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!
Our door, notice how low the peep hole is, and the thing to the side is the doorbell/ video monitor.
Empty front entry.
Laundry room.
Dinning area, with borrowed furniture.
Really big kitchen.
Flowers from the housing office as a Welcome to the neighborhood.
Video monitor/ door bell. And the intercom phone to call upstairs.
What will be our living room when all our stuff arrives, and my desk.
Front entry and stairs.
Extremely curvy stairs/ baby obstacle course.
Master bed room before furniture and unpacking. Thankfully one whole wall is closets!
A bathroom.
Our bed room, nothing fancy but it beats the floor!
Rest of the room.
Kids bedroom
The disaster area aka the playroom!
Giulianna loves having a play room!!!!
Looking out my front door. We are on the 2nd floor but each "house" is 2 floors.
Looking out our porch. The play ground is right below us.
We live in one of the smaller low rise buildings, but all those taller buildings are also housing.
More housing.
Our porch.
A step chest.
I forgot to mention earlier how they move you in.... but in this case a picture is worth a thousand words!
They pull up this truck.
And then extend this lift thingy.
Next they remove a door or window and make sure they are in the right position.
They line everything up and begin loading the platform with a item or two at a time.
They don't strap anything down...
Up, up up....
Once it gets high enough they drag it in.
You can see the window has been removed in this one.
I am so glad that is not me sitting in the window!!!!
Voila!
I am not looking forward to the day when our stuff arrives, just because of this process!!!!
Yesterday we went to the Boryeong Mud Festival at Daecheon Beach. Overall it was a fun day but very long and tiring. We started our day by getting up at 5:30am. We had to be on post and waiting for the bus by 7:15am. It was about a 3 hour bus ride to get to the festival. It was actually a nice ride. It was fun to get out of the city and see what else Korea looks like. It is actually very rural and the mountains are amazing! As soon as we were outside the city we started to see a lot of fields and much smaller homes and towns. I took some pictures but keep in mind that we were on a moving bus, they are not the best.
I think all that green in front may be rice fields. We saw this everywhere!
The day started out quite rainy and grey but by the time we got to the festival it cleared up nicely and the sun came out.
These are the Mud Festival Mascots. They are even on the storm drains.
Before we got muddy we stopped and colored a keychain and made some soap.
Our mud mermaid all finished!
What a cool Dude!!!
Ok time to bring on the mud! Wait.... one more picture of all of us clean!
This photo was taken by Mike's friend Doug. Doug came and spent the day with us so there will be pictures of him here as well. Just didn't want anyone wondering who this random guy was.
Now it's time for the "dirty pictures"!!!!!
Daddy getting some mud on Giulianna.
Getting muddy. There were paint brushes and a mirror so you could get it everywhere!
Mike and Doug getting their mud on!
Yep mud on the baby!
Happy Mud Face!!!!
This is the muddy Doug monster.
Me and the kids. Mike managed to get this shot among the paparazzi.
Yes, I said paparazzi. I mean that quite literally too. Now I know what it would be like to be famous. All day long we had people taking our pictures, mostly the kids, but us too. Mike and I are pretty convinced there is a good change our kids will be on next years Mud Festival poster. There were constantly cameras in our faces. Some people had "press" badges but most were just walking around with huge expensive cameras, or phones, or anything that they could take a picture with. Sometimes people would stop and ask to take pictures, but mostly they would just swarm us, or use a camera with a huge lens to take them long range. We would turn around and there would be cameras surrounding us! When it stated to get really crowded we couldn't even walk though the crowd with out being separated because so many people would stop to look at the kids and take their pictures. It was insane! Here is a picture of an early, fairly small group of paparazzi!
Enough of that! Time for more mud!!!!
Lady painted with colored mud holding Rhyon for yet another picture.
Really great picture of Mike and I that Giulianna took!!!! (Never would have imangined this is where we would be the day after our 5 year anniversary.)
The following pictures are proof that the Army is truly a "small world". When Mike was first commissioned and went to Ft. Stewart he was in a unit with CPT. Rodrigiez. Funny thing is we ran into him at the festival. Nothing like being on the other side of the world and running into someone you know! Always nice to see a familiar face!!
Doug decided he wasn't muddy enough so he went over and got him self doused with a bucket of mud.
We took some time and went down onto the beach. This was Rhyon's first real beach experience.
Suddenly the sky got dark and the wind picked up. Then it started to sprinkle and before we knew it it was raining pretty heavy. We got off the beach and got the kids coats on. And by we I mean I took them out of the bag and this group of 3 Korean women came over and put them on the kids for us. The one lady was holding Giulianna because she was upset by the rain. They stood with us for a good while and then came back two times after that. I keep saying it but its very strange to get used to!
Then I was standing there waiting for Giulianna to come down the mud slide and some kid comes over and throws a bucket of mud on me. It totally took me by surprise and was really funny except he creamed my camera! His mother came by and started to yell at him. I said "Its okay, its okay." Thankfully she had a towel so I could wipe off my camera lens and still capture the picture of Giulianna on the slide. Then Giulianna and I grabbed a bucket of mud to go throw on Daddy since the rain was making him fairly clean! I then got to really douse Mike with some mud!!! He made a funny face because I got it in his mouth too!!!! HAHAHAHA! That was the highlight of my day!
Since my poor camera had gotten wet from mud and rain every time I would put the lens cap on the would fog up. I tried taking a picture of Giulianna playing a game and got kind of a neat effect due to the fog. Rhyon took a nap in the wagon, which was a great thing except that it reattracted the paparazzi! We managed to find a place to sit and have a break away from the crowd and in the shade.
For some reason we decided to go back toward the main festival area again. This time it was even more crowded. It also didn't help that the tide was coming in. We decided to try and go into the ocean and wash off our mud so we could change before went back home. The crowds were like nothing I had ever seen!!
That pretty much concludes our mud festival experience. Except for the long ride back and then the really good baths we all had before heading to bed. Like stated in my information post the mud festival was started as a way to promote cosmetics made from the mud. So no trip would have been complete without purchasing some mud products. I bought these huge bottles of shampoo, conditioner, body wash and two bars of soap in a set for 20,000 won which is a little less than $20. So for my shower I used my new mud products! I LOVE the shampoo! My hair is super soft today and not frizzy for the first time since we got here!!! My skin and face are nice and smooth too! The good news is they have a web site, www.boryeongmudmall.co.kr just in case anyone thinks they might want to try it!!!
