Tidbits

1. PapaFish recently became a volunteer online teacher three nights a week. One of the benefits of this volunteer opportunity is that it will give PapaFish a taste of the main industry for foreigners here in Korea: teaching. The greatest benefit, however, is that students of less-than-wealthy parents will be able to practice English regularly throughout the week, hopefully narrowing the income gap between Koreans who can speak English well and those who can't.

2. TheFry has been walking for one whole month now! ...Or, at least I think it's been a whole month. He pretty much was running from the start. One day he was still clinging to the walls, and the next evening I caught him scurrying past me from the corner of my eye. Now it's just a game of chase until he decides to start listening to and cooperating with MamaFish and PapaFish. He refuses to hold hands, and it can be very difficult to guide him in the right direction sometimes. Needless to say, we still often use the Pognae baby carrier most of the time when we go out.

3. The new semester at my work has begun, as of March 2. It's been a crazy whirlwind of teachers getting hired and quitting, and me not knowing how many classes I'm really going to have to teach each week. I have a stack of about 75 or so essays on my desk that need grading by next week. Not sure when I'm going to find time to do it all!

4. My dad is in town! Yay!!! AND HE'S GOING TO TAKE US OUT TO TACO BELL ON SUNDAY HOLY COW I'M SO EXCITED!!!

5. Here's hoping the springtime warms up sometime soon.

6. I can't really fathom making a blog post without pictures, but this is the best I've got:

If that doesn't say "I'm a boy," I don't know what does.

P.S. - I have no idea why he's not wearing a shirt.

Things I Love about Korea!

I go to work every afternoon at 2:30. That means that the time I get to spend with my family is in the morning, when I am refreshed and happy (I'm a morning person if you didn't know). In my previous life, I worked eight hours at a job that drained me completely, so that by the time I got home - even if I hadn't had to think or move around or really do much of anything at work that day - I was totally exhausted and wanting to be alone or just veg out and watch TV and eat. Mostly, I just wanted to eat. TheFry would be either taking a nap or just waking up when I got home from work. When he woke up, he would be happy for a little while, then he would want to eat. We would eat food. I would put him in the living room so I could clean the kitchen. I would put on a half hour baby video so I could crochet for a few minutes. Then we would go for a half-hour walk together. Sometimes we would watch Korean dramas on the Internet together, but other times we would play. TheFry would take a long bath, have a bottle, and go down to bed. I would spend a few hours watching TV and crocheting. It was rather bleak.

Now I get up with TheFry. PapaFish gets up when breakfast has been prepared and we all eat breakfast together. Sometimes we go out for a walk in the morning. There is a park near our apartment that has a huge pool with a ton of fountains. Also there is a bunch of exercise equipment at the park, from bench presses to rowing machines. There is a "therapy walkway" which is a path of different sized rocks arranged in various patterns; you take off your shoes and walk on the path, and it's like getting a massage or acupuncture in your feet. It feels wonderful afterwards.

Sometimes we just go to HomePlus - our local grocery store. It has 3 floors. It's like Super Wal-Mart and Macy's combined and on crack at the same time. There's a huge food court and all three of us can share a meal there for about 5 bucks. It's cool to just go and look and see what they have, to plan out the things we might buy to improve the living conditions of our apartment, or to just dream of what we could make the place like. But the food court is reason enough for us to pay HomePlus a visit on a weekday morning.

Sometimes we just hang out at home. TheFry takes a morning nap. I crochet. We watch NCIS back-to-back for about 2 or 3 episodes. I go to work a little early to use internet or to prepare for the day.

I get off work at 10pm. After work, Seoul is even more alive than it was before. The park fountains aren't going anymore, but the park is full of people playing basketball and hanging out with friends. On Thursday, we went for a walk to a playground that was in a nook between several high-rise apartment buildings. There must have been about 10,000 people living in that small portion of the neighborhood, but it was completely quiet. There were no loud cars, loud music, loud people being obnoxious. It was THURSDAY, and it was almost midnight. We played on the see-saw, swang on the swings and slid down the slides.

There are many things here that are different than back in the United States, but we have found that we are adapting rather easily. TheFry has also been doing very well. He loves the attention he gets and he loves going out people-watching in the middle of the night. We love going to grab an ice cream bar for the rough equivalent of $0.40 and walking around the neighborhood. There is always something new to find, always somewhere new to eat. It is going to be a really fun, exciting year.

Stuff o' the week!

Okay, let's count down the top five!

5. I made a list of stuff I need to do before the move on Monday, and I haven't looked at it since. Good thing I e-mailed it to myself.

4. I eat way. too. much. sugar. I'll be lucky if I don't get diabetes before I'm 30 at this rate.

3. Man, I'm really going to miss the support staff at my current workplace. It's a hoot making jokes to pass a slow afternoon. These ladies are terrific, and I can't imagine having more fun in a workplace again as long as I live.

2. Buying international plane tickets isn't as easy as I thought it would be, especially from an agent. It took about 6 days to confirm ours. At any rate, we got the ones we wanted, so we'll be getting to Seoul on August 1 at 4:00 in the afternoon. More details on that to come!

1. I'm supposed to move stuff to storage tomorrow, and probably only 2/3 of my stuff is actually packed! Way to go, me! I'm going to be up late tonight scrambling to get the last few things together.

I know people thought he was a girl, but this has gone TOO FAR...

The Korean Consulate in Chicago thinks my son is a girl. Okay, he kind of has eartails in his passport photo, HOWEVER, his passport clearly states that he is MALE, hence the "M" in the "Sex" column of the photo page of his passport.

However, when his visa was issued, he was listed as "F". Whattheheck?! So, after dozens of dollars in shipping fees and a week and a half of wait time, I still don't have a visa for my son or for myself. I'm calling the consulate tomorrow at 10am if I can possibly manage it.

At least PapaFish has his visa correct and in tact. Maybe they should issue proofs of the visas via e-mail before they stamp them in your passport to avoid the hassle. I have 2 weeks and 5 days to get this done. Actually, 2 weeks and 4 days, since the last day we'll be staying in a hotel before we leave for Korea.

In other news, we just got back from our week-long vacation to visit PapaFish's side of the family. The trip there was easy-peasy. Did I mention that TheFry loves to ride in his car seat? We are planning on buying him his own seat on the flight to Korea, and I am going to try and convince PapaFish that bringing the car seat is a good idea. Give me a holler if you've done this (bringing the car seat, that is) and what you thought of it. Was it more convenient to strap the little bugger in the seat for an hour or two so everyone could get some much-needed shut-eye, or was it just more of a hassle to carry it around?

PapaFish is leaning towards bringing the umbrella stroller to cart TheFry through the airports and we could possibly use our travel booster seat to strap him down for some time in his own airplane seat. I don't think that the flight attendants will let us do this because it is a flimsy inflatable booster seat and not a government-approved vehicle seat. Plus, I don't think that it would really hold TheFry down because the harness strap is not the most restricting thing in the world. Anyway, here is our travel inflatable booster seat and here is the car seat.

As for our trip home from visiting relatives, it was a 6.5-hour doozy! Usually the trip takes about 3 hours and 45 minutes, but TheFry barfed about 5 times (multiple heaves each time) and had a blowout diarrhea diaper towards the end of it. We changed his clothes twice during the trip. He was exhausted and, quite literally, pooped out. Apparently, he is allergic to bananas. We called PapaFish's mother in the beginning of the trip (after Barf #2, and about 25 minutes of driving) and she mentioned that PapaFish had also been upset by bananas in his infancy - he'd just had the opposite reaction. So there we have it. No more bananas for TheFry until he's old enough to clean up his own messes. Like, until he's 17 or something.

Oi. Right now I'm soaking the stains of various baby clothing items with OxyClean. I have so many things to do tomorrow that I can't think straight about it all. Here's what I have so far:

1. Go to work
2. Give 2-week notice at work
3. Get chip in windshield fixed over lunch break
4. Get car washed over lunch break
5. Call Korean Consulate in Chicago over lunch break
6. Get quarters from the bank after work
7. Clean out inside of car after work
8. Show car to potential buyer at 6:30pm
9. Do laundry
10. Go to bed tired

We'll see how it goes!

*UPDATE*: I got the car wash done before work to lighten my work day a little bit. I also called the Korean Consulate in Chicago, found out my visa is on its way to our local UPS Store, and that I don't need to mail in TheFry's passport again to get his "F" changed to "M". So there we have it. All that and a bag (*snap*, *snap*, *snap*!) of chips.