To the moon

home again

noreply@blogger.com (AndrewK) — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 10:06:00 +0000

I never really wrapped this thing up. I returned home to Los Angeles in march of 2008 and have since been working with my wife towards clearing up debt and trying to reach a financial level where we can afford to purchase a home.

Things are going well, I have returned to school in pursuit of a business management degree and am about 2 years from graduation. I'm taking night classes and seeking full-time employment.

greetings earthlings

noreply@blogger.com (AndrewK) — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 14:01:00 +0000

Hey, time for the monthly update! So, we moved this month across town. We were south of the river, now we are north of it. The rent here is much lower, and our place is much larger. The area isn't as "nice" but it's a lot more "cheap" so that takes our cost of living down significantly, which is good since more money for us is better than less.

To get into our new place you must first go through a rickety little gate (built for hobbits), which makes a very loud banging noise every time you close it... Then traverse up some fairly narrow stairs which have pretty shit lighting at night, and finally through another door (made for hobbits) into a little shoe/laundry/garbage room. At this point you will remove your shoes! Because this is asia and thats what we do here! Then you proceed through another even smaller hobbit door into our kitchen. After which the place is really nice. There are pictures of how nice it is to follow.

We got a good deal here because the former tenant wanted to leave, but the way it works in Korea for most rentals is that you put down a large amount of money as a deposit and then your rent is fairly low. But anyways, our tenant wanted to move back to Australia early for the last 6 months of his lease which coincides with our schedule fairly well.

Speaking of which, we'll probably be returning on schedule. Korea is great but we miss America, it's hard to do a lot of stuff here and also in order to finish school I need to come back to California preferably or at least America for a couple years. Us coming back however depends on us making a plan for such, which is still in the works. Money being the main factor, we'll go where the work is.

So anyways, here's some pictures!

First, the new place.

Our green l shaped couch and the leathery something kind of a futon device. Also table, which we won at an auction. It doesn't look like much but it's pretty cozy.

The kitchen, there is a stove but its hiding.

"My office" basically a spare bedroom, with closets.. Oh I forgot to upload a picture of our bedroom, which isn't a big deal since its basically a room with a bed in it.

Guard dog, guarding.

The veranda, it's big.

And here's some other pictures I had on my camera from a few weeks ago.

Brought the dog with us to this "everything market" where they sell lots of random stuff.

Including delicious dough nuts.

This is what I kind of imagined Korea would look like, but most of it is a lot cleaner.

Oh I forgot to mention it snowed for the first time the day before yesterday. It started with sleet and I though oh no big deal, then Helen called me and told me it was snowing so I looked out the veranda door and it was like I was transported to the north pole. Almost time to wear my gigantic snow boots.

Also I didn't get any pictures with the view off our veranda, which is pretty nice since we're up in the hills.. Trees and you can see a mountain in the distance. I'll get some and post later. Enjoy your easy shopping/communication and familiarity with things in America because we sure miss it (sometimes).

dog!

noreply@blogger.com (AndrewK) — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 10:16:00 +0000

It's been a while since I last updated. I've been kind of busy but mostly I am just lazy. I'm doing fine, everything is good. The weather in Seoul is starting to get colder finally and its been raining pretty heavily off and on for the last few weeks. Right now Joe (helen's brother) is staying with us, he is coming here for a year to work. He found an apartment this week and starts his job next Monday.

I got a dog, it's name is Benji, I think it's some kind of terrier about 1.5 years old. He's been in and out of the vet a lot lately but he's doing fine now. Also I started school a few weeks ago, and that's going well. I'm on my 4th week now. Most of my classes are fairly short 8 week things so I'm almost half done with a few of them. I like that, 14 week classes seem so long.

Here's some pictures.

Playing some game, Helen secretly photographing me.

Here's Joe. This is the picture we took for his job application.

More secret photographing.

After a bath (doesn't like baths)

The spread from a Tea House we went to, waffle and some good teas. Then later we went to the casino and won $150 at roulette so this was free!

Poor guy had to wear this for a couple weeks after being neutered.

Yeah he's pretty cute.

That's it for now.

Onward, to victoly.

noreply@blogger.com (AndrewK) — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 12:29:00 +0000

Hello again! It's been a few weeks so I figured I'd throw together an update. So, we're really getting settled now. We have just about everything major that we need to live comfortably, it's great to be all moved in and setup.

We managed to procure some used kitchenware, a vacuum, desk, and I've already gone through 2 desk chairs (the first was pretty old and broke after about 2 weeks of use).

I decided about 2 weeks ago that I'd really like to do a lot of bicycling around Korea and Seoul, Joe (Helen's brother) purchased a used bike while he was here and rode all the way to the south end of Korea on it! Amazing! It took him about 3-4 days, and he climbed a mountain for 8 hours to boot. Pretty hardcore.

So when he left, he let me have the bike since it wasn't worth a whole lot... Unfortunately it wasn't large enough, and it was a road style bike which I don't really like. So I set out to find a bike... Well, finding a bike my size wasn't easy but I finally found one. It's really nice, and I got it for a very reasonable price.

A lot of people ask me what it's like living in Korea... It's like living in a cleaner New York where everyone is Korean and speaks in Korean... I think people could relate to that.

Recently those Koreans who went to Afghanistan have been all over the news, I feel really bad for them, and it makes me want to hurt dumb people, but ultimately I and I think a lot of Korean people just can't feel 100% sorry for someone dense enough to go to Afghanistan after being repeatedly warned by their government that it's a horribly bad idea... It's like going from America over to Auschwitz in WW2 and saying, OY VEY STOP THIS MADNESS!

So anyways, this week Joe left to go back to Los Angeles, it was kind of sad to see him go since he's a pretty cool guy and now I don't really have any beer drinking buddies but I guess I'll survive. We think/hope he might come back to teach English since he seemed to really enjoy himself here.

So here's some pictures as usual:

The aforementioned bike, in all it's glory. Behold!

This huge ass goddamn tower is right across the street from where we live. It's the World Trade Center Korea. Second largest building in Korea. (don't quote me on that)

The Olympic Stadium, on the way to Helen's work.

One of the statues lining the street where the Stadium and the Olympic Park is, also on the way to Helen's work.

I just thought this was a strange staircase, looks a little harrowing don't you think? It's on the top floor of Helen's work.

Me, Joe, And Helen at the Airport bus terminal across the street sending Joe off.

My computer desk thingy. This picture accidentally got flipped while editing, no I'm not left handed.

The view out of my window.

Our drying rack with a towel on it, Helen's cool bubble chair, TV, Windows, Table, etc...

Oops I forgot to rotate this, who cares, it's a bathroom. Nothing really out of the ordinary, it's all western fixtures.

Another view of desk and stuff.

I forgot to take a picture of our kitchen, well, I'll describe it. It's a kitchen. There is however a big cool laminated map of Seoul that we bought recently and mounted on the door. It's nice since Google maps doesn't work here.

Well that's all, hope America hasn't been invaded by Canada or anything.

birthday day

noreply@blogger.com (AndrewK) — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 05:18:00 +0000

Hey, well I guess my birthday isn't technically for another day since I'm in the future here but that's not really important.

The last few weeks Helen's brother, and his kids have been around. They had a tour for the first week or so, with a church group, and after that they stayed with us for a little while. Last weekend we went up to Joe's (Helen's brother) wife's, sister's house in the mountains.

The mountains were incredible, the whole drive up was really nice. Along rivers and generally seeing the country. The weather was really accommodating too, no heavy rain or intense heat. We went on a pretty brutal hike pretty far up into the mountains, well brutal for us, Joe's brother in law went twice as far when we wussed out. Apparently he hikes there every weekend though.

So here's some pictures of stuff.

The view from the area where we ate dinner. The house is to the left, it's pretty big and nice considering there's no running water and it uses a well.

Same area different direction. Full on farm thing and greenhouse where they grow their own food.

Me sitting in their little pond/creek bed thing they constructed, just at the end of the area from the last picture.

Marcy (Helen's nephew) coming to refill her water gun.

Looking up the creek.

William (Helen's other nephew) and Joe.

caterpillar

Helen observing the forest.

And here's a couple from us goofing off around the apartment.

After payday.

The Maharajah sits on his birthday day.

Rainy days are here again!

noreply@blogger.com (AndrewK) — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 06:43:00 +0000

Well, I'm here. Actually, I've been here for about a month now. I have been putting off updating this so that I actually have something to write about. I hate it when I read peoples online journals and it's just boring mundane stuff that they expect people to care about.

Anyways, it's been pretty exciting getting settled here. We've managed to get most of the furniture and general stuff we needed. TV (with cable), computer desk/chair, bed, some dishes, internet service, pots and pans etc.

It's really pretty nice here, the weather on some days is a little uncomfortable but I'm pretty used to it already. It can get very humid and hot some days, but from what I hear it's very mild here compared to places like Hong Kong and Thailand. Some days though, like today, it is awesome. Huge thunderstorms, pouring rain, very fun to watch. The kind of weather that happens maybe once a year in LA for about 10 minutes happens every couple weeks here.

So far we've seen mostly palaces and explored various parts of the cities. The palaces are pretty interesting, thinking about all the history that went on there. The city is pretty rich with historical remnants, tombs and old ramparts (walls) still dotted around the city.

The old part of the city is north of the Han River, which is on the opposite side of where we live. During the period between now and the Korean war the city has expanded quite a bit, a lot of it south of the Han river which is where most of the modern structures are.

Well that might not be true, there's a lot of tall buildings on the north side too (the tallest in korea is over there), as well as old money type house, also a lot of the government buildings are over there.

I haven't managed to snap very many pictures so far, I'm thinking of selling my camera and getting a smaller one that is easier to carry around and snap with. Mine is pretty cumbersome and I'm always worried about dropping it.

Anyways, here's some pictures.

These poles do not mean you get two haircuts. It's a sign for massage parlors with "extra" service. You see them in the more seedy areas. There's a lot of single pole massage parlors around our area too but those don't offer happy endings.

Here's the subway, I ride it a lot. Almost every day... It's the fastest way to get long distances in the city. Bus's are better for short distances. I've avoided riding taxis for the most part, since the drivers smell like cigarettes and don't really understand me very well.

This is some church I noticed around the immigration office. There's a lot of Christian churches in Seoul.

This is the immigration office. Where I had to go... It took me about an hour to get there so I felt like taking a picture of it for posterity.

Here's me next to sleepy/probably drunk guy on the subway.

I am not this fat, I promise. I was wearing unflattering clothes, in bad lighting, from the worst possible angle... I hope. I know I've lose weight since it was taken (2 weeks ago)

You probably can't tell but we are both scared out of our minds in these pictures, on the cable car going up to Namsan mountain.

Tower on top of namsan mountain, we didn't go up since it's kind of a tourist trap and I'm chicken. But here it is, you can see it from almost anywhere in seoul if you're high up enough.

Eating shaved ice desert thing, I've had this stuff at a lot of places but this was by far the best. Tea house in insadong, the cultural street we visited.

That's all, I'll try to do more interesting stuff and write about it. Also I'll get Helen to write some stuff in her thing too.

HONK HONK

noreply@blogger.com (AndrewK) — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 06:34:00 +0000

I'm creating this blog while sitting on the floor, in a corner of LAX, on the tmobile wifi I paid 10 dollars for. There's noise all around, little courtesy shuttles and people of all ages shuffling around. On the PA system there is all kinds of directions in languages which I can barely identify, sometimes Korean, Japanese, and English.

I know I'll read this again in a long time to reflect, so I thought I'd put some of whats going through my head at this point down for posterity. I'm nervous and excited, I haven't flown on a plane in around 6 years, I haven't flown internationally since I was a child, and I've never been anywhere in Asia. I'll be living there for the next year, in Seoul, with my wife.

A lot has happened in the last year, especially the last 6 months. It's exciting, I'm glad my life has finally taken off. Overall I'm very satisfied with how things are going.

So yeah, what do I think about going to Korea? To be honest I haven't had a lot of time to think about it in any real detail. I'm excited, I want to go, it's the most exciting thing I've ever done in my life and I think that it will be a ton of fun. I always wanted to live abroad at some point, I didn't think that I'd be able to do it so soon. Simply initiating all this has given me a lot of confidence, realizing that I can do things. Big things...

The people who will be on my flight all look very interesting, mostly Korean. These are sorts of faces I will be among for the next year. A lot of short people, I tower above them. I hope I don't step on any.

Already the people seem very nice, polite, smart looks on their faces, well dressed.

I hope we can find a place to play tennis and badminton there. I haven't played in a long time and I miss it. I can't wait to order food and have it come in 10 minutes for cheap. I'm also looking forward to short trips out to japan, taipei, hongkong, etc.

Anyways, I can't think of much more to write. I pray this is a safe flight, flying scares me. I keep telling myself, "this is a routine flight," and "nobody would fly on these things if they were dangerous."

So that's it. I board in about 30 minutes. Wish me luck.