19 months in Korea

After 19 months, life is becoming fairly normal. Well, as normal as life overseas can be. Other than everyone here having dark hair and eyes and hearing Korean spoken everywhere, there are times where I forget that I am overseas. I go to work everyday, come home every evening, and spend my weekends with my family. We buy groceries, take out the trash, and eat out at restaurants occasionally. So, all in all, we live a fairly normal life here in Korea. Even hearing Korean spoken all around us isn't that disconcerting or even distracting anymore.

We do have some interesting experiences still, though. A few weekends ago, we went to Namdaemun market, an outdoor market with just about everything. We were just about done for the day when we went by this stall and this man was there. He was a seller of underwear.... ladies underwear. A picture is worth a thousand words, so here's my thousand. The funny thing about this is he was just displaying his wares. He wasn't really trying to dress in drag or anything. This was just his gimmick to get people to look. It made us stop, but only to take a picture.


I had a meeting with my school owner's recently about renewing my contract. We had a few things that needed to be worked out for me to re-sign my contract. My main stipulation was that I needed a new apartment. This apartment is really, really small and it has a huge mold problem. It has caused us much sickness over the last year. The problem with this is that my school signed a two-year contract on this apartment. This means that they have to find someone to rent this apartment before they can get me another apartment. I just found out on Friday that they have found someone who wants our present apartment. They want to move in by July 8th, but my school didn't think that our budongsan (realtor) could find us a suitable place that quickly. I think if we put some pressure on them, we could do it. I mean it's almost three weeks. My school asked them if they could wait until August and they agreed. So, we should be moving within the next month. It should happen before I come back to the states in July.

Speaking of coming back, I will be in the states from July 23rd through July 31st. I will be emptying out our storage shed while there. I will be giving away many of the things we can't take with us or store at my parent's house. So, I may have some things you need. I would really like to see as many of you as would like to see me while I am there. If you would like to see me, please let me know so we can schedule time to get together.

Also, please be aware that Pamela has started her own blog. http://walkndwoods.blogspot.com Check it out for stories about the family and what they are experiencing.