A World of Adventure: Moving In..... and First Steps!

The week following the mud festival was a bit of a crazy one. Tuesday we had our appointment to go to Hannam Village to look at our new house. This is the "on post" housing. Now I say that with quotes because it is not really on post. The housing is actually about 2 miles from the actual garrison. We had only driven over to Hannam Village once. I must say I wasn't expecting much, it didn't look extremely nice from the outside and I have been in many different government quarters before. So we arrive at our appointed time and after Mike tracked someone down in the housing department we were let in. Well I was immediately impressed, so was Mike. It was huge inside! We will have no problem living here! We were miraculously able to sign the paperwork and start moving in that day, which was great. They were hesitant about letting us do that since they hadn't put in our rental furniture yet. But we assured them that we would still spend the night in our other place and we just had a lot of miscellaneous stuff we wanted to start dropping off. So the moving began.....

We brought over two car loads of stuff on Tuesday and then two more on Wednesday. We have pretty well unpacked during the past week and now are waiting until our household goods arrive. Mike tells me that they are scheduled for September 9th. UGGG! So for now we have a borrowed dinning table, 7 chairs, a desk, 2 end tables, a coffee table, a book shelf and a bed room set.

The house has three bedrooms but we decided that the kids would share a sleeping room and have a play room. So far this has been a great decision! My favorite thing about this house is all the closets and the huge kitchen! There are tons of places to put things which is really nice.

Our biggest hurdle is the stairs with the baby. He likes to climb them, up is ok but down is definitly not! So we suddenly became in need of baby gates! Well we went everywhere on post and there were no gates of any kind to be had. So there is a place called E-mart which is kinda like a Korean Wal-mart. I should have taken my camera when we went but alas I didn't. That was certainly an experience! Well, since we have been here we have obviously been the racial minority but not so much so that there was not another white person in sight pretty much at all times. Suddenly this was not the case! We were the only ones in the whole place!

I will do my best to describe this place for you. First think of Grand Central Station in NYC, then add a huge high end mall to it, and put a Wal-mart in the basement with all that and add a grocery store/ open air market to the basement of that. Now add escalators and moving walkways on angles, plus signs everywhere you can not read. Then finally add 10,000 people (at least) speaking a language you can't even begin to understand! That was E-mart. The bus station is here along with a mall and then this store. Its a crazy place. I am quite sure we will go there again and I promise to take my camera and take pictures, even if it will make me stand out even more.

Needless to say we didn't get our baby gates! I guess Korean kids don't climb stairs?! So anyway I ordered some from Babies-R-Us and am currently awaiting their arrival. Everything is an adventure!

Over the weekend we didn't do much. We spent Saturday on post. There is a gift shop there with furniture and stuff in it from various Asian countries (except Korea) that was having an event so we went there. In a last ditch effort we also stopped in the thrift store on post to see if they had baby gates, failed again! We also made a purchase of a piece of furniture, at another store on post, called a step chest. Its a traditional piece of Korean furniture and I have just fallen in love with them. So Mike decided to buy us one!!!! I will include a picture of one, ours will be here Thursday.

After dinner Saturday night we were cleaning up and I had Rhyon grabbing my legs to stand like he usually does. So I got him to balance and stand on his own with out holding on and then I backed up a little. He then took about 3 or 4 steps! Mike and I both witnessed it! I got him to do it a few more times but unfortunately by the time the camera came out he wanted no more. Luckily we got a video of his new walking skills on video the next day! He isn't to keen on repeating this new skill yet, but I make him do it anyway.

Sunday was a pretty relaxed day for us, we pretty much just hung out at home. We took a walk in the afternoon and discovered the Hannam Village gym, library and youth services buildings. Then we went to the play ground.

Life here is becoming more routine. Living on Hannam is much more convenient than our other apartment. There is a small commissary (grocery store) here, a class six (liquor store), a library, a pool and most important a play ground! I also actually used the gym last night! I know, I know the Korean air has made me go crazy and that is very unlike me, but having it so close, I have no excuse, and its a chance to be kid free a few hours a week.

Tomorrow is Rhyon's 1st Birthday so we are having Angie and Abbey over tonight for cake and ice cream. It should be a good time, as it is always nice to see them. I will post pictures of that soon. For now here are some of our new residence and a video of Rhyon walking. Have a great week everyone!