Hangaram! We love you...

On August 28th, we got to move into our new apartment (Hangaram is the building name) located in Ichon-dong and we LOVE it!!  We signed all the paperwork and made all the arrangements to have the Army deliver some furniture today. The apartment is partially furnished, so there were just a few things we had to borrow from the Army. We also got our first shipment of household items (not the shipment pictured in previous posts). This shipment were the items we needed immediately to live in a space and it's working out great! We hope to have our large shipment by mid-September.  

Our living room...remember, we're waiting on the rest of our stuff still...

Our bedroom without our bed...this one will go in the guest room once we get the rest of our stuff

We've come a long way from our 'hallway' kitchen!

The last 24 hours have held a bit of a learning curve for T.G. and me, mostly for me since T.G. has lived outside of the U.S.A before.  
We've learned that there is a furnace on our 'front porch' that gets REALLY hot when the AC unit in the living room is turned on.  So much so that my poor plant, that I have been nurturing for the past two weeks or so fried and so I had to cut it back quite a bit and move it to another room.  Hopefully it will make it.  
We've also learned that finding plugs for all of our various electronics is going to be a bit of a challenge and even when you think you have it all plugged in correctly with converter and all...it may still blow up, like my hair dryer this morning...oops!  We still don't understand exactly why it blew up, but I have replaced my dryer with on bought on the Korean economy, so we should be good in that department.  Let's just hope we don't blow up any other important things!!

T.G.'s doing a great job of learning to drive here in Seoul.  (I'm still waiting on paperwork to take my test.)  It's quite a challenge both because of different road signs and because finding your way around is incredibly complicated.  We made our way to E-mart (a large super store, like Wal-Mart, but much nicer) today it probably took us an extra 30 minutes to figure out how to park and get in the store than necessary, but hey, we made it!

I also went shopping at our local market after T.G. went into work this evening and was quite successful!  I found a new blow dryer and a few other general household odds and inns,  bought some fresh produce and found a place that makes the most delicious fried chicken!  The produce I found were brown eggs and the largest, sweetest peaches you have ever seen or tasted!  Shopping can be quite intimidating here, since I am handicapped by my inability to speak the language, which I am quickly attempting to fix.  Given that, I am proud that I was able to find these items and purchase them without much in the way of incident.  I also learned that there is a small supermarket just down the street, mixed in with the outdoor market to buy 'regular' groceries.

Sorry, it's a bit blurry, but you get the idea...

Just some views of the market just outside our door!

Maybe places to get a drink in the evening...not sure yet.

As we get settled into our new place I'm sure we will come across many new life lessons and funny stories...can't wait to share them!

P.S. Feel free to leave comments below.

First post from T. G.

Loyal internet followers,
     Welcome!  I have been conspicuously absent from posting and for that I apologize.  I would like to attribute it all to inprocessing and working, but, to be honest, I didn't want to add any negative comments about our situation while there was still hope for improvement.  I feel I would have been too bleak about our living space and you would have got the wrong impression about how much I like it here.  However, now everything is looking up.  We will be moving into our new apartment by week's end.  Just outside our new building, there is a small market with fresh fruits and vegetables, live seafood, and other local fare.  Since we took a cooking class yesterday, we are excited to try our new skills out in the kitchen.  We learned bulgogi and kimchi yesterday.  I learned from our class that families make a year's worth of kimchi over two days and then eat it throughout the year.  Apparently, our instructor's favorite was 3-year-old kimchi.  They have a special kimchi refrigerator that they stock it in.  Weird.
     For my birthday today, we started it off with a Batman smoothie from Jamba Juice.  It was a combination of blueberry and banana, with a protein boost.  We then headed up to North Seoul Tower, which is the equivalent of Seattle's Space Needle.  Oddly enough, it is located in the geographical center of Seoul.  For those who are wondering, there is not a South Seoul Tower.  The tower is located in a huge Central Park-like area, if Central Park were a mountain.  It hard to describe, but amazingly beautiful.  I have included a few pictures that partially capture our adventures.  For those of you that don't know, I have taken quite a liking to photography.  I'm no professional, but it is a fun and interesting hobby that Autumn and I enjoy.  There is a photography class on post that we hope to attend in the near future.
     I'll leave you here for now.  I will likely have more things to say in the upcoming weeks.  Right now, I'm still getting settled in at work and meeting as many people in the hospital as possible.  Until next time, take care and have a wonderful evening.

T. G. III

View from under the North Seoul Tower

View of North Seoul Tower from a distance

View of Seoul from inside the North Seoul Tower

Amazing Changes Ahead!

Great things have happened in the past few days!  

We bought a car from one of the out-going physicians...seems to bee the way things work around here.

Not only did we buy our "new" car, but we also found out that we get to move out of our 403 sq. ft. crackerjack box and move into Ichon-dong, where we originally wanted to live!!  Hooray for us!  We went out with three different realtors so far and we think we've found several places that would be great!  We're just waiting on pricing and other details that will decide if/when we can move in!  This is the winner so far...

This is our potential view from our favorite apartment so far. Past the street is Yongsan Army Base.  The arrow on the left points to the hospital where T.G. works and the arrow to the right points to North Seoul Tower, a large landmark in this large city (not on the Army Base).

Also, in the past few days we've been to the Namdemun Market, which is a traditional Korean market that has stall after stall stuffed to the brim with everything you can think of!  It was really fun to walk through and just see all of the interesting things that were for sale.  Anything from food and knock-off bags to general household items and high-end jewelry.

Just a few pictures from around the market...

















T.G. started working in the ER (second shift today) and really loves it so far.  The people he works with seem really nice and easy to work with.  We are looking forward to getting to know them better over the year we are here. 

We've also spotted some fellow Longhorns!!

I've got a full weekend of plans for T.G.'s Birthday weekend!  Starting tomorrow with Korean cooking classes!  Should be a lot of fun!

More to come soon...

Killian's Here!!

Auntie Duckie and Uncle T.G. were ready and awaiting Killian Kovacevich's arrival at 0200 on August 16th (Seoul time).  The call came in and we FaceTime'd with my Mom to see the new addition to our family!  

January, Kyle and Isabella are all doing well...Welcome to the family little man!

 

 Killian Kovacevich

 August 15th, 2013

7lbs. 9oz.

191/2 inches

And the Adventure Continues...

We've started working on our subway skills here in Korea...So far we have been successful, with small hiccups here and there, but have made it to our destinations on time.  Luckily, the subway is pretty easy to navigate and there are apps in english that make it even easier to figure out!

 Looks easy, right?








My first venture off-post was to Ichon-dong, which is where we would like to live...just a few photos of our walking adventures...

The high-rises mentioned in previous posts...

Hangang Park and the Han River

My 'Korean' cell phone takes panoramic photos!  There's T.G. on the Han River Bridge with Ichon-dong behind him!

We've had fun times exploring different neighborhoods here in Korea.  We had dinner in Itaewan, which is a very popular area for the bar seeking Soldiers and has a feel like New York City.  Very bustling, cars honking and the streets packed with street vendors and tons of people.  There's just about anything you would need or want in one very small area!

The Maple Tree House was delicious Korean food!







The sidewalks have metal tiles for countries around the world...super cool to see and compare them!   

We found a bar and grill called "Prost" just down the street from The Maple Tree House, so we enjoyed some German beer too!










We've been to several movies here on post, to include: "The Heat", "2 Guns" and "Despicable Me 2".  We've gone to the enormous driving range as well, it will be fun for us both to get back to working on our golf swings.  We also attended a yoga class at one of the gyms on post, which was a really great class! 

T.G. starts working in the Emergency Room next week, which he is excited and ready to start seeing patients again.  After meeting many of the people he will get to work with there, I have no doubt it will be a perfect ER start his practice outside of residency!

I had my hair done here in Korea for the first time and aside from a small curling iron incident, all went pretty well.  I am still a platinum blonde!  Hooray! Still, my hair will ever look as good as when, Heather Tarnow does it!  She was kind enough to support me through this first hair venture!

If you see someone coming at you with a set of these...just walk the other way.  Take it from me...











We're looking forward to hearing more from the housing office soon and purchasing our "hoopty" car from one of the physicians leaving Yongsan.  It's a 1996 Hyundai Sonata...oh be jealous!  We'll just be happy to be able to go to the grocery store and not walk 30 minutes each way to get there and then tote the groceries back...'FIRST WORLD PAIN'!

More to come!

We're Getting Settled In!

I've been in Seoul now for about 4 days and we've had a lot of activity so far!

  

When I arrived, we were staying on post at The Dragon Hill Lodge, which is a very nice hotel where most Soldiers stay during the in-processing and out-processing transition times.  It also is an open hotel for other military personnel to stay in when in Seoul on business or for pleasure.

On Tuesday, we learned we were moving into on-post housing, which was not the original plan.  As many of you know, our original plan was to live off-post in Ichon-dong (a neighborhood in Seoul that is very close to post) so we could truly get the 'living in the Far East experience'.   

Yongsan Army Base is walking distance north of Ichon-dong, the area depicted above.  The Han River is just on the south edge of Ichon-dong, which would provide us with a lot of water and outdoor activities where we live.

   

Not to mention the views we could have from our high-rise apartment!

This was what the weather was doing the day we had to move out of The Dragon Hill Lodge...luckily it cleared up by the time we actually had to move our baggage to the apartment...

Needless to say living somewhere that has monsoon and typhoon seasons will take some adjustments given that we are used to the central Texas drought!

T.G. is working tirelessly on fighting the housing office's decision to place us in this apartment, which we like to call our luxury condo on the hill...it is a 403 square foot 'apartment', in which the fridge is in the living room because the kitchen is the hallway between the living space and bedroom/bathroom space.  We've made it vey cozy and livable for now, still hoping that our housing situation might change, but we will make this work for now.  We finally felt set when we got our internet set up today...ahhh, the comforts of home!

This is T.G. standing in our 'hallway' kitchen, as you can see each of his arms are touching both surrounding walls.

I was able to make us a pretty yummy dinner last night, despite the space and kitchen equipment discrepancies.





The fridge in the living room...hallway kitchen to the left.








The living space...note the fridge in the left side of the picture.

Then there's the bedroom and bathroom that is at the other end of the 'hallway kitchen'

It's very cozy!

The Fun Times in the Meanwhile...

Since my last post, we've been doing a lot of prep work for our journey to Korea, like on Monday 7/16, packing and supervising the movers putting all of our things in crates to go on the ship to Korea...

This process is very strange, but we're glad it is done...I was at the house with the packers/movers from 0800-1900. Meanwhile T.G. was out at Ft. Hood getting all his clearing paperwork started (I can't say completed, because that took many, many days).  

We're moved out of the Oaklawn house and ready to pack our daily belongings and head out!

Other than the work of getting ready to go, we've been having fun with friends and family.  Thursday, 7/18, we got to go see Jason Boland and The Stragglers at Schoepf's BBQ, one of our favorite summer past times here in central Texas. We also went on 7/25 to see Brandon Rhyder, one of my personal favorites!  It was great music, decent weather, and time with awesome friends!

Staying with my parents really provided us with a lot of quality time with them before leaving as well...  Bob and T.G. continued to see who is the ultimate Jenga champion, which is always worth a good laugh!!  Bob has won the last two, you can imagine T.G. is not very happy!

T.G. took me to get my tattoo touched-up before our adventures too!!

 

                          I love the upgrade!!!



T.G. left on 7/26 to start his journey to Korea, which included a 36 hour layover in Seattle.  He got to spend that time with his friend from med school, Elizabeth.  They hiked, kayaked and visited other friends from med school!  Sounded like the perfect send-off before he left for Korea!