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!

As you can see, we're making the best of our little place.  We walked to the movie theater last night and saw "The Heat", which was hilarious!  There are all sorts of fun things to do on post, like going to the driving range, an enormous amount of work-out equipment and facilities, an arts & crafts area and pretty good 'American' shopping. So far we are loving this duty station.

This afternoon we are going to venture off-post to explore and find a fun place to have dinner.  I'm pretty pumped, since I haven't had the opportunity to go off-post yet!

Other than that, we are working on getting our driver's license and a car, mostly so that it's easier to go get groceries on post and so we can travel to the south part of the country with ease and at our leisure.  We're looking forward to having our bicycles arrive so that we can put them to good use as well!   

I'll keep you posted on our upcoming adventures!