Author: Meg

Yesterday was Daeboreum, the Great Full Moon holiday. It celebrates the first full moon of the lunar year, and traditionally was a time when Koreans would pray for health and for a good harvest in the coming year.
We hadn’t heard of this holiday previously, but noticed last weekend that somebody was building a large bonfire in a field south of the school. Bonfires, or daljip (“moon house”) as the structure is called, are a central part of this holiday. Historically, every community would build one on the edge of their village. Daljip taeugi (“burning the moon house”) is the ritual of burning the daljip in order to bring fortune and prevent evil. It is set alight just as the full moon begins to rise. In the past, people would shout their wishes at the daljip, but today people write wishes on strips of paper and tie it to the daljip in the days leading up to Daeboreum.

There are a host of other rituals and foods traditionally associated with Daeboreum. Before breakfast, a family would drink a rice wine called gwibalgisul (“ear-sharpening liquor”). Drinking gwibalgisul at this time of day was believed to improve one’s hearing. Gwibalgisul was also believed to have the ability to dispel spirits, and was therefore served cold (rather than hot like most rice wines) to retain this ability. Everybody in the family would drink together; even children would “wet their lips.”
For breakfast, people would eat ogokbap (“five grain rice”) and sharing it with three neighbors was said to bring luck. (I can’t help but think this must have turned into a who-makes-the-best-ogokbap competition amongst the villagers.) I saw ogokbap in the store, so I assume it is still eaten today. Yaksik or yakbap (“medicinal rice”) is a yummy sounding concoction of sticky rice, honey, sesame oil, chestnuts, pine nuts, and jujubes. Both ogokbap and yakbap were nutritious meals for the middle of winter.
Nerdy historian side note: A record of Korean customs written in 1849 states that yakbap originated in the Silla Dynasty (57 BC – 935 AD). Another text from the early 1800s says yakbap is eaten on the 15^th of the first lunar month (time of the first full moon) in a custom unique to Korea. The Samguk Yusa of 1281 describes a legend called Sageumgap about the origin of Ogiil, “Crow Memorial Day.” I’ve read a few different versions of this legend online, so I’m not sure what the original text says, but all involve a crow saving the life of King Soji of Silla on the 15^th day of the first lunar month in 488 AD. This day became Ogiil, and the sticky rice offered to the crow in thanks became a traditional meal for that day. Given these records, many people trace the origins of yakbap to this time. My favorite version of the legend involves cryptic messages, intrigue, murder plots, manslaughter, and the queen and a monk getting frisky in a zither case. HISTORY IS AWESOME! Other records from the Joseon Dynasty (1392 – 1897 AD) attribute the origin of yakbap to Chinese envoys, but I’m going with the zither case version.

Bureom, or nuts, are another Daeboreum food. Koreans would crack open nuts with their teeth to keep their teeth healthy for the year (seems a tad counter-productive to me, depending on the nut, and I’m fairly certain they don’t do this anymore) and to prevent boils and skin infections. Apparently, the cracking sound of the nuts would also scare away evil spirits.
There are various traditional games and activities, as well: tug-of-war, kite flying, selling your heat, crossing a bridge at night to protect your legs for the year, and jwibulnori. The only one of these I witnessed myself was jwibulnori. In this “game,” children swing around a can full of blazing charcoal – wheee! – and it is said to help protect the new crops. It sounds like a parental nightmare, but jwibulnori actually serves a rather practical purpose. The fires are used to burn dry grass around rice paddies and fields in order to kill off insects and vermin. In fact, we saw several farmers around our area setting their fields on fire that afternoon.
Just before sunset on Daeboreum, people started gathering around the field with our local daljip. I say “our local daljip,” because we saw a couple other daljips around the area. (This whole region is very agricultural.) The road was lined with cars, people were walking over from the apartment complexes, food stalls were set up in the courtyard of the Korean elementary school, somebody was talking over a PA system, and a traditional Korean drum line was marching around the daljip.

We arrived just as the sun was setting and the moon was rising. We squeezed our way through the crowd, climbed down a few rocks, and found a spot along a concrete road that borders the field. Several men took torches to the base of the daljip and everybody cheered as the flames spread and grew. 

The drummers continued drumming while the crowd snapped pictures with cell phones, and slowly started to disperse. It was pretty cold, and the wind quickly pushed the cold into my gloves and jeans, so I had little desire to linger either. I’m pretty sure the only warm ones around were the drummers, because they were playing frighteningly close to a 30-foot tower of flame.

I read an article in the Korea Times that expressed concerns over the fact that Valentine’s Day was seemingly becoming more popular among young Korean city-dwellers today than the other early-February holiday, Daeboreum. I suppose if you were a child living in Seoul, surrounded by nothing but high-rises, you would have no idea behind the meaning or purpose of jwibulnori. It would simply be a fun game spinning around cans of fire. But down here in the south, surrounded by farms, it all makes a lot more sense. In our local E-mart, the Valentine’s Day candy display sat right next to the Daeboreum nuts and grains display. I’m pretty sure they will continue celebrating Daeboreum here for years to come. After all, who doesn’t like standing around a massive bonfire?

We celebrated my birthday this week. I am almost to the half way point, getting creakier by the year. But we don’t need to talk about that right now… let’s talk about a more exciting celebration!
Korea celebrated Seollal the last weekend in January. Seollal, or Korean New Year, is the first day of the Korean lunar calendar and one of their biggest celebrations of the year. It is a 3 (or 4) day public holiday, and a time when everybody returns home or gathers with their families for fun, food, and games. Or, if our language teacher’s facial expression was to be believed, just food and games. And maybe not even games.
In case you are wondering how it is calculated, the first day of the lunar calendar is the day of the second new moon after winter solstice. … Yeah, I didn’t know that either.
Historically, Seollal was packed full of religious significance. Some of that lingers today, but from what I’ve heard, many of the traditions now are just traditions. It’s kind of like Christmas in America: religious for some, not so much for others, a time for families to get together and exchange gifts and eat a bunch of specific foods that the new daughter-in-law is begrudgingly forced to cook.
In the weeks leading up to Seollal, stores were filled with a variety of gift packs. And yes, do I mean variety. We saw everything from traditional berry wines (we bought some to try) and whole ginseng all the way to shampoo and fancy body soaps. There were traditional confectionaries, persimmons, Asian pears, oranges, socks, undies, lotions, facial care products, tooth care products, crazy looking mushrooms, oils, vinegars, seaweed, “flavors of the sea” spices, Spam, nuts, anchovies, and my personal favorite: nuts and anchovies. I desperately wanted to take pictures of all these things, but in every store we visited, the Seollal Gift Box section was swarming with sales ladies who would pounce the second you paused in front of anything.
“No, thank you, I’m not really interested in… what is that? It looks like something you’d get arrested for growing in rural Colorado.”
I managed to take just one shot by standing still in an aisle, mumbling, and pretending to reply angrily to a text message until it got awkward and the hovering sales lady walked away.

Our E-Mart also had a section set up for children’s hanbok and accessories and bokjumeoni – silk money bags. The bokjumeoni are for the sebae, or “elder worship” ritual. Dressed in hanbok, children honor their grandparents and elders by offering a deep bow and wishing them good fortune in the new year. Grandparents then give the children sebaetdon, or new year’s money, in bokjumeoni.
I am glad our store had this section, because I received a text from Lena’s teacher one night telling me that they were going to have a Seollal party the next day, and to send her with hanbok. So the girl and I ran to the store before it closed, confused a sales lady with my awful pronunciation of 그녀는 학교에 한복이 필요하다 (I finally just typed it and showed it to her; she understood, but I realized later that’s the wrong word for “she” and I forgot to properly conjugate “to need”… oh, well), picked out a pretty one, then came home to try it on. Lena loves her “pretty Korean dress.” She performed several interesting dances for me, which she insisted were dances that “people who wear this dress do.”

At Lena’s school Seollal party, the kids got all dressed up in their hanbok and played some traditional games, such as yutnori, the throw-marked-sticks-on-a-board game. Lena said this was her favorite. There was also the throw-sticks-into-a-pot game, throw-rings-on-a-stick game, shake-a-fuzzy-thing game, and tug-of-war. At the end, all the children practiced their sebae.

Side note: A classmate apparently taught Connery how to do sebae also, so the kids drew us New Year cards and performed a bow for Aaron and me on Seollal. It was pretty cute. It would have been a lot cuter had Connery not been in his underwear at the time, but whatever.
The children did not get any sebaetdon at Lena’s school party, but walking home that day, a grandpa hanging out at the roasted hazelnut food truck saw Lena and lost his mind. He talked with us for quite a bit. I have no idea what he was saying, but I heard something about Seollal and Korean culture and he just seemed really excited. He gave Lena a bunch of hazelnuts while saying something about grandmother and grandfather (two of the few words I recognize). Then, he forced her to bow and gave her money… which wasn’t as creepy as it sounds.
I’d read somewhere that a couple years ago there was a New Year’s Eve celebration up in Jinju at Jinjuseong, the fortress. I couldn’t find anything about it this year, though, or any other place that had celebrations or fireworks. I couldn’t even find any celebrations on TV. All I could find was the CCTV New Year’s Gala, aka the Spring Festival Gala, aka Chunwan, the big Chinese song and dance spectacle watched by over 700 million people each year, making it one of the most – some say the most – watched TV program in the world. There were hundreds, probably thousands, of performers, all of whom were amazing. Lots of costumes, lots of sets, lots of sparkles and smiles and makeup, lots of rows upon rows of people all in perfect coordination. And lots and lots and LOTS of CGI.
Beginning: “WHOA! How did they do that??”One hour in: “Wow! How did… wait a minute…”Two hours in: “Yeah, that’s totally fake.”Ending: Aaron walks in.  Aaron: “WHOA! How on earth do you make chicken-shaped fireworks??”  Meg: “CGI.”  Aaron: “……Ahhh, yeah. I see it now.”
In fact, I heard that fireworks were banned in northern China this year due to the ongoing smog problem.

The day of Seollal, we didn’t do much. I tried making tteokguk, a traditional soup made of tteok (rice cake) and beef broth and topped with things like sliced beef, eggs, peppers, and seaweed. I found a recipe that was pretty simple, hoping the kids would try it. Boil beef broth and add the tteok. Separate an egg yolk from the whites. Fry the yolk like a thin pancake, then slice. Add the egg whites to the soup after the tteok become soft and start floating. Ladel into bowls and top with egg yolk slices, etc. I’ve read various things about tteokguk: it will add a year to your life; the tteok are coin sliced to symbolize prosperity; it represents you turning one year older;* you must eat one tteok for each year of your age (no idea how this works past age 20 or so).
I thought it was pretty yummy. How about the kids?

That night, we tried another new meal: a bbq at the table with our brand new MASTER J portable grill. The Master J is fabulous. It comes with a grilled meats top that has vents for grease and also a deep pan with a lid. (And it cleans up like a dream.) The kids loved it. Some beef and pork and marinated chicken, mushrooms, sprouts, carrots and peppers, sliced garlic cloves, rice on the side, soy sauce and fermented spicy soybean paste. Ohhhhhh, yeah. The kids loved it so much, in fact, that they insisted we do it again the next night. Only, we skipped the beef second time around, because those six thin slices cost something like $30.

On the last day of the holiday weekend, we drove up to Jinjuseong to visit a Seollal cultural festival at the Jinju National Museum. Entrance was free for the holiday. The festival was… somewhat anticlimactic. In fact, it was little more than a few scattered tables and since I didn’t know what to do at them, we just skipped it. But since entrance was free, we wandered around the museum for a while and, if you know me, you know I love me some museum. Ancient pots and swords and manuscripts and turtle boat replicas and centuries-old Japanese graphic novels and a big model of what the fortress used to look like. And let me just say, those medieval Japanese knew how to craft some intimidating armor. Jinjuseong was the site of several battles with the frequently-invading Japanese, and there are some fabulous stories to be told (more on that later).
The fortress grounds, and especially the museum, were full of people. There were families and young people everywhere.
“How cool so many people came out here for the holiday,” I thought. “Although, they sure are spending a lot of time on their phones.”
Aaron noticed it, too. After glancing at a passing phone, he suddenly laughed and said, “Oh, yeah. Pokémon Go launched in Korea last week.”
That’s right. Every single person there was playing Pokémon Go. Free entrance = free chance to catch some rare pokémon. Should we join them? … Meh. I’ve got enough on my to-do list as it is.

*Korean age calculation is a bit different than in the west. When you are born, you are 1. Then, you add a year at New Year’s. So, for example, my niece who was born in November, would be considered 2 years old the following January, even though by our calculation she was only 2 months old. Now, they also have a “birthday age” that is more like western calculations, and this is used for things like legal drinking age, etc. Schools, though, use the Korean system. That means Lena, who is 4, will be starting in the 6-year-olds class at her Korean school when the new school year begins in March.

We’ve only been in Korea for a couple months, but I have to say that we are enjoying it. Our district is beautiful, the food is yummy (well, most of it), people are nice, and it’s safe and clean. I would like to be better with language (more on that later), but nearly all the Koreans we encounter are kind and patient with our painful mangling of their native tongue. While there are some inconveniences, so far we have only noticed one big downside to living in Korea.

Smog.

Specifically: Chinese smog.

That’s right, all that nasty off-the-charts hazardous smog you’ve been hearing about in China lately (if you follow international news) blows across the Yellow Sea and right over the Korean peninsula.

I have this app on my phone that shows me air quality readings nearby. It even has a little map that lets you see air quality readings throughout Korea. If I check it frequently enough, I can tell when smog is coming, because I’ll notice some reds pop up on the west coast. Then, they start moving east, towards our district, then on to Busan, and often all the way to Kumamoto in southern Japan.

What are “reds”? It’s an Unhealthy air quality reading. Here’s the air quality index…

On a normal day, most of Korea should be greens and yellows. Maybe orange. To be fair, Korea creates many of its own smog problems, but primarily in the big cities. Seoul can get pretty nasty all by itself. But we live in a small town on the coast. Even with diesel vehicles and farmers burning rubbish piles, we should not have a major problem with particulates.

Here’s a map of Korea on what I would call a “mixed” day. Seoul is that big cluster on the upper left, and Busan is the bottom right.

See those reds popping up on the west coast? Where could they be coming from?

Want an actual picture? Here’s a satellite photo of China. All those brown clouds you see are smog.

And here’s that smog blowing towards Korea.

It’s pretty ugly from ground level, too. These photos were taken from my living room…

What is causing all this hellish smog in China? Well, it’s a somewhat complex answer involving economic development, mountain ranges, humidity levels, atmospheric layers, rising global temperatures altering air flow in the northern hemisphere, and various poorly understood interactions between sulfates, nitrogen oxides, water vapor, and particulates.

But the short answer is: coal, coal, and more coal.

Coal is a dirty, dirty source of energy, but we’ve been using it for thousands of years (intensely since the Industrial Revolution) and just can’t seem to kick the habit. In fact, coal consumption worldwide increased over 70% from 2000 to 2013, and is projected to increase more with development in India and Southeast Asia. Today, China accounts for half of global coal consumption.

In the face of public outrage over shrinking life expectancy and the millions (yes, millions) of premature deaths each year due to air pollution, the Chinese government announced plans in 2013 to tackle the country’s pollution problems. They gave their environmental regulations some enforcement power, closed many of the worst-polluting factories, set limits on car sales, and banned coal burning in urban areas. China now leads the world in renewable energy investment. These measures, along with a general economic slowdown, are helping to a certain degree. Each of the past few years has seen a decrease in the highest concentrations of PM2.5 (small particulates… the ones that can get into your bloodstream and wreak havoc with your cardiovascular system), as well as a decrease in the number of red, purple, and brown days.

But they have a long way to go. Just this past month, Northeast China experienced its longest stretch of severe smog days, and during that time some cities in the area recorded air quality readings approaching 1000. (Note that the chart above stops at 500.)

Lest you mock the Chinese government for its short-sightedness, let me remind you that it was not that long ago Los Angeles had the worst air quality in the world. The city began having smog problems in the early 1900s, but it was during the WWII economic boom things really got bad. A severe bout of smog in 1943 – in which visibility was reduced to 3 blocks and residents thought it was an enemy “gas attack” – finally brought air pollution to the public’s attention. The smog problem persisted for decades, until the Clean Air Act and emissions regulations eventually brought it under control. Now, while the air in downtown LA is not going to be the same as Middle-of-Nowheresville, Montana, it’s a vast improvement.

And for the life of me, I cannot understand the current administration’s desire to roll back emissions standards. If you think it’s so great giving business precedence over the environment, come take a look out my window and see what that philosophy has done to this part of the world.

And lest you think it could never again get that bad in America, consider this… After London’s Great Smog of 1952 killed 12,000 people, Britain enacted its own set of air quality and emissions controls to bring smog under control. But just last week, thanks to traffic pollution and a massive increase in the number of households using cheap wood burning stoves, London’s government issued their highest air pollution alert for the first time, calling it a “health crisis.” Air quality readings in London exceeded those in Beijing.

So… yeah. Until somebody invents Mr. Fusion,* we need to protect our existing regulations, support energy innovations, and make smart, energy-saving choices in the home.

Oh, and keep a mask handy. Just in case.

*High five if you get the reference.

My goal is to post an update here every week, but obviously I’m not there yet. This month has been busy.

(And, I’ll be honest… it’s winter, it’s cold, we got ourselves a heat pad for the bed, and I may or may not grab a book and sneak back into its fluffy warm layers for a bit when I return home from walking the kids to school on a brisk 20° morning.)

Specifically, this month we have been occupied with (1) school beginnings and (2) Aaron’s injury.

(1) After winter break, Connery started back at the international school. This time, thankfully, without the tears. He seems to be enjoying it now, especially PE days because he gets to wear the cozy PE uniform pants. The school’s student body is not very large (180?) but the property is huge and they have a lot of rooms for specialty classes, like PE, music, art, library, computer lab. Beginning next quarter, his class will also start Korean language lessons. I’m pretty excited about that.

The only downside to this school is the fact that Connery came in ahead academically. In his previous school, he was already working on 2nd grade math and phonics. We would spend at least 30 minutes doing homework each evening, in addition to special projects like speeches and presentations. By contrast, his 1st grade homework here takes him approximately 5 minutes. I chatted with his (very good) teacher about this, and she said some families here came from no-homework schools so they don’t even do the small amount she gives. Aaron and I debated for a while, and ultimately decided that living in Korea and travelling around Asia will provide Connery with enough extra stimulation and learning that we shouldn’t worry too much about academics. Plus, he’s only in 1st grade; it’s not like a couple easy years are gonna break him. And besides, the Dutch don’t give any homework in primary school and they reportedly have the happiest children in the world. So… balance, I guess.

That being said, after 3 weeks off for winter break, I noticed Connery struggling with some easy math questions:
“Hey, buddy, you know this one. What’s 6 + 3?”
“Um… 5?”
“Try again.”
“…6?”
“…”

Well… maybe we’ll supplement just a little. Aaron has started spending a few minutes with Connery every evening doing flash cards. He wants to start some father-son bonding time building robots, so he’s using that as a carrot. Apparently, they will program it with a tapeworm brain, or something like that. All I heard was: box, wheels, eyes, likes to hide in the shadows. Sounds fun.

The week Connery returned to school, Lena started her new preschool. After another lengthy debate, Aaron and I decided to put her in a local Korean preschool. It was recommended by Connery’s teacher, and there are a couple other English-speaking kids there. It’s a nice (and cute!) facility, and the staff are super nice and helpful in spite of the language barrier. I really like Lena’s teacher. We communicate via broken English and Korean when I pick up the girl, and via text message when more detail is required (thank you Google Translate). I made sure Lena knew some key words in Korean before she started, e.g., hello, goodbye, teacher, water please, thank you, bathroom.

Both schools are within walking distance of the apartment, so we have this little routine of walking Connery to his school first, then walking Lena to the preschool (a bit farther away). Of course, that all sounds sweet and bucolic, but for a family of formerly-desert-dwelling-night-owls, it’s not so much strolling hand-in-hand as it is light jogging while dragging one small child by the arm and yelling at another small child to pay attention and watch for cars before he runs ahead through literally freezing temperatures, eyes and noses dripping, hoping we make it before the school gate is locked (we usually don’t). It’s not really a pretty picture. We don’t like early mornings in the Harris household.

Right now, Lena attends 3 days a week, but I may add another day when the new Korean school year begins in March, because on her days home she is booooooooooored.
9:00 am: “When does Connery come home?”
9:15 am: “Are we going to pick up Connery?”
9:30 am: “When Connery comes home can we go to the bakery?”
9:40 am: “Can we go to the bakery now? I want a chocolate donut.”
10:00 am: “Can we go to the bakery, get a chocolate donut, then go get Connery?”
10:05 am: “Is it time to get Connery yet?”
10:06 am: “How much longer until Connery is done? Can we get him now? And then can we go to the bakery?”
10:07 am: “What are you eating? Is it a chocolate donut? I want a chocolate donut. Is Connery done yet? We should get him the donut with blueberries inside and sugar on the outside. Get him that donut, and I’ll get a chocolate donut.”
10:08 am: “Are you done eating? Can we go now? Let’s get Connery and then go to the bakery. You can get tea, and I’ll get a chocolate donut, because I love chocolate donuts. Chocolate donuts are delicious!”

Sorry, kiddo, but mommy can’t go to the bakery today. Mommy doesn’t have a dishwasher and she has to cook from scratch. But first she has to figure out which of these bottles is baking soda and which is salt, which of these curries won’t give us diarrhea, and what the heck is green pumpkin? It looks like zucchini? And then she has to tackle the strange dust problem in the apartment. And figure out how to organize the trash and recycling such that we don’t get fined for improperly sorting it into the TEN separate bins located in that hut by the parking lot. Then she has to figure out where to buy 2x4s to fix the headboard because a country of apartment dwellers doesn’t have DIY stores like Home Depot around. And at some point, she’d also like to find a nursery, because home doesn’t really feel like home unless there’s a houseplant dying in the corner somewhere.

And now Lena’s school is really making me feel like I need to up my game, food-wise. I have a bad history with processed foods, so I’ve always been a sort of homemade, non-GMO, organic kinda mom. But I tell you what, Americans could stand to learn a few things about eating habits from Asians. So many variety of veggies! Lena’s preschool includes 3 meals: morning snack, lunch, and afternoon snack. They’re served in the classroom, on an adorable little lunch tray that comes home with her for washing. The morning snack is always some kind of porridge: barley porridge, rice porridge, broccoli porridge. Lunch includes some kind of rice, some kind of soup or meat, a couple veggie sides, and either cabbage or radish kimchi. The afternoon snack is either fruit or a yummy carb (like toast or a red bean bun) with milk.

Just look at these lunches… these are for preschoolers!

And snacks… I mean, a whole steamed sweet potato. Are you kidding me?

Unfortunately, Lena recently hit a picky phase, so she’s having none of it. Just the rice. And the afternoon snacks. But I’m still making her try them, unless I know there’s absolutely nothing she would like even if she tried it. (They give us the month’s menu in advance.) So, for example, tomorrow’s lunch will be rice, fish cake soup, a pile of small dead fish, and kimchi. I’ll be sending her with a sandwich.

The other issue that took a surprising amount of time this month was (2) Aaron’s injury.

I mentioned in the last post that Aaron found an MMA class nearby. He’s been practicing it for some time now – over a year, I think? Running is boring, he says, and punching things helps him vent his frustration with bureaucracies. At first, he thought the Arizona class would be all happy, happy, punchy, punchy like your standard kickboxing class, but on the first day, his teacher pretty much showed them how to knock an opponent unconscious. Not a bad skill to have, I told him, just make sure you protect the brain.

Anyway, I was really glad Aaron was able to find a class here. It’s in a taekwondo dojang run by Korean Hercules, and not every night is MMA – some nights are judo and some are cardio. Well, a couple weeks ago, Aaron wound up going on judo night and – even though he was on the wrestling team in high school – it’s been awhile since he’s used that muscle set. And, to be fair to my husband, he hasn’t had a place to work out the past few months because of the move. And, you know, he’s starting to get a little bit older. And Korean Hercules is… well, Korean Hercules. And Korean Hercules decided it would be better for Aaron to wrestle him than the scrawny teenage boys in the class. And Aaron, being a man of pride, refused to let Korean Hercules pin him. But, in the process, Aaron forgot one important rule: when wrestling with Korean Hercules, you let Korean Hercules do whatever Korean Hercules wants to do. Be the reed. Just bend in the wind.

Aaron pulled a muscle in his shoulder. And the pain got worse, and nothing was helping, and sleep was impossible for several days, because while I prefer to weep silently into my pillow when I’m in pain, Aaron turns into angry bear. And it’s kinda hard to sleep next to angry bear when angry bear can’t sleep. Then his fingers went numb and he started having dizzy spells and I said, “GO TO THE DOCTOR!” and eventually he went to the little medical clinic next to our apartment complex. It was a fairly interesting experience, apparently. Doc said it was just a pull, not a tear, but nerves get injured along with the muscles and they take longer to heal. Then he did an ultrasound, gave him a few shots of something next to the injured nerves, put him on a heated bed, and then put some electrified suction cups all over his shoulder. (All this cost $50, by the way.) It kind of helped. I think hot pads and time probably helped more, but I was glad to hear it wasn’t anything serious. Thankfully, Aaron is much better and is even back to the MMA classes, where he and Korean Hercules had a good laugh about it all.

We’ve been in the country now for a little over three weeks, and we are fairly well settled in to the new place. The apartment is mostly furnished, the refrigerator was delivered a few days ago, and we ordered curtains today. Connery started his new school last week. Aaron is working. I’m slowly figuring out what I can buy to cook food my children will eat. Many tasks are left to be done, such as teaching the kids not to thump when they walk and disturb the downstairs neighbor (we’re hoping to mitigate said disturbances by purchasing curtains from said neighbor), learning to say, well, anything in Korean (we’ve got ‘Hello,’ ‘Goodbye,’ ‘Thank You,’ and ‘Can We Get This To Go, Please’ covered so far), and buying a car, among other things.

A quick recap… We spent a few days in Seoul to visit Immigration and have a look around. We spent one hellish Saturday doing the following: packing 4 suitcases, 3 carry ons, 4 backpacks, and 4 humans into a little Hyundai Santa Fe; trying to find a gas station and driving through Seoul to IKEA with a really crappy GPS; shopping at IKEA for 7 hours (I even had a list and it took that long); packing all our small, undeliverable items into a little Hyundai Santa Fe (only possible because super-amazing new coworker Mike drove to Seoul and took all our luggage in his minivan); and driving 4 hours with purpose and 1 hour saying “is this right??” across the country with a really crappy GPS.

Random note: If you accidentally blow through a toll booth in Osan, it’s okay. You can just ignore all those sirens and lights and cut across four lanes to the on-ramp, because when you get to the next toll booth several hours away, the toll booth worker will simply give you a sad look and say, “Osan?” and your husband can say “Yes, I’m sorry,” in broken Spanish and pay the toll he didn’t pay in Osan.

Another random note: Korea is a country full of mountains. In fact, I’d say it’s almost all mountains. So the roads twist and turn and go up and down and there are lots and lots and lots of tunnels. (For those who heard about our little barf-fest in Belize, I’m happy to report that the kids slept the whole drive and there were no unpleasantries.) In the longer tunnels, some government administrator decided that it would be a good idea to play loud noises. To keep people awake? I’m not really sure. Sometimes, it was siren-type noises. Other times, it was the national anthem. But because these noises were playing in a tunnel, they became… distorted I guess would be the best description. (Aaron’s note: Doppler effect is cray cray in a tunnel.) I should also note that Korean roads have a lot of flashy lights along them. Red and blue police lights flashing in the middle of the road, yellow lights flashing along the side of the road, these little man-shaped cutouts with a line of red lights that raise and lower to make it look like a dude with one of those “park over here Mr Airplane” type mini-lightsabers. Why? Why not, I suppose. So imagine, if you will, that you, still jet-lagged from travelling to the opposite side of the planet, have just spent an entire day maneuvering through weekend crowds at the only IKEA in a densely populated country… and now it’s nighttime, dark and foggy, colorful flashing lights refracting through the fog, and you’re driving through tunnel after tunnel full of the creepiest ice-cream-truck-from-hell music you can imagine. Remember that boat tunnel scene from the original Willy Wonka? Yeah, it was kinda like that.

Anyway, we finally made it to our new home-away-from-home. We had to stay at the local hot springs hotel for about a week until our apartment lease began and our furniture arrived from IKEA. We never made it into the hot springs, but our room had the largest tub I’ve ever seen in my life. I felt a bit like an eco-terrorist filling it up with water, so decided to go family style. Shower first, then we can all use the tub! Made the mistake of putting the kids in first. By the time they were in bed and Aaron started singing Marvin Gaye, the water was lukewarm, inexplicably bubbly, and full of strange black blobs and the hairs of hotel patrons past. Were the kids cleaning the bathroom with this water? Ew. Family tub and romance tub are not the same.

I really like our little neighborhood. It’s a foreign investment zone, so there are several foreigners and we’re nothing special. As soon as we venture into the main town, the cameras come out, but down here nobody cares. Our apartment has a fabulous view over the rice fields, the school is immediately across the street (I can watch the boy play at recess time from our office), there’s a grocery store, three quik-e-marts, two coffee shops, and several good restaurants all within walking distance. There are lots of other places we’ve yet to visit, including, I’m led to believe, some kind of Lego playzone and a bouncy playzone. Far too often, Lena tempts me with pleading eyes saying, “Mommy, can we walk to the bakery and buy a chocolate donut?” She’s not the only one who wants a fresh chocolate donut on a cold December morning. I thought I was supposed to lose weight moving to Asia? It seems impossible, what with all the amazing food here (more on that later).

Pro tip: ‘Donut,’ ‘Cafe Mocha,’ and ‘Fried Chicken’ in Korean are ‘Donut,’ ‘Cafe Mocha,’ and ‘Fried Chicken.’ Just add a Korean accent.

Greetings, all!

Or should I say: Anyeonghaseyo!

I’d write that in Hangul but I’m still trying to figure out how to switch languages on my phone.

It’s been a busy week (more on that later), and last night was our first night in the new apartment (more on that later). We don’t have internet yet, so I can’t post pictures. Hopefully, soon.

Anyway, I wanted to briefly discuss our first impressions with the language. I read somewhere that the Korean for Korean is Hangugo, but honestly I’m not sure what’s real or not anymore.

Why? Let me explain…

When I first started researching this country, I read that English and Korean are so different as languages that it’s difficult for native speakers of one to learn the other. That’s why few Koreans speak English even though it’s a mandatory subject at school.

“Pish posh,” I thought. “I got a hold of that whole pluralize-a-word-by-nasalization thing in Urdu, I’m sure it will be fine.”

Now, I am by no means a master linguist, but I studied language in school. Plus, I’ve travelled quite a bit and picked up key phrases in various countries, so I figured I’d start the same.

Let’s start with: “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.” Because if you’re going to be an ignorant foreigner, you can at least be a polite ignorant foreigner.

I checked my little So You’re Moving to Korea book’s phrase list and there was “I don’t understand”: XYZ. Got it. Off I went to the grocery store, but drat if I didn’t remember. That’s okay, I’ll just check Google Translate. “I don’t understand”: ABC. Huh. Well, let’s try that again. “I don’t understand”: MNO. Hmm. Okaaaaay, how about that Korean language learning app? “I don’t understand”: QRS.

WTF? What the heck do I say???

Sure enough, the cashier asked me something about my credit card and ignorant foreigner just shook her head and made some strange “Duhhhhhh ohhhhh uhhhhh” noises like a weirdo.

Later that day, I asked the kindly realtor Ms Lee. “XYZ?” I said, with hope. She shook her head, “EFG.”

Well, whatever. We start language lessons next month, so maybe we can figure it out then.

One word I did learn for certain is the word for bunny: tokki. I was trying to have Connery say, “I like cars,” for Ms Lee, but he was struggling with the word for car: jadongcha. How about Lena? Bunnies.

“Tokki!” Ms Lee said. She then preceded to both sing and dance a children’s song about a bunny in the mountains.

I highly doubt you’re reading this right now, but if you are: “Ms Lee, you’re awesome.”

I just can’t translate that very well.

My to-do list is slowly shrinking. The bags are slowly filling. Our collective sanity is slowly fading. In five days time, we board an airplane and fly west – so far west, in fact, that we will land in the far east, in the country known as the… (pick one)

Land of the Morning Calm
Land of Scholarly Gentlemen
Land of Splendid Rivers and Mountains
Rooster Forest
Great East
Eastern Country
Eastern Country of Courtesy
Eastern Plains
Eastern Land
White-Clad People
Three Thousand Ri*
Azure Hills
Rivers and Mountains of the Eight Provinces
Land of Hibiscus**
Three Kingdoms East of the Sea
Flourishing Eastern Sea Country
Eastern Domain
Country of Early Morning

Granted, some of these titles are rather archaic, like the Joseon Dynasty’s “Small China.” I highly recommend you DO NOT show up in Korea and start calling it “Small China.” Nobody will like you. And while we’re at it, don’t call the Sea of Japan, the “Sea of Japan.” It’s the “East Sea.” Just ask IKEA.

*Ri aka Li aka Chinese mile: a traditional measurement of length that varied over time but is today equal to half a kilometer
**Hibiscus syriacus is Korea’s national flower