Pepper Season!

A typical site while walking around Bundang:

Peppers are growing in EVERY garden and in any space possible. Culinary HEAT is a very big part of the Korean experience. They love their chili peppers and it is evident everywhere. Right now it is typical to walk by large mats full of peppers drying in the sun. Any flat, dry surface is used.

Half of this side road was taken up by the drying of peppers! I spotted peppers drying on top of stone walls, behind apartment buildings, in the parking lots of businesses, and of course the street.


Walking past these pepper displays on an 80-90 degree day you can smell the heat coming out of them! When I walked past the greenhouse pictured below my throat actually burned a bit.


According to our friends who have been here a while the pepper season lasts a couple of months. Right now the farmers in our dong have recently harvested their tomatoes and are starting another crop. I can't tell what it is yet, but I will keep you posted.

A Hike Above Our Dong

So I mentioned before that we are surrounded by lush, green hills. Well we finally took a Saturday to explore the hills. Hiking is a national past time here in Korea and they have what sounds like a substantial system of trails throughout the country. Hiking is king, but mountain biking has taken off recently and the two groups of recreationists are quite friendly to each other.

A view from the water tower back toward the start of the hike.

We gathered up our friends Hannah, Luke, and Walker and set off to the hills. Just a block or so from our doorstep there's a fairly steep, paved road leading up to a water tower, marking the junction of a couple trails. Turn right and head through the woods to our school, hang a left and off to the peaks surrounding our dong.

Simple exercise equipment is is all the parks here, and apparently scattered on the hiking trails as well!

I wish you could hear the sound of the woods here (the video clip I took vanished some how). The trees here are alive with cicadas and who knows how many other insects. It seems most of the sound buzzing in the trees is insects. We hardly see or hear birds.

At times the trail was pretty steep! Notice the rope the kids are using to help them climb to the top!

It was probably in the high 80s during the hike and humid too. Which is pretty much every day. Although, in the past week there have been a couple nights cool enough for us to turn the AC off and open the windows. Fall is creeping in and we are excited for what people say is the best season here in Korea.

Haven was giddy with laughter on the way up this stretch. I kept wondering if her laugh was eventually going to end up as tears. But she did it with a smile the entire time.








Reaching the peak was such a reward! Although out of water, dripping with sweat, and having no idea when the hike would end, we were all stunned by our views.

This photo does such a great job showing the juxtaposition of our dong (foreground) compared to the high rises in the background!

The Little Things

The funny thing about when you move into an empty apartment with way too many clothes and no furniture is that you literally have no furniture.  Doing laundry almost daily means those three pair of underwear always end up at the top of your pile so you cycle through them constantly.  Blue, black, tan, blue, tan, black, blue, black...

We found a furniture store near our apartment with four large tents out in front of their shop.  It looked like they were doing some inventory reduction.  The prices told a different story.  We bought a rug to cover our marble flooring.  It was a sea of marble, which is beautiful, but monotonous.

After some thought we decided to go for it.  Well, it paid off!  We may have overpaid, but you will overpay for almost everything here in Korea.  I paid 300,000 Korean Won and the owner asked for our address so it can be delivered.  (Almost everything can be delivered here in Korea.  Check out our friends' blog post to prove it.  You can even see us in some of the pictures.)  I told the owner that I would just carry it home as our apartment is just around the corner.  She said, "Really? It's heavy." in Korean and I just flexed my muscles.  She must have known better because she helped me carry it to her car so we could put it in the trunk.

We ended up also "buying" a bowl which turned out to be free.  Directly related to how much we paid for the rug I would guess.

Erin also found two pieces of framed art to hang on our wall by the street as were leaving and noticed some couch cushions there too.  We snuck back under cover of darkness to get those.  Probably eight cushions in all that we don't really know what to do with yet.  They have cleaned up nicely though.

Across the busy street (Hwy 23), which we liken to Aurora only quieter and less seedy, we found a greenhouse/nursery where we bought some plants.  Five plants in all and the owner there threw in a few floating water plants which we put in our new bowl.  Someday we will move them to their permanent home when we find a more appropriate one.

We are slowly getting our new home into shape.  It's a process to get things the way you like it, but everything we do outside of our apartment is a learning opportunity and the slope is steep.  Where are we on that learning curve?  I'm sure it's somewhere near the origin still.

Have we hung the art?  No.  We are still trying to figure out how to do that.

First Day of School

 School Started August 12!

Finlay was a bit apprehensive about being the new kid.
Haven, on the other hand, was a ball of excitement!

Hannah, Luke, and Walker are our new friends who live just down the street.

Each day the whole Gugnae Crew is picked up at 7:20, just down the street, by a KIS bus.

 The students line up by class each morning out on the KIS soccer field. Take a look at the view! Keep in mind it is about 90 degrees and probably 85-100% humidity. It is stifling! Once I greet my class we take the long journey up 6 floors of stairs to get to the classroom. By the end of the year I will have great legs!

Our beautiful babies are ready for first and fourth grade. Haven's teacher is from New Zealand via London and they have 11 students in their class. Finlay's teacher is from Canada but has been in Korea for several years. They have 16 students in the class. Fifth grade has the largest class size. I have 18 awesome kiddos to hang out with each school day!

Korea vs. Peru

Korea may have tied Peru 0 to 0. But WE were Victorious! 

We made it to the stadium and back home without having to take a taxi. We mastered the bus. Truth be told. Our success was highly dependent on the fabulously friendly Korean people. We have had nothing but wonderful interactions with both English-speaking and non English-speaking Koreans ready to help however they can.

It was about 90 degrees and 50% humidity with NO breeze at all.

Almost a goal here off a corner kick. S. Korea in red

 We decided to go home at half time. The kids were doing their best to hang in there but it was very difficult. Luckily we stayed for the half time show. Live K-Pop performance by a boy band!

Barely keeping my eyes open on the way home in the bus.

Our Dong - Part II

Our Dong Deserves Another Post!

So, we ended up being placed in a neighborhood we never thought we would live in. Typically the families with kids our kids age live in a giant apartment complex called Good Morning Hill. This is a complex of more than ten very tall (25 stories) buildings circled around playgrounds and open space. Surrounding the complex are shops, restaurants, and other complexes.

Good Morning Hill

We ended up in Gungnae-dong, a fairly rural little community about 1/2 mile long and 1/4 mile wide.

At first we were a bit taken aback by our placement. The kids are fairly removed from others their age, with no spontaneous meetings at the playground. On the other hand, we have some anonymity, live in a 4 story building, have beautiful hills surrounding us, and are a close walk to school. All the hustle and bustle is a short bus ride away. It seems the possible downfalls of our dong are the benefits of Good Morning Hill and vice versa! We have come to really like our dong and the other families here.

Our new home. Our apartment is in the two windows on the left above the street level.

Friday is casual day. This was taken this morning on the way to catch the bus.

 We have a little playground just down the street which includes exercise machines for the adults (very common along bike paths and in parks).

Here is our local dry cleaner. Just around the corner.

Typical shot of our dong. We have little "farms" scattered throughout the apartments. Our friends live in the apartment behind the garden on the far left of the shot. We are just down the block. Notice the skyscrapers in the near distance. They are just across the highway. It is a whole other world over there.

One cool thing about our dong is that the kids can just go out and walk through the neighborhood with their friends, pop down to the local market (oops, forgot a picture), or walk to the park. It is SO safe!!! Stay tuned for more about our dong.

Laundry in Korea

Laundry Day is Every Day!

At least I was prepared before we boarded the plane. Dryers are a rarity in South Korea. They exist, but apparently even when people have them they are rarely used. Thus...

Gone are the days of ten loads of laundry back to back. Now I have to keep up with the dirty clothes as they reach the hamper. Otherwise there is no place to hang them. The racks usually travel between our kitchen (pictured) and the living room.

Using the washing machine took a bit longer to figure out. The first few loads of laundry I just hit some buttons and hoped for the best. Eventually Erickson, from Faculty Support at KIS, translated our washer. It felt like Christmas morning for two reasons. First, I finally knew what I was pressing. But more exciting, I found out the washer was a dryer as well!!!!!!! The verdict is still out on how well it works, but the potential is there.

Every load is an adventure. Next I hope to figure out how much detergent to use!

BIG in Korea

We finally had an opportunity to be tourists for a few hours. Setting aside our role as new expats we gladly took a break to do some sight seeing. KIS has been a gracious employer so far, providing three meals a day to the entire family during orientation, repairing our leaky toilet pronto, translating our on-demand hot water heater so we could stop taking cold showers (although they felt great in this hot and humid climate), and bringing us to Seoul for a quick tour.

First on the stop was Itaewon, a district of Seoul, know to be very international. We saw "Western" faces all over the streets while walking around. A rare site where we live! It was a relief to see English on the menus and not have to mime our order. We spent most of our time in Itaewon inside restaurants to hide from the suffocating heat. Man were we sweaty!

Fries and Lagunitas IPA @ Irish Pub in S. Korea! Who knew?

Cool Indian restaurant surrounded by trees. Great mango and kiwi lassi!

Itaewon, because of its international population, is also where you go to find clothes and shoes if you happen to be bigger than the average Korean. Check out the subtle signs.

Pancakes in Korea

Our first shopping trip was on our first day here in Korea. We were up VERY early in the morning and luckily ran into another new KIS family. That afternoon we navigated the bus and subway system to find one of the big grocery stores, Emart. An Emart is a lot like a Fred Meyer back home. It has a big grocery section as well as electronics, housewares, toys, clothes, you name it. Needless to say our first trip was a bit chaotic. I had no idea what to get, where to find it, and in a lot of cases what was even in the package!

Pictures are very helpful! I grabbed this package of pancake mix and hoped for the best.









We had a chance to make pancakes a few days later and it turns out they were pretty good. They have more of a Swedish pancake consistency and the syrup is Aunt Jemima style but Fin liked them!