr.......We made it to the gate with enough time to choke down most of our sandwich before our zone was called.  In my mind, I thought, 'Here we are. We finally made it! Three months of planning, three sets of movers, endless paperwork, a not so good start to the day, and we've made it! This is the final leg, what can go wrong now?  Wait!  My window seat doesn't have a window?!'  Yeah.  Our row was the only row in the entire plane that did not have a window, and it had less leg room that the other rows.  Perfect.  I almost cried at this point; but my super awesome husband talked to the flight attendant and asked if we could move to a vacant row since the plane was only half full, and she granted us permission.  This was the only positive to come out of our entire trip.

The flight to Seoul was the longest 13 hours of my life.  No one can prepare you for how long that flight is, especially after coming off a five and a half hour cross-country flight.  When we finally arrived in Seoul, it was February 9 at 5 pm (3 am US Eastern time).  I don't remember much about this part of the trip since Michael and I were basically zombies at this point.  We went through customs, headed to baggage claim, grabbed our baggage off the belt and realized with horror that my carry-on did not make the trip.  Michael took one look at the steam coming out of my ears and took charge.  Off to Asiana's lost baggage claim he went while I sat with our five other bags that did made the trip.  Now, here's the fun part.  It's a tad hard to put in a claim for lost baggage when you don't know your address and don't have a phone number. It's right about now that I realized we are in a foreign country, with a language barrier, and absolutely helpless for lack of a better word.  A million emotions ran through my head, but I kept it together, and truthfully at that point was too tired to care about my lost bag.  I was drained--emotionally and physically.  Michael gave the airline the name of our hotel which is the only hotel on Yongsan Garrison (Army Post).  They promised to find the bag and off we went to the USO area where Michael's sponsor (another Air Force person who takes care of little details before you arrive and answers any questions you may have before you get there) agreed to meet us and drive us to the hotel.  Even though we had a ride, Michael was required to sign in at the USO letting the military know that he had arrived.  Somewhere in the midst of that, a Korean soldier who worked at the USO handed Michael a stack of papers to fill out and told him he would need to board a bus to Yongsan.  What??  Well, our sponsor wasn't there, we had no way to contact him, and had no other way to get to base, so he did as told.  There were around twenty or so US Military men and women waiting for buses too with their spouses so we figured we must be in the right place.  Twenty minutes later the Yongsan bus pulls up and we're directed by the Korean soldier to board.  About that time, Michael's sponsor shows up and tells us not to get on the bus.  Thank goodness he did, because the bus was for Army only (even though Michael told him the Korean soldier numerous times that he was in the Air Force) and we would have been taken to God knows where on base for Army in-processing.  

We finally made it to the hotel at 8 pm (6 am US Eastern time). We were tired and starving. Luckily, since our hotel is on base, it has a Pizza Hut and Subway. One large beef thin crust pizza later, we were off to bed! Our Korean adventure had began.  :)

And by the way...in case you were wondering what happened to the lost bag......

Asiana found it in San Francisco and put it on the next flight to Korea which arrived two days later! All of my jewelry, prescriptions, medical records, make-up, toothbrush, shower stuff, savings bonds, birth certificates, social security card, W-2 forms, other important documents we pulled from our safe before we shipped it with furniture, spare check books, and back up credit cards were all there! Phewww! Big sigh of relief!