Chusok

Merry Chusok to all!

This weekend marks the three-day Korean holiday of Chusok. To compare the holiday in importance and festivity, this is the Korean holiday most similar to Christmas in the United States. I mean this in terms of the holiday atmosphere.

Last week we made a quick trip to E-Mart (the Korean version of WalMart) to do a little shopping. The store was filled with lovely women in beautiful traditional hanbok:Each of these lovely ladies was showcasing different gift packages to give for Chusok. Similar to the American Hickory Farms packages or other gift baskets, there were packages of instant coffee, packages of Spam with Olive Oil, fruits, mushrooms and traditional cookies.

For Chusok, families will all travel to the home of the oldest relative to celebrate. This is a holiday for honoring ancestors and spending time together as a family. The city of Seoul will be virtually deserted, as most older Koreans live in the small villages outside of the big city. Most businesses will be closed for the duration.

It is said to avoid traveling during Chusok. While it may normally take an hour to get to Seoul from Songtan, over Chusok it can take five, six or eight hours!

Update on Marlena

Yay! She's home from her overnight stay at the vet clinic. While she was good and brave, she didn't have much fun with Specialist Crawford and the other vet tech because they just wanted her to stay calm and relaxed, so no playing!!

She received her 2nd and 3rd heartworm shots, and got a packet of heartworm pills to start on. The vet said that they figured out the trick with her - the first shot she got last month, she wriggled when they injected her and it caused a subcutaneous lump of fluid to form. They figured out that if her feet aren't on the ground, she won't wiggle! So two techs held her up while a third gave her the shots this time.

When I went to pick her up, the vet said she was doing great. We decided to go ahead and give her the rabies vaccine and distemper shot today too; she's good on the rabies now for a year, but will receive a booster shot of the distemper next month. And she is to come back for follow-up on the heartworm in four months. Also, next month she will get her Bordatella vaccine (to be done every six months) which is a preventative against kennel cough. This is given in anticipation of her having to stay at a boarding kennel or her playing with large groups of dogs.

She's such a good girl! and she was so delighted to see me come pick her up. While she was gone, I washed her sheepskin bed thing and her two towels in her crate, and bought her a nubby squeaky donut toy and a pink rhinestone heart charm to hang on her collar. So now she is sporting some serious bling - her pearl necklace, her heart charm, her microchip ID tag and her rabies tag. Such a spoiled little princess!

This and That

Things have been hectic so let me try to fill you in a bit!

• Household Goods (HHG) arrived - all of our stuff! It's been quite the orchestration trying to organize and coordinate fitting everything in and finding places for all of it. Like putting 10 lbs of flour in a 5 lb sack!
• Marlena - doing well. Took her in to the vet today but they had a scheduling conflict. The vet needed to attend a conference. So she did not get her last shots for the heartworm today, but she did get her microchip! Poor girl, that really hurt when they did it. But she was brave and well behaved. Tomorrow morning we will drop her off at 8 AM for her heartworm shots and she will be having a sleep-over at the vets. When they do the final shots, she has to be on 24 hour watch so two of the vet techs will be switching on and off overnight to monitor her, and the vet will then be available to be on call should anything happen.
• Car - we have our car (not sure if I confirmed that earlier). I don't have my license yet, though, but I plan to remedy that in the next week or so. Until then, Snuffles is my chauffeur and he has been quite patient and accommodating about that.
• Fabric - OMG!! Mr. Kahn's Happy Quilter Warehouse - it is NOT just a myth, it is real!! About five minutes from my house by car. A literal warehouse brimming with bolts and bolts and BOLTS of fabric. Not flat bolts either - the real McCoy, the ones off the loom!! Big huge round bolts of fabric. And the price? $5.00 for TWO yards!!! It's all the good stuff too! I spent 85,000 won (roughly $85 American).For $85, I got 36 yards of fabric. That's $2 a yard!! Remember, I said it was $5 for two yards; well, for every 10 2-yard packs you buy, you get one free!!Brand names? I have Lakehouse Dry Goods, Clothworks, MBT, Alexander Henry, Maywood Studio, Wilmington Prints, Blank Textiles, Andover, Moda, Benartex, and Makower UK!!!
• I have to add, my wonderful fabulous husband took me down to a furniture store last week and had me pick out a glass door cabinet to hold all my fabric! Absolutely lovely!
• Our other big purchase recently was our hand-made, double-knotted 6' x 6' rug made in Pakistan! OMG so gorgeous! The one rug shop was going out of business and the rug was originally priced at $2000 and I talked him down to $600!

Some detail of the rug:


I'm still chugging away at language class and Snuffles is still working hard.

I am a SPECIAL kind of stupid!

or "How I Know that I am Really At Home Now"

My family will appreciate this second title. I am definitely home here in Korea now because I had my first trip to the Emergency Room today!!

Being the good little housewife I am, I have been working on unpacking boxes and trying to get everything in order (another blog to come about the moving in of the House Hold Goods) and I even managed to do some dishes.
Now, as you can see from the drawing above, I have the dish drainer facing the wrong way, because the silverware holder is on the outside edge of the counter. And it tilts. And I washed a VERY sharp knife and set it in there to dry.

I went about puttering around, putting things away in the kitchen and turned to walk to the other counter when I . . . (and here is where the special stupid comes in) . . . walked INTO the VERY sharp knife! Yes, I impaled myself on the *&#%@* knife!!

Bear in mind, this isn't the first time I've done such a thing either!! Several years ago I had a paring knife in the dish drainer and brought the side of my wrist down right on top of it!!

I'm hot and sweaty and grungy from doing the boxes, and I am dressed but no bra. I immediately ran my arm under the tap water (let's hope it was pure enough!) and grabbed a paper towel and applied pressure. Then I went to the medicine cabinet to grab an ace bandage and I wrapped it around my arm to hold the paper towel in place, so I could put on a bra!! Didn't want to scare the natives and the hospital staff.

I shut off the hot water, latched Marlena into her crate and grabbed my purse and out the door. I got to the street corner and fished out my phone so I could call for a base taxi to pick me up, when my neighbor (whom I had just met this same morning) called hello to me and asked what I was up to. I said I was on my way to the ER (explained the whole special stupid to her) and was calling a taxi. She told me that her husband was just heading out the door to work on base (he is a contractor) and that he would take me. What a wonderful neighbor!!!

The physician at the ER determined that I did not need stitches, so the assistant put a couple steri-strips on and sent me up to immunizations to get a long overdue tetnus shot. I have to say, I think the assistant was fairly new to the whole job because she put the steri strips on as if they were bandaids, instead of using them to pull the wound together and hold it tightly. I think I'll live though LOL!!

The cut is about a half an inch long and looks like I gouged out my skin. When I got home, I examined the knife to determine how far in it had gone and from what I can tell, I impaled a good full inch of knife into my tender flesh. I have no tingling or loss of feeling or sensation though, so I'm sure that it will be fine.

I wanted to have it checked out though because the last time I self-impaled, I didn't have it checked and it probably needed a stitch that time. Plus, I haven't had a tetnus shot in about 15 years so all in all, it was a wise move to go visit my ER.

Now I am off to turn the dish drainer around!! No more self-inflicted physical idiocy if I can help it!!

I can't wait to tell Snuffles about my adventure today, and to warn him that he may be questioned. I realized that as I said that I walked into a knife, that it sounded like the lamest I fell down the stairs / tripped and hit the door knob with my eye excuse ever!! Hopefully they understood that it was what happened and there is no question about spousal abuse, but who knows? He has an alibi, I promise he didn't do it!!!

A Miracle?!

Woo hoo! This is the second day in a row that we have not had to turn on the air conditioner in the living room!! A sign of good weather to come! It's been fairly warm, but the humidity is notably lower. Autumn will actually arrive, I do believe! I was starting to think it was just a myth.

Tomorrow I go "back to school". I start my Korean language lessons! Tuesdays and Thursdays in August, for an hour each day. I hope that I can learn at least a little - it would make it easier to get around. I am so excited; I went to the BX and bought a spiral bound notebook and a pack of mechanical pencils. Yay me!

We put down a deposit on our "new" car today. The dealer has promised to replace the frayed fan belt and get the radio working again, as well as doing any necessary repairs if needed after inspection on base. Now I just need to get my driver's license and be brave and venture out on the roads. I feel confident though. Korean drivers pretty much drive the way I do!! Be afraid!

Working Hard!

It's a nice day today! Sunny, temp not too hot, and very little humidity. Even a nice light breeze.

So in anticipation of our stuff arriving from the States, Snuffles and I worked on getting the shed ready for storage items. What a lot of work!!

First we had to haul out the Korean cabinet we had salvaged. That wasn't too bad since we had put it in there only a couple of weeks ago.

The big hurdle was the "built-in" shelf of miscellaneous bits of wood. That took a good hour to dismantle. Lots of big nails, nasty cobwebs, rough wood. No way to just pull it out because it was built to fit and nailed into the cement walls to boot! We sweated and grunted and sweated and grunted and finally SUCCESS!! There is no chance of putting it back together but that's alright. We'll get some good sturdy metal or plastic shelves to put in there instead.

Then we swept the piles of dirt that had accumulated over goodness knows how many years, and swept down the walls covered in cobwebs. Not cute dainty "Irish Lace" cobwebs but dark, thick, dirty, greasy nasty cobwebs. *shudder*

Next we got out the hose and sprayed everything down with the strongest stream possible. Dumped some Pine-Sol on the floor and scrubbed. And scrubbed. And scrubbed. Then we did several rinses with more water. Each batch of water also required us to push it out the door with the big push broom since there is no drain in the floor.

Now we are letting the room dry completely and towards the end of this week we will paint the interior. Ceiling, walls and floor! Then we will have a nice clean shed to use for storage. There just isn't enough room in the house to accommodate some things, like tubs of seasonal clothing and holiday decorations.

You know, we should have called Mike Rowe! This was definitely a Dirty Job!

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