My Mommy Sent me Christmas

I got to my friends' house tonight to hang out for Thanksgiving, and one of the first things they mentioned was "Nox's Boxes". Yes, my care packages from Mom arrived :) I was expecting most of it, but I was really, really touched by the little things she included. She sent some of our traditional Christmas decorations, and The Polar Express book that we read every Christmas Eve... She sent our Christmas stockings! Intriguingly stuffed... -- even one for Hooligan! I almost cried... Thanks Mom :) :) :)

A Little Math

I bought beef yesterday. I wanted to make beef stew and chili, so I needed beef. 340 grams of ground beef cost me 12,000W, and the beef stew meat was on sale for 3,480W per 100 grams. In Imperial? I spent about 12 bucks on 3/4 a pound of hamburger, and the stew meat was on sale for about $15 per pound. Yeah...

Yay Chocolate Chip Cookies!

As soon as we got our oven, Haley wanted to make chocolate chip cookies. We didn't actually get around to it until the next weekend, but when we did, the cookies tasted great. Alas, they were only about a millimeter thick, but they were very yummy :-/ So I figured I needed to adjust my recipe; maybe add more flour so it wouldn't spread out so much in the oven. This has happened to me before, though never to such an extreme. I make good oatmeal cookies, but I've never made a batch of chocolate chip cookies I was proud of... Meanwhile, I happened across a chocolate chip cookie recipe online that claimed to be for Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies, written by the folks who made my favorite cookbook (thanks Grandma!). Naturally, I had to try it! Holy moly, I've finally made thick, chewy, delicious cookies!!!

The recipe only makes about 20 cookies, so I'll need to make another batch (or two...) so I can bring some cookies to school to share with all the people who helped me get my oven :) :) :) Meanwhile, I suggest you click on the Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies and give them a try yourself :)

Mushroom Soup

Today I found mushroom soup in the store. This is a big deal, because Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup was at the top of my "American Products" wishlist. However, one of my co-workers told me that a local convenience store had Campbells, and another mentioned, "Don't waste too much money -- they have packages of mushroom soup mix here that are pretty good." So I went to the convenience store armed with my iPod, and played pictionary/charades with the sales clerk. Drawing with my fat finger on an iPod touch is not an exercise in precision, but it's a lot better than nothing!

They did not, apparently, have Campbell's soups. I wandered every aisle before asking for help, and couldn't locate any. But she *did* have the mushroom soup packets! $1.50 apiece, they make about 4 cups of mushroom soup :)  I have no idea how they taste on their own, but I used one tonight to make chicken/mushroom/rice casserole, and it turned out very well :) 

I'm so glad that a) I have an oven and b) the weather has cooled off enough that I can *use* it without dying!

Saturday we're walking to school at 6am to hop on a bus to Haley's soccer tournament. After she plays soccer all day, we're going to hop in Ivy's car (she's driving rather than riding in the bus) and we're driving up to Seoul for the rest of our 3 day weekend :) So I'll be able to pick up my garb etc that is cluttering up some nice person's house and meet the SCA people I've been corresponding with.

Hopefully while we're up there I can find a cell phone company that is used to dealing with foreigners so I can arrange to get an iPhone 5 when they come out!

Meanwhile, I have to do this weekend's lesson planning tonight and tomorrow, since I won't be around to do it this weekend...

Holy expensive soccer gear, Batman!

Haley will be going to play in a soccer tournament this weekend, so it was immediately necessary to purchase soccer gear for her. Although we were told that this particular event the kids would not be wearing cleats (artificial turf), she will probably need them for the next game. And no shinguards = no game for Haley, so off we went to purchase a soccer kit. Any US soccer fans out there are smiling and nodding at this point, but the rest of you may be confused. Every fall in the US marks a nice sale in the sporting goods stores: for $30 - $40 you get a package deal on soccer cleats, shin guards, and a ball. Not super high quality, but the kids outgrow the cleats *long* before they wear out anyhow...

Fast forward to Korea... No soccer kits. You have to buy everything separately. The cleats look the same, but the shinguards are these little plastic things you shove down your socks. No elastic, no ankle protection, and they only cover about half of a tall kid's shin... We headed down to eMart to check out the soccer gear there. The shinguards were the same dinky little things, but at least they had cleats in her size (9 - Mens!) The cheapest pair of cleats? $59 (this is the *sale* price!). So I order some american-style shinguards online. Together with a soccer ball, they cost $24. They came in two colors, black and white. My school secretary was helping me order, and she was very surprised when I ordered the black ones. "But Haley is girl!" "Yes, but she's playing *soccer*! White gets too dirty and ugly. Black is better. Also, they will match her shoes." This last argument was probably the most potent for her... Though she probably thinks we're crazy for buying black shoes for a girl...

Hooligan

In case you were wondering, this is why I can't keep my floors clean...

Seriously, I'm having trouble finding a kind of kitty litter that I like. There are really only 3 choices. There's clumping clay litter, absorbant crystals, and (my vet ordered this just for me) *flushable* clumping clay litter, made of finer particles. I like it the best out of all three by far. Unfortunately, so does Hooligan...

Culture Shock

Umm, yummy pizza with cheezy bites :) Hey, wait a minute... This tastes like... You mean that orange stuff isn't cheese... it's sweet potato?!?! AAAUUUGGGHHHH!*

*No, no I'm not fond of sweet potato. However, even Haley, who is, did not care for the cheezy sweet potato bites :p

Momentous Weekend

On Thursday my new (to me!) oven was delivered :) Then the lady from the gas company arrived to hook it up on Saturday. Alas, they apparently don't have y connectors here, so I can't have my new stove/oven and my old range top hooked up to the gas at the same time :p So the gas lady cut off the old range top's gas line and then attached the hose for my stove/oven. It's a pretty nice stove. 4 burners, a (tiny!) oven and even a broiler. It looks like I can select whether I want the flame above or below the food in the broiler. Neat!

Saturday afternoon we walked to the farmer's market. I got my Korean friend, Hye Sun, to tell me the words, and then I walked down the street asking people "farmer's market?" in an inquisitive tone of voice and getting them to point me in the right direction. Finally we found it :) It was pretty neat :) It was a permanent structure so that the merchants don't have to worry about rain, and many of them had a permanent storage structure/shop, but most of them had their goods spread out in front. As we walked in, we could see a bunch of American products in the store to our left. It turned out to be a kind of kitchen store, which is exactly what the owners of a new oven need! Muffin tins, pot holders, baking dishes, parchment paper, a rolling pin... It's astonishing how much kitchen stuff we needed! Our best find was a pile of "handkerchiefs" -- we bought 14 of them for $7 and now we have cloth napkins!!!! This has really been bugging me, so it might be second only to our new oven as my favorite part of this weekend :) $160 later, we asked the shopkeepers if we could leave our two giant bags of stuff there while we browsed the rest of the market! 

We passed a fruit vender, and got a bag of nectarines for $5, and then picked up some mushrooms for $2 :) I expressed interest in a weird product, and ended up inadvertently spending $3 on something I'm almost positive I'm not going to eat. And I still have no idea what it's called! Anyhow, the market was fun, although it ended up being very expensive... 

Then back home to drop off our stuff and eat a quick (and very late) lunch. Then on to Emart. My first stop was to try to get my Emart card validated -- I'd gotten one last time but didn't have time to stop by the service desk and get the paperwork filled out. So I walked up to the service desk, only to be told by the nice lady that she was signing people up for credit cards, and the service desk was over there. Oops. So I went to the service desk and got my paperwork filled out. Koreans have very small signatures, so it's hard to fit an American signature into the box. I signed it 4 or 5 times, with no idea what I was promising. I guess they'll be by to pick up Haley any day now... Then, as I was walking back into the main part of the store, I paused by the credit card desk... You see, I have no use for a Korean credit card, EXCEPT Costco here ONLY accepts cash or credit cards. Nobody here uses checks, and Costco doesn't accept debit cards :p And shopping with cash isn't much fun because I have to keep up a running total to make sure I don't get to the register with too much stuff :p So I decided to sign up for a credit card too! It's supposed to arrive to Tuesday -- we'll see how that goes. I got a free polka dot tote bag for signing up with the credit card company; Haley immediately claimed it. I also got a free gift with the Emart card. I'm pretty sure it's dish soap; I guess I'll find out when I try to use it *grin*

Then we got to try to figure out clay. I know that in the US we have several kinds of clay. The two big contenders are Playdoh and clay. Haley has to make a model of the Earth (crust, mantle, core, etc) and Playdoh won't be good cause it doesn't really harden up properly. So we got some help and hopefully what we picked will work. Then on the the kitchen section where we picked up a cookie sheet and a tiny pizza pan. Finally downstairs to the grocery section. Apparently they don't have pancake syrup anymore (they did last month) which was a bit of a blow, since we just bought a *huge* bag of pancake mix at Costco :p Also, they have a zillion kinds of flour and I'm having a hard time telling them apart. Who knew that cookies required a different kind of flour than noodles? Stranger yet, it's the noodle flour that has "All Purpose" on it in English, though I am definitely taking that with a grain of salt. I bought both just in case! Speaking of salt, all the salt here seems to be sea salt. It's not bad, just different.

Finally, we took a taxi back home. Since it was already 8:30 and we were both pretty tired, my plans of making a potpie out of the leftover chicken stew crashed and burned into the reality of a "forage for yourself" night.

Sunday dawned. I'm sure it did, but I didn't see it until much later, since I had stayed up until 3 researching pie crust on the internet. You see, my favorite pie crust recipe requires shortening. Shortening may or may not exist here, but I haven't seen it. So I needed to figure out how to make a pure butter pie crust. I actually found a great recipe online, called The Food Lab: The Science of Pie Dough. Yeah, it turns out to be written by one of the guys who helped write my awesome cookbook that's got all the whys and hows and "what happens if you try it this way"s of cooking :) So that's the pie crust I ended up making today. It turned out pretty well, I think. Flakier than my usual pie crust for sure. I think it was maybe a little overdone, since I like my crust a little moister... I think I need to calibrate my oven... The only number on the dial that's still legible is 200˚ C. Which is great, since that's the temp at which I wanted to bake my pie crust. However, it didn't get done and didn't get done so I ended up just turning it up a bit. I'm not sure how much each of the rest of the tick marks is worth, so I'm not sure what temp I ended up at. Maybe a thermometer should be my next purchase.

I tried going to the health food store, while I was chilling my pie crust dough between making it and baking it. However, the store owner didn't have any of the things I was looking for. No coconut oil, no flax seeds, no Dr. Bronner's soap, no henna. She sent me to a cosmetics store on the next block that very definitely didn't have any of that eco-friendly stuff :( I'm a bit worried about that, because there's no way my flax seeds will last me a whole year, and my hair is desperately in need of a touch-up henna job :p As a country mouse, I tend to think that cities will have lots of big stores. It seems that (in Busan, at least) they just have a ton of small stores, so that each neighborhood is like a small town. So the quest for a hippie store continues...

Anyhow, after all that business about buying the clay, Mom mentioned on Skype that I could just mix salt and flour and water to make baker's clay. Duh! A good thing too, as we didn't buy nearly enough of the official stuff. Luckily I had a big bag of flour. I'm not sure what kind, though Hye Sun says it's not the regular flour I thought it was. It makes great dough though:) Alas, we ran out of salt (yes, that bag I *just* bought!) and when Haley ran downstairs with our empty bag of sea salt, the basement claimed not to have any. So we'll have to buy more salt to make more dough tomorrow. Yes, a half-sphere that is 20 cm across uses a *lot* of dough!

Oven & Power Outage

Yay, we got our oven! Today after school the delivery guys got the extra stove+oven from the basement of the school and brought it to my apartment. Yay, now I have an oven. Hopefully the gas company can send someone over tomorrow so I can have a *working* oven *grin*. Anyhow, when we got to my place, the power was out. I wasn't able to find out why until the power came back on so I could look it up on the internet. I did bump into one of my students outside (woohoo, someone who speaks English!!!) and he told me that he was on the phone and he had friends in Seoul who were also without power. I couldn't imagine what could cause the power to go out across a whole country! Part of the problem is that I forget that Korea is more the size of Kentucky or Indiana, and states in the US have been known to have a statewide power outage.

Apparently, several Korean power plants thought the hot summer weather was over, so they shut down for some maintenance before needing to supply power for winter weather. Unfortunately, the temps came back up; it was 85˚ (30˚ C) all night in my apartment, and it got hotter during the day. So lots of air conditioners got used and the national power level dropped so low they had to cut off power to certain areas. Now it's back up, but there's no guarantee the power will stay on -- they might have to cut it off again to avoid a national shutdown.

Happily our stove is gas, so we'd be able to cook. Unfortunately, our fridge won't do so well. Alas, I don't have large quantities of ice, nor do I know where to buy ice locally. So for the sake of my groceries (and my internet connection) I hope the power stays on :)

Praying Mantis

Today we found a praying mantis hanging onto the bars outside Haley's window. I guess he must have climbed up. Haley didn't want him hanging out outside her window all night, so I caught him to release him back down on the ground. Well, that was the plan! I caught him, but underestimated how amazingly fast praying mantises can sprint! So he got away, and crawled under Haley's bed. Oh yeah. If outside her window is bad, releasing him under her bed earns me "Worst Mom of the Year Award". So I picked up her mattress and eventually found and caught him. This time I covered up the glass with a piece of paper since he can climb the unclimbable! We took a photo and a movie, so you could see him too, and then released him downstairs.

Our latest

Yesterday was Meet the Teacher Night at Busan Foreign School. We got the option to leave early (as soon as the kids left) and go freshen up etc for our long night. Since Haley had a bunch of homework, we just stuck around. I got caught up on scanning class notes to post on my web page, and Haley worked on her homework. We did walk home briefly, to eat dinner and snag Haley's laptop.

Dinner was Chamchi Kimbap -- tuna kimbap, which is a lot like a sushi roll with veggies and canned tuna. Then as we left the kimbap restaurant carrying our rolls, there was a big oven on a truck with meat on spits rotating. I asked (using mime and sound effects) and the man told me it was pork. So I bought $10 worth, and he sliced it for me into a container. We ate our kimbap and dipped the pork into the sauce it came with. Very good, if a bit fatty. I would definitely buy it again though :)

Then we came back to school for Meet the Teacher Night. The parents followed their kids' schedules, except we shortened all the periods to 10 minutes. Haley hid in the back of Ivy's room and I did my roaming teacher thing. Luckily, the order in which we ended up doing the 2 days worth of classes meant I only had to move rooms once. It was pretty funny though, since several parents came to 2 or more presentations. Some of them have more than one kid in my classes, and a few kids are taking 2 math classes at the same time. I didn't really do anything different, so they got the same speil twice.

After the big meeting in the cafeteria, we were able to leave at 9pm. Bleah. Haley walked home with Ivy and Zoey and went to bed. (It's really cool having a keypad to open our door -- it totally eliminates the worry about your kid losing the key.) Meanwhile, I caught a cab with another teacher and rode down to Emart. I bought a toothbrush holder and a vacuum.

No, I have no idea why Haley has two toothbrushes...

Brooms here are weird; most of them have a very short, 2 foot handle. They are used one handed, and the sweeper bends over at the waist to sweep. They do have long-handled brooms, for outside use. I bought one, not knowing what it was. However, the bristles are stiff plastic, good for sweeping stubborn twigs but not so great for catching grit and dust. Watching the fluffballs wafting away from the broom was so disheartening that we didn't want to sweep. Our floor got pretty disgusting, so I talked to some other people and found out how they cleaned. Most of them said that they bought one of the little vacuums that are sold in Emart. They're very, very lightweight upright vacuums intended for use on hardwood floors (because nobody here has carpet).

Our new vacuum is pretty neat. It's a cordless vacuum with a charging station. Not having to worry about a cord is very liberating! I'm not really worried about the battery life; I just vacuumed this morning and it took less than half an hour. The floor part has a rolling beater, the dust goes into a cup that I empty into the trash (not a bag that I have to replace), and the middle of the vacuum comes off and is a little hand-vac dust buster thing, to get in crevices and vacuum the couch. This is going to make it much easier to keep our apartment clean. Now I just have to find a place to store all of my groceries and get my trash and recycling figured out, and we'll have it made :)

Guess What?!

In Korea you can't really do anything until you have your alien resident card (like a green card in the US). You can't sign any sort of contract, so there's no way to get a cell phone or open a bank account or get internet in your home. We applied for our alien cards just a few days after we got here, but they didn't get here until yesterday. After school I helped a few students who had math questions and then Haley and I hiked over to the nearest branch of the expat bank. Except, it turns out that that "branch" is a couple of ATM machines (though they're fancier here and do more things). The gentleman in the business next door told us about another branch with real people in it, about 10 minutes away. Except it was already 3:50 on a Friday afternoon and banks close here at 4! Well, we walked very, very quickly, and made it to the bank just as they were closing. They graciously let me in and helped me open an account. Yay! So now I have a purple debit card :) It will be nice to have an account that is in the same currency that I am spending; it gets hard to keep track of my expenses otherwise. Hopefully my school will be able to direct deposit my paycheck -- that would make things very simple :)

Anyhow, we then ambled back to school and asked Miss Jin (one of the secretaries) to help me set up internet at home. She was able to find me a good deal *and* to set up an appointment for Saturday! So the internet guy just came and we are online!!! I am posting this from my home!!! I brought my Airport Express router with me, so both Haley and I are wirelessly on the internet right now :) :) :)

Anyhow, this is excellent because I will be able to Skype people in the morning before school, and not be doing it during my prep periods when I'm too busy to hold a good conversation :p So feel free to give me a call around 3pm Pacific time :)

My next thing will be to get a cell phone. I'm holding out for an iPhone for my permanent cell phone, but I figure I can get a cheap flip phone and give it to Haley when I get my iPhone :)

Cold Snap

Right now we're on the edge of a storm that has brought some rain and a week of unusually cold weather (for this time of year.) It's been so cold that building superintendents have turned on the heat so that the residents can use their heaters. Today's chilly temp? 78˚ F. Oh yeah, I am loving this cold snap.

The River by our Apartment

Our apartment building is part of a complex of apartment buildings. They are grouped around two open areas in which the garbage and recycling are kept. Our apartment building is very near the main road. If we walk away from the main road, past the other buildings, we arrive at a nice walking path by the river.

First we walk down a staircase.

Then down a ramp to the river path. Under the bridge it's nice and shady. They have a neat stone path with lots of different textures. You're supposed to take off your shoes and walk on it, to self-administer a kind of acupressure on your feet.

Most of the little kids and their moms and grandmas hang out under the bridge, to hide from the sun. (Koreans really don't like sunburns or suntans.)

This is the view from across the river; the stepping stones are really pretty :)

None of the kids wear swimsuits; they're all swimming in shorts and t-shirts. Haley decided, "When in Rome..."

Our Korean Apartment

I didn't want to post photos of a messy apartment, so I've been putting this post off. But we finally finished unpacking and got all the luggage and junk put away. So here it is!

 I did a video tour:

I also have several photos. Here's the view as you enter the front door. Straight ahead is our bathroom.

To the right is the kitchen and Haley's room.

Opposite the kitchen is the living room and my bedroom.

 Past the living room is the veranda, where our washing machine and clothes drying racks live.

My room overlooks the veranda, and offers me a lovely view of our drying clothes *grin*

Ghost House

On August 13, 2011 I went to a haunted house with my mom, my friend Zoe, and her mom and dad in South Korea. The building was huge it was named Bexco.

There were so many people dressed like comic book characters it was so cool.

We went into the building and found the haunted house, Ghost House.

I got very scared and Zoe was excited. When you walk in you go through a black ripped cloth onto the ground but, the floor is squishy. Now you go through another black cloth and people are jumping from hidden places and holographs of ghosts and a t.v. with bloody mary and phones ringing and all kinds of scary things. At the exit you see small booths. I went in to some and you can scare people. So the people scaring you got scare by other people it was so cool.

Money

I've been having trouble with money here in Korea -- I have (hopefully) enough money in my checking account, but that's back in the US and none of the ATM machines here seem to want to talk to my bank back home. I was down to less than $1 in pocket change yesterday, when I got a tip about an ATM on the way home that works with foreign cards! So with Haley and Zoey in tow I headed to the Family Mart on the corner. All seemed to be going well, but then the ATM crashed! So no money for me :( But this morning I stopped by the ATM again and this time I was able to withdraw $200. Such a relief to have money! Now I can buy bread and eggs and other groceries. At lunch I overheard my coworkers talking about going to CostCo this afternoon, and I asked if I could join them. Woohoo -- CostCo trip! They told me that CostCo only takes cash or a Korean credit card. So I might want to withdraw some more money before heading down there -- I'm not sure how much I'll be buying, but it's the only place I can buy a lot of American products.

Stew & Friends

Today the school took a bunch of us to immigration to apply for our Alien Resident cards. Another mother-daughter pair were on the school bus with us. Ivy is about my age and Zoey is a little younger than Haley. The two girls really hit it off :) It turns out that Ivy and Zoey live in the same apartment complex as us, two buildings down. Zoey came home with us from school and played with Haley while I made stew for dinner. It was pork, rather than beef, and chicken broth rather than beef. But it turned out pretty darned well! After dinner we all went for a walk. We brought Hoolie too; she was glad to get out of the apartment. Ivy showed us the river right behind our apartment complex. There's a really nice walking path. Then we went to Ivy and Zoey's apartment and let Hoolie run around a bit while we chatted. They had a little dresser that they were giving away so we scooped it up to go in Haley's closet. All in all, a very fun night :)

Lazy Day

Today is a lazy day -- just hanging around the apartment reading and relaxing while some laundry dries. Haley just took a 2 hour long cold bath. It's about 86˚ in here, which is comfortable as long as I don't move around at all. 

Yesterday we went to Emart to buy some of the things we need that weren't provided. Trash cans for our bedrooms and bathroom, an iron and ironing board for my work clothes. A wet/dry mop with two washable microfiber heads, cause our floors are already getting gross. Spray bottles for water, hair gel, and cleaning spray (vinegar). A pillow for Haley (a cutesy cat shape). A kitty scratcher for Hooligan (immediately necessary to protect the couch and chairs). Doorstops. By the way, I am a master of charades. I managed to communicate cat scratcher and doorstop to a nice store lady who spoke no English. I also managed to get fitted sheets for Haley and my beds (theoretically they are the right sizes -- I got one queen and one single). Then we went downstairs to the grocery store. We didn't buy much -- some chicken, some garlic, salt, pepper, canola & olive oils, cooked meat patties, cheese, butter -- some very basic essentials. Well, and a $9 bottle (the cheapest!) of what turned out to be a sweet sparkling wine. I'd assumed it was chardonnay! Oddly enough, it was only 6% alcohol. Anyhow, the grand total for our shopping trip? $420!!!!!!!!!!! That's most of the money I had changed. I've now got about $60 left, so I need to get some more money pretty darn soon. We're down to one package of ramen, cheese, uncooked chicken so I'm going to have to go shopping today too. Happily, there's a grocery store in the basement of the next building (weird, but my boss says the prices are better than some of the big stores, so it's going to be tremendously convenient!). Also, there's a bakery, Paris Baguette, on the corner, so we've also got a good source of baguettes and packages of pre-sliced white bread (no heels!). They do not, alas, have any wheat bread. I'm going to make fried chicken with garlic and onions for dinner tonight, but I don't know what else to make. I was completely intimidated by the produce section at Emart -- it's very small and has lots of weird stuff. No broccoli or asparagus, so I couldn't figure out what to cook with my chicken. I'll need to get that worked out pretty soon. Vitamins or no, we really shouldn't live on ramen, bread, and eggs!

First Notes on Korea

Our kitchen is tiny, but neat. I really like how the sink is set up. It's a double wide sink, with a dish drainer that sets into the sink. So with the dish drainer in place, it's a single width sink, but we can take it out for big tasks, like bathing the cat. It also has a sprayer head, so no need to attempt any plumbing before bathing Hooligan.

There is no oven, which I was expecting. There is also no microwave.

We have discovered that Korean ramen is really, really good. We found one brand that  we really like, and one that looks almost the same but is a little too spicy.

My apartment does not have air-conditioning. It does have two fans, which haven't been off since we arrived. Hoolie doesn't seem to be suffering too much from the heat; I think the panting at the rest stop must have been stress as much as heat. She mostly lies around, but does regular patrols of the apartment. She really likes that my bedroom windows open into the sunroom; she thinks jumping in and out as she loops through the apartment is great :)

The laundry machine makes a long beep when it's done. If you ignore it, it'll beep again later. Intermittently, for hours (I think). I started the laundry before going to bed and groggily ignored the first several beeps.

The washing machine doesn't work if you don't turn on the water taps running to it. Duh. That's why it was beeping! It doesn't beep noticeably when a load is done. A load of laundry takes an hour to wash and then less than a day to dry when hung up. I like our laundry room. We have two drying racks. One is a folding rack that leans against the wall when we're not using it. The other is hanging from the ceiling. It lowers to chest height to get loaded up, and then can be raised back up to the ceiling to let the clothes dry. That way you can duck under the hanging clothes to move around the room, rather than having to dodge a whole rack. Hanging laundry is way more eco friendly, and cheaper. We'll see how well it works in the winter. I've heard that winter is very dry here, so the clothes will probably dry pretty well and we'll probably appreciate the extra humidity.

Haley's room was completely empty. No bed, no wardrobe. The school arranged to have a bed dropped off, as well as some missing cupboard doors in the kitchen replaced. They were supposed to arrive after 3pm. The cupboard men came at about 6, and were finished in 10 or 15 minutes. The kitchen looks very neat with the missing cupboard doors replaced. No sign of the bed though. That was kind of a problem, since it was Friday, which meant a weekend of no bed for Haley :( Haley went to sleep on a folded comforter in the sun room. I started to get ready for bed, actually had one contact in my hand, when they called in from the kitchen window. Holy cow, they make deliveries at 8pm here! They brought in the parts and put together the bed in about 5 minutes!

There was a really weird intermittent electric noise. I thought there was an electric trolly that was going by just out of sight. Nope, turns out Busan has cicadas. I'm awake early, and now know that the cicadas start humming shortly before the birds begin singing.

Wait a minute, WHAT AM I DOING?!

I keep having moments where I think, "Wait a minute! You've got a comfortable life here! What are you doing, leaving this all behind?!" I keep telling myself, "Yes, I could have stayed in California. I would have been comfortable, but I don't think I would have done much growing. Time to go have an adventure!"

Moving towards my new life in Korea is no problem. It's taking steps to leave behind my old life that's hard. Signing a contract with my new school? No problem. But writing a resignation letter for my old school was pretty tough. Moving out of my lovely apartment was tough. I needed several kicks in the butt from my fantastic friends (thanks friends!) to get through that one. Yesterday I gave away my car to some friends who will babysit it for a couple of years. Ouch. Today I've got the last big goodbye -- saying goodbye to Mom :( Then the plane ride isn't going to be much fun -- we need to be to the airport by 10am and the plane is supposed to land at 9:45pm Korean time. Which is 5:45am in California!!! But once we get about 10 hours of sleep, the adventure can begin :)

Sharing

Gabbi decided to share her books with Hooligan. Too bad neither of them can read yet!

Trees of Mystery

Today we drove 20 minutes back down to Klamath to meet Mom & Grandma on their way north at the Trees of Mystery. We hiked up a trail through the redwoods.

At the top of the trail, we caught a skycar the rest of the way up the mountain.

The view at the top was amazing!

So was the cell phone reception; I'm hiding in the back cause I just got a phone call from Dad. I don't get to talk to him very often, so I took the call!

Next we have our photos with Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox. Haley threatened to disown me if I posted some of these on Facebook. I'm sure you'll be able to figure out which ones! (Disclaimer: Mom started it!!!) 

Camping Beds for the Win!

So even though our beds have been disassembled and put into storage, we need not sleep on the floor. No, no, because I am the proud possessor of awesome rope beds!!!

Back to Crescent City

Today we drove back to Crescent City to finish cleaning out our apartment. Before we left, we got a photo of the whole gang, including Grandma Ruby!

I finally stopped on the drive up to take photos of my favorite house:

There's a whale swimming in the Klamath River, so of course we stopped to take some photos. Here we are in front of one of the golden bears that guard the bridge: 

Here's a video of the whale:

 And this is the view from the bridge. So beautiful!

Then we had to stop and take a couple of photos of the redwoods :)

Not to mention some photos at the vista point overlooking Crescent City.

Then we stopped at Crescent Beach for a little bit before heading home. There were a lot of people on the beach today!