Our New Home

Hello to everyone! We have arrived and are adjusting to our new life here in Seoul. I have found a wonderful church community here, which has been in the Seoul area for over 100 years. The church building is beautiful, it's like an oasis in the middle of this never-sleeping city.
Drew has settled into his new job as a 2LT up at Camp Stanley, about 1 1/2 hours north of us. He is able to come home most weekends but we miss him during the week. He is learning all about how to transport people and things around. I think he feels like a dad to a lot of his soldiers, since he's older than most of them, but they seem to really like him as a leader so I think he's having a good time for the most part. We would rather he be down here and home every night but he's getting platoon leader time which is good.

Drew did a wonderful job finding us a new home here. Our apartment is huge and we even have a guest bedroom so anyone wanting to visit will have a place to sleep :) We live on the top floor here (the 13Th)with gardens on the roof and a market on street level. The roof is a great place for the boys to go roller blade, ride the scooter, run around, and meet all the people living in our building. Most of them don't speak English but it doesn't seem to matter much. Everyone is very friendly and Tobias and Zac are constantly given high 5's, hugs, kisses, being talked to in a language they don't understand...the saying "It takes a village to raise a child" is very true here. Your children have 30 million parents in this city! Yes, there are 12 million people that live in the city of Seoul and another 26 million living around the city. It's amazing how many people live in such a small country!! We have learned how to say "hello" and "thank you" in Korean but everything else "sounds Greek to me"!

Our car finally arrived last week, and after days and days of paperwork, registering, and getting my Korean drivers license we tried to drive up to Camp Stanely on Saturday. The trip should have been 1 1/2 hours, but turned into 3 hours 'cause we got lost!! The roads here are scary! Not just because all the signs are in Korean, but the drivers would put LA and NYC drivers to shame! The motorcyclists rule the roads (and sidewalks for that matter). The taxi drivers are crazy and cut you off all the time and the buses think they are NASCAR drivers! It's not as scary as I thought it would be, driving here, but it definitely took a day or two to get used to people driving so close to my car! Drew keeps telling me we need to get a GPS so that we can find our way around but I think it's kinda fun getting lost...we get to see places here that we wouldn't see if we hadn't gotten lost :) We now know where EverLand is if we ever want to go (I think it's a theme park).

Haven't done much exploring yet (except for our getting lost on the expressway) but now that we're more settled we can start taking the subway other places rather than just to post. The boys love the subway! Zac gets so excited when it arrives that people on the train are all looking out the windows wondering what all the screaming is about! The only thing Tobias doesn't like is having to take the elevator instead of the escalator when we have the stroller. Me, I like it when he's confined in a box, at least for a few minutes :) There are a lot of sports and activities for the boys to be involved in on post. Tobias wants to try Tae Kwon Do and golf. I think we'll try the martial arts first.

So lots of new stuff for us to experience, lots of new people to meet, lots of Korean to learn! Though I won't be a good or as diligent as my brother-in-law, Gregory, is at this blogging, I will try to keep this up to date with pictures and stories of our adventure here. Please keep in touch by email or phone. Love to everyone!