The Jones Family in Korea

Lizzie's New Toys

2009-02-10T20:16:00.008+09:00

(Mom and Dad: sorry if this uses up your monthly allotment of bytes!)

In the past few days, Lizzie has received some new toys. One is her red piano, which was supposed to be a Christmas gift, but which didn't arrive until a week or so ago. She played with it, then Daddy broke it (turned it into a "build your own piano" set), then he rebuilt it and it sounds better than before!

Another is her "cage" (for lack of a better term), a plastic playpen-alternative which pens in
part of our living room. She loves playing in it, because we don't stop her from doing whatever she wants!

Also in recent news:

-Our nanny arrived! Mearia is great, she fits in so perfectly with us, and Lizzie likes her a lot.

- Lizzie was sick for a week in January.

-We had a great snowfall, of over a foot of powdery snow. Lots of fun, and I enjoyed seeing snow around for a few days!

-We celebrated Lunar New Year in Seoul, taking part in some traditional activities, trying on Korean traditional outfits, and eating yummy New Years soup, which is broth with rice cakes an dumplings.

- We watched the Superbowl (8:28am kickoff) at home

No, we didn't let her drink any Mountain Dew (the can was closed), she just wanted to do what grownups do, and put her mouth on the can!

- Fun this week: Lizzie playing with my ipod charger on the blue chair, and sporting a foamy admiral cap in the bath!

Furniture

2009-01-11T21:11:00.001+09:00

For the regular readers: These are posted because I'm trying to sell the crib/changing table, and I wanted to post photos for folks to see.

Lizzie and her Basketball

2008-12-21T21:51:00.002+09:00

Anyone Seen Will & Cara?

2008-12-14T21:52:00.002+09:00

So, Thanksgiving came and we had lots of people over. And we were real busy. Hmm...are real busy. So, this is to let you know that, again, we're still alive on this side of the world. Cheers!

Format troubles :-/

2008-11-14T21:52:00.002+09:00

So, the previous two posts are backwards... Halloween was first; Gongju was mid-Nov. I just happened to start the Gongju one first, so even though I published 'Halloween' first, when I posted 'Gongju', it showed up as if it were earlier! Grr... So, sorry for any confusion!

Halloween

2008-11-14T21:34:00.007+09:00

I've been so looking forward to Halloween, because I found Lizzie a tiger costume! And a super cute one at that. My squadron is the Tigers, so it's very appropriate. Enjoy!

Lizzie with her Gma, showing off her Tigerness

Kim learning what it's like to be mommy to a cute little girl in an Asian country (i.e. mobbed by everyone with cell phone cameras), at the Squadron's Halloween Sports Day. Lizzie became our team's mascot, we won the tournament, and she got to take home the MVP prize!

Lizzie Tiger got a little tired from all the sporting excitement

TSgt B was glad to hold her, while mommy took part in the Tug of War, which clinched our victory!

At home, she played for awhile before changing into non-Tiger clothes

We went to our church's 'Hoedown', which is their Halloween-alternative. Lizzie had a good time (for the most part!)

Will decided to rock his giant belt buckle, and it was a hit!

Gongju!

2008-11-14T20:05:00.007+09:00

Hello again! Last weekend we (Will, I, Lizzie and Will's mom who is here to play with her grandbaby while I work) went to Gongju, which is a smaller town a few hours south of here. The drive there was great - drove through some of the countryside, so there wasn't so much traffic, and we weren't in the middle of tall apartment buildings the whole way.

Lizzie was good as usual, and slept most of the way. She cried when she needed her diaper changed, and when she was hungry once, and that was it. We tried out her new stroller, and she seemed to like it for the most part, when there was something interesting to look at. Though, when I put her in front of the mirror in the bathroom so she could see herself, she immediately had a pouty face and started crying! Silly Lizzie...

When we got to the town, we followed the signs to a burial ground, which had a king's tomb. We wanted lunch, but didn't see a restaurant, so we ate ramen from the souvenir stand. Then we went to see the display. The tombs were all closed up, but they had recreated them inside a museum. We walked through and saw the displays, which were simple, but nice. It was fun to see a bit of history.

The king and queen's symbols were pretty neat, they are very intricate. The king's tomb was noticeably different from the others. All were brick/stone domes covered with earth (so they look like little hills from the outside). The king's tomb was made of small bricks which were all carved with symbols. Some of the other tombs were created of large, rough stones.

After the short stroll through the museum, we went outside to see the tombs themselves. It was a gorgeous day, clear blue sky, pleasant temp, and lovely fall leaves on the trees. We walked up an incline to look at the tombs, which looked like little round hills. The doors were all sealed, so nobody could get in.

While we were there, about 8 busloads of elementary-aged kids came for a field trip. They were going through all the exhibits with worksheets, trying to find the answers to the questions. I remember doing the same thing when I was young! When they saw us (the only foreigners), they said 'Hello!', 'Glad to meet you!' and 'Obama, Obama!' We laughed at the last one - who would expect a South Korean 4th grader to know about US politics? Just shows the world was watching.

After the tombs we went to a fortress. It was basically a wall around an open area, and other than a good view of the town and river, it wasn't all that exciting. The only thing of note was when one of the ticket sellers looked at me, looked at Lizzie, then looked at Will, and said 'your baby look like American president'. Umm... ok. I guess all mixed babies look the same! Lol.

We drove back via a different route, much quicker but through the city. A lovely day overall!

And now, some photos of Lizzie...

What Lizzie thinks of her toy catalog:

Naptime!

Bathtime with Mommy!

Bedtime story with Daddy!

Lizzieness

2008-10-22T12:09:00.008+09:00

Hello again! With work, church, baby, etc, life is so busy it's hard to have a minute to think straight enough to have more than a paragraph of summary, and even harder to have a few minutes to type that info for all to see!

But, here is the copied/pasted list of the first section of the 'Lizzieness' file I started to record the little things Lizzie does. It's easier to keep that up than to write lots of blogs, and I figure it's interesting to at least some of you out there, as well! I'll throw in a few current photos too. I'm not editing it, so I hope it isn't too long. Enjoy!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

During Sept, she tried out lots of new sounds, so she had lots of vowel and consonant sounds while babbling.

Lizzie often talks to her mobile that was hanging above her changing table. It had lots of black and white designs. She especially liked the outline of the little boy face, and would tell it stories, with very expressive faces and sounds, and lots of smiling. Beginning about Oct 1, she no longer looked at the mobile. When we replaced the b/w designs with colored pictures, she again enjoyed her mobile.

For about a week, starting on 1 Oct, Lizzie wouldn’t make her talking noises, only a high-pitched screeching that we termed ‘pterodactyl speech’. This lasted about a week, then went back to normal babbling.

5 Oct – Lizzie turned from her side to her stomach. She tries to sit up by doing a crunch and raising her legs at the same time. Must be good for strengthening her tummy muscles.

10 Oct - Lizzie sometimes spends up to 30 minutes in her play mat, talking to her lion, and manipulating the duck that rattles. Back in early Sept, her time on the mat was only 5 min. She also is now able to catch items even when swinging, and hold onto it, and let it go at will. She can hold onto the swinging duck now too. While on the mat, she often turns herself 360 degrees, by pushing with her feet on the stereo speaker, or coffee table next to the mat. And she also scoots. It looks like she will turn over onto her stomach but hasn’t done it in the mat.

10 Oct – Lizzie likes to hold her toy key ring, then drop it. Then we pick it up and give it to her, and she drops it again. She watches it the whole time, and knows what she’s doing. I think she’s practicing her coordination. Sometimes it gets stuck on her thumb, so she has to tip her hand to make it fall off.

Oct – She likes to help when we change her diaper, holding her legs up or straightening them at the right times.

10 Oct – Lizzie nearly sits without assistance. She can sit for a minute or two before falling to one side. She likes to play with her feet while sitting, and with colorful toys. She tries to put the ring of keys onto her toes, like grandma Claire often did. She is good at taking the keys off of her big toe when grandma Claire puts it on the toe.

11 Oct – Lizzie likes to grab her toes. I think I saw her chewing on her toe once too! She sits and tries to grab them, then holds on and moves her feet around with her hands. She does this while she’s sitting, while she’s laying down, and while I’m holding her.

13 Oct – Lizzie has been sucking on her bottomlip today. She started when she woke up, and often goes ‘hmm, hmm’ with her lip pulled in.

16 Oct – Lizzie definitely knows that the music starts on her play mat when she kicks it. She was determinedly pushing her feet against different parts of the foot pad until it started. Also, over the past month she has started the music in her crib several times, at night or in the morning, when she is bored or wants to go to sleep. To start that music, she has to push a button twice.

18 Oct – Lizzie is 4mo old!

18/19 Oct – Lizzie figured out how to roll over on purpose, while she was supposed to be sleeping. She was with mommy on a retreat in Seoul and was sleeping on a blanket on the chapel floor. When mommy went to check on her, she had rolled out of her wrapping and off the blanket, so at least a few rolls away. That night she wanted to practice rolling over in bed, near mommy but not with mommy’s help! Nobody got much sleep! At home later, she rolls over from her tummy to her back fairly consistently, but doesn’t have much motivation to go the other way – she doesn’t know it can get her closer to fun things yet!

21 Oct – Lizzie played with her book while on her tummy, chewing on the pages and moving it, and closing it. She is getting much stronger, and I think she may actually crawl (I had thought she would walk first). She can hold herself up on her hands/knees for a few seconds when I put her down, and also lifted herself on her hands and toes for a second at one point, like she was doing a real pushup! Mostly she tries to move by pushing her feet on things, she hasn’t figured out the value of her knees yet.

22 Oct – Lizzie can balance herself pretty well while she’s sitting. She puts an arm down in the middle or to one side to help, but can pick up toys and move them without falling over.

And finally, a video of Lizzie playing with her kitty ball in the back of the car!

Still Remiss....

2008-10-01T02:39:00.002+09:00

So, yeah... still remiss with the blog. I forget sometimes that we have this. All is still good, although Lizzie just got her first cold. On top of that, she got a mosquito bite that she learned how to scratch. So Lizzie didn't get that much sleep that night. Cara brought her into our bed due to the mosquito situation in Lizzie's room, which left me with not a whole lotta room to sleep, and a constant reminder to NOT ROLL OVER. Despite all that, I probably got more sleep than Cara, so I'm not gonna complain (too much).

Its finally starting to get cool here. This was the first week in which the temps were below 80° and the humidity wasn't ridiculous. The reason I mention this is because our power bill came. $531. Not bad actually... we were keeping a Lizzie & Grammy Claire cool all day long. The last time we ran 1 (one) AC like that, we ended up having a $800 bill. So, I think we're doing better. Plus this time we had 3 different ACs running at various times and sometimes simultaneously (Main room, Guest room, Master Bedroom).

I think that about covers most of anything....if not... you'll have to wait till I'm actually awake, and not my I-took-my-ADD-medicine-too-late-and-now-I'm-still-awake-at-3:00am state. I need to get up earlier.

Update!

2008-09-06T21:17:00.002+09:00

Hello! We've been remiss lately, so here are some quick updates:

I've been back at work for 2wks now, and it hasn't been too bad. I've been able to pump each day, in a new office that isn't occupied yet (no furniture). Once people move in, I'll have to find someplace else, but for now it's great! My job seems like it will be a lot less stressful than the other two I've held at Osan, and the guys I work with are wonderful.

We were in Beijing for 4 days of Olympic fun, check out photos and captions here

My mom is here until mid-October, taking care of Lizzie, and my dad came out for the weekend from Vladivostok. Lots of fun, and they love their grandbaby!

Lizzie is growing quickly, and is starting to really enjoy her toys, especially her playmat (from Uncle Kurt!) and her new Jumparoo. She has so many outfits, and is super cute every day! She's sleeping 6hrs then 4hrs at night, so not too bad, and she takes the bottle well from Grandma during the day (though she gets really excited to eat when Mommy gets home!).

Will is still working, and playing the bass at church. He also was pretty involved in VBS at church, so we got to see him up in front in skits for a few weeks.

We are both still going to our Tuesday night Bible studies. The women's study is about the Psalms of Ascent, and it is great fun.

That's about it! Lizzie keeps us busy, and entertained, and we are still enjoying life :-)

Lizzie's Friends

2008-08-17T21:34:00.003+09:00

Hello all! I know we haven't written for a long time. Blame our trip to the US (which was great! check out the photos on Picasa), then the Olympics starting soon after we returned. Speaking of which, you may know that we don't regularly have TV, just dvds and video games. But, I wanted to watch the Olympics, so we borrowed a satellite dish and receiver from some friends who didn't use theirs because they recently moved on base. Will managed to set up the satellite dish after a few tries, and it's worked like a charm! We missed opening ceremonies, but I've had it on almost every day. Can't wait to go in person, we leave in the morning!

The main topic of this post is Lizzie, as usual :-). She used to hate her diaper changes, and would scream bloody murder from the time her back hit the changing pad to the second we had the new diaper fastened. We never figured out why. Well, that was before we went to the states for 3 weeks. At some point, she grew up a bit more, and started to realize that diaper changes were helpful, not hurtful. She became resigned to them, no longer screaming, but not really happy about it. After we returned, though, she noticed the mobile over her table. It had always been there, but she could never see it before. Now those mobile pictures are her best friends, and she talks to them whenever she lays down! No more screaming diaper changes :-)

Here is a video compilation of several changes. It may be a bit long, but I hope you enjoy my happy, talking baby Lizzie!

Traveling to the US from Korea with an Infant...

2008-07-13T08:56:00.002+09:00

So, Cara and I just finished the trek from Incheon Int'l Airport ROK to Denvier Int'l Airport, and it was a lot harder than it should be.

First, we got a ride to the Local bus terminal and got to ride in comfort to Incheon airport, and got on the bus, and was pretty nice ride. Once we got to the airport, and tried to check in, everything got difficult. First, we wanted to verify that we had an infant seat that would allow us to put Lizzie in a bassinet. When we did that, the ticketing agents found out that we hadn't paid for our infant ticket yet (which we knew). Then, when we showed them our passports, they noticed that Lizzie's Passport didn't have a Visa stamp and became worried. We got kinda annoyed cause Korea states that if our child is going to be in the country for more than 30 days, we have to get him/her a SOFA (Status of Forces Agreement) stamp. Lizzie was only in country (out of the womb at least) for 21 days, so there shouldn't have been a problem. But even after explaining all of this, we still had to go to customs. On top of that, the office that would let us purchase the ticket was closed for lunch, so we had to call them to see when they were opened.

When we get to the Customs office, the line is rather ridiculous, and I end up changing Lizzie's diaper, and Cara had to feed her. We finally get called up, and show the Customs agent official Lizzie's passport. He looks at it a little strange at first, and then exlaims "No Problem!" He writes some Hangeul on the a scratch piece of paper and then staples it to the passport. We head over to the Delta office and get the infant ticket and then have to change Lizzie again on the way out of the Delta office. As we're heading back to the ticketing counter, we walk past a lot of Korean Flight Attendants. As they see Cara and Lizzie, they start to making the adorable "awww" sound as only women can do. So, in an effort to prevent a scene, we let them look at the baby. They were very happy about it. We finally head back to our ticketing agent (who has been waiting this entire time for us...wow...) and get everything squared away and head to the international security area.

When we get there, they ask where I'm going, I say US, and they hand me a set of sandals to wear that are like 5 sizes too small, while my shoes go through security. The koreans behind me chuckle as they see the shoes are not coming close to fitting. I take all of my electronics out (video camera & laptop) and and wait for my laptop back to get cleared. Well the guy scanning sends my bag through like 5 or 6 times, and keeps taking things out of my bag in the process. I know I have no scissors, nor anything flammable, so I wonder what's going on. Finally, he pulls out what he's looking for. I had a set of hex tool bits for a ratchet screwdriver with a phillips head bit on it. The phillips head bit was pretty sharp, and thus considered it gone. I apologize to the agent for bringing the phillips head bit out, but soon find out that the reason he pulled that out, was because they were tools. Grr... I can't stab anyone with those, nor can I use them on anything. I think someone misread the guidelines. But what do I know.

So we're finally through customs, and we hurry over to our gate cause we want to pre-board. When we arrive at the gate, I see the economy line is verrrrry long. So I walk to the gate agents to try and explain we have a baby, but they wave me to the Business Class line with out hesitation. Sweeeet. As we're walking down the Personnel Bridge (sorry, Jetway is a copyrighted company), we look for the gate check people. We don't see them, so we keep walking... and walking...and enter the plane. The ladies end up taking of stuff and storing it in the over head compartments. I never knew 747s had that much over head storage space.

Oh, I forgot to mention earlier that Cara and I couldn't get seated together cause there was only one bulkhead seat left. So we figured we'd try our luck with the bartering system. As I'm sitting, Cara tells me to come back to the front of the plane and we'll try and negotiate the seat switch. So as I get back to our seat, Cara asks the Korean Air Flight attendant to ask the lady sitting in the seat next to Cara, if she will switch with Me (Will). So the Flight attendant starts speaking english to the lady. That kind of startles me, since you'd figure she'd speak in Korean. I look at the flight attendants nametag, and... Oh! She's Japanese! That's not gonna work. Then a gentleman behind starts to translate the whole thing for us. Then the lady speaks. But it's not English, Japanese or Korean... wait... is that..? Yes! That's Chinese! Holy Cow! So, basically, she figures out what we're asking, and agrees. We find out later that the seat she was in wasn't the right one... but then later find out that everything was fine.

Partway through the flight, we have the bassinets installed in the seats in front of us. They are super nice cause it lets us put Lizzie to sleep without have to hold her the whole time. The downside is that they are engineered for people shorter than 6'4" (me) and thus, I had no leg room in part cause of the bulk head seat, but also cause of the bassinet. Dude... That was a long flight.

After that, everything became smoother. We got to LAX, went to customs, and changed Lizzies diaper. Then went through customs, sent to the back of the line for filling our paperwork in purple, went to the next customs agent, and interrupted his coffee break (he was a little disappointed, we could tell, but to his credit, he put his coffee away and got to work). Turns out that Lizzie was the youngest person he'd ever seen go through customs. We get our luggage, clear customs, recheck our luggage, and head to the terminal. Security this time is a breeze, and get to our gate, wait, and then board the aircraft. I get an exit row seat, and immediately pass out (I hadn't had any sleep since we took off from Seoul), and Cara ends up getting a seat with no one next to her. We land at Denver, get our luggage, and then get to the rental car place. We get upgraded for free and get to drive a Chevy Equinox .. its a nicer SUV than we were supposed to get (Kia Sportage...[I came to America to see something besides Hyundai & Kia...]).

We get on the road, and immediately notice that there is no traffic, parking spots are larger, and there's a whole lot of variety when it comes to the cars on the road. But I digress. Cara pulls out the directions for our hotel, and it states: Get off at Colorado Blvd at exit 226, take a left, and the hotel is on the right. Well, as she says that, we pass Exit 283. Either that's not right, or... that's not good... As it turns out, they meant exit 276. Whew. So we get off the highway, and turn left... and start looking on our right. And keep looking on our right... and keep looking. We figured we've been led down a bad path, so we stop and get a map, and ask for directions. Turns out we were on the right path, but no one mentioned how far south from the Highway the hotel was. So we keep driving... and driving... and driving.. and Yay! There it is! So we park, check-in, and start to relax. Ahhh.....

3 Weeks

2008-07-09T23:00:00.007+09:00

According to the Korean ladies, today is the first day Lizzie should be allowed to leave the house. I heard about this several times each time we went out previously, the first being when we brought her to church at 4 days old. A Korean lady I know came up and said, "she can be out?", told me that in Korea babies don't leave the house until 3 weeks, and then justified it to herself because the weather was nice. Since then, many Koreans have told me she is too young to be out, and look at me dissaprovingly. Though, in Starbucks when she was 9 days old, a Korean asked me how old she was, and then whispered, "when my daughter was 9 days old, we went to a movie!"

I don't think I've ever seen a "little" Korean baby. I see many larger ones, who seem to be around 6mo old and up, but never a small one. I wonder what they do while they're hiding?

The interesting thing is, when I carry her in the Maya wrap, I don't get any comments! Maybe they think she's older, or that it's ok because she's bundled close. Not sure.

One thing I do know, I couldn't have stayed in the house for 3 weeks. Not counting the doctor's appointment we had to go to, the paperwork processing we had to do to get that appointment, and the forms I had to turn in for leave, all of which required me to leave the house, I wouldn't have been able to stay without going stir-crazy! My trips to Starbucks in between errands were lovely, and walks around the neighborhood are a good way to get out and get some exercise.

But, in honor of Lizzie being allowed to leave the house, we'll go to the US :-)

----------------
Some things about Lizzie:

-she gets really really excited when it's time to eat
-she likes to try to 'inch' around, especially when she's laying on mommy or daddy, and gets mad when she can't (usually because she's run into something)
-she sleeps best wrapped up and in her bed
-she doesn't like her car seat very much, and won't sleep in it unless we're on a long road trip, but when we stop she wakes up
-she enjoys snuggling
-she likes to look around and watch shadows and faces, and sometimes we're not sure what she's watching
-her eyes get real big when she's close to something she wants to see, and she sometimes leans sideways to keep watching something
-she likes to be lifted high
-she doesn't want to be laying down if she's awake, she'd much rather be held vertically
-she hates diaper changes
-when she poops, it's really loud
-after she poops loud, she makes a cute, high-pitched "eh" sound
-she doesn't like wet diapers at all, even if they are just a tiny bit damp, but she will sit in a poopy one for quite awhile
-she likes to lay over a shoulder (in the 'burp' position)
-her fingers are super long and she likes to grab (she likes to hold mommy's finger when she eats)
-she sucks on her hands, and is learning about her thumb. she gets it about 1/3 of the time now
-she gets mad if she can't have access to her hands (i.e. don't wrap them up inside her blanket)
-she makes a super-cute pouty face right before she's about to cry
-her 'reflex' smile is adorable, mommy and daddy can't wait for the real ones
-she acts surprised when daddy blows air puffs at her
-she looks super cute in a fruffle

USA or Bust...

2008-07-09T22:51:00.003+09:00

Except, that the only thing keeping me from the US is our plane crashing into the ocean or something. But tomorrow we go back to the US. We leave from 인천국제공항--that is Incheon Int'l Airport, get to LA the same time we left Korea (traveling across the int'l date line screws with my head sometimes...) From there we get to go to Denver, and then DC and then into North Dakota. So I finally have the opportunity to drive on large open roads and such. And don't worry, gas won't phase us, we're paying $4.19/gal here on base. However, its like $1.80/liter [$6.80/gal] on the Korean economy, so, I'm still not complaining...much. Well, it will be good to be back in the US. I wonder how much has changed since the last time I was there? (Sept '07 for a friends wedding). We shall see. But, please pray for Cara and I to have a safe trip!

Picasa!

2008-07-07T11:09:00.003+09:00

I tried out Google's photo organizing program yesterday, called Picasa, and I must say it is the coolest one I have seen - and totally free. There is a program to download which makes it super easy to see and organize all the photos already on my computer, and I can select the ones I want to make a web album, then on the website it's really quick to organize and caption them. I made 4 albums during Lizzie's nap yesterday! Check them out, http://picasaweb.google.com/wills.carebear. There is a collection of Lizzie photos, our spring trip to the Garden of Morning Calm, and our vacations to Thailand and Vietnam.

Diaper Changing

2008-06-24T18:13:00.002+09:00

I just finished changing one of Lizzie's diapers, and it was quite hilarious. I heard her poop while she was in her bassinet, and Cara checked and commented that I get to take care of Lizzie before she fed her. Well, as I was getting ready to change the diaper, I heard her poop again. Good thing I waited. So I waited a little bit longer to make sure she was done, and continued to change her diaper. As I removed her diaper and grabbed the cleaning cloths, what happens? She poops again! But, without the diaper covering her bottom. Oh man, I never knew babies could spray things besides water that well. As I'm trying to clean the poop up, I notice that she starts to pee. Good thing she's not a boy, otherwise I would've gotten it in the face. Goodness gracious!

It's hit me...

2008-06-24T15:35:00.005+09:00

Before Lizzie was born, I had talked to a lot of people about the whole birth process, and what their feelings were after their first child was born. One person told me, there is no cooler feeling that holding your first born child. Another told me that her husband balled everytime he called someone to tell them it was a boy. Even funnier was the amount of people who told me I was going to cry when I held my newborn girl. I've found that I'm more emotional than not, so I was prepared to let my emotions run free.

As Cara was 'evicting' Lizzie out of the womb (she was 2 weeks past due!), I was able to watch the whole process. When I could see Lizzie's head, it was totally cool! When Lizzie came out, I was just so awestruck with the whole delivery process, I don't think I thought too much about the fact that it was our daughter that I watched this time versus some person who volunteered to let them selves be filmed during labor. I walked over to the warmers where Lizzie was being warmed, and played with her a little bit. And then I realized that Cara was still in the stirrups by herself. So, I ran back, and made sure she was okay...and then ran back to Lizzie. She was sooo adorable, little hands, little face, tiny eyes... awww. But it still hadn't hit yet.

Cara and I were moved to the postpartum room and things got a little more hectic. Nurses were in and out, people came by, sleep was never at the same time, and Lizzie would cry. I think it began to sit in when Cara and the nurse woke me up to change Lizzie's diaper. I was half asleep and hear: "Dad...Dad...time to change the diaper...." Poof, there goes my sleep. I get up, start changing a diaper best I know how and in a non-medicated/tired state. The nurse helps me out here and there, and I do catch a few things it seems, cause the next time I change the diaper, she comments "Wow, fast learner." That's right... I love my daughter... :-P.

One day (wait.. this was all in the period of 36 hours..), Lizzie, Cara,.and I were sleeping soundly. We should have bee ordering our food, but hadn't had a chance to put our orders onto paper yet. Well, the food guy came by, and was kind of annoying, and basically wasn't leaving until we ordered our food. So after I finally get our orders to the food guy and he leaves, the is a knock on the door again. I think he's forgot something, so I open the door only to find its one of the nurses. To make things worse, its one of the more verbose nurses. So after she finally finishes telling what she was supposed to (it was good information) I shut the door and sit down in my uncomfortable chair and attempt to sleep. Cara check's Lizzie's Diaper and says: "Daddy... Lizzie needs a diaper change." Gargh! Not what I wanted to hear! I'm rather grumpy at this point, and so I start changing her diaper. "Lizzie... stop moving your legs. Lizzie, if you wouldn't move so much, this wouldn't be so bad." Then I think it started to hit. She's a baby... My baby... I have to be gentle no matter how tired/annoyed I am. She hasn't done anything to me. So I changed the diaper, and gave the baby to Mom, and passed out in my chair.

It really began to sink in when we were at the US embassy here in Seoul, and I had to get visa passport pages added to my passport. The lady told me to give them the passport book and to come back in like two hours. I told her that I was getting a passport for my daughter... whoa! Daughter?!?! Holy Cow! It just about sank in.

It was all complete when my dad wrote me an e-mail with just one line. "So, has it hit you yet?" Man, my dad and I are like genetically linked! Hilarious. Anyrate, just so everyone knows, its hit.

Labor Story

2008-06-20T21:12:00.003+09:00

Hello all! In case you're interested, this is how Lizzie decided to enter the world :-) Sorry for any TMI moments!

I was heading to the end of 41wks pregnant, and the hospital doesn't generally let anyone go past 42wks. Because it appeared nothing was going to happen soon naturally (I wasn't dilated at all or having even mild contractions), they had started trying to 'encourage' labor to begin. I got 3 gel treatments (Prepidil I think) to try to soften my cervix, on Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday. When the checked on Tuesday, my cervix was softer, but that's it, so we decided I would be induced starting Wednesday evening, and plan to start labor on Thursday morning.

However, the 3rd gel treatment must have done something. It was administered around 2pm, and at 5:30pm I was on the computer in the library when I started noticing slight contractions. I thought they would go away when I got up to walk, but they didn't. I ran (walked?) the rest of my errands and got back to the Stork's Nest. Will was driving up after work to trade a few things for a radio I had picked up at the PX, and he arrived around 9pm. By then, my contractions were happening more often, but still weren't regular or painful. He left at midnight, and I went to sleep. A few hours later, I woke up because they were stronger and I couldn't sleep anymore. I walked back and forth in my room (it was raining outside), and rested some more. At 4am, I went to the bathroom, and then decided to see if the contractions were regular or not, so I could decide if I needed to call Will and tell him to drive back up. He planned on working Wednesday and coming up with the van on Wed pm for when my induction started. I came back from the bathroom, and wrote down a few times, but not enough to tell anything. Then, I thought I had to go to the bathroom again, so I went back. It seemed like, since I hadn't drank anything for awhile, I shouldn't be peeing that much, and thought I should start so see if maybe my water had broken. I laid down for 20min or so, then stood up, and sure enough more liquid came out. At that point, I put on a pad, and called Will (who hadn't gone to bed yet!!)to say he should probably come back soon (after a nap). Then I called the WICU (women/infant care unit) at the hospital to find out what they wanted me to do. Since I was by myself, they had me call the ambulance. I did, then went back to my room to get some of my things together. I also quickly ate a few servings of applesauce, because I figured they wouldn't let me eat at the hospital (I was right). The ambulance came, thank goodness without sirens, and I walked through the rain to the street. I sat on the stretcher, because it was the only place to sit, and we rode to the hospital. When I got there, they strapped me in and unloaded me, on the stretcher! I felt so silly, because I wasn't hurt, and could walk fine. But, they said I was already strapped in, so I may as well stay on for a ride. We arrived at the WICU, and they brought me into the evaluation room, but as soon as they saw that I was clearly losing liquid, they moved me immediately to the Labor and Delivery room. Dr Kim checked me, and I was dilated a fingertip. Because my water was broken, I wasn't going to be leaving the hospital without a baby. This was around 5:30am. I waited until 6, then called Will to tell him I had been checked in and he should head back up to Seoul.

Will got there around 7:30 or so. Everything was still pretty easy, nothing too painful. The nurses and midwife said I could walk around as long as I came back to be monitored every 30min, so I took a few laps of the WICU. Around 9:30, Dr Han came in and asked if I'd be willing to start Pitocen to make my contractions stronger. Because my water had broken and we weren't sure how long my body would take to dilate naturally, she was worried I was at risk for an infection. Plus, it could possibly take several days. As I was planning to start Pitocen the next day anyway, I figured it was a good idea. They let me take one more set of laps, which Will joined me for (he had been napping on the recliner in the Labor and Delivery room), then hooked me up to all the monitors and started the Pitocen. I'd guess this was around 10am.

Contractions started getting harder and closer right away. Every 20min the nurses would come in, see how I was doing, and turn up the dosage. By the 3rd or 4th time, I wasn't very happy about it! Lizzie's heart rate dropped a few times with the first strong contractions, so they put me on oxygen for a bit. She started looking OK pretty soon, though, and I didn't need the oxygen anymore. At first I was fine with my ipod, then I couldn't concentrate on the audiobook anymore and one of the nurses helped a bit. Will got up when he saw what he could do to help (I didn't know what to ask for either, so I'm glad the nurse was there to show us!), and he was great, doing everything I asked him to do. He put pressure and heat on my back, and let me lean on him in awkward positions, and helped me relax. The midwife came in often as well, to see how I was doing, and help out. She gave Will some ideas too. When it started getting more painful, I got out of bed and sat on the exercise ball I had brought, which was much better than sitting in bed. It was frustrating, though, because the monitors were sensitive and in certain positions (most often the ones I wanted to be in), one or both of the monitors (baby heartbeat and contraction sensor) would quit working, so I had to hold them in position. I changed positions whenever I thought something else would feel better, and they let me get unhooked in order to go to the bathroom, so that was a nice change as well. Focused breathing helped quite a bit, though I never did the 'hee hee hoo' stuff you see on tv. Long 'whooshes' and moaning helped me, because I could concentrate on the sound I was making instead of the pain. Contractions came close and hard, and when the midwife checked me at 3pm, I thought I would be decently far along. I was 3cm, which wasn't bad, but not where I wished I was! I started thinking about an epidural at this point, because although we were getting through the contractions fine, I didn't know if I wanted to keep doing it through 7 more centimeters.

Ginny Lee, the midwife:

An hour later or so, Dr Han came back, and said she wanted me to stop moving around so much, and that I couldn't get off the monitors anymore to go to the bathroom. Because the baby hadn't dropped hardly at all, there was a possibility that the cord could drop below the baby, forcing a c-section. Since I was going to be stuck in bed anyway, I started leaning stronger towards an epidural. Dr Han asked if I wanted one, saying it was only going to get worse, and I talked to Will about it. He made sure I wouldn't be mad at him afterwards for letting me get one, but once I pointed out that the contractions were fake (because they were from Pitocen), and that in a normal natural birth I wouldn't even be at the hospital yet, and that since I was going to be tied to the bed anyway (one of the reasons I didn't want an epidural originally), he agreed it was probably best. I got the epidural at 5:30pm, 12hrs after I got to the hospital.

Because I had the epidural, the nurses could turn up the Pitocen so it was stronger than I could have tolerated without the pain relief. The contractions were long and strong even through the epidural. Dr Han came in to check me 2hrs later, and I was at 5cm, and Lizzie had moved down further. Until this time, I had still been doubting that my body would respond properly, and I was worried about a c-section. On my mother's side, most births seem to be from c-sections because of big babies/small birth canals, including my mom and grandmother. So, I was expecting a continuation of that. But, because I was progressing, it was a great sign, and we were all really excited. Dr Han said she would be back in 2hrs.

I could still feel the contractions through the epidural, though they were almost painless. My left leg didn't go as numb as my right leg, and I could feel some pain there, but I lay on my side for awhile and the medicine evened out a bit more. About an hour after Dr Han left, though, I started feeling more pressure and pain, and it felt like Lizzie was moving down. At this point, Lizzie's heart rate dropped a bit again, so they put me back on the oxygen. Her head felt like it was pressing against my bottom with every contraction, and it was very uncomfortable. Will came over to hold my hand. I watched the clock closely for when Dr Han was supposed to come back, and felt like I was very close to feeling the 'urge to push'. I almost asked for her to be called earlier, but kept waiting. When she arrived at 9:30pm, she was surprised, and said I was 100% - ready to push! 2hrs to go from 5cm to pushing, pretty crazy.

The nurse came in at that point to help us start pushing, and set up a mirror at the end of the bed for me to watch (at my request). She took one leg and told Will to take the other, and we started pushing! It was hard at first to focus on the muscles that needed to do the work, but the mirror helped a lot with that and when she told me to relax my legs and not push into them, I started doing better. Will counted to 10 several times during each contraction while I tried to push Lizzie along. Will said he could see the bulge of Lizzie's head move down inside my belly, and at one point could see her hair. Then she rotated to move through the tight spaces, and we had to wait awhile to see her again.

An hour into pushing, Dr Han came in to check out my progress. She felt all around Lizzie's head (not fun for me!), and said she was in a good position to come out. I got scared for a minute though, because it had hurt to have her hands in there, and her hands weren't nearly as big as a baby! For a few minutes, the room was a flurry of activity as the end of the bed was taken off, the stirrups set up, a light came down from the ceiling, and Dr Han got all her equipment ready. Pretty soon we were ready for the real thing! Dr Han sat at the end of the bed, and Will had my leg. They still had the mirror set up, but it was hard for me to see because everyone was in the way. Dr Han kept checking Lizzie's progress, and told me when I wasn't pushing enough, and at some point was able to hold her head to keep her from going backwards in between contractions. Her heart rate was still going down with every contraction, but would go back to normal in between. Dr Han thought she might have the cord around her neck. I kept pushing, and her head was almost out. It was stuck on a piece of skin that Dr Han was going to cut, but on the next push it tore itself so she didn't have to. Later, I pushed Lizzie to the point where her head was halfway out, and the contraction stopped so I couldn't push effectively anymore. It hurt pretty bad to have it just sitting there stretching me! But, I had to wait for the next contraction. When it came, I pushed, and then Dr Han said to stop pushing. I felt her unwrap the cord, and thought I would have to push again to finish getting her out, but there she was! Born at 11:05pm.

Dr Han with Lizzie:
They put her on my stomach to clean her, while Will cut the cord, but because she had the cord on her neck she was a bit blue and they had to take her over to the warmer. She cried right away though, while she was on me, so I wasn't too worried. Will went wither her, and watched them do tests, give her the standard medications, etc., while Dr Han stitched me up in two places (nothing too bad, she said). I had to wait a bit to get Lizzie back, but they finally brought her over and I got to hold her and start to feed her while the epidural wore off. We moved into the postpartum room around 5am.

In the Labor and Delivery room:

Lizzie is Here!

2008-06-20T19:17:00.003+09:00

Well everyone, it is a pleasure to introduce to you all Elizabeth (Lizzie) Ruth Jones. Baby Lizzie came into the world @ 1105 PM on June 18th, 2008. She weighed 7lbs 11oz, and Cara was able to deliver her without getting a Cesarean! She is a very pretty baby, with a lot of hair, and likes to look around. We have some pictures here for you all to look at. Please enjoy!

The Kitchen is alive!

2008-06-10T01:00:00.007+09:00

So, Cara has been at the stork's nest for the past week and a half, and I've gone up there quite often to visit her. When I'm not at the stork's nest, I'm back here at the apartment pretending its 2006 and Cara and I are separated again. The only difference is that Cara cooks a lot of food and there are leftovers.

Well, this past week, I looked at the kitchen, but never ate much in it, or cleaned much for that matter, and just went about business as usual. We had a few warm & humid days this weekend as well, and to keep the house safe, the windows were closed. Today, however, I was determined to eat into the stockpiles of good leftovers in the fridge (the leftovers in the fridge aren't the problem, so don't worry about those). Cara made some shrimp(s) with some olive oil and spices, and suggested that I pour them over noodles for a good dinner dish. So, I figured I'd give that a shot.

Around 9:30ish PM I turned the water on to the sink, and noticed that gnats started flying around. Great, must be mold in the sink trap. I open it up, and voila, mold. Ick. Followed by more gnats. Ug. So I promptly take the sink trap to our food trash, open it up and get surprised by some more gnats. At this point, I hold my breath, tie the food trash shut, and take it outside. Boy, that was nasty.

I start to fill up a pan to make noodles, when I notice the gnats migrated over our kitchen table. As I ponder what could be over there, I soon find our banana bread bananas have begun to mold as well. I throw those away, while attacking the gnats with table cleaner. Now, I have set myself to clean this kitchen. Its attacking me!

So while I'm boiling the noodles, I fill up the sink and start to soak some of the dishes and open an old salad bowl. Mold. Ugh. But its salad? Oh, that's right, there was feta cheese in it. Realizing that the salad bowl was pretty nasty, I remember the container sitting next to it.

*****

Earlier last week, I had dropped off Cara at the stork's nest, and she told me I had to try the potato salad, cause it wasn't too mayonaisey, and it tasted pretty good. So one night, I was looking for regular green salad, and took out the potato salad to get to the green salad. I polished it off and threw the empty container on the countertop. The next day I set myself to try the potato salad. So I pour a glass of Kool-aid to wash it down, open the fridge, and look for the container of potato salad. The only problem is, I can't find it. So I look a little harder through the fridge, and then I realize what I did. I look on top of the fridge, and find the container of potato salad that had been left out for a day or so. Annoyed at myself, I throw it on the sink counter telling myself that it is 'off limits' for food. But I never moved it or emptied the contents after that...

****

Anyway, as I sat there next to the kitchen sink trying to convince myself to open the 1.5 week old potato salad left out in the heat & humidity. It takes me a while, and then I hold my breath and open the container. I jump a little. Wow... it was a total colony. So, I did what any man would do. Ignore it. I washed just about everything else except that.

I even contemplated throwing the whole container away. I took the potato salad outside with a garbage bag, but then I realize that's just a tad wasteful. At about this time, I realize I need more dish soap. So I run to the shoppette real quick and get some soap and juice.

So after telling myself that it is only mold, and I can wash my hands, I grab a food trash bag, go outside and dump most of the potato salad without looking at it. I figure I should actually see what it looks like, so I take a look, and get semi-amazed about how much mold grew, and the different types that grew. So, what do you do with something that looks cool? That's right, you take a picture of it! So I did. (still freaks me out kinda). So I take the tupperware container back inside, make fresh sink water and let that sucker soak for a while. I do some more cleaning to rid the kitchen of more mold, but as far as I can tell, it'll be a while before the gnats retreat.

Bragging...

2008-06-09T17:43:00.003+09:00

Hello! No Lizzie yet, still waiting. And getting impatient, and running out of ideas of what to do each day, but that will end soon enough, I'm sure!

Re: the below post, I thought I'd publish the file of Will's recent creation. He created/played/sang/recorded all the parts, which is pretty cool.

Enjoy!

Majestic

My Music Studio

2008-06-05T23:22:00.004+09:00

Well, borrowed at least. Its real fun too. I can mix my own music, and harmonize myself. Its not easy.

In the picture you can see what it looks like. One of the guys I play with in our praise band used to be in a bunch of very good bands back in the day. Knowing this, I asked, in an e-mail, for some advice on getting a sound board to help me mix music to my computer. His reply was a tutorial on sound boards different kinds of sound, etc. He mentioned that he also had some recording equipment that was collecting dust in his house that he could let me borrow. So, like anyone who finds something cool... I jump on it! He let me borrow a digital mixer board, a Roland SC-55 Synthesizer (which I had to fix to use...), a PCI interface board, a SWEEET microphone, cables, and so forth.

Its all in the picture below.

Oh, and if you want to hear a song I worked on, let me know. I'll e-mail it to ya.

Update on The New Guy

2008-06-05T19:55:00.003+09:00

He's doing okay, and is taking it well. He's actually pretty jokeful about it too. Today we went to the boss's office first instead of our main office. When we walk up, our boss says hello and he says: "I've told everyone not to ask you how your trip was...There's a pun in there somewhere..." I think my boss thought about that all day long. But I could be wrong. Anyway, we get things taken care of, and head over to the shop. I drive in this time vs parking away from the main building. Jokingly he comments, "Why didn't we do this yesterday?" Oh, I wonder the same thing. When we got to the office, he introduced him self as 'Trip' At that point, I figured he wasn't embarrassed much anymore. But just letting everyone know, the new guy is indeed OK. :-D

Oh even funnier are some of the jokes about the situation I've heard.

New Guy (to me): Okay, so I've come up with the story that I'm going to tell everyone. You and I were talking about politics, I'm a die hard Clinton supporter, and you're a Obama supporter. While we were walking, I said something bad about Obama and somehow I'm on the ground....
(He's joking, I assure you!)

******

Sergeant: Hey dude, don't trip me!
Me: Ha ha, sorry, I'll try not too.
Sergeant: Hey, did SF come out to the scene?
Me: No...
Sergeant: (jokingly..I hope...) Man I'm surprised they didn't come out, see the guy on the ground and report "There's a white male down with a black guy over him!" and then come out with the Humvees and 60 cal guns!

*******

I didn't even think about that fact (black guy/white guy) when it happened... but it goes to show you, that racism is still in a lot of peoples minds, whether we talk about it, or not.

"Funny story about the new guy..."

2008-06-04T22:19:00.006+09:00

That was what I told my co-worker this afternoon when he asked about the arrival of the new guy to our office. What is that story? I'm glad you asked.

Well, I was asked to pick up our new guy from his hotel and bring him by our office. So, I got up kinda early (for me at least) and headed on over to the hotel. I let him know I'm there and introduce myself when he comes down to the lobby. I then drive him on base and give him a mini tour of the main street (BX, Hospital, Family Housing, etc...) and then head toward and park as close as we can to our office. As we're walking into our office compound, we're talking back and forth. I'm not sure why, but I looked behind me just in time to see his head, in what felt like slow motion, hit the curb and bounce a little. It seemed so slow when he was falling because I could process the fact that he was falling, I could tell where his head was probably going to hit, and focused on that spot. When his head hit, I looked at the spot to make sure it wasn't hurt to badly. I felt like I was (Warning: Geek reference ahead!) Piccard in the movie "Star Trek: Insurrection." (Told ya...)

"Ahh! Dude, you okay?!" I ask as I help him up. I looked at the spot where he hit, and it looked like is was only scraped, so I figured that everything should be okay. Then I noticed the blood dripping from his nose. Not good. So I suggest that we go to the hospital, and he agrees. He had a handkerchief in his pocket and so he's already applying pressure and all that good first aid stuff. He even gives himself a self diagnosis: "I think I broke my nose... " along with some other choice words. So we do 180 right back to the car. I drive pretty quick to the Emergency room and drop him off. I park, walk in and don't see him anywhere. Turns out he walked in, and they took him right away. Thank the Lord. So I sit down and watch whats on the TV. After an hour of waiting, I figured I should tell someone at the office that we're being somewhat held up . I didn't want to tell everyone the new guys business, because word around the office spreads like the wildfires in SoCal. (I lived there during a few of them. I can say it. :-P)

An hour and a half later, the new guy finally comes out and doesn't look too happy. That and he's got scabs on his hands, face, and surgical tape on his nose. He sighs and asks that I take him back to the hotel. So I call our boss and tell him that the new guy broke his nose, and wants to return to his room. When our boss asks what happened, I try to gloss over exactly what happened to save the new guy some face, but he tells me to tell the whole story. So I tell the entire story to our boss, and he doesn't mind letting the new guy go back to his room to rest.

Well, at this point, past experience tells me that whoever was at office now knew what happened.
So, as I'm walking back to our office, I enter the compound and a random Sergent walks out towards me and is like "Don't trip me man!" I chuckle. Apparently one of the Sergent's shop mates saw the new guy fall.

When I walk into our office, what's the first thing I'm asked? "Will, why'd you trip the new guy?" I chuckle again, cause I expected it. So I explain to the two guys there what happened, and while I'm explaining it, a coworker exlaims "Dang, you couldn't write that, that sucks!" So true.

I go to lunch and come back, and another coworker was present. I explain the story again. He chuckles, but agrees it sucks. 5 mins later, he chuckles randomly. "Sorry, I'm gonna be chuckling all day about that," he says. "Yeah, just not tomorrow though," I reply.

I tinker around on the internet, and then walk to our secure office, and another coworker shows up.

***** POP QUIZ TIME! *******

Question: How many people are currently at my office? No Peeking!

a. 3
b. 4
c. 5
d. I don't care just finish the story!!!

Acceptable answers are:

C (Me, ****, ****, **** & ****) or
D for those who don't care. Kidding.

*** END OF POP QUIZ ****

Anyway, CW4 (coworker 4) shows up and asks me a question.

"Hey, wasn't there supposed to be a new guy coming in today?" He asked.
"Funny story about the new guy..." I replied.
"Oh, I like funny stories, lets hear it."

So I explain what happened, and he can't believe it at first. It just seems so crazy. It was like he got all the way to Korea, just to trip right before getting to his job. In essence it was: Welcome to Korea! *WHACK*.

So, CW5 walked in the room, and CW4 says to him: "Hey, Will took out the new guy and broke his nose!" Now, don't worry, I expected that comment as well. Oddly enough, I think I was looking forward to it.

But, just to make sure, I tell the story again of what happened. CW5 is also in disbelief. They also wonder if the guy is clumsy or something. I try, as best I can, to erase that thought from their minds (Jedi Mind trick... no, not really). Okay, so tried to convince them that it was just terrible 'luck'.

Well, after that everyone who wasn't off that day or on vacation knew what happened. I just felt bad for the new guy since he could already have a 'klutz' stigma against him!

*** DISCLAIMER ****

While this story is funny to some, It's not funny to the new guy. I realize that. Its less funny to me than the coworkers, since I watched it happen. I feel sorry for the guy that this happened before Day 1.

*** END DISCLAIMER ***

Oh, and I have curbophobia at the moment.

Oh, and I didn't use any names, so It may be a bit confusing. Apologies in advance.

Incognito Concert!

2008-05-30T10:53:00.005+09:00

When I was at the USAFA Prep School, I began listening to what would become one of my favorite bands. Incognito. I'd never got to see them in concert in the US cause they never tour there, but, Since I'm in Korea, there was a lot bigger chance. And on 24 May, I got to go see them Live! Woohoo!

After hearing an ad on the radio about them coming to the Seoul Jazz Fest, Cara and I bought tickets right away. One of my friends who I introduced to Incognito (Jeff) is also here on Peninsula , and I told him about it as well. He was super excited. And the best part was, Cara, Jeff and I all had seats right next to each other. How awesome is that??

Well there were two shows that night, a French band called "Nouvelle Vague" (New Wave?). They were definitely different. They sang a song called Human Fly (spelled F-L-Y... buzzz buzzz buzzzz)... And they tried to get the whole audience in on it. But they were really wierd... their whole jazz moving and scatting and such just looked like... well... me trying to do it. Not a good sight. let me tell you. The funnier thing was, one of the ladies had long black hair, and Cara was like "Oh they have a Korean Singer with them!" The woman spoke a few times, and it was obvious that singer wasn't korean. It was definitely a Euro Accent of some sort. Which turned out to be French. I also was a little peeved when kept trying to get the audience to yell a certain word dealing with carnal knowledge. But I suppose they came up with it so, whatever. Thankfully Nouvelle Vague's two encores ended (Yay!) and intermission came and went... and then.. Incognito! Yeahhh!!!!!!!!!! *Ahem*

That was such a totally awesome concert. It was awesome to actually hear Bluey (Jean-Paul Maunick, band leader) talk and explain the meanings behind the songs. It was cool seeing how the brass section worked. They put on a good show, and had the audience out of their seats and jammin' on the ground floor. So many of the song's they played were some of the songs that got me through the Academy (Still a friend of Mine, Pieces of a dream, Who Needs Love, Morning Sun, Always there, a cover of Don't you worry 'bout a Thing, Nights over Egypt) and new songs from their new CD, which I have now :-). Towards the end, Cara mentioned to Jeff and I (die hard lovers of incognito) if we would really want to pay for bottom floor seats for this. This was after we got to watch everyone shake the hands of all the band members. Without hesitation, both of us answered "Yes!" She cracked up. Apparently Jeff and I were quite into the whole concert, excited for all the songs that knew and loved that were played live. Completely awesome experience.

Well, after all was said and done, we left and bought some memoirs from the concert, and then headed back to the Metro station (we took the metro to avoid traffic and having to pay for parking.) As we're walking toward the metro, we realize that we don't have enough cash to get to back to Osan AB. So we pray that there'll be an ATM in the metro station, and there is. Its a good thing too, cause according to the schedule, the last train departs from our station very shortly. And with most metro systems, if you get on the metro, you're guaranteed to make it to your final destination. So we get our cash from the ATM, head to the ticket guy and ask for a ticket to Songtan. He looks at us strange and says something in Korean. My korean is minimal to non-existent so I had no clue what he was saying. A Bi-lingual Korean came by and explained that we can't get to Songtan, because its too late.

Too late?? Wait? What?!?! Oh boy, our evening just got interesting. We decide to see how far south we can go, and then take a taxi the rest of the way. Well, we got nowhere really. The trains don't go out of Seoul that late at night. As we're headed towards Guro, I realized we're gonna have to get a hotel room, cause we're not making it back to Songtan. Cara and I start discussing various Hotel Options. Immediately we think about Yongsan's Lodging. (Dragon Hill Lodge -- 5 star Army Resort. Truly nice).But it is Memorial Day Weekend, so that will probably be full (which it was), and then the other various Hotels off base. We get to Guro, and its almost a Ghost Town. The southbound trains go a little further south than Guro, but not much. So we walk to the northbound side of the platform to see if there is a train coming that will take us back into the city, cause to be honest, our best options are in and around the base. As we walk around the Northbound platform, there aren't too many people and it looks discouraging. So we figure there is no train coming. I glance up at one of the Train signs, and notice its advertising something about Seoul Station. But I figure its nothing. As we're walking back up the stairs semi-defeated, I get to thinking (dangerous I know...).

There were people there still... If there were no more trains, The train station managers would come through and clear everyone out.
The train sign mentioned Seoul Station, and those signs always advertise the next train's final location.
So there's at least 1 more train... isn't there?

At this point, we've already been walking a bit, and I don't want to keep taking Jeff and Cara to random places. But I guess I looked like I thought there was one more train, so Cara asked if we wanted to go back. So we did. Boy its a good thing to. There was one last train. So we took it to the Yongsan station stop and then got a Taxi to the Hotel Capital hotel. There I used one of my prepared Korean sentences. "호텔 카피탈 가주세요?" (Hotel Capital ka juseyo?) [Can you take me to the Capital Hotel??].

On the way there, we determined that if we can get a room for less then a Taxi ride to Songtan, we would get it. We guesstimated the taxi fare to Osan AB would be $150-160. We got there and the price for the room was about $150. Okay, on to the next hotel. When we left, we got the next taxi we saw. It was actually a nice cab. It had a credit card machine, GPS, and everything. Hooked up. We ask him to take us to Itaewon hotel. He goes. well... starts to. Unfortunately, GIs here in Korea have a thing called Curfew. (Yeah, doesn't stop even when you leave the house...) and it being a Saturday night, a lot of people were out drinking and now were walking back or looking for taxis. The people who were walking back, were walking anywhere they wasn't a car. Even if it meant in the middle of the street. Then people were yelling at each other across the street and such. So, all of us being such refined and dignified officers (well... I'm part of the contractor mafia... nevermind...) were taken a back by all the behavior of the lower class enl--- I'm so totally kidding! But it was still ridiculous. The cabbie driver even mutters a few things in Korean under his breath, and I figure he's thinking the same thing he is. We get to an intersection that is pretty crazy and well, the cab driver is a little frustrated we figure cause when he finally gets a chance to go through it, other cabs are trying to cut him off. He had none of that. He just kept going across the street, and squeaked through a small opening. Awesome cab driver.

We get to the Itaewon Hotel, and Cara and Jeff hide out in the car cause technically, they're subject to Curfew as well. I look more like a tourist and such than Jeff (he has a military hair cut) so I do all the leg work. Fine by me, I just wanna get a hotel room. I walk inside the Itaewon hotel and yup, you guessed it. Full. I walk back out, and hear my name being called, so I look to the left and I see our cab driver out of the cab waving his hands. Wow, very awesome driver. We get back in the cab and he asking where to next in Korean. It takes me a second to realize that though. (from Cara: Will says, 'Pyongtaek-shi?', on a whim, to see if the cabbie will take us back to Osan AB. The driver just laughed. Guess not!) I'm not sure what to say so I ask if there is a Hotel down the road somewhere as I point straight ahead. When I asked that I think he took it as "Is there a Hotel on the GPS??" cause he looked up Hotels and Motels on the GPS device. Well, he found an hotel called "Ben Hur Hotel." I go in and ask for room prices. $65 a room! Sweet! Inexpensive! I run out and tell Jeff and Cara that we're good. As I'm walking out, I wonder why its so cheap. We check in and get our room keys, and then the people hand us our back of room goodies I suppose. I take a look, and I see disposable toothbrushes, tissue, something else, and four condoms. ...what?!? Condoms?? What in the world? I hear Jeff say: "Oh goodness Will, Where have you taken us?" Which was the same thing I was thinking. But, we needed to sleep, so sleep we will.

As we're going to our room, we try to unlock it, but the key doesn't work. I look at the Key and it says room 502. the key block says room 403. Go figure. We walk to room 502 go in, and like 30 seconds later, the phone rings. I pick it up, and they start talking to me about a Key. Seeing as how they called right when we walked into the room, I figured they were telling us we're in the wrong room. So we go back down stairs and they take us to our room and show us that the room door wasn't locked. So it didn't matter if the key matched or not. Strange. The guy tries to get the TV working, but at this point I don't care. My ADD medicine is quickly leaving my system, and I need to sleep before I get grumpy. We tell him its okay, and then pass out on the rock hard bed. All we have to do the next day is get to the metro, get home and then go to church. All before 0800. Did I mention that we finally get to bed around 0130? yeah.

At 0515 my phone alarm goes off and we ready to go around 550. We get Jeff and we head out. We try and figure out where the nearest metro station would be, and we're in luck! Its right next to the Hotel. So as we're walking, we realize that we are *again* without any cash for the train (from Cara: we were only W100 short, which is 10 cents!). We used a lot of it for cabbies across town. I pray again for an ATM in the subway, and there is! Oh but wait... it doesn't take foreign cards! Grr... so we leave and start walking down the hill to convenience stores looking for ATMs. We pass another metro station, and the same thing there: No foreign Cards. We're getting a little frazzled and then, we find a 24 hour store, and it has an ATM that accepts foreign cards! I pull out W50000 just to be safe, and Jeff also pulls out like W3-50000 just so we don't get in the same situation again. We go to a bakery, get some food, then we get tickets to Songtan, and head back home. We get home in time to drop off Jeff at his hotel, then grab my Medication from home, and then get to church for Sunday School. Oh man.... what an adventure!

Baby Bumps, by request :-)

2008-05-26T12:21:00.002+09:00

36wks, my crazy stretch marks.

37wks

38wks, last day of work :-)

What I usually wear at work, because there's no A/C

38wks, after the Incognito concert in Seoul (I'm sure Will is planning to post about that soon!)

Our Cars in Korea Revisted

2008-05-08T10:48:00.006+09:00

So, for the past year we have been making our home here in Korea, and initially started with the bare minimum cars. However, lots has changed since then. I didn't want the Corolla to sit around back in the states and kinda get abused or what not, and no one wanted to buy it from the family (It had my car computer still in it, so I didn't want to sell it to just anyone) cause they were either not in the market, or not the kind of vehicle they wanted to get. So, after a little pondering, Cara and I realized that she never shipped a car from the US. So, when I went home for Ty Russell's Wedding, I took the car and got it shipped to Korea. Its cool having the Corolla here. The first car I had, the Hyundai Accent was quite the small car with a small engine. I would go about 100km/h (approx 60mph) and the engine would already be running at about 3000+ RPM. I would think about how the corolla was a lot better at going fast than the accent was. After the Corolla arrived, and I was on my way back home from the port, I noticed how much smoother and nicer my car felt than my original car (pink car). The funny thing is, its only a Corolla, so there are plenty of cars that feel even nicer out there. But who cares? I had the Corolla back and I could drive it, and work on the car computer. Once I left the states, I had totally let go, and had assumed that my little car computer project was finished and I wouldn't be working on it any longer. I had even labeled my Lab Book to say that the project ended once I left LA. Well, it seems the Lord is letting me work on it longer. Yay! So, in an effort to have a car that works and can be used by anyone, I'm putting some finishing touches on it this project so that there is little hardware / car modification, but mostly software modification that will be easy to update on the fly. Should be exciting :-D.

Now, as we all may (or may not) recall, Cara had a Volvo 940GL that she got for a pretty good deal. They were a few things wrong with it (No driver side mirror, non functional door handle, bad fuel relay, etc.) that we fixed, and it worked great. Then Cara got pregnant. (Yay!) Then we tried to fit Lizzie's infant seat in the Corolla, and it was then we realized that my Corolla is very small when you want to fit two parents and a rear facing seat in the car. So we figured we'd move it to the Volvo. I didn't like that much though. The lights on the Volvo aren't quite aimed correctly, so low beams act more like fog lights, and high beams are more like high beams. In the winter time, cold air leaks in from somewhere (never figured that out). So I didn't feel the car was too safe. So, Cara and I decided to look for a good car (<$5K) that would be newer and still be safe enough. One evening we're out at an apartment of our friends' and they mention that they are eying a $1000 minivan. I was quite happy that they found a deal like that, but wished that I could have found it as well. But they only were allowed to have one car, so, I'd live. But as it turned out, they had bought a smaller car, and like it more (it fit better everywhere) and so, they decided not to buy it. So, guess what cara and I bought... thats right a minivan. Funny thing was, we were wondering how good a $1000 minvan could be. I mean, its only $1000... As we look at it, we find that its awesome. So awesome we would make an offer later. And it was cheaper than we thought it would be too. It fits Lizzie right where we wanted to originally, and we can take out the back row of chairs and just put the stroller there. The only thing we have to do is get a new compressor for the AC. It nearly seized why the previous owners were using it, but they caught it before it happened, and just skipped the pulley and got a smaller serpentine belt. Even with that pending repair, it's price was perfect for what we wanted. So, we sold the Volvo, and now have a very nice (for being a GI in Korea) Minivan, and a great Corolla. :-D. So the Lord has blessed us a lot, and I am very grateful for it.

Picking up a friend's lost cell phone

2008-04-14T22:22:00.005+09:00

So last Wednesday, Cara and I were invited to some of our friends' (Jamie & Bekah) house for dinner. On Sunday, when they invited us, we told them that Cara works until around 6:00pm, so we'd get there as soon as we could. Well, when Wednesday evening rolls around, its about 6:25ish, and I call Cara's cell, and she's on her way home. At this point I decide to tell our friends that we'll be late. When I call their cell phone, I initially think it's Bekah, but then I realized its a Filipino woman on the phone. She explains that she found this phone, and that she'd be at the Loft (a club/bar off base) between 9-10pm that night. So, I write this info down, and head to eat dinner with our friends. We get there and I tell them that their phone turned up, and I mention where it is, and offer to go with Jamie after dinner to find the club so that I wouldn't send on a wild goose chase. After dinner, we all decide to watch a movie with Doris Day in it. (Its the one where her Hubby thinks she's dead 5 years after a plane crash and marries some obnoxious woman) Well, in the middle of the movie, 9 o'clock rolls around so Jamie and I head out to 'Aragon Alley' (named that way because at the end of the alley is a restaurant called 'Aragon'... clever eh?). After calling the Filipino woman again to make sure we were headed in the right direction, we find the club and go ahead and walk in, and that's when it happened...

You know how in movies and cartoons when people walk into a bar, everyone stops, stares and the music comes to a halt? That's basically what happened. I felt like I was on a movie set cause literally everyone stopped what they were doing and looked in our direction. The music kept playing though. ;-) Had it been a bar full of Koreans, I would have just wrote it off as 'they've never seen a black guy in real life'. But this was an American bar, so it definitely made things a little awkward. To make matters worse, it seemed like the bartender wanted us to have a drink, because she kept telling us that getting the cell phone back wasn't free... Now, nothing is wrong with a drink here or there, but seeing as how our wives were at home expecting us back (to some, that is lousy reason not to drink....), and I don't think Jamie drinks alcohol anyway, we leave promptly and head back to the car. We were so thankful that it didn't take that long, or, for that matter, that much, to get the cellphone back.

Once we get back to Jamie & Beckah's apateu...er apartment, we get asked "Where did we lose it, where did they find it, etc..." The women seemed surprised that we didn't try and find out more, but we explain to them the awkwardness of the situation, and they understood.

Wow, that was an interesting experience...

Baby Shower!

2008-03-23T21:37:00.006+09:00

My baby shower was yesterday, and it was such a good time. It was a joint shower for me and another mom-to-be, Simcha, (due in 4wks, but we thought she might have the baby at the shower, since she was having contractions last week!). The hostess/organizer was the lady who runs the local Hospitality House, which is a house which hosts Christian fellowship off base, both in the form of studies (I go to a ladies' study there on Tuesday nights), and as a great place to hang out on the weekends (they have hobby nights, board game nights, movie nights, and other fun activities). The shower was located at that House, which was good, because there were soooo many ladies! I was overwhelmed by gifts, and when I came home I left all of the bags in the living room and took a nap (I blame Lizzie for my recent tiredness...). When I woke up, I went online and ordered everything I didn't get, so in a few weeks it'll be like another shower! I was at the computer ordering when Will came home from work, and he did a double take at all the presents. I didn't get around to unpacking everything until today, but now it is all taken apart and put away. Despite the limited shopping (BX, anyone?), I only got a few duplicates, for the most part in varying sizes so it didn't matter. I am going to try to exchange a bath set I received in triplicate, but that's it.

The shower was very unique, and I heard lots of positive comments today in church. After getting food, we were divided in two teams (led by the two mothers-to-be), and played a baby video quiz game, which had been made by the husband of one of the ladies. It was quite impressive, and if I didn't know better, I would have thought it was purchased. There were video clips followed by questions about the movie. We only went through 10 of them, but there are 20, plus 3 bonus questions! It was kind of likeScene It, if you've ever played that. My team got 2nd place (we got one wrong!), but I still got a gigantic Dove chocolate bunny out of the deal :-)

Then it was time to open gifts, and we had to answer trivia questions to open each one! They were semi-difficult, about birth, labor, baby names, breastfeeding, vaccines, infants, and celebrity babies. We could use 'life-lines' like on Who Wants to be a Millionaire (50/50, call a [husband], poll the audience, ask an expert). I will add that neither of us called our husbands... they wouldn't have been much help on any of these baby-centric questions! We did both use all of the other options, though. If we got a question wrong, we had to play a 'consequence' to open the gift in question. A few 'consequence' examples: telling a made up fairy tale, letting everyone rub your belly, demonstrating that you can still tie your shoes, dressing up like a baby (see photo!), and eating baby food. It was a lot of fun, and there were just enough questions for all of the gifts, and Simcha and I received pretty close to the same number of presents, so it was great. I thought this was a very innovative way of keeping all of the guests entertained while gifts were opened!

Afterwards, people were milling around, and Simcha and I ended up back by the food table, finishing the bruschetta. It was pretty funny, we commented on how the pregnant ladies were hovering around the food. Some of the other foods were: chicken salad (with some made without celery, just for me!), mini cheesecakes in muffin shells with varied fruit topping, cinnamon rolls, and fresh strawberries with melted chocolate for dipping - yum! And, sherbet punch, of course!

One of the highlights was a diaper cake for each of us. It was created out of rolled newborn diapers on a pizza tray, two-tiered, with small 'goodies' (mini shampoo, baby brush, etc) tied around the edge, and a stuffed animal on top holding a 'Welcome Lizzie' or 'Welcome Joshua' sign. The good pictures of the cakes are on another lady's camera, but you can see it in one of my photos. I got a ton of newborn diapers, so many that we're worried about being able to use them all! We also have plenty of washcloths and newborn onesies. Between the shower and gifts I've received in the mail (thanks to everyone!!!), we have a good variety of sizes of clothes, and though there are a few types in each size we are missing, it is a pretty amazing start to Lizzie's wardrobe! I also received three great blankets at the shower, and some 'tricks of the trade' like teething tablets.

Here are some photos for your enjoyment :-)

This is less than half of everyone who was there! Also notice the cute clothesline decoration that we were able to take home with us at the end!

My favorite of the blankets, plus the hat is darling!

This one gets my personal 'cutest outfit' award -- the strawberry hat is just too much!!

Telling my homemade fairy tale. Notice the 'consequence' list, as well as the diaper cake to my right on the table. (Btw... you can click on any of the photos to make it big enough to fill your screen)

Another 'consequence' - the blanket I'm holding is one of my gifts. And, they let me keep the pacifier... so nice, huh?

Look at all the presents!!

Its beginning to sink in....

2008-03-06T13:24:00.004+09:00

So we just got Lizzie's crib delivered from the local furniture store we go to, and I must say, its really beginning to sink in. Cara's bump is getting larger, then I got to feel Lizzie moving around the past few mornings, and now...the baby room is beginning to take form. Wowsas. We really are having a baby....

Good Morning Việt Nam!

2008-02-26T21:57:00.003+09:00

So, as you can see from the title, Cara and I just returned from Vietnam on our last vacation without children running around or crying. It was a great time filled with wonderful beaches, fishing, snorkeling, crazy cities filled with scooters and motorbikes etc.

We got to Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) the evening of 20 Feb and after getting through customs and getting to the arrival hall, Cara and I noticed a couple of things.

Vietnam is a "communist" country. The large amount of commercial ads we saw is the reason for the quotes.
Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City after "the American Imperialists plans of occupying South Vietnam was thwarted." However, 50-60% of signs and business names in the airport alone were "Saigon this, Saigon that."

We read some books before we arrived in HCMC that warned about traffic and the craziness of it. We figured we live Korea, how could it be worse? Well... Korea is mostly cars driving crazy... and cars are less maneuverable than scooters/motorbikes. HCMC is 4 million motorbikes driving around...everywhere. On the sidewalks, on the streets, on the grass, you name it. Also, the horn here is used for everything from warning some one that you are going near them, to get out of my way. I'll write more later, however my beautiful wife is telling me to go (not come) go to bed.

Happy Valentine's Day!

2008-02-14T23:26:00.003+09:00

Hello! This is just a post to show off my Valentine's day flowers :-)

And, when I looked at these pics, I said, 'Aahh!! I look like a real pregnant lady!!! when did that happen?' It's so strange! I still can't feel Lizzie move around very much, but she's obviously getting bigger... according to the websites, she lives inside a soccer ball now.

Flying Cross Country in ROK (S. Korea )

2008-02-04T21:16:00.000+09:00

Today, Ryan, a friend of ours from church, invited us to ride along as he flew to Pohaeng, ROK. It was the perfect activity after watching perfection elude the Patriots hands, but I digress. Well, we got the plane ready to go, did all the checklists etc, and I sat there watching everything he was doing and knowing that I could do it. (which is another story--Those who have ADHD and are treating it by taking medication are ineligible for medical clearance to fly. If you were diagnosed with ADHD and no longer take medication, you have to run through hoops to get clearance). But, that wasn't going to stop me from having a good time. The last time I was able to fly with a friend who had a Pilot's License was back in 2000 when I was at the USAF Academy Prep School. So as we're getting to altitude we're notified of traffic in our area. As we're looking around, who spots it? That's right Cara! As we keep flying, we're getting close to restricted airspace. And so, we have to divert our course. I ask Ryan if ATC (Air Traffic Control) is going to tell us when we can return to course. He shrugs and asks ATC if he can turn back. They give him permission and he's like: "They probably weren't going to tell me when to turn back!" A little later, Cara asks if we can turn the heat up in the cabin. We pull out the cabin heat knob, and while this is happening, Incheon Approach (they control the largest amount of the the commercial aircraft flying through Korea) contacts Ryan about something. He answers their question. He then keys the mike again, and asks: "Are your feet still cold?" I kinda paused when I heard that, and looked at his fingers on the transmit button. He suddenly looks at me, and we both kinda stare for a second, and then bust up laughing. He just asked the whole Incheon approach frequency if their feet were still cold. Awesome! I still have a smile thinking about it. Ryan also mentioned that flying cross-country flights prove challenging, not because of the skill required (Skill? What skill?), but because of the difficulty understanding the air traffic controllers when they speak English with a THICK Korean accent. Sometimes Cara and I'd have no clue what the controller said, but Ryan would figure it out, and answer back. One time though, the controller asked something, and then Ryan asked us: "Did you guys understand a single word that was just said?!" There were times when he'd ask two or three times for the controller to repeat part of the question. Sometimes I don't think he ever figured out what they said, but just gave the information that they would probably want at that point. We landed in Pohang, and got to park in front of some Korean Air colored Helo, and a Korean Air Force AC-130 looking plane. We took off from Pohang and ATC notified us of traffic at our 1200 @ 9500'. So we're looking around and... ooooooo, ROKAF F-4s are flying by us. I haven't seen or remember seeing an F-4 airborne...ever. (but there were probably some while I was at the Academy). We then proceded to fly into a sizable head wind. Oh, how we enjoyed that wind so much more on our way to Pohang. We get back to Osan and land without a hitch. Its a great reason for me to see that I do have this desire to fly, and its not going away. But why? I do not know... but I know who does. :-)

Baby Pictures

2008-01-27T14:05:00.001+09:00

Hello all!

We had our ultrasound last Wednesday, and it was very cool. Will got to see the whole thing, and I guess our baby was moving around a lot in the beginning, Will really enjoyed watching. I was laying next to the screen, so I couldn't see it until the tech finished all of the measurements and turned it, so I didn't see much until the end. From what he told us (we haven't heard what the doctor thinks yet), our baby is healthy, though a bit on the small side of average. So, either we have a small baby, or our due date is actually about a week later than we thought originally. I guess we'll wait and see! We found out the sex of our baby, here it is:

And now, some shoutouts from Baby Lizzie (Elizabeth Ruth):

Update!

2008-01-09T21:04:00.000+09:00

Since I'm feeling guilty about leaving the blog un-updated for over a month, here's some current info. Will also has a draft in the works about a few other events, so hopefully he publishes it soon!

My ultrasound is on the 23rd, so we'll find out soon what we're expecting to have. My mom already bought a little dress just in case it's a girl :-)

Our NYE party was pretty amazing, we stayed at a (relatively) cheap hotel and drove up to the Grand Hyatt for the party. Some friends of ours had gotten the penthouse, and it was quite impressive. We were up in the room for a bit, then went down to the hotel party, where two tables were reserved for our group. We hung out with some of the other married folks and talked and laughed at all the single guys trying to woo the single ladies - and the married/attached guys realized how pathetic they had also been at one point!! We went back up to the room for the midnight fireworks, which were awesome - a great show, and they exploded pretty much level with our window! Everyone was dressed up in gowns and suits/tuxes, so it was pretty classy.

I'm in a wedding this weekend, a girl from church is getting married and she chose me as her maid (matron?) of honor, which is pretty cool. I threw a bridal shower for her which was a lot of fun, last weekend. I had to get a dress made that fits my belly, and I think it'll turn out nicely... it's so great to be able to go get something like that made in a few weeks, that fits perfectly!

I have one more class to finish before I'm done for awhile. I have to write a paper this weekend, then I'll have two weeks to finish the smaller assignments that built up while I was finishing my previous class. I got an A in that class by the way, the teacher thought my paper was good; hopefully this one turns out just as well!

That's it for now, I hope you all are having a great new year!

Wiiiiiiiiiiii!!!

2007-11-29T20:58:00.000+09:00

I am proud to announce, that after about 2 weeks of stalking the Osan BX (like more hardcore than I have ever done before), I was the lucky person who arrived at about the time the Osan BX opened and got to pre-purchase a Nintendo Wii! So how did this come about? Lets see....

After Cara and I moved to the new apartment on the 9th, we decided that we wanted an LCD TV as well as a Nintendo Wii. The TV was no problem, just go to E-mart (이-마트) and buy one. However, we didn't realize how popular/understocked the Wii was until we wanted one. Around the 15th (day after our TV was installed), I started walking into the BX daily and asking if they had a Wii in stock. I figured they might get it in whenever, and not announce it too much. I was wrong. I was always told to come back on either Tuesday or Friday, which where the BX shipment dates. Since thanksgiving was around the corner, I figured I'd try my luck on Black Friday--oh sorry, I'm not suppose to mention black anymore, it might cause an HR issue at work--The friday after thanksgiving. So I got up with the crowds, and stood in line at the BX, which was an impressive line considering this is Korea--but with $399-$499 laptops, I can see why. So I got to the head of the electronics department line, and... yup, no Wii. Oh well, at least I knew without a doubt that there were no Wiis. Not wanting to waste anymore effort, I started asking more pointed questions like: "Do you have any Wiis? No? When are you going to have them?" and after they gave me an answer, I'd repeat it back. Even if on Tuesday someone said come back Friday I still asked everyday. Sometime earlier this week I had gotten information from one of the clerks that the BX would be receiving 6 consoles. (wow... not a lot for the entire base of Osan...) So I decided to be very agressive, and eventually got some good intel that the Wiis would be coming in on the 29th @ 11am. So I decided I was gonna get there @ 10am and try to buy those. So I got up this morning @ 0940, and realized that I should have gotten up a little earlier to make it to the BX before all the Wiis are sold out. I jump outta bed, throw on some clothes and haul bootie to base. Luckily I live 6-7 mins when going the speed limit and like 4 when speeding (too many turns). And on a side note, I slowed way down when I saw a car turn over on the side of the road where I started to slow anyway. I think he wanted a Wii too. (j/k). I get to the BX around 0955, and its already open! ARGH! So I jet inside (after showing my ration plate of course) and jog back to the electronics section. I see a line, with more than 6 people in it... I almost give up, but someone mentions to another guy who's leaving the line that there are more. So I as I cut the guy off to get in line, I realize that it's just a Wii, and if I don't get one now, I can wait, so I let him get his spot back. But not the guy behind him. Turns out that there were 12(?) consoles, and I got the 9th one! Yesssss!!!! However, this was a pre-purchase line... the Wiis weren't at Osan yet. So I went back at 1730ish and picked it up. Ahh.... a Wii for Mii!!! (and cara too...) :-P

Happy Thanksgivings! And more...

2007-11-24T11:27:00.000+09:00

Yes, we survived our many Thanksgivings! I baked a 26lb turkey (my first turkey ever!) made gravy which I wasn't sure about, but it was salvaged by a lady at church, made 3 pans of stuffing, and a cherry-glazed ham. Everything turned out well, thank goodness! Though, I was up baking fairly late several evenings. Mom called my grandmother for her stuffing recipe, and it was a hit for sure. We went to the squadron Thanksgiving on Wednesday, our church lunch Thanksgiving on Thursday, followed by a short stay at the Thanksgiving for Will's coworkers, and then a supper Thanksgiving with some friends from work - complete with the movie Swingers. Friday we had a post-Thanksgiving with some couples from church. All were fun, and the food was wonderful! It'll be awhile until I'm hungry again...

In our non-eating life, we now have a 42in LCD HD-tv on our wall, made by LG and with Korean menus. It's fun to be able to watch movies on something other than the computer screen! Also, Will is trying to get ahold of a Wii, but that has proved to be difficult. They are crazy expensive online and the BX is getting 6 of them at some undetermined (or just unreleased!) date in the near future. First it was 'Tues or Fri'. Then '1st week of Dec'. Each time Will asks, the employees try to avoid the question. Interesting. Hopefully we can get one soon, they're supposed to be super fun!

I'm taking another class online, and I'm keeping up so far which is great - I hate being behind. My next class starts in a few weeks, and I'll have an overlap, so hopefully I can handle that. I may intentionally fall behind in the next class so I can finish this one, which ends around Dec 28. The class starting in December ends in late January, and my next class is supposed to start in February and go through late May. I don't think I'm going to take that one, as I'm due in early June, and I'm pretty sure I'll be worn out by the rest of life at that point!

So far, the baby has been really nice to me, I was overly tired for the first month or so, but never really sick, and I'm not so tired anymore either. I'm 12wks, and I'm hoping it stays easy for the rest of the pregnancy :-)

Registry Woes

2007-11-11T15:04:00.000+09:00

So, I spent an entire weekend - and I really do mean an entire weekend - building a baby registry at www.babycenter.com. I was so excited! I picked out all the perfect furniture that would fit in the Korean-sized nursery in our apartment, I researched strollers and car seats until I was confident I had found exactly what I wanted, every category was covered. We had some extra money this month, so I was going to get a head start and order a few things for the nursery - I figured the glider and ottoman were a great first purchase since I could enjoy them now. Well, I went to buy them, and I can't ship them to Korea! If I were to ship them to the states and Fed-Ex or DHL them, it would be the same price over again for shipping! I looked at several other items in my registry, and many of them can't be shipped over here. :-( So, it looks like I'll be stuck using whatever the BX decides to stock (and we looked at that the other day - in general, there are very few choices, with one high-end model and lots of cheap styles, none of which are what I want) or what the Korean version of Wal-Mart (aka E-Mart) sells. We're checking that out this afternoon. In the mean time, I'm sad because a good chunk of my registry can't be shipped to me!!! I looked at other places online, including the AAFES website which stocks the BX, and none of the big stuff can be shipped over here, even through the BX. I just get what they choose to stock :-/. And, there's no use asking them for certain styles, people try that, and get very evasive non-committal answers. So, hopefully the Koreans have cute baby furniture, or one of you has an imaginative way to get large items over here without paying ridiculous prices.

Pregnant

2007-10-30T21:56:00.000+09:00

So for all who have been asking, or who are simply curious... I'm around 8 1/2 wks pregnant, and I haven't really dealt with any morning sickness thus far (thank God!). In the mornings between getting up and breakfast, I don't feel 100%, but not even close to being 'sick'. The one thing I do feel though is super tired, all the time! Although I don't always want to go to bed right away in the evening (because that's no fun!), neither do I want to actually do anything more than sit and read or sit and watch a show. Hence why I haven't taken time before this to write about being pregnant! I'm on my way to bed now, but I wanted to drop a line to all of you and let you know how I'm doing :-)

Moving!

2007-10-26T22:35:00.000+09:00

So, after Cara and I finally get more or less situated in our apartment, get stuff put away, buy a nice wall closet, what happens? That's right, our lease ends, and we find another very nice apartment for very close to what we are paying now. It has a dishwasher (finally!), full size washer (yes!), dual voltage (woohoo!) and, and wood area on the wall in the den that is put there to mount TV's etc. Its very sweet. Anyway, we'll send pictures of the new place when we move in. But its funny, since leaving for the academy in 1999, the longest I have stayed in a residence was for 18 months in '04 when I was living in Torrance, CA (ahh, those were the best 18 months of my brief AF stint...) and the shortest during Summer Period of the Academy (~3wks). It does get old at times, and I'm sure this move I'll wonder why I didn't just stay at 대옥 7차 아파트?

Now the view in our current apartment is wonderful. On the 16th floor you can see all of Songtan. Its quite cool. However, when you are in a rush because you left something home, it really sucks to have to wait for the elevator to come to the first floor from the 12th or so floor, then travel from the 1st floor to the 16th floor. Once you get what you left and return to the elevator, its already at the 15th floor headed back down to the 1st floor. Yeah, that's when we take the stairs.

Anyway, that's all for now. Yay!

Sunday School

2007-09-30T23:59:00.000+09:00

Cara and I teach Sunday School at Mission Baptist Church. Its pretty fun, and at times it can be pretty interesting. We teach the 4&5 year olds and, in my opinion, these are the cutest kids because they're getting pretty intelligent at this point and are just fun to talk to. Today we mentioned to a woman named 'Nita that we taught 4&5 yr olds, and she was like "I guess it'll make you guys wanna not have kids for a while huh?" Cara and I looked at each other and laughed, and 'Nita picked up on it (it = Cara is pregnant) pretty quick.

Anyway, one of the first things that makes it so interesting is that our class has both American and Korean kids. The Korean kids don't speak English very well (if they even speak cause some are shy), but they are 4&5 and speak it better than I speak Korean. But it helps that I can read and write Hangeul! Its actually come in handy a few times. For instance, today, we had done our craft, story and activity time, and had to think of something else for the kids to do. Well, the Korean kids are the better artists of the group and they enjoy making crafts and coloring pictures, so I decided to draw their names in Hangeul blocks. Boy that worked! One kid, Jae Ho (재호), wanted two of them! Sweet. But, nonetheless, we still had too much time left, so that didn't work too well. Now where was I? Oh yeah, Korean and English kids. Right. So I don't speak korean, and they always speak korean to me. So, I generally try and guess whats going on. I sometimes get it, sometimes don't. Also, I borrowed a friends book and looked up a few phrases. Guess what the first phrase I looked up was? "Sit Down!" Though they are good at crafts, boys will be boys, and boys like to run around and hit peeps/things. Well, I can't say much Korean, but "anjeuseyo" [앉으세요] worked like a charm.

The American kids are definitely a handful. You put certain combinations together and madness ensues. Today was probably the worst. Instead of 1 set of friends we had 2. (three actually, but the third set of friends behaved wonderfully) Some of the children who sat together play off each other and things would get progressively louder and more obnoxious. Cara could hear some of them in the bathroom across the hall from our classroom. So when story time came around, we separated them. However, some of the ones we separated would just stop dead in their tracks and not do anything cause they were sad and mad I suppose. Then crayons start getting thrown around, along with paper getting ripped, and random things getting water colors on them. One of the more annoying things the kids can do is when you say something like "let's stand up!" or "lets clean such and such!" they say "no!" I'm thinking "You don't have a choice kiddo..." but obviously a.) they're not my kids and b.) its truly not that serious. So i find another way to convince them pick it up, or they come up with an alternative. Fine by me, as long as you pick up those crayons ;-).

Well, I have a 0600 swim workout with a co-worker, so we'll see how much swimming i remember from USAFA. probably not too much, but, I'll get a work-out none the less.

My Week in Pictures

2007-09-28T19:36:00.000+09:00

We drove to Seoul on Tuesday during the Korean holiday of Chusok, which is comparable to our Thanksgiving. The Koreans all travel to their 'grandfather's farms' if they still have them, and visit the graves of relatives. Many Koreans follow some shamanist traditions, believing that the dead interfere in the lives of relatives if their souls are not satisfied, so when they visit the graves they bring alcohol and food to leave, and bow in worship of their ancestors. We hiked up a mountain in downtown Seoul and saw much of this. The pictures of the traditions are on my film camera, but here are some of the scenery shots.

,

,

Here are a few of the flowers on the walk from base to our apartment.

And this is the continuation of the Mattress Video you have all been clamoring for (especially you, Grandma!)

Our New Mattress

2007-09-22T20:54:00.000+09:00

So, remember that earlier post about the tale of two mattresses? Well, here's part two to that story.

For labor day weekend I'm heading back to the DC area because my Best Man is getting married, and my parents have our mattress sitting in the house ready for me to pick it up. Cara and I have done some research and assume that since the mattress is too big for APO/FPO shipment, that the only route is air cargo shipment. My dad mentions that its too big for a small car, so I change the rental car I have already reserved from and Mid-Size to an SUV.

So I get home, and place the mattress in the back of the SUV and drive from Bowie, MD to Fairfax, VA for Ty's wedding festivities. Fairfax is pretty close to Dulles so I figure I'll have no problem shipping it by air cargo. Boy was I wrong. As it turns out, unless you are a company, Delta or Korean Air Lines doesn't want to talk to me. I have to talk to a freight forwarding company, like FedEx. Great.

So, after all the wedding festivities are all over, I head back to Bowie with the mattress in back of my car. I do some more research on FedEx.com and after creating a fedex.com account, I find out that my package is too light to be shipped by freight forwarding. Then it hits me... I could have had FedEx come and pick the mattress up from my parents house as soon as they received it. I could've had our mattress over a month ago! Oh well, water under the bridge. So dad and I take the mattress to FedEx Annapolis and ship it. Dad mentions that the clerk wasn't the brightest, but I thought everything was cool. That was labor day, and I flew back to Korea the morning of the 4th.

Cara receives a message from FedEx Annapolis that says I forgot to sign the waybill and it can't go out. Great... But, thank the lord, they send it anyway. After about a week has passed, we haven't heard anything, and wondering whats happening to our mattress. I realize that I've tossed my tracking number, and try calling FedEx Annapolis and corporate, but nothing. So I'm completely lost and worried about the location of the mattress.

Well, FedEx calls us and informs us that our mattress is stuck at customs, so she gives them my cell number and FedEx calls me that afternoon. They ask how much it was worth, whether it was brand new or whatnot, and after all was said and done, I was on the hook for a 20% tax! Whoa! So I mention that I'm under SOFA (status of forces agreement), and that changes everything. No import taxes!!! :-D. It gets released through customs and the very next day, we have our mattress!

So we've been sleeping on our new mattress for a while now, but we finally transfered the video of us opening it from the camera to the computer. So, here it is: The "jack-in-the-box" mattress.

Tiger Crawl

2007-09-22T20:23:00.000+09:00

This is a video from the recent 'Tiger Crawl', when my squadron toured some of the more interesting bars off base. This is one example of that 'interestingness'. They are 'jaeger bombs' which is Red Bull and Jeager, and the bartender put the shot on toothpicks so it would balance at the top of the glass. Watch to see what he did next!

Classes

2007-09-19T20:33:00.001+09:00

Just a quick note to say... I aced my first master's class! Woohoo!

As many of you know I have been writing a paper for the last two months for my Research Methods class. I finally turned it in late Sunday night (or was it early Monday morning?), and got the grade back today. That means I am officially done with my first masters class! I don't mean to brag, but I feel like it, and this is my page... I got a 100 in the course :-) including rave reviews from my instructor about my approx. 30-page rational choice analysis paper on the Chonger (as we affectionately call Kim Jong Il, also known in acronym-ese as KJI).

My next class (which is Intelligence Profiling - should be super interesting) starts in November (the school wisely doesn't start classes in October because most of the students depend on government funding), so now I have ridiculous amounts of free time. I've been in this class since April, before Will got here, so it'll be interesting to have worry-free, and homework-free, evenings again!

Umm... Kia?

2007-09-02T22:37:00.000+09:00

So... this is what I do when I'm procrastinating while supposedly writing a paper... I went to the site to see if I could find out what 'Kia' really means, because in Korean it means 'a rejected child' or something similar. Turns out, it's a combination of Chinese characters that means 'to arise and come up out of Asia'. Or so they say. Anyway, like all Korean corporate websites, if they don't have some random anime interaction nobody would buy their products, so here is my contribution to the gallery of Kia oddness. Enjoy!

We're still here!

2007-08-28T20:42:00.000+09:00

Hello again... it's been awhile! I have often sat down to write about something only to decide I was tired or got distracted by something else I've had to get done. This week and last week have been ridiculously busy, as I've been working 5am-5pm shifts plus an extra hour or two following that. It has been fun, but more challenging than I'm used to - which is a good thing! I'm learning a lot, that's for sure.

The other thing that has kept us busy is what I like to call 'adult parties'. Will and I started this trend when I decided our apartment looked 'homy' enough for me to want to host. We decided to try out our hosting skills by inviting several of the Lts I work with over for lasagna and board games. There were 12 of us, and it was a great time - we played pictionary, boys vs. girls (guess who won? :-)). The lasagna got rave reviews (my dad's recipe), and it was the perfect amount. We had salad and pie as well, and all received compliments. Everybody agreed that events like that have to continue, and the next week our friends Tom and Katie had everyone over for scrabble and homemade pizza, but it turned out to be socializing and homemade pizza. That was another fun evening. Hopefully, this trend will continue, and everyone living off base in apartments will take turns hosting.

This coming weekend, Will is headed to DC for a wedding (our best man is getting married, and Will is a groomsman). I am staying behind to have an intense 4-day writing session. This is also keeping me busy - I'm working on my masters, and I have to write a research paper by the 18th. I finished the first part for a grade a few weeks ago, but I haven't been able to work on it because of how much it has picked up at work these two weeks. A 4-day weekend, followed by a 2 1/2-day week, will be a much-needed break for all of us.

We had considered the possibility of my going to the states with Will, but decided it wasn't worth the money and using up my last 5 days of leave for the year. Instead, we're planning to spend a long weekend in October hiding on a little island in Thailand. I'm looking forward to it!

While Will is in DC, he will also be getting some things accomplished. He'll ship his Corolla to Korea (literally on a ship... it will take a few months to arrive), and hopefully send our new mattress (see post below) via air cargo.

All summer our church was having VBS on Sundays, and it's been a whole lot of fun. Since all of us who could run a traditional week-long VBS work all the time, they stretched it out over a few months and only did the activities on Sundays. I didn't help out other than buying some of the snacks for the kids, but they did have adult VBS sessions. These were focused on the books 'For Women Only' (about men) and 'For Men Only' (about women). They are truly excellent books, written to explain the inner workings of the opposite sex, based on hundreds of surveys and scientific research. They are very accurate, and it was incredible to discover that something I thought was natural and normal, most guys don't even think about, and vice versa. I knew some of it, but hearing both books taught to a mixed audience highlighted how true the findings were; everyone was surprised at one point or another and we all were enlightened. It's interesting how much we assume guys should know about women, and how much we don't know about men! The authors are Christians, and they highlighted the findings with Bible truth, demonstrating that God made us this way - and many of the traits unique to men or women are found in Bible characters. We learned once again that we are different, it is wonderful, and our Lord is so good as to make us perfect for what we are uniquely called to be and do! Men and women truly do complete and complement each other.

Last weekend, we went up to Seoul to see Cats, the musical. I've always wanted to see it, since I watched it on PBS as a girl, and it was wonderful. Even though we miscalculated the subway ride and arrived 20min late, and had seats in the very back row because we bought the tickets too late, it was an awesome show. The theater was fairly new, and every seat in the house had a good view. The acting was a lot of fun, and of course the music is wonderful. We bought the soundtrack and the dvd, I'm sure we'll enjoy them!

As we left the theater, a stage had been set up in the courtyard and a free concert was beginning. We stayed just to see what it was, and it turned out to be really neat. A group of guys played percussion instruments, a combination of drums, xylophone, marimba, glockenspiel, and piano. They were excellent musicians and great performers. We ended up getting sandwiches from a stand and sitting at tables in the courtyard until the end of the show. It was a very pleasant day!

So. I think that about covers the month we've been absent from the blog... sorry if it's too long, though those of you who used to get my emails should be used to this! I hope you are all enjoying fall weather (ours should be starting soon - it's still too humid and hot most days), and are doing well.

A Tale of Two Beds

2007-07-29T22:39:00.000+09:00

So... the beds here in Korea are super hard, because Koreans who don't sleep on beds sleep on mats on the floor. Our bed is like this - very firm. We bought a mattress pad, butit doesn't help much, so we started shopping for a mattress. For awhile we've wanted to buy a Tempurpedic-type, but not so expensive. I searched all over the internet and finally found one we wanted. And, it is shipped vacuum packed in a box so we figured we had a better chance of getting it to Korea than most beds which come shipped as a full mattress. We called the company, and they don't ship out of the US, so we decided since Will is going back to DC in September for a wedding, we could ship it to his parents and then Will could somehow get it to the airport and ship it cargo. Ok, so we hadn't figured that part out quite yet, at least not the details. But it was gonna work somehow! Will emailed his parents and mentioned that we were shipping a bed to them. This was about a week and a half ago.

In Maryland, a couple received a large box labeled 'mattress', but they hadn't ordered a mattress. They put the box in their house, but as it was very large, they kept thinking about what it could be, for almost a week. They called all their neighbors to find out who ordered a mattress which got delivered to the wrong address, and finally decided to ship it back to the company. They searched the whole box for the shipping label, so they could find who to return it to, and when they finally found the small label on the bottom, it was addressed to them, by name! So they said 'hmm! what a surprise! I wonder what nice person sent us a mattress!' and opened it up. Out of the box came a rolled up mattress, and they carried it upstairs. They took the mattress off their own bed and opened the bag on the newly-shipped mattress. It unrolled and became a 10" thick wonderful tempur-foam mattress. They thought, 'this is wonderful!' and slept on it that night, the best sleep they had in a long time.

Now, as I'm sure most readers are aware by now, these two mattresses are actually one mattress. The couple in the second story is Melvin and Peggy Jones - and in the morning they thought, 'hey-didn't William say something about a mattress?' and sent him an email. He replied and said, 'yes! and here is the email I sent awhile ago, don't you remember?' And they said 'oooo... umm... it's a great mattress, son.... i guess we'll have to get you another one!' So we called and all laughed about it, and warned them it was going on the blog.

I hope you enjoyed the story. I'm glad our mattress is wonderful, and hopefully we can figure out how to get it (the replacement mattress- not the original one which is already being enjoyed thoroughly)!

Top Ten Reason Leaving the AF wasn’t so bad

2007-07-26T19:06:00.000+09:00

10. I get to live with my wife in another country

9. During Exercises, I start work after wifey, and get home before wifey

8. MOPP Gear Everyday? …is that in our Contract?

7. BX/Commissary isn’t off limits during exercises

6. Shave? Haircut?

5. Meetings — CCS-C: 7/wk, SYERS: 2/wk (maybe)

4. Death by PowerPoint is no longer in my vocabulary.

3. Compiling code one minute, working on an airplane the next.

2. $100k+ >> $68k

1. Doing what I’m good at is actually my job

The Volvo revisited...

2007-07-19T19:18:00.000+09:00

Well, my attempts to fix the Volvo yesterday didn't fair so well, so I gave up for the day. The car has had a problem with the fuel pump relay, no door handle, and a broken mirror. The latest was that the starter wasn't working. So I tried to fix it. While I was working on the car, it was quite hot, and so I rolled the windows down to get some air in. Unfortunately it didn't help much because there was no wind blowing. So that prompted me to go inside and do something else. Well, I didn't roll the windows back up, and it is Monsoon season here in Korea. (you can see where this is going...) I woke up a few times last night to the sound of thunder, flashes of lightning and a lot of rain, but I didn't think about the windows. When I woke up and decided to try to fix the car again, I couldn't remember if I had rolled the windows up. In fact, I knew I hadn't. I went down to the car this afternoon and looked in it. Oh man, there was water everywhere! On the dashboard, the side of the doors, on the insides of the windows. I sat down to try and do some more troubleshooting, but before I could start, the seat of my pants became very cold and wet. Crap. The seats are soaked. At that point, I called the Sam's Car garage and arranged for a tow truck to pick up the car.

After the car was at the repair shop, they started looking at the car and found out the wiring to the battery was not as good as it could be. So they fixed that. Then the car was engaging the starter, but the engine wouldn't run. I told the repair guy about the fuel pump relay. He took it out, looked at it, and then fixed it by resoldering it! So that problem was solved. I had purchased a new door handle to fix the door, but had no hardware (nuts & bolts) to fix it. They saw it in the car, and installed it also. Woohoo! All we need now is a new mirror! Those guys were great, and it only cost 80,000 won! Awesome. We finally have two cars again. Sweet.

Cars in Korea

2007-07-18T21:24:00.000+09:00

Well, Cara's car is having issues at the moment. First her car completely stalled and then would crank, but never physically run on its own. That was solved by jiggling a fuel pump relay so it would supply fuel to the car. Now, the car won't even turn the ignition on. Grr.

But, to take my mind off of Cara's car being broken, I'll tell you about the cars we have now, versus what we had while we were back in the U.S.

Cara's old car was a 2000 Audi A4 1.8T. Oh man, that car was sweet. It was comfortable, looked good, and drove very very nice. The windows were tinted pretty dark, it had a tiptronic transmission, 5 Speed Automatic (which made it very fun to zoom on the highway in the middle of Texas...). The only problem for me was that if we weren't using cruise control, I couldn't fold my legs, and well, it got uncomfortable real quick. That didn't matter since it was Cara's car.

I did discover a few interesting things about owning an Audi though. First, maintenance is expensive. If anything had to be fixed on the car, you can guarantee that it cost $250+ to get it repaired. Most we paid was around $1k to get an airbag fixed that was on the passenger seat. Of course you're probably thinking why we'd pay that much to repair 1 airbag. As it turns out, the Audi was programmed to disable all airbags if one was not properly functioning. Not much of an option there. But that was by far out of the norm.

Second is that if you pull up to a car dealer, you are treated completely differently than most people. If you can buy an Audi, you must have money. When I was getting ready to buy a car my junior year, I remember going to a few dealerships with my friends Explorer. The car salesman would talk to me, but more often than not, I had to stand around or ask for someone to help me. Let's contrast that with my recent experience when my corolla's transmission was getting repaired. I drove to the Toyota dealer to check on my car, and when I parked, a salesman came walking out from the show room.

"Good afternoon sir, how are you today?" He glanced at the license plates and started some small talk. "Wow, North Dakota...that must've be a long trip."

"Actually my wife is from North Dakota, I'm from Maryland," I replied.

"Oh, that's even farther...Is there anything I can help you with today?"

"Well, not really, my Corolla is being repaired and I'm just checking on it." I was surprised for a second, and then remembered I was driving an Audi that was old enough to look like I was in the market for another, but new enough that it looked like I had money. I was in Manhattan Beach, CA (Ritzy L.A. Suburb) after all, and it was nothing to see high-end Lexus, Mercedes-Benz, BMW or Audi cars. But, alas, we've sold the car to Cara's parents, and is no longer in our inventory. (Audi A4 1.8T, nicknamed Roxy, primary function multi-role road transport...)

My car in the U.S. was a 2004 Toyota Corolla S. Not as nice as Cara's but I had my reasons for buying it. First, I blew a little too much of my $25,000 cadet loan to have enough of a down payment on a 2003 Honda Accord EX-V6 6-Speed Manual Coupe. Also, I wanted to be able to tinker with the car and have to worry about breaking something because it was so complex. Compared to Cara's 26(ish) MPG, the Corolla was supposed to get 42MPG. I had fun while I drove, so it ended up being 34-36MPG. Once I started driving in LA, it dropped to like 29 or so.

As I neared graduation at USAFA, I started looking at the radio console and realized I could put an LCD in place of the radio. Thus beginning my Car Computer Project that I worked on from 26 June 2004 -16 April 2007. One of the only things (besides Honor Guard) that I actually had fun with. When I started, I had a simple volume control scrollbar, and Windows Media Player as my music player. No radio, no easy way to power down the computer. By the time I had finished, I had installed the following:

a music player designed for in car use
Character LCD and software interface I programmed
FM & XM radio tuners,
a power supply that powers down the computer safely after the car is off,
GPS
Internet Access

When I traveled to Oklahoma City, OK from Los Angeles in March, this whole setup was very nice. It made the drive so much more bearable. Needless to say, I miss my car. Its sitting in Joe's driveway, and we're hoping to ship it to Korea when I go back for Ty Russell's Wedding.

Well, those were the cars we had in the U.S. Now what about the cars we have now?

Cara has a 1992 Volvo 940 GL. Not a bad car. However, there are about two key things that are wrong with the Volvo. First there is no driver's side door handle. We have to pull on a hook to get the door open. The second is there is no Driver's side mirror. Apparently parking on the street in Korea is bad for the mirrors. So much so that folding mirrors aren't a luxury on cars. Any car made in Korea has folding mirrors. Luxury determines whether your mirrors automatically fold in or out by the touch of a button. Nice, eh? Not having the mirror doesn't bother Cara because she doesn't use it that much. I, on the other hand, rely on that mirror when I'm parking in tight spots. I tried to use that mirror plenty of times when I first got to Korea, and it bothered me a bit. Oh well, such is life.

The previous owner put in a CD player, which is cool, but instead using screw on wire connectors (whatever they're called) he used electrical tape. So depending on how you turn, brake, etc., different speakers go out, or turn on. Regardless of all that its still comfortable for long drives, and the gas tank does not lie. When it says empty, it really means empty. We found that out the night I arrived in Korea to stay. Her car cost about $750 which is pretty good for a GI Mobile.

My car presently is a red 1994 Hyundai Accent. Well, it was initially red, now it seems more like pink or something. When I started working with Goodrich, one of my co-workers was driving me around in the car. I was looking at it, and was like this would be a cool Korea car. It was low maintenance, small, fuel efficient and had a radio/tape player. What more could you ask for. Literally seconds after thinking that, Dave (co-worker) asked me if I liked the car, and then offered to sell it! After all the paper was finally accomplished, I paid him $100 for the car. basically everything he had to pay for to make the car sellable. (paperwork, inspections, etc.). My car is a five speed manual, with power front windows. Everything else is unpowered. No powered brakes, no power steering, no power mirrors. Makes me appreciate driving the Gold Car ('83 Honda Accord) during high school, even if it was one of the most beat up cars in the parking lot. Now, the funniest thing about the car is that the previous owner was somewhat paranoid. He thought that someone was stealing his gas, despite the fact the fuel door had to be released from inside the car. Yeah, talk about a piece of work. So in order to make sure no one was stealing gas, he would fill the tank up, put a piece of tape over it, and then sign it. I still look at it and crack up. Too funny.

Having said all that, our cars are actually pretty good for a GI car. People are typically only here for a year, and the people who are allowed to have a car already have a nice car back in the states, or don't feel like buying a new car for just a year. So if these cars fail us, there are plenty more to choose from. Especially since I'm part of the 'contractor mafia' now. (He made me an offer I couldn't refuse....)

Exec Work

2007-07-13T22:46:00.000+09:00

My commander is gone for the next week, so I finally get to work on some of the larger projects he's given me. I'm the Exec, if you didn't know, which is kinda like the secretary, or office manager, but actually much bigger. I found out my job when I called into my old job to ask when my next shift was, and they told me I didn't work there anymore. So I called my new office, and they said I should have been there already! Nice to know, guys! BTW...for any of you who remember this from my earlier emails...yes, this is the job I was fired from in February. Apparently the new commander needed a new exec, and the old commander, who fired me, recommended me, ending my 'rehabilitation period'. Good to know they like me! Too bad they all assume I'm going to spend a career in the Air Force but never actually ask. But, that's a whole 'nother blog!

Back to my new job... I answer the phone, run the commander's calendar, and review all of the paperwork which needs his signature. Some of my current projects: policy letters, personnel reports, tracking taskers which come down from higher echelons, writing thank you notes for a bunch of contractors who saved huge servers from a burst water pipe. Today I successfully updated all of the recall roster information. Our squadron is in the process of splitting into three different units, so our organization has changed quite a bit, and everyone's phone numbers have switched around. Our old list of numbers was pretty much useless.

I know this whole job doesn't sound that exciting...but at the moment, it's better than 3-on, 3-off night shift work, and my projects are my projects...nobody can touch them. The front office is my domain, I make sure things get done and set my own policies for routing paperwork, and I am the direct supervisor (and rater) for a MSgt and a TSgt. I always have 20 things going on which I need to get done...I thrive when I have lots of tasks. I work normal days, with weekends and holidays off - it was quite amazing the first time I realized it was Friday, and I had the weekend off. It's my first 'real' weekend since I've PCS'd here, over nine months ago!

We got a new commander while I was on leave, and he's slowly seeing things he wants to change about how things were done in the squadron, and I'm the main person who gets to take on these projects. I either do them myself, or task them out. While he's gone, the DO is in charge. This is the deputy, and he has an office in a different building, so it is very quiet in the office. Very nice and conducive to finishing big projects, which I need. I work 9-6 (the TSgt works 6-3), and I hardly ever get to work on anything until 4pm, because of the phone, emails, and random 2-minute taskers.

Transformers

2007-07-13T21:42:00.000+09:00

Will and I went to see Transformers after work today. The theater was almost full, because it was the first showing here. A few of my friends had seen it already in the Korean theaters, and had said it was pretty decent, and pretty AF-sponsored. Will and I both enjoyed it: I thought it was good, he thought it was great.

The acting was well done, I had a few critiques about the camera work, but the CG was pretty much amazing, and it is definitely an 'AF' movie. Most classic line, said by an Army guy: 'We can't make a stand without the Air Force!" Right. Exactly what he would say, I'm sure. Plus, all the 'good guy' transformers were GM cars, and the leader of the 'good guys' was a red, white, and blue semi truck tractor. The 'bad guys' pretended to be US military vehicles, infiltrating our forces like terrorists.

The AF gave a lot of money to the movie, and let them use 2 of our 3 operational Ospreys, as well as a few F-22s complete with pilots, and land in the desert of Nevada for both a mock Qatar air base and bombing scenes. A-10s and a gunship saved the day in the beginning. It is probable the best AF movie I've seen. Much better than Iron Eagle, of course! It wasn't completely, obviously, ridiculously AF at all. Us AF people probably noticed more than any one else, and it may help recruitment some. There was one really random Bush-bashing moment which wasn't quite necessary.

I'm sure Will is gonna have more to say :-) He was way more into it, because he actually watched the original Transformers. Kurt and I had the semi-truck that turned into a robot...but I didn't know the Transformers were anything but a cool toy that turned into another cool toy! Turns out Will really wanted the truck when he was little but never got it...poor guy, it was at my house all along!

The Journey to Seoul for Computer Parts!

2007-07-10T13:06:00.000+09:00

Well, for my first post, I'll tell you about my adventure to Seoul to visit Seonin (sawn-in) Mall. Seonin Mall is basically the place to go if you want to buy computer parts and accessories. It has many shops that sell all sorts of computer odds and ends. You can find computer cases, power supplies, all sorts of graphics cards (well, not the nVidia 7950...but thats another story...) processors, memory, etc. When I walked in, I was like a kid in a candy store, but with a mission. Oh, and don't worry, Cara said I could :-P.

So the easiest way to get there is by taking the metro; however, I knew I'd be buying a hefty case. So I ended up traveling the crazy roads of Korea. Which aren't that bad, once you leave the city areas. I took an expressway North, and it was pretty open the whole way. Despite my mapping the whole trip and determining what landmarks to look for, I ended up getting lost twice. Once on the way to the expressway, and the other I missed my exit because I was gazing at all the big bridges the Koreans have going into Seoul.

After driving around and finally finding parking, I made my way over to the mall. When I walked in, it was exactly what I had hope for. Needless to say, I was a very happy camper...okay, computer geek. There are four floors in the mall, and it has a triangular shape to it. I decided to browse around at all the stores and see what they had before I purchased anything. I was pretty impressed, there was a store for almost every kind of computer part you could ever want.

As I said, there was a reason I came to Seonin Mall with my car, I was going to buy a case, and didn't feel like dragging the case home and through the metro and having everyone stare at my case. Now all the cases I had seen when I walked in were pretty boring and/or too small. After making my way around the mall, I arrived on the first floor (I entered on the second floor) and found the case I wanted. Unfortunately, I found it before I had bought any of my other components. So I went back around to the stores and began to buy the other components.

The first items I bought were two Samsung 320GB 7200 SATA drives. That was a cool experience. The couple I bought it from would actually say the numbers in Korean, and actually let me try and understand, and say the other numbers. Initially I asked for a 사백 (sa baek) GB drive, which is 400GB (sa = 4, baek=100). When they told me the cost, I was like whoa, never mind, so I tried to ask for a 300GB. Well, 3 & 4 in the Sino-Korean numeral system are rather close: 3 is sam (삼) and 4 is sa (사). Confident I knew what I was saying, I asked for a "sa baek GB" thinking I was asking for a 300GB. I was actually asking for a 400GB hard drive again, just after they had just shown me a few 400GB models. They looked at me a little strange and started reaching for the 400GB pile. As they reached for the 400GB stack, I wondered why, and so I went over the numbers in my head. "...il, i, sam, sa, o...oh crap!" So I, quickly corrected myself. " 삼백! " (sam baek!). They laughed and reached and got a 320GB. It ended up being 79,000 per hard drive.

Now, before you freak out, that's 79,000 Won. 1 USD = about 931KRW. So, divide by 1000, and you get the approximate dollar value. There's a quick lesson in Korean/US economics. Probably the last, too.

Now, where was I? Ah yes, Hard Drives. I paid the couple and went out to find my video card. as I walked around, I noticed that everyone had the same brands of Video Cards. So, I looked extra hard for the nVidia 7950. I went from store to store looking for it. And then I saw a box for it! Sweet! hard work pays off! So I went in and asked the man at the desk for it, he replied that they didn't have any in stock. Grr. Gotta keep looking. I went to another store, and this lady asks me in english if she can help me. I think to myself this will be an easier exchange.

"Do you have any nVidia 7950s?" I ask.
"No, we don't." She pauses a bit and continues, "but why do you want that when then future is the 8000 series?" She had a little condescending tone in her voice.
"Because I don't want top of the line, I just want that one." My brow became furrowed as replied. I left that store and never went back. Don't get me wrong, the lady was right, I was asking for a great video card that had reached its EOL (end-of-life), but she could have tried to convince me in another way. Oh well, her loss.

I finally found another store that had two 7950 boxes. I asked the man in the store if I could buy one, and he called his stock room, and replied "Discontinued." Discontinued?! Why do you show a box on the shelf if you're never going to have it again? I asked about the other one, he chuckled (he could tell I wanted that card), and called again. Same answer. Discontinued. Grr. Why do these people tease me with their empty boxes?! Oh well. Such is life. I picked up a 8500GT & 8600GTs for < $90 a piece, so I could at least have some video (and Cara wanted to be able to use 2 screens). Now all I had to do was find the case store I had passed by earlier. That would prove to be the hardest part of my day. I walked the 2-4th floor looking for that case, cause I knew I had seen it. You remember me talking about it above, right? Well, if you've already scrolled up, or remember from what I told you, it was on the first floor. It took me over an hour to find that store again.

But before I found it, I ran across this LCD vendor who had a nice 20.1 inch Square Monitor. Which was cool cause I'm trying to make a Square-Wide-Square monitor arrangement, and when the widescreen is 24", its hard to find anything smaller than 19" that comes close or anything above 19" that isn't widescreened or a small fortune. it was $230, but I needed to make sure I had enough money for all of my case. Which I did. So, after buying my case, I lugged the case and other hardware back to my initially-red-but-now-rather-pink car. I counted my won, and decide to head back. I walk back inside, and right as I enter is the LCD vendor. So I pick one up and head back to the car very happy because I had accomplished what I had come for.

As I left the parking lot, I had to pay the teller "manobaeg won" (만오벡원). I had think to myself... I knew it was 10,000 something.. but what did he say after 'man'? So I asked him again. He could see me thinking, so he helped me out "Ten thousand five hundred!" he says with a smile. "Oh, right, man o baeg won!" He smiles and says yes in korean. (네/ne).

So I break out my already proven valuable Seoul map and navigate my way back to the Olympic Expressway. It was 6:30pm, and wowsas, talk about traffic. Luckily, as a former resident of Los Angeles, it wasn't too big a deal. I just didn't have any music. (K-pop anyone??). Once I left Seoul, traffic was non-existent. And I drove back home having bought my hearts content of computer parts. Well for now at least. ;-).

Moving In

2007-07-08T22:38:00.000+09:00

We are in the process of unpacking, and we continuously realize we have no place to put anything. The downside of Korean apartments - no built-in storage space. So, Will's shirts are hanging up on the rolling clothes rack, and our dishes are on a wire shelf from the BX.

We have picked up a few bookshelves from a great little furniture store we found just a few blocks from our place. We scoped it out along with a few other places, then came back and purchased a great (and huge!) dresser for Will's stuff. It was super cheap, they delivered it, and it's really well built, especially compared to what's available in the BX for twice as much. So, we went back and bought two bookcases. Then we went back and bought a smaller 4-shelf deal to put our random pocket stuff, mail, and (my) purses on when we come through the door. By that point, she was excited to see us walk in! We went back today and bought two more bookshelves, so we could unpack Will's trunk which was full of heavy books. Will found a super nice chair as well, it's quite amazing actually.
We hadn't been there in awhile, but we walked to the door and she got up and smiled and probably figured we would buy something since we always had before! They even broke out the catalogs, so when we get to the point that we need things they don't have in stock, we'll see if we can figure out how to order things from them. Their prices are hard to beat, and we really like them.

We have a few more purchases planned, including a wall closet for the rest of Will's clothes. I already filled the wall closet that was here when I moved in. I also had a desk, an orange couch, two orange chairs, a tv-stand dealy with drawers, two beds, and a kitchen table but nothing else. Will's stuff and what we've bought definitely make it feel much more like home! In the living room, we also have brand new curtains and a rug we bought in Dubai! Yes, a real one, hand-made in Iran. And don't say anything about our money paying for nukes!

(This is before Will's stuff arrived...the living room's a bit different now)

But, as I was saying in the beginning, we have no storage space. Our extra bed is currently covered with all kinds of random stuff we have no real place for yet. Slowly we are getting rid of the garbage, but we're going to have to make sure we don't collect too much unnecessary junk while we're here - and that could be a challenge!

Here we are!

2007-07-08T13:39:00.000+09:00

Hi everyone! I decided I may be better at blogging than at sending group emails. It got to the point where I was too busy to send emails, and then by the time I got around to it, I had too much to say for one email, so it would either be really long or I'd have to simplify everything. So I gave up and didn't send any emails at all! Not the best plan :-) So, the point of this blog is to tell the stories as they happen, and not be so pressured to say everything at once. Hopefully that'll work! Also, Will and I can both talk in the same place.

For some background, we're both here in northern Pyongtaek, South Korea, also known as Songtan. We work on Osan Air Base - Will is a contractor and I'm in the Air Force. Because of his job, we'll be here for a few years, though we aren't sure how long. I was here for almost 7 months before Will arrived, and I lived on the minimum essentials I had brought with me (all in my luggage!). We finally received Will's shipment of household goods, so we're slowly putting things away and rearranging furniture, and our little apartment is starting to feel like a real home!

Will got here in April to start his job (which he loves), then we went on vacation in the month of June. It was my mid-tour, so Will's company let him leave (we made sure he could before he took the job!). We were gone for 25 days, and went around the world. Starting in Seoul, we flew to Tokyo, then Seattle and DC, drove to NY, flew from JFK to Frankfurt, took the train to Berlin, flew to Estonia, came back to Berlin, then back to Frankfurt, then flew through Dubai back to Seoul. A lot to do in under a month! It was an awesome trip, we had lots of great experiences, and we'll both share some of those, along with our favorite pictures, in the next few posts. I don't want to make this first one too long!

Please leave comments, we love to hear from all of you back in the states. I don't often have time to write personal emails, but I promise I think of you often and even if you don't hear from me, I miss you! I hope this can help us reconnect, as it's so hard for me to keep up friendships long-distance. I know I probably won't see any of you for awhile, but keep us up on where you live, so if we're in the area we can meet up. Also, if you're headed to Korea for any of the upcoming exercises, let us know, or if you're stationed in Japan, we're a short hop away. Of course, you can come stay with us anytime you happen to be in Korea, we have an extra bed waiting, just let us know! We'd love it if you came to visit!