Engrish Around Daegu

I'm going to keep this one short. We went out and did a little shopping today, and I saw enough Engrish that I thought I could add a few examples to the blog.

Outside of Donga Mart there is the Forever 21 for nerds...

 Just a few shops down, there was a place that had a big sign reading, "Let's Go Art!" It looked like an art supply shop, but David and I couldn't decide what the sign meant - David's take was, "Come on, Arthur. Time for your drawing lesson." I think they were using art as a verb, like "Come on, let's all art!" Or maybe they just left out a comma...

Anyway, I also found this wonderful bag. I had to get two shots.

"We are bang bang bad guytrio." Indeed you are. Of course I had to go in for a closer look:

David tells me that his hungry does come on like a tsunami sometimes. I should have bought this bag for him.

And on the way home we bought pastries here:

Korea, seriously, I love you. Don't ever change.

Post-Christmas Blog

It's been a good couple of weeks. A few nights ago I was reflecting with David on the past few months, and it occurred to me that I am more happy than I have been in a very long time. Of course, the next day we got confirmation that David has to leave for a six-week school in the middle of January, but in the meantime I am finding I'm doing okay at staying in the present and being conscious of all the blessings I have. Life is really, really good.

Korea continues to amaze and amuse me. They just had their presidential election last week, and I LOVE how South Korea handles elections! Candidates can campaign for the 30 days before the election, and during that time you'll see polititians' names everywhere. Billboards, posters, buses, and I even got TONS of texts from all of the candidates. They were all in  hangul, but I have a handy little translation app so I could figure out what they were saying. Oh, and trucks with dancers on the roads! The week of the election there were trucks driving around with people dancing on them and music blaring with their candidate's name on a sign. Anyway, Park Geun-Hye won this election, and she can stay in office for 6 years and that's it. There is no chance for a second term. I think that is brilliant.

Remember how I've mentioned that Koreans seem to like my kids? I've had friends on Facebook say the same thing happened to them when they were living here, and it doesn't seem to be limited to just fair-skinned light-haired kids. I have to assume it's just foreign kids? Anyway, things haven't changed in that area. We always get people talking to the kids, and wanting to sit near them on the subway, and whenever they use their few words of Korean (they have around 5 I think) people just freak the heck out. I didn't get to witness the latest episode of Korean Talbot-Kid Madness because I was home with a sick Lillie, but David called to tell me about it. He and the kids were on the subway with our friends Nick and Lauren, and there was an ajeossi (older man) who was clearly enthralled with Reagan. He was smiling and waving and talking to her, but she wasn't really responding, which is weird for her. Normally she's practically in performance mode. Anyway, this guy sat down across from Reagan and Nick, started talking to another man, and eventually leaned across the aisle and tried to give Ray some money! We have no idea why. David's theory is that since she was only wearing one mitten, he was offering cash so she could buy another one. :)

That leads me to another thought - adjimas (older women) have no problem yelling at me. I've been yelled at for Reagan not wearing long enough pants, for her not wearing her mittens, and an adjima actually physically took Reagan's thumb out of her mouth once. I don't let it upset me because I know this is their culture, but man it's weird! It occurs to me that Reagan gets a lot of notice - it's just because she's the one that is with me most of the time. The other two are in school so Ray will go wandering around town with me, which means she is the one that gets all the love/reprimands from the adjimas and ajeossis.

On to picture time! First off, here's one for you Sheyann. This is a typical table at a Korean restaurant. This is in front of a shop down the road from us. You sit around it, the waiters bring you food and barbecue it for you on your table, and there's usually a little button on your table so you can call them back if you need them. Otherwise the staff pretty much leaves you alone. It's nice.

Lillie and Reagan have both been coughing a lot lately, so we have done the Korean thing and bought them masks. These are disposable, and have pictures of "Dibo, the gift-giving dragon" on them.

It snowed a TON this weekend, and we noticed dozens of snowmen around town. They weren't made by only kids, either! David and I saw this one being built by a guy in his early 20s outside the subway station near our apartment. I love the face!

And finally, here is a picture of our Christmas tree. We didn't pack our fake tree, and we didn't want to spend a lot of money on something we wouldn't be bringing back to the states in a couple of years, so we found a pretty inexpensive vinyl stick-on tree. :) All the ornaments and candy canes are removable, and so is the star (perched all gravity-defyingly atop the tree by David), and the kids loved "putting up the tree" this year.

Hope you all had a great Christmas, and were able to give everything you wanted to!

Subway Dance Practice!

Every Sunday we look forward to the trip home from church, because we get to witness Sunday Afternoon Subway Dance Practice.

 

I can never tell what the music is, but they do this every Sunday.

I think that in their minds they are Girls' Generation.

Exercise Equipment, or Torture Device?

I have been trying to come up with interesting topics for this blog, and I think I have a couple, but until I really get those pulled together you can enjoy more pictures of random weird stuff. I know! A total departure from my norm here, right?

We took the subway to Home Plus today, and as soon as we got out of the station this is what greeted us.

They're hula hoops, but there are bumps all around the inside. David thinks they are some sort of exercise thing. Frankly, I think that exercise is cruel enough without needing to turn childhood toys into torture devices.

Inside Home Plus we looked around for mittens and stuff, and perused the toy department as well. That's where we found these bizarre entities.

The top ones reminded us of Catbus from "My Neighbor Totoro", although these are somehow a little creepier (if that's possible). The bottome one isn't that awful, till you realize it's a ram. There is just something very off-putting about a fluffy pink ram.

On the way home we passed a car that had the Korean version of a "Baby On Board" sticker.

 

Like so many things here, the English is technically correct, but somehow seems a little off...

 

Tune in later for a video of "Subway Dance Practice!"

First Snow

It's been getting chilly here, and today we had our first real snow.

The kids have been going nuts with it. Yesterday it was so cold that the roads had frozen in parts of Daegu and the nearby city Waegwan, so they cancelled school even though it was still very clear where we were. Today they had to get up and go, though.

 

After school we went downtown for a bit, and as we were leaving the post I thought I'd take a picture of the World Meridian apartment building, where we lived when we first got here. We were on the 6th floor of this building.

 

 

And here's a shot of the view out of our bedroom window here on Camp George, taken the day we moved in. It's a pretty little pagoda where you can have barbecues and stuff.

 

 

And I will leave you tonight with a picture of me posing "Korean style" with my brand new ridiculously large earmuffs.  

 

 

Try Not To Get Motion Sick...

I wanted to give you guys an idea of what the streets look like here. I'm so grateful  my meds have kept me seizure-free for two years - otherwise, I'd never make it in Daegu!

Big Bang on Soda Cans!

I was going to take the kids to Home Plus this afternoon, but they ended up being super wiggly and whiny so midway through the trip I gave up. I did get some decent photos, though. Here is one I got in the subway. It is a somewhat disturbing vending machine that seems to dispense gas masks.

On the way home we found a new little market close to post called Shin Woo Mart and got more Sunny 10! You may recall I bought a can of this a few weeks ago because it featured a member of Big Bang, my favorite K-Pop group. Well today we found two more of the five members on cans of Sunny 10! Here are T.O.P. (orange can) and G Dragon (yellow can). Also I bought a Crunky bar. These are sort of like Nestle Crunch, but way better.

 

 

This weekend David's friend Julian and his Korean girlfriend Yun took our family out to dinner at a very nice Korean restaurant. I wish I had remembered to get pictures, because it was such a cool place. Each table was contained in its own room, and you left your shoes outside under a little ledge. The room had a low table surrounded by pillows to sit on. The servers brought TONS of food, and the kids were actually pretty good about trying a lot of it. There was a lot of seafood, and some pork, and some stuff that even Yun didn't recognize. For dessert there were pear slices and little cups of the sweetest apple juice I've ever had. It was delicious.

 

We've been to a few different Korean restaurants now, but the kids really like this place:

 

 

Italy & Italy has really yummy pasta and pizzas, and you order in a pretty cool way. Each table has a little pad of paper with a check list. You can choose what kind of pasta you want, what kind of sauce, what sort of garnish, or you can even just mark "whatever" and let the chef surprise you. And the pizzas come in different shapes - circle, heart, or hexagon.

Now that the kids have been exposed to a few different kinds of food, maybe we can move on to Indian. There are a couple of places I would really like to try!

Mickey D's

Tonight we went to Home Plus, which is sort of like Target, and bought a few things like this amazing water bottle. It's the only way I can feel amazing freshness!

We also went to McDonald's for dinner. I love going to McDonald's here. We don't go often, because it seems kind of silly to call a cab to take you for fast food, but since we were already out we figured we'd stop and get a burger. It's so posh-looking, huh?

 

They also have a really interesting system for throwing away your trash. You don't just go dump it all in one big bin. 

 

Lunch gets way more exciting when you're wondering if the Koreans are secretly judging you for throwing your left-overs away in the wrong order or something! Also, McDonald's here delivers. On motorscooters.

 

Sadly they don't come on post. :( Actually, that's a good thing.

 

And today's last two pictures are of drinks that we enjoy here. Pocari Sweat, which is Reagan's new favorite, is sort of like Gatorade:

 

 

And Sunny 10, which is a really yummy grape soda. I had to get this specific one because it features the face of Taeyang, a singer in my favorite K-Pop group Big Bang. :)

 

The hangul on the can says Sunny Ten. Go me! I'm slowly learning!

 

 

Subway Tour of Daegu

The family on the subway.

What the heck is with David's face here?

Aiden was actually watching Dr. Who on that woman's phone.

 

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Yep, pig's head. According to our adorable interpreter Shawn, since this pig is smiling it is lucky and therefore more expensive.

They seem to just add random English words in the weirdest places. This was on all the kids' forks at the restaurant downtown today

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This was our treat at the end of the day. We stopped at Olive Mart and got pineapple Fanta and weird flavors of Cheetos, plus these amazing ice cream sandwiches that are shaped like fish. They have red bean paste in them, which sounds gross, but is so very very not.

 

And now that our household goods are here, off to unpack!

 

Ah, the weirdness.

So today I just wanted to show you our shower. We have two bathrooms in our apartment; the first one is a full bath with a normal tub and shower, and the second is our master bath. It does NOT have a normal tub and shower. The shower head is attached to the sink. This has taken some adjustment, but really it's not too bad. You just have to make sure you stand right next to the sink, and aim the shower head directly at your face, and don't move, and ... well, it's a process.

Woobang Land!

Today we went to Woobang Land with David's friend Jeremiah. Woobang Land, also known as E-World, is a small amusement park built around Woobang Tower. It's got a few roller coasters, a log flume, some kiddie rides, one of the smallest and saddest zoos I've ever seen, and it is full of Korean people who want to take my children home with them. Seriously. This is what happened before we even got up to the gate to buy our tickets.

A whole flood of Korean students ran up and wanted to hold both of the girls, and then they all wanted to have their pictures taken with our kids, and they kept exclaiming over them all, and as soon as Reagan said "annyeonghaseyo" (hello) they just about went crazy. And it was like that the whole time we were there! People would randomly walk up to the kids and stroke their cheeks, or take the girls by the hand and smile at them. A group of guys came up to Aiden and talked about his blue eyes, and then grinned and started to do the "Gangnam Style" dance, and when Aiden smiled and joined in they just fell over laughing. At one point Aiden said, "I think we're famous in Korea, guys."

Fame aside, the kids had a great time at the park. Lillie went nuts for the log flume, although Aiden (shocker!) wasn't such a fan. David and Jeremiah went on the bumper cars, which are much faster than the ones in the states. Seriously, I'd never let the kids on one of those things! Jeremiah was singling out the weaker drivers in the herd and ramming them as hard as he could while the kids and I laughed hysterically.

I don't have a good camera yet, but thank goodness Jeremiah brought his and got some decent shots, so here are the best from our day at Woobang Land.

Ha! So I AM going to blog!

We have been in Daegu for 18 full days now, and I've got to say I really like it here. We are living in David's apartment but will be moving on post on Tuesday (I'll post pics when we're settled in there) so -yippee!- we get to move again.

As it turns out, Daegu is quite huge. It is the fourth largest city in South Korea with over 2.5 million people, which means I am living in a city that is roughly the size of two Montanas. I can handle it just fine as long as I am walking around in the city, but when we were standing at the top of Woobang Tower looking out over Daegu today it was a bit overwhelming.

We do walk quite a bit here, since almost everything we need is really close. There are three army posts here in Daegu - Camps Walker, Henry (David's office), and George (housing and school) - and we can walk really easily to both Henry and George. There's a little shop down the street called Olive Mart where we can get fruit and veggies as well as Korean candy and stuff, and for anything more than that we just take a cab. There's also a really good subway system, but we haven't used that as much because it runs through downtown mostly, and we don't spend a lot of time there.

The kids have handled the transition really, really well. They're amazingly adaptive. They have all learned how to say thank you in Korean, so every time we climb out of a taxi the kids wave to the driver and say, "Kamsamnida!" and the drivers always laugh really hard. The language barrier has been the only downside so far, but we're working on that. The kids all believe they can speak Korean since they've been listening to K-pop music since before we left Washington.

The pictures today are the view from the top of Woobang Tower, and a few from Reagan's birthday lunch at Hello Kitty Cafe.