Top Ten Tuesday: Korea

We have been stationed at Osan Air Base in the Republic of Korea for a year now.  In two nights time we will fly back to the states and make our way to our new station in Alabama.  I did not want to be sent here, but it has been such a great experience living here.

The top 10 things I have enjoyed while living at Osan Air Base in Korea:

1. The view from our 10th floor apt.  In the early morning hours, the kids and I loved to snuggle out on the patio wrapped in blankets, drinking hot coco and coffee and watch the sun rise.  At night, the lights of two different cities that twinkled in our view was stunning.  Though I often tried, I could never get pictures that adequately captured how beautiful those two times of day were.

 2. Being within walking distance to everything on base.  The chapel? 5 min.  The school?  The grocery store?  The indoor pool?  8 min!  The gym was 15 min. but the walk added to our exercise!  Don't feel like walking?  Call the base taxi.  $2.30 will get you almost anywhere you need to go on base.

3. Taking groceries from the car to the kitchen in shopping carts.  So convenient!  The carts are also convenient for anything else you need to take up or down.  And for playing in too...

4. Having a trash chute.  Its not that I mind taking the trash out to a trash bin, its that I can never remember to take the bin to the curb on trash day until I hear the garbage truck pulling away!  Not looking forward to that again.

5. The restaurants.  The main strip full of stores and restaurants right outside the main gate has just about any cuisine you could ask for, and we enjoyed them all.  Ok, the Mexican wasn't that great because they never had limes, but the Italian was fantastic.  The Meat restaurant was a family favorite for Korean food because they cooked it right on your table.  The Indian/Pakistani restaurant that opened not too long ago was really goo, and the Turkish one was our favorite of all.  Yum!  There was also Brazilian dining, Japanese sushi, Thai, Chinese...and those are just the restaurants off base.   On base there was Chili's, Oriental House, Flying M Steak House (where kids eat free on Tuesdays!), Checkertails, Popeye's, Pizza Hut ,and various other fast foods, and almost all of them delivered.  What will we eat now?

6. Speaking of good food, we loved to hop in the car and head to E-mart or Home Plus.  Kind of like a cross between a Super Walmart and a department store.  We would always stop at the food court first and decide what to order from the display.  Most of the time, we didn't really know what we were ordering, we just hoped that it was something that we would enjoy.  They had the coolest stuff too.  And the best produce!

7. The mountains.  Most of our favorite memories here involve mountains.  They are beautiful and we have enjoyed seeing them and hiking them throughout the various seasons.

8. The rest stops.  The rest stops here are fantastic!  They are master-planned with restrooms, food court and convenient store.  There is usually a playground for the kids too.

9. Safety.  The kids got a lot of attention from locals here.  Everyone wants to give them candy or take a picture with them.  The youngest has started to say 'Cheese!' anytime anyone even looks at him.  It's very safe to allow that here but they are in for a big surprise when we get back to the states.

10. Experiencing Korean culture.

In Motion (Part 1)

Even though we have about 6 more weeks before we fly back to the United States from South Korea, we are already in motion.

The movement began with an assignment.  We were originally suppose to be here in Korea for two years, but after we had been here for just a few months, we found out that we would be moving to Alabama after only one year.  At that point, plans began to be made and life began to take on a temporary feel.  We had to get housing set up for the new assignment right away (you can read about that here).  Conversations started to include the statements '...before we leave...' and '...after we move...' While we waited for orders (official paperwork), our calendar started to fill up with dates for the process of moving, the first of which is getting our stuff from here to there.

Since it takes a few months for household goods to make the trip by boat, they needed to be sent ahead of us.  The moving company had an inspector come to evaluate our move.  This is the beginning of the part that makes me feel unsettled.  I don't like people looking in my closets and cupboards, and though it may not be true, I always feel like I'm being sized up.  Being in Korea didn't help this at all.  The inspector kept making comments about us having too much stuff and our TVs being too big, etc.  Since English was not his first language, and he kept smiling while saying it, I could never figure out whether he was insulting us or complementing us.  A week later the movers arrived at 8am and had us packed and loaded on the truck by 3:30pm of the same day.  Previous movers have always taken at least 2-3 days so I was up all that night wondering if they broke anything in their haste.  The guy in charge kept assuring me that Korean movers are the most careful ones.  I hope that proves to be true.

We were only in the hotel for a couple nights when loaner furniture was delivered to our empty apartment so that we could continue to live there until it is time for us to leave.  This part is nice.  Well, mostly nice.  The double mattress that the base loaned us is not really big enough for two people to sleep on so I have spent many nights on the loaner couch.  Its also smallish, but so am I, so it mostly works.  What really works though, is having less stuff.  I already miss things like our bed and my desk, and eventually I would miss the rest of it too.  But for a while, less stuff is nice.  Its less to take care of.  Less to be responsible for.  There are less dishes and laundry to do, though that also means they have to be done more often. *sigh*  I must say that I do like having less toys to convince the kids to put away.  I think I might even be hoping that the box marked 'toys' gets lost during the move.

To read Part 2 go here.

ROK/US Airmen and Air Force Civilian Family Invitation Event May 11, 2012

Recently our family was invited to participate in the ROK/US Airmen and Air Force Civilian Family Invitation Event.  It was a fantastic day and we were very honored to be a part of it.  Here are just a few of the pictures from that day.

Click here to view these pictures larger

I confess! I did it!

 Reposted blog entry from August 9, 2007

Of course, I don't remember doing it and it was my husband that confessed that I did!

Here's the story...
I took the car over to the new house to paint.  My husband called and asked me to come bring him the keys to the van so he could move some stuff. I hop into the car and spend the ride over chatting with Asha about how we are going to see Daddy and Daniel. She's so cute calling out, "Dadi, Danda, whey!" (Daddy, Daniel, we're coming!)

I get home and we all hop into the van and head over to the new house. At the security gate, the guard tells us that someone just ran the gate at our old house without stopping. (this is a big deal) He tells us it was a white car.  My husband  says "our car is white." The guard says they only got the last three of the license plate -XXX.  My husband  says, "That's our license plate." I say, "Are you sure its ours?" Surely I didn't run past two stop signs, the guard shack, and a guard and not know it! I can't remember doing it but it had to have been me. And it better be because my husband tells the guard it was me and we head back over there.

We sit at the guard shack while security forces (Military police) and a bunch of rent-a-cops chew me out, pour over all our ID's and talk to each other and other people on their walkies or whatever. Daniel, who is never at a loss for questions, fires one after another to rub it in. "Why did we come back here? Why are we stopped here? Why can't we go? What are they doing with your ID's? Who are they talking to? What are they talking about?" etc... My husband is just sure that they are going to impound our car and cart me away to jail in hand cuffs right in front of our kids. He also reminds me that if this were another base (and not East Housing) that I could have been shot at when I didn't stop. We sit in silence for a moment and I tell him that on the bright side, the paint will be dry by the time we get back home. :) I don't think he saw the humor in it that I did though because he wasn't amused...

In the end it was just a ticket for failure to stop at a stop sign -though I think I might have really enjoyed the quiet respite of a cell for the night. :)