Week One

Countdown to move: -7 days

Seoul lessons so far: Cars don’t stop for pedestrians; signs in English don’t have to make sense (case in point: “INNOVATION BEAUTIFUL YOUR.” No idea.); the hot version of bibimbap (dolsot bibimbap), a rice and vegetable dish, is better than the cold version—and I already liked the cold version; many American goods are available here (Starbucks included), but it all costs more; the embassy keeps its heater up extremely high; and fourteen hours ahead is a big time difference to get used to.

One week in, it’s hard to know whether my sleepiness and difficulty sleeping are due to jet lag, pregnancy, or the really hard mattress in our bedroom (I can’t wait for our wonderful mattress to arrive sometime next month!!).

The first few days, jet lag made night sleeping feel like an afternoon nap and naps feel like night sleep. Last Friday morning, I got out of bed around 3:30am and was surprised to find afternoon American news shows—Megyn Kelly, Tamryn Hall, Shepherd Smith—on our

television (and slightly less surprised to see Rick Perry dropped out of the GOP primary fight).

It was comforting to watch the (completely slanted) Fox News and MSNBC shows I used to watch in my office at U.S. News & World Report, but I have to say it’s even more comforting to stay in bed until at least 6am, which is about what I can do these days.

Other than checking in with the embassy and getting used to my new life on a U.S. military base, here’s what Joe and I have been up to:

Itaewon
Saturday morning, Joe got up ultra-early with me (it felt like afternoon to our bodies!) and convinced me to go on a 6am venture into the cold morning. We walked out the military base gates and wandered up streets lined with closed coffee shops, antique stores, and mini-marts (7-Eleven included, though I didn’t notice any Slurpee machines…). After a breath-stealing hill, we found ourselves in familiar territory: Itaewon, where an embassy colleague had taken us to dinner the night before.

Itaewon is designed for foreigners. There are restaurants with food from all over the world (Jordan, China, Belgium, Thailand, India, UK, Mexico, etc., etc.) and lots of shops. It’s the easiest place to go out nearby base, and probably the neighborhood I’ll know the best.

Oh, it’s also filled with bars and clubs that make it pretty seedy at night, we hear. And these bars and clubs are open until around 6 or 7 IN THE MORNING.

We made it into the neighborhood around 7am, and definitely saw some multi-cultural drunken stumbling. In the daylight.

We ducked into a 24-hour Korean hole-in-the-wall for some breakfast and discovered a similar crowd inside: groups of people with varying shades of skin, sharing soju to postpone hangover, and Korean women who were, well, definitely NOT women underneath the makeup and wig.

Ha. It was an entertaining morning.

Myeongdong (I think)

Later on Saturday, Joe and I went to a cultural event at the Lotte Hotel for the Lunar New Year. It was suited more for little kids (Joe compared it to an elementary school fair with booths of activities… the drum section was quite popular. And loud.), but we enjoyed wandering around half asleep.

To keep the wakefulness going, we spent the afternoon exploring a nearby neighborhood of shops—I believe it’s called Myeondong, but I honestly had no idea where I was.

The roads and alleyways were filled with tables of vendors selling gloves, shoes, fried squid, scarves, and roasted chestnuts, all surrounded by upscale shops with colorful signs all jutting out, fighting for our attention.

…And this is where I started documenting Korean signs in English that don't entirely make sense. Here are signs from three lingerie stores:

These two are from the same store. Yes, Lovely So Cute Pops Girl.

Seollal / Lunar New Year
This past weekend (a 4-day weekend from work!) marked the biggest holiday in Korea. Everyone on Facebook seemed to call it “Chinese New Year,” but China isn’t the only country that celebrates the beginning of a new lunar year.

The holiday is a time to see family and perform a bowing ceremony called Sebae (which involves the younger generation bowing to the older and receiving envelopes of money in return). The ritual is something I am used to celebrating with Joe’s U.S. family on January 1, so when I found out we’d be joining in with his Korean family for Seollal, I wasn’t too nervous about making a fool of myself… well, at least with the bowing.

Language? That's another matter.

Going in, I knew only one of Joe’s relatives who would be present spoke English, so I was in for a day of almost complete immersion. Ok, I was a little nervous.

Have you ever listened to Korean language? It’s beautiful, but it is HARD to pick out words if you don’t know the language. When I listen to French, Italian, or (especially) Spanish, I have a general idea of what’s going on. Not so with Korean.

But it turns out food is a universal language.

Joe’s grandmother (yes, she rubbed my little pregnant belly—see gratuitous belly pic from last week, at 16 weeks) fed us loads of Korean food (for breakfast—not normally my favorite time for spicy-savory), and Joe says I made a good impression just by eating and enjoying everything offered.

And, really, the pressure was on Joe, who had to translate quite a bit to include me in conversation.

But once the adults wandered out of the living room, the college-aged cousins came out of their shells: They speak English, too! Well, they are working on it, but they understand a lot more than I thought they could.

They were so sweet. Joe told me one of the cousins was calling me Unyi, which means older sister, and they both said they want to hang out with me more whenever they visit Seoul.

When we were all leaving, the younger cousin (freshman in college) whined to me, “I wish I had more time with you!!”

It’s amazing to move across the world yet still find family, and the accompanying acceptance just for existing.