My fridge smells like kimchi

It’s been 3 weeks since arriving in South Korea and life is good. We have an apartment with a yard, a car, and our household goods have arrived!

Since it is hard to talk to everyone and remember all the stories and adventures we have been experiencing, my goal is to keep this blog updated. I hope that with this blog it won’t seem like we are so far away!! :)

**Warning: This is going to be a smidge long and split into 2 posts since a lot has happened in 3 weeks.**

The Flight Over

There was a fiasco in getting Johnny and myself actually on a plane to Seoul but once we were finally on our way, the trip itself wasn’t bad at all. Well, maybe not so pleasant for Johnny, but for me, it was fine.

Got to see a glimpse of Johnny during one of the flight changes.

I flew from Seattle to San Francisco and then San Francisco to Seoul. The amazing gentleman at the ticket counter in SF upgraded my seat from a regular window seat to an economy plus seat with no one next to me and no seats in front of me so I had plenty of leg room. It was such a blessing to have the extra bit of space being 26 weeks pregnant! The airplane itself was pretty cool. I had never flown on a two-story jet before. The thing was huge! If you have flown recently, you might have seen that now a lot of newer planes have a new section where the seats are beds!! If you haven’t seen them, click here (this one is technically Delta not United, but their page does a better job at showing it off). I think paying the extra $2,000 would have been totally worth it, Ben not so much. Too bad the guy didn’t upgrade me to a bed seat. lol The flight from SF to Seoul was direct and only took 12 hours. They played several movies and that helped time go by. I slept for a little bit, maybe about 4 hours and that was it. One of the stewardesses was incredibly sweet and brought me a giant 32oz water bottle before we even took off when she noticed I was pregnant. We got 2 meals on the flight. One dinner meal, which I chose a chicken teriyaki with rice and veggies and one breakfast meal, which I chose a red potato, veggie, sausage, and egg hash. They were both surprisingly good. My flight left from SeaTac Friday at 7:30am and I arrived in Seoul on Saturday at 2:50pm. Both Ben and I experienced very little jet lag, which I am very grateful for. The only thing we both experienced was being wide awake at 7am, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Thankfully arriving in Seoul wasn’t too confusing. I just followed the herd from our gate to customs to baggage claim where I found Johnny, took him to the quarantine office to get him okay’d by the Korean government. Once Johnny was good to go we found Ben and rode from the airport to the Dragon Hill Lodge which is the on base hotel in Yongsan.

A view of Seoul from our hotelroom.

 

Finding A Place To Live

Making the decision to live off post was easy, and thanks to our sponsor, making the decision on what realtor to use was easy too. The main road just outside the main gate has over 130 realtors!! Getting an apartment and/or home here is an incredibly fast process. We met with our realtor on a Tuesday, looked at a few places, made a decision, and moved in the next Monday.

The apartment is great and ironically bigger than any place we have lived back in the states. It is about 1600 sq. ft. with 4 bedrooms and 2 full baths plus a semi private backyard, which is great for Johnny! We do not have an oven which is a little weird but I think we will get used to it. After talking about it with each other, Ben and I decided the only thing we regularly used an oven for was baked goods and frozen pizzas. lol So we can do without both of those.

I’ll have to do a separate post with pictures of our house once we’re done unpacking our household goods.

And as my title suggests, our fridge smells like kimchi. We have tried baking soda, coffee, and charcoal to no avail in trying to get the smell out. So, to anyone who visits, I apologize in advance. I am slowly getting used to it, but I know the smell is a bit pungent. The owner lived there before us and was this little old Korean lady who was super sweet and adorable. She spoke no English but she was funny! She clearly loved fermenting, which is not surprising, and left several fermenting pots in the backyard.

Johnny with his new kimchi pots.

Finding a car was honestly about as fast as finding a place to live. There are so many cars constantly being bought and sold from service member to service member as people come and go. We found our own hooptie car, passed our drivers tests, and now we’re officially able to drive around Korea! :)

Our little rollerskate of a car.

Until next time!

Annyeong-higyeseyo*

 

 

 

(*pronounced: awn nyoung – hee gay say yo and means goodbye)