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We’ve been in our permanent house in Seongbuk-dong for nearly a month and it is starting to feel like home.  Our Pennington furniture doesn’t look so out of place now that I’ve unpacked the pictures we brought from home as well as some books and found some plants to soften up the corners of the room.

      

Everything is a tiny challenge; for example, the lamps instantly sparked out when I plugged them into the adapters I bought to convert to 220. Once again, I leaned on Mr. Choi to decipher the problem.  It turns out the lamps needed different bulbs that could handle the higher voltage, a much easier fix than I originally thought. I am however dreading December 8th…Mr. Choi’s final day as our driver…since he won’t be around to explain, interpret, direct, etc.   Try to imagine how disconcerting it is to arrive home and have notices in Korean stuck to your mailbox and no Mr. Choi…or to try to decipher street signs about parking!

                                                           

We’ve sent out some of our most “tired” furniture (picture green floral chintz-covered circa 1995 couch from our early living room in Pennington) to be re-covered by Mr. Kim who was recommended to me by another Seongbuk-dong expat who has since relocated.  Mr. Kim is one of 3.9 million of Kims in Seoul (!!) since 15% of the 25.6MM folks living here have the last name Kim because it is one of the 6 royal ancestral family names.  He came the same day I called him with fabric books galore and together we chose new fabric for 7 pieces of furniture which he picked up in his mini-truck 2 days later.  He promised to have it all recovered in 3 weeks, but in fact, texted yesterday that he can deliver the items on Monday…a mere 2 1/2 weeks after our initial meeting. Highly efficient and typical of the service/delivery common here. Love it!!

We are excited about our dining room since the table is made out of an antique gate from a shop outside of Seoul I visited with a friend.  I also got the console table there which brings out the red in the painting, but is hard to see now because it all needs better lighting.  I bought the gate and then had a separate modern furniture store design the wrought iron legs and make 12 chairs.  In true Stanton-style, we’ve found a table that is plenty big and just waiting for any of you to join us for a meal in our new home!!

It arrived on my birthday, and as you can see, we had a wonderful birthday celebration, complete with a piece of dry spaghetti standing in as a candle since those are very scarce here!  Daph worked hard to make the cake from scratch and even used blueberries to dye the icing, a tip she learned from one the many “DC Cupcake” episodes she watched years ago.  Bill and the girls went shopping in Gangnam, thanks to Daphne who has a “nose” for finding the best shopping.  I’m thrilled with the vases, pottery and clothing they found.  Truly talented shoppers!  Daphne and Zoe assembled the special felt birthday hats and worked hard to make the Birthday evening special.  I am so proud of their efforts to adapt to all the challenges this move has thrown their way and the way they are adapting to life in Seoul in general. There are definitely more smiles and laughter and fewer tears these days.

                                
Earlier in the day, I went to Hat Party given by the Australian NZ Women’s Club of Korea and had a blast trying on various hats (there were 85 to sample with mirrors scattered around the room) before selecting the “pink perfection” that I’m wearing in the picture.  Some of them were enormous and swallowed up my tiny head while others were even more delicate than mine.  All had been commission by ANZA for the party and made in the Philippines.  Each of the 85 guests were called up individually to receive their hat and have a picture taken.  This was NOT my favorite Birthday moment, especially since the MC “outed” me and announced my birthday to the entire room.

                   

The Hat Party is a pre-party/breast cancer benefit before the Melbourne Cup Party to celebrate the famous horse race in early November.  Unfortunately, I will not get to wear my lovely, pink hat since I’ll be traveling back from the US on that date.  Oh well…champagne and the hat outing still made for a fun foreign birthday.

We are having our first dinner party this weekend and I went to the big wholesale flower market to get vases and flowers, thinking of Stony Brook Garden Club the whole time.  At a Seongbuk-dong neighborhood potluck lunch last week, I met the Helen, the wife of the Australian prime minister who is a member of a garden club here in Seoul.  Her garden club is full of the grande dames of Seoul, octogenarians and wives of chaebol leaders; as you can imagine, I was immediately intrigued. Apparently they are very, very rigid, stuck on protocol, don’t do much actual gardening and have lots of bureaucratic meetings. Sounds dreadful, except that they do have 4 tours/yr. of super exclusive, amazing gardens that are sometimes a plane flight away.  Now, that DOES excite me!  Helen has invited me to come speak at the November meeting about my garden club and our activities.  I’ll be proud to represent SBGC and introduce them to our website!

A few pictures of the teenage lair downstairs that Daphne and Zoe have set up and now RULE.

                         There’s plenty of room for them to leave their clothes and damp towels strewn about, but they are generally keeping it all very tidy.  Rona, our new house cleaner, tries to wash everything they leave on the floor even though I explain that it’s not necessarily “dirty”, but rather “rejected” as a possible outfit.   Ah…teenagers!

I am thrilled to have found some water lilies for the trough outside our front door though I think the mosquitoes are equally as thrilled.

Many nights this month we feel like we’re in Blue Hill since there’s a persistent buzz of pesky mosquitoes in our ear as we try to sleep.  While this has been highly annoying/perplexing since I haven’t been keeping windows/doors open, it is even more troubling to imagine how drafty our house may be once winter sets in….on verra!  The persimmon trees all around Seoul are laden with beautiful orange fruit and they are for sale on every corner.  I have been making banana persimmon muffins, persimmon cakes, persimmon spinach smoothies….and most of the fruit is still on the trees!  I think persimmon ice cream would be lovely, but unfortunately the market is dominated by vanilla and green tea (yuck!) ice cream.  We really, really, really miss Ben and Jerrys and Halo Pub flavors!! My tutor, Eunsun, did give me a green tea milk spread that is lovely on digestive crackers so who knows…maybe I’ll be a convert after 2 years.

Zoe broke her wrist at soccer!!

    

After being chosen to be part of the select developmental team representing both the American and British schools, Zoe defended her team so well that she broke her wrist in the process during a practice 10 days ago.  I got a call from the school nurse and thanks to Mr. Choi, I was able to scoot over to school fairly quickly.  We went to the nearest hospital where once again Mr. Choi proved to be invaluable in helping us navigate the ER, x-ray and examination rooms.  The hospital was very busy with lots of old, barely clothed people on gurneys in the halls, moaning in pain.  The doctors and staff attended to them right there, in plain view of everyone else and the lack of privacy compared to our U.S. hospital experiences was striking.  We couldn’t complain as Zoe was seen and treated within 2 hours and given a follow-up appointment a week later which I think is probably faster than what we would have experienced in NYC or any other large U.S. city.  The bill was also a pleasant surprise…only $400 for everything and the school called us the next day to say that whatever isn’t covered by insurance will be paid for by the school’s policy since the injury occurred on premises.  Again…not bad.  We went back this week and Zoe was VERY relieved to learn that she does not need surgery despite the growth-plate location of the fracture.  Her new cast allows for elbow movement so she can put her hair in a pony tail all by herself now.  (Daphne is thrilled!)  No more soccer for our star though.

Both Zoe and Bill have found a new orthodontist who has completely re-written their “plan” to great ($6,000!) expense.  Zoe now has a fake tooth where the one extracted just before we moved had left a giant hole. Our self-conscious 13 yr. old now smiles willingly which is worth every penny.  Just for the record, she is objecting strongly to my inclusion of this photo!

Dr. Lee will work to prepare her mouth for an implant in a few years but Zoe will hopefully be out of braces within a year.  Bill has been no less than 3x in the past two weeks and has all new hardware in his mouth.  Despite the pain and cost, he loves Dr. Lee and is confident that the “new” plan will produce results quickly.  In fact, he gives us daily updates about his teeth, how they feel, look, etc.  Daphne and I are THRILLED to be out of braces and avoiding this Korean orthodontic adventure.

A few nights ago, another neighbor (an experienced Expat who has lived all over the world, is super warm and reminds me of my college friend Andrea) invited me on an evening food tour she had arranged for a friend who was in town visiting.  Normally, I’d decline this invitation, but I decided that staying home in my PJs was NOT why I am in Seoul, Korea!  It was so much fun!! We were joined by 4 young-ish, who have consciously decided not to have kids, partying-type Australians and a 40 yr. Canadian guy here on vacation, and our group of 8 walked around the city to 4 different Korean eating establishments.  The first stop was a traditional Korean BBQ street shop with plastic stools around BBQ grills.  There we drank “Sour Follows Sweet” drinks which consist of Coca Cola, a shot of soju and a shot of Cass beer.  One is supposed to down this 6 oz drink all at once, and had I not felt “peer pressure”, I would have declined.  Instead, I chugged it like a good 52 yr. old “girl”…and actually liked it?!  It was not strong, or like a shot of tequila, and the mixture of flavors was surprisingly tasty.  The grilled pork, various spices, vegetables and kimchi were all delicious. I loved the street ambiance (too dark for i-phone photos) which was super casual and full of Korean men just finishing work and grabbing dinner with friends.  At the next 3 shops, we sampled other traditional dishes and different flavors of Soju, plum wine and Makali (sp?) which I believe is a fermented rice wine drink (and NOT tasty, in my opinion, though the Aussies loved it).

One establishment was a typical tent restaurant which dates from the post-war period when most of the country was demolished, very poor and just trying to feed its people.  The toilet paper hanging from the tent poles served as napkins and is still common today in these tent places.

I didn’t drink a lot at each stop (surprise, surprise) but just absorbed the tastes, culture and little historical tidbits our guide offered.  (Did you know that Korean cuisine was not spicy until the 1980s when the hot pepper flavors were imported from the US?  Hard to believe since it’s certainly difficult to avoid the red chili paste today.)  It was a great evening and I’m really glad I stepped out of my comfort zone to join in.  Fortunately, I did NOT smell as badly as Bill did after his soju nights out, though I was dragging a bit the next day and admittedly, my Korean language lessons the following day were more challenging than usual.

An update on our attempt to learn Korean:  the girls continue at school and are mostly learning nouns, sounds and a few phrases to use in restaurants, stores, etc.  After several frustrating private sessions with Eunsun, who in Bill’s opinion is “too young, too pretty and too book-oriented”, Bill almost abandoned the lessons entirely since he doesn’t have much time to study and sometimes has to cancel his weekly lesson which is NOT the way to learn a language.  They recently came to a new agreement, though, that seems to be working.  Bill comes up with the lesson plan (for example: terms he needs at work, in meetings, cafes or standard greetings/everyday phrases to use with co-workers) and then he and Eunsun practice mock dialogues vs. working out of the textbook and learning in a traditional manner.  We are both scrambling to learn how to use Kakao Taxi (app like Uber) that will prove invaluable once Mr. Choi leaves us.  Kakao Talk is the texting app that the entire Korean population uses here and it is fantastic!  We can text/call anywhere, anytime for free and our unlimited plan allows us to call/text outside of Korea for free as well.  It is in English and has crazy, silly emogees which have quite a following.  “Peach” is my personal favorite and from the picture, I think you can see why.

                       

My Kakao Talk ID is acstanton and my Korean phone is 82-10-7232-5112 so download the app and join in on the chatter!  Kakao is how I communicate with my friends here and Kakao Taxi is an off-shoot.  Kakao Taxi, however, is only available in Korean and is consequently much more of a challenge; in fact, Google Translate, another app I use multiple times/day, is required.  We’ve added our address as a starting/end point and can usually enter a new destination/pick-up point for our travels.  The challenge arises when the taxi driver calls and starts babbling in Korean and all we can say is “Nae, Nae” (yes, yes) since we assume he’s announcing his arrival and we should come out to meet him. However, as we’ve learned when quickly handing off our phones to a local to interpret, sometimes the cabby is just around the corner and needs further instructions which of course we can’t begin to provide.  All in all, Kakao Taxi works for us since we can literally ask ANYONE around us to help and hand them our phones. Just love how safe this country is and how genuinely helpful and considerate the Koreans are.

My efforts to learn Korean are progressing but it is getting quite difficult.  There’s now a vocab quiz each Tuesday and Thursday in my public class and I’ve yet to get 100% which is really bugging me!!  Our class has shrunk to only 8-10 students on any given day because several classmates have returned to their native countries, shipped out on military assignments or just had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts.  The young, quiet Liberian boy who I never thought would stick with the lessons is surprisingly committed and strong student, as are the 4 Indian ladies who are often dressed in saris in honor of the many Indian festivals going on. I’m quite worried about the 3 public classes I’ll be missing as I travel to the US, but my friend Christina has promised to take pictures of the blackboard and share assignments with me.   

I’ve taken a picture of one of the pages in the book I use with Eunsun who concentrates on more conversational Korean.  I hope you’re impressed!  I can read all of that pretty easily and pronounce it reasonably well, though at a snail’s pace compared to how it should be spoken.  The challenge is definitely remembering how to write all of the characters by heart.  I’ve downloaded the audio version of various lessons and try to listen to them on my phone as I walk around.  As discouraging as the lessons are most of the time, I am feeling empowered by the little Korean I now know.  Just as I “mastered” counting in 10,000s (1,239.000 Won is 123 ten thousands (or mahn) vs. 1 million, 239 thousands), Eunsun taught me that when you tell time in Korean, you use Korean numbers for the hours, but the Sino system for the minutes.  WHAT?!!!!

A few food thoughts:  micro greens are very easy to find in every market and always presented beautifully, last forever and are inexpensive.  The flowers are edible I think, though food presentation is important so they could be just decorative.

                                         

Apparently it is garlic season now since there are trucks and stalls full of bulbs but the cost is still much, much higher for unpeeled, bulb garlic than the omnipresent containers of peeled raw garlic in every supermarket.  Go figure?  I’ve found Shinsegae Department store which is Seoul’s premier department store, complete with Chanel and other haute-couture shops upstairs and a high-end specialty food market/hall in the basement.

A highlight of our shopping excursion was undoubtedly a show the panda bears put on in the arcade and we were tempted to jump in and take selfies along with all the locals.  The Shinsegae pastry counters are stunningly beautiful and they even sell Sees Candies (my favorite!) though all the prices are astronomical as you can see from the $225 fruit basket featuring less than unusual fruit.

        

I splurged and bought a pomegranate for $9 yesterday which felt very decadent, but the lentil, chili pepper, feta cheese AND POMEGRANATE salad I just made is delicious and it was worth every penny (dollar!).  McDonalds delivers and I quickly got a snap of the scooter as it whizzed by. Bill has eaten at McDonalds for lunch several times out of sheer desperation and desire for non-Korean cuisine, but I really, really doubt we will ever avail ourselves of the McD’s delivery service.

Bill and I continue to hike each weekend and last weekend stumbled upon two beautiful temples in the forest near our house.

  

One temple was an interesting tribute to military service and we were fascinated by the juxtaposition of Buddha sculptures and modern warfare symbols.  After hiking, we dusted off our shoes like these Korean women and felt like we were fitting right in!

This week, I went hiking alone since the Fall weather has been generally stunning (aside from two days last week when polluted air from China overtook Seoul provoking all sorts of broadcasts/alerts and the cancellation of Zoe’s school field day?!).  I hiked up and down a ton of stairs only to arrive at a check point surrounded by a group of Korean soldiers. Since I wasn’t carrying my passport, I was not permitted to pass through the gate which leads to trails behind the Blue House where President Park resides.  Next time I will be prepared!!

Without a doubt, we are loving the access to culture that living in a city provides.  The art along the stream in front of Bill’s building downtown has rotating exhibits and we enjoy the “art stroll” along its banks.  The dog is actually made out of LPs that have been molded into the doberman shape.

                                  

In the past two weeks, Zoe and I went to an Ansel Adams show and were reminded of the stunning beauty of our National Parks and his amazing talent which preceded all of the fancy digital cameras and computer-aided technology we now have at our figure tips.  The girls’ school produced Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” and the four of us went last weekend.  The production was solid, but the 3 hr. length and Puritan language were challenging at times. It provoked a lively discussion of McCarthyism, Mao and Hitler’s regimes, mob-mentality/peer pressure and I think Daphne and Zoe were both struck by the play’s powerful messages.  We also went to Cirque de Soleil which Zoe had never seen and just loved.  (Yikes!  How did we almost overlook that for our 4th child?!) My french friend Christina stumbled upon a modern dance performance so we joined her and her husband Guillaume on Friday night and thoroughly enjoyed a fantastic show by a Brazilian choreographer named Deborah Colker.  For the finale, the dancers performed all of their moves on a rock wall, jumping from perch to perch and amazing us with their strength and grace. On the way out, there was a vendor selling shoes on the roof of his car.  Too funny.

We are trying to keep up with the World Series as well as with the Korean baseball season which is reaching its climax at the same time.  For awhile when the Texas Rangers were “in the hunt”, it was easy to watch US baseball since the Koreans are crazy for their home-town hero “Choo” and all of his games were re-broadcast much to our delight.  Now that the Korean teams are in post-season and the Texas Rangers have fallen, our ability to follow the World Series is much more challenging and we miss it!!   Go Mets (at Citifield!). Daphne and Bill just signed up for NHL Live and are happily watching a Flyers Shoot out via VPN and a HDMI cable that connects our laptops to the TV.  A pain in the butt to set up, but well-worth it given the whoops of joy I hear as the Flyers prevail!  As I sign off, I’m packing for my trip WEST and wondering how it will feel to be in the U.S. after nearly 3 months in Seoul??!!