As you probably have guessed, that means hello everyone. Well, we have been here for 2 weeks now. It definitely has been two of the strangest weeks of my life, but we are starting to really adjust. So here goes...
The kids and I spent the week getting back into the homeschool schedule. It is working fairly well with only a few kinks to work out. In some ways, I am very happy that we are homeschooling because I feel like they are learning things that they would not learn at regular school. For instance, Darci is learning about the Italian Renaissance, and loves it by the way. Mitchell finished a unit on the Scientific Revolution and now has moved onto democratic revolutions. I do worry that I am missing some stuff, but that are definitely brilliant and will be fine.... I'm sure of it. Check out the pictures of them hard at work.
We made a couple of trips onto post this week. I went shopping at the commissary for the first time. Boy, was that a reality check. The commissary here has only about 5 aisles of groceries. There is not very much to choose from. In the states, if you want to buy spaghetti sauce, for instance, you have half an aisle of selection. Here, if you are lucky if you have 2 brands. I am grateful, though, that we have the ability to buy stuff that we are used to. Going to the Korean grocery store is kind of scary. Unless you are in produce and can see what you are buying or can recognize the packaging, you really do not have any idea what it is. Yes, they do have some brands that we use, but are labeled in Korean. I will have to take some pictures of that next time I go to the market. It is weird!
On Thursday, Dave and I went to the furniture store this week because I needed a desk to work on during the day. We also ended up having to buy a new computer because his laptop has almost seen its last days. Two deployments has been hard on it. So I am typing to you from our new family pc, which was quite a nightmare to set up. The kids and I spent a little time at the playground on post while Dave was in a meeting and we actually got to meet another family. She was very nice and I found out that her husband will be working with Dave in the coming months. I was also able to get Darci set up with the girl scouts here. She will attend her first meeting March 29th. I am super excited about that. The troop is brand new this year, and they are so excited about having Darci join.
Friday was spent waiting for the furniture delivery guys and rearranging the school area and the kids rooms. The kids also spent a lot of time playing outside with some of the other children in the complex. It is so nice to have someone come ring the doorbell again to ask if they come out to play.
Saturday was our day out for fun. Well, it did start with laundry, but then we had fun. Dave took us to a restaurant called Ono Bar & Grill. It is located under the Bosan train station. They serve a wide variety of food from burgers to Mexican to Korean. The first thing, I noticed when we sat down was that there is a call button on your table so that if you need anything you can call your waitress over. I think some restaurants in America could benefit from this particular thing. I have not been to many restaurants, yet, but I have noticed that they bring you individually wrapped wet towels to clean your hands with prior to your meal. There were also a couple of pretty funny signs on the wall. I took pictures of them. Anyway, Dave and Mitchell ordered burgers, Darci ordered chicken fingers, but I decided to be a little adventurous and order Mushroom and Bacon Black Spaghetti with Cream Sauce. They at least had English descriptions under the Korean words. There was no silverware on the tables. The waitress only brought us what we needed. So she brought me a fork and mustard and ketchup for the Dave and the kids. The picture with the Ono label is my fork in a paper wrapper and the towelette in the small plastic bag. When our food came, my dish did look a little scary. The kids said it looked like I was eating worms, but it tasted really good. I even convinced both of the kids to try a bite. After lunch, I went online to find out what makes the spaghetti black and only then realized that I ate noodles that had been colored with squid's ink! So glad I did not know this before I ordered lunch.
After lunch, we decided to go walking around in New City (which is part of Dongducheon, but they call it New City because its the newest part). We went to their version of a Dollar General, which is AWESOME! It is in this large building pressed in between lots of other stores. It is two stories, so we had a lot to look at. Dave and Mitchell found a very unique and interesting pair of suction cups for sale at the dollar store. Check it out below! After that, I needed to buy a bottle of rubbing alcohol so that I could disinfect Darci's earrings, so we went to a Korean drugstore. They did not carry rubbing alcohol. They did, however, have ethanol and hydrochloric acid in a bottle for sale. I have no idea what a person would be buying hydrochloric acid for and personally, I don't want to find out!
As we walked around the streets, we came to a street that was blocked off to traffic. It was located next to a park. There were families everywhere. The street had been blocked off so that the Korean children could ride their hot wheels and bicycles up and down the streets. Dave and I joked that they start teaching the kids bad driving habits at a very early age.
After all the walking, we decided that we wanted a snack so we stopped at the local french bakery (yes, I know, we are in Korea) called Paris Baguette. These places are everywhere in town. This is where Dave's friend bought the cake last week. Everything looked amazingly delicious! We had trouble deciding on what to get. We each tried something different. Dave even got a blueberry flavored water that we found out was a product of Australia. We were not disappointed at all. Darci and I got water to drink. We have found that bottled water comes in all shapes and sizes here. There are a couple of pics below to show what I mean. And yes, that does say DMZ water. We drank water that comes from springs at the DMZ.
Sunday was pretty uneventful. We spent a little time on post in the am doing some medical stuff. Then we spent the rest of the day at home, relaxing. Darci and I did walk to the market down the street to get the special garbage bags we need for food waste. Recycling is very important here. We are required to save and dry our food waste and dispose of it special yellow bags. I saved the receipt so you could see what one looks like here.
Well, that was 2nd week here. On to helping the kids with school work. I hope you enjoyed the pics. More to come next week. We will see what adventures in Korea will be like then. Until then.....annyonghi geyseyo.
