First Days in Seoul

Hi again!


Our first couple of days in Seoul have been busy, exciting, tiring and rewarding. We shopped for the basics (groceries and Hello Kitty stuff), did a little touristing and looked for an apartment. The over-riding factor though has been dealing with jetlag. It was good that we arrived in the evening last Wednesday, so we could head straight to bed. The trouble is Jin and Lili woke up at 2:30am and would not/could not get back to sleep. We didn't sleep much better. That of course meant we were all very tired the next afternoon. Fun times shopping with the cranky family! Everyone has been adapting, slowly but surely. The kids actually stayed awake for dinner tonight (Sunday) and slept in till 4:30am. Anyway, let's tell you about what we've been up to the past few days.


We planned a low key first day. Our first order of business was shopping for some groceries. We brought coffee and cheerios, so after a quick trip to the corner store for milk and juice we had breakfast covered. After that we set off for the E-Mart (a sort of upscale Walmart) about 1km away to do some serious shopping for supplies. It was an alright spring day when we left for the store, about plus 7 and a slight drizzle. Half way there though the rain got heavier, then the temperature dropped, then it started to sleet! Yuck! By the time we got to the Emart we were a little damp and chilly (did I mention tired and cranky too?). The highlight of shopping was the moving sidewalk ramps, or as Lili likes to call them, the excalators. You can even take your shopping cart on them! Here is a photo to prove it. And then one of Deb and the girls walking back from the store in better weather.


After shopping Deb treated us to our first "home-cooked" meal in Korea, a dumpling lunch. Mmmmm! And for dessert, very juicy strawberries.





As a further reward for putting up with grocery shopping, and in an effort to keep people moving and awake so we could try to force our internal clocks to Korea time, we treated the kids to shopping at the Hello Kitty store at the COEX mall, just a short subway ride away. This underground mall is huge, so a simple trip to hit one store turned into a marthon walk through throngs of Korean shoppers. (did I mention we were tired and cranky?) Anyway, the expedition was succesful and both Lili and Jin came home with a couple new stuffed HK toys. After this busy day everyone flamed out early.





Day 2: Everyone was awake early for day 2. Not because we wanted to be, it's just our bodies still thought it was the middle of the day. This day we went looking for a place to stay for the rest of our time in Korea. We had arranged ahead of time by email an apartment hunting tour set up with a real estate company (they handle sales and rentals) that was recommended to us by friends in Korea. We took the subway to the Hannam District (an area in central Seoul where many foreigners live) where they showed us 3 places. We loved the first place! Two bedrooms, two bathrooms, furnished (even a dishwasher and an oven - ovens don't appear to be common in Korea), new, clean, four storey "villa". In some respects it's even better than our house in Sudbury! It costs more than we were hoping to spend, but the more we thought about it the better it sounded. Nice neighbourhood. The landlady's son goes to kindergarten, so maybe Jin and Lili could to school with him. We are now in the middle of making arrangements to sign the contract and arrange payments, etc. We could be moving in in a day or so. We'll send pictures of it once we move in.

That afternoon we visited our friends Justine and Soomee at INKAS, an organization that helps international Korean adoptees. We met them back in 2007 when we came here for a Motherland Tour. It was great to see them again! They arranged for a volunteer translator to help us out. Her name is Na Young. She is a university student majoring in English literature. They also lined up another real estate agent to show us apartments in another area of town, Gangnam District (upscale and modern, think Bloor and Young times 100). So Derek and her went out to check out a couple places late Friday afternoon while Deb took the girls "home" to bed. The apartments ranged from smaller, nice expensive places to not-so nice, older cheaper places. The neighouhood is not too kid friendly though - few visible playgrounds, narrow backstreets with BMW's speeding around. That helped confirm our decision to go with the first apartment we saw.

After all this, Derek came home with some take out food (not so good chicken kalbi and a weird spicy veggy and cold noodle dish with chunks of some kind of meat) and a bottle of wine (the kids were already in bed). Then it was early to bed.

This post has gotten a bit too long, so let's save the storey of our fun weekend tourist trips (zoo and Bhuddist Temple) for the next post.

Bye for now.

Derek, Deb, Jin and Lili