About a Great Lunch and Finding A Car

Snuffles got back from Japan late last night and it's good to have him home!

Today we went out for a short walk down the street to Sunny's Auto Sales and found a nice car! A 1996 Hyundai Avante Touring, which is basically a compact station wagon. Low mileage, good price. We'll go back on Monday to make the purchase and by Tuesday it will be ours! Keep your fingers crossed.

This is what the car looks like, but the one we will be buying is white. I think that's a better color choice during the hot summer months!


Then we decided to go for some lunch. Chang Pwuck, a Thai restaurant, recently moved and relocated inside the Young Chon Hotel so we stopped in to try it out. Fabulous! Since it is Saturday, they had a buffet with so many yummy choices and everything was delicious. 30,000 won for the two of us (roughly $30 USD).

Here is a website with a review: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=140&article=41578&archive=true

Neglectful, I know

I just keep waiting for something exciting and big to happen worth blogging about but then I remember that I am so fascinating that even the most mundane details of my life will thrill you all LOL!!

Snuffles has been gone to Japan all week so Marlena and I have been holding down the fort here at home.

She started coughing this week, which is bad. It means that the worms are getting into her lungs. So she is on complete bedrest. No walks PERIOD. Poor girl. She thinks she's being punished, I'm sure. We went to see the new doctor today and she prescribed some steroids for Marlena to help with the respiratory issues. She also gave me the okay to give Marlena some baby benadryl to help keep her calm. Miss D is so darn peppy!! She wants to run and jump and walk for hours but we just can't let her right now. We shall see if Benadyrl makes her sleepy or if it peps her up.

I also talked with the lady that coordinates the animals for adoption on base, about the cats in the attic. She has some humane traps for me and she and I will be working together to get the cats rescued and out of the attic.

Snuffles and I saw The Dark Knight at the base theater on Sunday before he left. GOOD MOVIE. I went last night and watched Get Smart and that was a fun movie!!

Did you know, on a military base, before the movie starts they play the national anthem? And here at Osan, they play the Korean national anthem as well! Everyone stands and is very respectful. The prices are quite good too. Maximum $4.50 for a ticket (depending on the show, and it's projected popularity, prices vary), and a refillable drink and a medium sized popcorn can be had for $6.25.

I signed up for my Korean language classes! Yay!! When I went to the community center to pay for the classes ($50 for one month, 8 classes), the guy at the desk - an AMERICAN AIRMAN - asked if I was signing up for the ESL class!?!?! LOL! At any rate, every Tuesday and Thursday in August I will spend an hour a day learning to speak Korean. Wish me luck!!

Poor Marlena!

Oh my sweet baby!!

She went to the doctor today to start the heart worm treatment. They did the chest x-ray first and she behaved very well, of course.

Then they shooed me away for a few hours and administered the first of three heart worm shots. From 10:00 AM - 1:30 PM, they kept her for observation.

Apparently she wiggled when they injected her so she is very swollen at the injection site. They said she behaved very well and didn't make a sound but omg . . . when I picked her up she wouldn't even make eye contact with me and she was drooling (vet said it was from stress).

She is so miserable and sore and I feel horrible Frown

They told me to keep an eye on her - watch for coughing, seizures, extreme swelling of the injection site, vomiting. If she is still very sore after a week, call them. She'll go back in a month for the final two shots.

In the meantime she is not to get excited at all. Apparently once the heart worm poison begins to work, as the adult heart worms die off, they can dislodge from the heart and get into the lungs and that can kill her.

She's to be kept calm and confined and only short necessary (bathroom) walks, for a whole month. I'm so glad we have her stroller!

I just feel so bad that my baby girl is unhappy and in pain and there isn't much I can do about it.

Some Photos

Just a few things I've photographed lately.

Who wants to go out and play?!?!


The chest that me and Snuffles found in the trash pile!


Close up of some of the art on the doors:


Marlena's Styling Ride:

Daily Life

So, you wonder, what IS it like to live in Korea? What kind of things do you do daily that are different from living in the States?

Glad you asked!!

Let's start with trash. No Hefty or Glad bags here in Songtan. There are two types of trash bags to purchase: the large white ones and the small red ones. The large white ones are sorted and used for regular trash, aluminum, tin, glass and plastic. Don't mix them! Songtan recycles!

The small red bags are for food waste. All food waste. No dumping that last piece of pizza into the white trash bag - it all goes into the small red bags.

Trash pick up is easy. There is none! Well, at least not door to door. There are areas in each dong (remember that word? Yes, it means neighborhood! Good memory!) where you take the trash bags. Sunday through Friday nights, between 9:00 PM and 4:00 AM. The local trash spot for us is just around the corner so it is very convenient. And it is far enough not to be a problem of trash or smell just outside of our own house!

To further cut down on bugs and critters in the house, I wash out all the containers before they go into the white bags and I store the red bags in the refrigerator until they are taken outside.

So that is how we deal with garbage here in Songtan, Pyeongtaek, South Korea!!

More tomorrow on plumbing!

Just for Bella

Having been chastised thoroughly for not blogging often enough by Bella, I decided to pop in today!


Rainy day here in Korea which is nice for Snuffles and I but not so nice for Marlena. She absolutely despises, loathes and abhors rain. Getting her to go potty is frustrating on a day like today.

We had big plans to clean out the shed so we can paint it but the rain makes it difficult as we have to move the chest and some shelving out of there first, and we don't want them to get all wet.

Also thanks to the rain, the kitties in the attic are having a fun romping indoor day today. Sounds like a party up there!!

I've been neglectful in posting

Mea culpa!!

I've been keeping busy and really not a whole lot of interesting things going on. Well at least not to me.

First of all, Marlena. Such a sweet sweet girl!! I got her into the vet's on base last Friday and found out that she is "very positive" for heart worm. Problem is right now the current vet is outprocessing and they are awaiting the new vet's arrival. We were told to keep her quiet and calm and no more walks until she is all better.

Poor girl! She loves her walks. She absolutely adores going down town, tail wagging the whole time.

The good news is that yesterday the vet assistant called me and we are all set up to take her in on Monday for a chest xray and to begin the treatment. We want her to have the xray first to determine the severity of damage. We are willing to do whatever it takes to make her well but if her disease is too far advanced and the treatments will do no good, we don't want to put her through the whole ordeal.

And how loved is this little girl? OMG spoiled ROTTEN!! I went out for about three hours yesterday walking all over Songtan looking for a particular pet store to buy her a . . . stroller. Yes, you read that right!! I paid 80,000 won (about $80) for a doggie stroller so that we can take Marlena out for "walks". And I got her a pearl necklace too (fake pearls; she looks so elegant in them!). She seems to like the stroller - when we return home from an outing she will continue to sit in it for a while. I think she knows that it shows how much we love her.

Other than that, I spent all day Monday waiting for the air conditioner repair guys to come. The a/c unit in our bedroom is supposed to drain outside but instead drains inside. On the nightstand. They finally came late in the afternoon and got it all fixed so that it now works correctly. So nice to go to sleep without hearing drip! drip! drip! right beside our heads.

I met up with an online friend, Katy, that lives just a couple blocks away from me. Very nice girl and she has two of the cutest kittens in the world!

We went dumpster diving last night. Someone discarded a bunch of furniture so we went and snagged a gorgeous (albeit damaged) chest. We are going to use it for storage in the shed but OMG, the incredible beauty of the piece! Each door shows a different scene of outdoor Korea with inlaid wood and I believe ivory!! Not to mention a fabulous border all around the top and around each door made of inlaid mother of pearl. Ultimately, when we no longer need the chest for storage, I will remove the doors and keep them as art. Or sell them for big money on E-bay!! I need to figure out how to determine if it IS ivory on the doors.

It's still fairly warm here and quite humid. Although I am accustomed to being drenched in sweat all the time, I still find it quite annoying. Today, however, is pretty nice. It's been raining all afternoon so the temperature has dropped to about 80 degrees.

We've been making good use of the new gas grill we bought. It sure beats heating up the kitchen.

I'm starting to get antsy for my sewing machine and fabric. I can't imagine how we'll fit everything in here when the rest of our stuff comes but I will be glad to have my "toys" back in my possession.