The things Mia does...

I haven't updated my blog in a while b/c not a whole lot is going on in my life and I'm pretty much bored all the time (you can only play Barbie so many times before you just won't do it anymore). With all that said, if there's a bright spot in my day, it's definitely thanks to Mia. Now that she's more verbal and able to express herself more clearly, Jay and I get a daily dose of comedy.

Case in point, a few days ago Jay and I decided to take Mia for a walk after letting her play on the playground for a while. We were walking down the sidewalk and a Korean woman was walking on the sidewalk going the opposite way. As she bent down to smile and say hi to Mia, she scuffed her heel on the ground, and it made a normal scuffing sound. Mia's 3 year old ears apparently did not take the sound to be that of her shoe and Mia pointed at the lady and loudly yelled, "Ewww! She fart!!!" Jay and I were stunned for a moment and as I burst out laughing, Jay tried to be all mature and parent-like and said, "Mia, that's not nice. We don't point at people when they pass gas." All I could hope for was the woman didn't speak English.

That's all I can think of now. I have other stories, but they might sound kinda weird if I try to write them. Good news is, Jay finally got orders and we're moving to Las Vegas next! We're supposed to go in November but Jay really wants Mia and I to go early so we can start looking for a house. It has to be approved and right now we're just waiting to find out if it's approved or not but if it is, we'll be going back in September. I have mixed feelings about going back early b/c that means I'll have to fly alone with Mia AGAIN from S.Korea back to the U.S. and that just sucks. I guess if Jay gets us a flight on Korean Air (super nice) with the individual videos on the headrest, then it'll be okay. But if we get that crappy Northwestern Airlines (those stewardesses were bee-yotches!), then no deal. Either way, when we do get back stateside, we're looking for a big house with a pool in the backyard.

Party at my place!!!

Daddy Did It!

Jay finally took the plunge and did Mia's hair for the first time... and it showed. Jay attempted a ponytail and it looked like a dude pony. Mia's ponytail looked like a ponytail a pirate would wear or one of those balding guys who has the long hair in the back and wears it in a low pony. It was so funny. Needless to say I will be doing Mia's hair from now on.

Don't Leave Chocolate Powder on the Counter!

The reason you don't leave chocolate milk powder mix on the counter is because while you're on the computer having a skype conversation with a friend, Mia will be attempting to make herself chocolate milk... NOT PRETTY!

After I got off the computer (yes, I took too long...) I was surprised to see Mia's face covered with chocolate. My first thought was "how on Earth did she open a chocolate pudding cup lid?" So I walked into the kitchen to investigate and it was immediately apparent that the chocolate all over her face was not pudding but Nestle Quik and it was all over my kitchen floor. Then I saw the cup on the table and it was a mixture of water and chocolate powder (eww!). Laughing I applauded Mia for attempting to make her own chocolate milk as I swept the powder off the floor. Then as I put the cup in the sink to rinse it out, I found Mia had tossed the remaining powder and the Nestle canister into the sink and there was a big pile of chocolate powder just lying there in the sink. So no more chocolate milk for a few days, but I can't help but laugh at how independent Mia tries to be.

New Favorite Korean Food: Black Rice Bread!

Okay, so I've been absent for too long from my blog, but I had forgotten my password and since I'm in Korea, when I went to Blogspot.com, it was all in Hangul and I couldn't for the life of me figure out what it was telling me when I was trying to reset it. Luckily, my beautiful Korean friend, Yun, came over and translated it for me today so I could reset my password and get back to writing about it here in Korea.

So we went grocery shopping at the Lotte Mart (think Super Target or something, but not Walmart, it's much nicer than Walmart) and I bought Mia some dinner rolls at the bakery. After we paid for them, I let Mia have one since she had been so patient and good while I was shopping and she gobbled it down really fast. I thought, "Wow, she was really hungry!" so I gave her another, and she gobbled that down just as fast as the first one. When we got in the car, I gave her one more for the road and predictably she was asking for more before we got home. I made her wait until we got all the groceries inside the apartment, then I gave her another one. While I was putting all the food away, Mia apparently ate all the rest in the bag (I know better than to leave these kind of things lying within Mia's reach, but I was preoccupied). I was surprised when Mia asked for more bread since she had eaten all the rolls I had just bought at the bakery. Well, I don't want to starve my growing child, (she's SOOO skinny, too) so I offered her some black rice bread I had bought for the first time and was surprised to see the bread is actually purple since it has a dark brown crust (and that was all I could see before I bought it). I tried a piece with her and it was SOOOO good! It tastes like regular bread but it is much more moist, almost a little chewy. I really really like it, but Mia took one bite and put it down on the table and it's been sitting here untouched for the past 15 minutes, so either she doesn't like it or she's finally full from eating a whole bag of freshly baked dinner rolls before. Oh well, more for me!

While I'm back, I would like to clarify my past incident with the Bongo truck driver... I'm really doing my best not to be an ignorant American picking fights with the locals, but this was really a dangerous thing he was trying to do that I simply blocked him from doing. The situation was this: I was driving home from Daegu on the interstate and there is a bridge we have to cross to get into Pusan. It was late afternoon and in the middle of rush hour traffic. We were stopped on the bridge and yes, it's everybit as frustrating as driving in rush hour traffic back in the States. There are two lanes in each direction and since neither lane was moving, some cars began to drive in the area between the furthest right lane and the wall of the bridge. It drives me crazy when they do that b/c they don't drive slowly to pass, they drive REALLY fast as if it's a third lane, which it isn't, and b/c it's narrow, they're so close to the cars in the right hand lane and all I can think is one of these a-holes is going to scratch the side of my car while they're rushing past all the stopped traffic in their pseudo lane. So, I pulled my car half in my lane, half in the pseudo lane and blocked the rest of the traffic from passing those of us in LEGITIMATE lanes so they can't cause a crash or try to sneak in front of us further up in traffic. I guess the driver of the bongo truck behind was pissed b/c he kept honking his horn at me the entire time we were on the bridge (which turned out to only be about 10 minutes) and FOLLOWED me to my exit and continued following me to where I turned to get back to my apartment. While I was stopped at a red light, he got out of his truck and knocked on my window, I rolled it down and he just started yelling (I assume angrily) in Hangul at me. So I yelled back in English that what he was doing was illegal and he would have been arrested for reckless driving back in the United States for pulling that kind of crap and he could've killed someone if he lost control of his truck and he needs to learn how to drive, yada yada yada. And it just went back and forth with him yelling at me and me yelling at him, neither of us having a clue what the other was saying, but we were both pissed, so I just started yelling, "YOU'RE DANGEROUS!" over and over and over b/c most of the people in my apartment building use that word when Mia's climbing on the playground equipment, so I figured it was a word he MIGHT understand. It must've done the trick b/c he shook his head at me like I was truly insane (and I probably looked a bit crazy at the time) and went back to his truck. I was fuming over this incident on the way home, but it felt SOOO GOOOD to finally yell at these crazy bongo drivers... they're the WORST (even worse than the taxi drivers here). I didn't use any finger gestures (though I was tempted) although a few F-bombs were dropped (I was concentrating too hard on not flipping him off, I can't not do both). So, I don't go around picking fights, I just finally stopped a crazy bongo truck from doing something illegal and he didn't like it. Oh well. The good news was the next time I drove the bridge (2 weeks later) there were signs in the pseudo lane preventing anyone from driving in it(YAY!).

Okay, now I'm tired of typing so until I have something else to say... TooDaLoo!

Poopsie DooDoo'd on the Bed...Again!

Mia is very adept at quickly undressing from head to toe and throwing off her diaper before Jay and I realize what's happened. It used to happen whenever Mia pee'd or poo'd in her diaper, but now it happens BEFORE she pee's or poo's in the diaper and if Jay and I aren't careful, we have a nasty mess to clean.

It starts with Mia walking around coyly repeating, "pee pee pee pee" or "doo doo doo doo", almost song-like. If Jay and I are being good parents and paying attention to her (which isn't always...) we ask, "Mia, do you need to pee pee?" or "Do you need to go doo doo, Sweetie?" Ninety-eight percent of the time the answer is "nooooo!" (Her voice is so cute and squeaky, I just melt even though I know she's lying.) She then usually bolts for a room (any room), closes the door behind her and is butt naked in whichever room she ran to within a matter of seconds and getting in position to drop a steamin' pile of poo or a stream of pee by the time we catch up to her. It's amazing how fast she moves, but not so amusing when we're too late to intercept a dookie incident on her fluffy rug.

Needless to say, today I had a dookie incident. Mia took a 2 hour nap (yay!!!) and I heard her talking to herself in her room while I was surfing the internet. Knowing she was now awake from her nap, I cheerfully walked into her room to find her butt naked in her crib with her clothes and diaper thrown in the middle of the room. Mia was standing in one corner of her crib pointing to something in the other corner her crib and babbling away about something to me when I heard "doo doo doo" in the midst of her babbles. Quickly I asked, "Do you need to doo doo, Sweetheart?" But even as I was asking the question, my heart was sinking, because she was shaking her head from side to side (as if to say, "no") while pointing inside her crib. Hesitantly, I walked to the edge of her crib and peered inside. Yep, a big steaming pile of poop complete with corn kernels was lying on top of her mattress, while Mia just nodded her head up and down (as if to say, "yep, that's mine").

Oh joy.

At least I didn't step in it like Jay did once while we were at the Lotte Hotel... THAT was funny!

(Mia peeking around the corner while in "time out" for something entirely different...)

Getting Brave and Doing Some Exploration...

Now that we've been here a week, Jay and I decided to get brave and attempt to go somewhere on the subway. You need to understand just how brave we are by attempting this on our own, since we have no clue where we should go, how to get there by subway, what we would do once we got there, or how to get back on the subway once done. We are brave and adventurous, and probably a little full of ourselves.

We walk to the subway following the picture signs since we can't read Korean, and once there we stop, taking in the chaos and trying to decide what to do next. Jay sees the money machines, okay, then he mentions that you can buy a card somewhere where all you need to do is scan your card to get on the train and put more money on it when it runs low so you don't have to keep buying tickets. Cool, so how do we get those? No clue... great. We found a ticket booth, and as we walked to it, we were approached by a nice gentleman who was wearing a "Volunteer" vest and asked us, in English, if we needed any help. "Yes, thank you!" was my reply, and Jay gave me an annoyed look. Men... they always act like they know what's going on even when they don't have a clue. The man showed us how to work the ticket booth (an electronic touch screen), how to select English, how to select which route we wanted, how to pay for the ticket, and even where to go to catch the correct train. All the while, Jay was very annoyed and acted as if he had known all along what to do and where to go. When the helpful volunteer left, I asked Jay what was wrong and he replied that he wanted to figure it out on his own, no matter how long it took him to figure out, no matter how impatient his wife and toddler were getting, it was just very important to him to be able to figure this stuff out on his own. Now it was my turn to be annoyed, and in a pissy attitude, I told him, "fine, figure it out on your own, I won't ask questions, I'll just let you figure out what we're supposed to be doing, and if we get lost, you can ask for help, because I'm done with this." Yeah, I can be temperamental...

With Jay and I bickering the whole way, we made it to the gate of the train we wanted to take, and Jay went first through, inserting his ticket, and then I watched another woman go through, and she just scanned a card, "oh cool, I thought, we need to get one of those cards." Then I inserted my ticket, and pushed my way through the gate, and we walked to the train, which had just pulled up (great timing) and boarded the train. It was very crowded and with my adrenaline pumping from the adventure of it all, I stopped feeling pissy toward Jay, and started enjoying the experience. We figured out how to know when we were at the right stop, and we got off on our stop. Everything was working out really great, then a thought hit me as we walked up the stairs to exit the subway... "Jay, " I asked, "how do they know we paid for a round trip fare when they took our tickets at the beginning of the trip?" But before I could finish my question, we came to the gates to let us out, and I watched as Jay inserted his ticket, pass through the gate, and take the ticket out of the top slot of the gate booth. WTF?!!! I didn't have my ticket, so I just tried to go through the gate (I'm leaving the subway, not getting on, anyway), but it wouldn't let me through. Jay turned around and asked, "where's your ticket?" Realizing my incredible mistake, I blushed, and answered, "at the entrance gate, I didn't know you had to pick it back up at the top...". Jay found this hilarious, especially b/c I had been so pissy with him just a few minutes before, and started laughing at me as I was stuck behind the gate. Not knowing what else to do, Jay ran to a ticket booth and bought me another round trip ticket, and laughing, handed me my new ticket, just as we watched a little old lady push open a side gate to get through with her cart. Oh, I didn't need a ticket to get out, after all, so I followed the old lady out, clutching my new ticket, feeling like a total idiot. I also felt like a jackass because I had been giving Jay a hard time about things before, and even though I had asked for help, I still didn't have a clue what I was doing. Ooops, live and learn, right?

We explored a little, realized we had chosen a really boring stop to get off on, and got back on the subway, heading back to the hotel, and decided we would take different routes next time. On the train, an older Korean gentleman was watching us (which we're used to by now, I guess there aren't a lot of blondes around here and understand we're a bit of a side show attraction to them) and before he got off his stop, he bowed to us and gave us a calender he was carrying. "A gift to you," he said as he presented it to us. Utterly taken by surprise, Jay and I took the calender and bowed back and thanked him. I felt like we should have given him something in return, but we didn't have anything to give him. I didn't know if we should have introduced ourselves, or offered him anything else, but I thought it was so incredibly nice of him to give us the calender. It's one of those basic desk calenders that sit on top of your desk or work area and you can write on it and such, and it's all in Korean (which I think is pretty cool). I really need to get a book on Korean customs so I'm not caught off guard anymore and respond appropriately. I think the thing that causes me most anxiety is that I'll unintentionally offend someone, and not be able to apologize for it. I don't want to come off as the rude, arrogant American. The Koreans are very graceful and polite and I'm glad Mia will be living here, so hopefully some of that will rub off on her.

I guess I'm going to have to get the Rosetta Stone for Korean after all, so I can learn to communicate here. How do you say, "sorry, I'm just an ignorant American" in Korean?

Finding our way to (through, around, and back again) PUSAN!!!

Picture this... a rusted, blue 1994 Kia Sephia with leopard print seat covers, new tires, but BAD shocks, riding low to the ground, with a car seat in the middle back seat, and bags stuffed around both sides of the car seat, a blonde toddler in the car seat, a blonde man driving, and a highlighted blonde woman in the passenger seat, and a bright metallic-purple soccer ball in the rear window of the car, and you have pictured us on our highway adventure driving from Kunsan to Pusan, all by ourselves, not understanding a lick of Korean, and with poorly written instructions on how to get to Pusan from Kunsan. (How do I know they were poorly written instructions, you might ask, b/c half of it was spelled incorrectly, the other half was in picture form of the exits we would see, and they were 5 years old.)





Surprisingly, we made it to the outskirts of Pusan without a hitch. We managed to figure out when not to exit when the directions said to exit and find our way without having to stop for help which was HUGE for me. I even figured out the yellow signs with the picture of a camera on them with a white sign underneath that had a number of meters below it was a warning for a highway camera that many meters ahead. Jay did not know this, and apparently instead of being pulled over by a cop for speeding, they just take pictures of your license plate when speeding on the highways, and you have to pay all the tickets in one lump sum when you go to register the vehicle. That could be pretty painful and there are stories of outgoing pilots selling their POS Kunsan Special cars to incoming pilots for $600 bucks or less and then when the new owner goes to register their new car, they're hit with hundreds of dollars of speeding tickets the previous owner incurred and failed to tell the new owner about. It's a joke to them, but I could see how it wouldn't be so funny when you're the new owner and the old one is long gone. So anyhow, Jay got busted, I'm sure, a few times along the road, and it will be interesting to see how much he has to pay in speeding fines when he has to re-register the car in a year. It doesn't help that the max speed on the highways was only 60 mph (although it does look impressive when listed as 100 km/h).



So we get to Pusan, everything is going great, we switch from the 5 year old directions to the directions given to us by the guys Jay will be working with at Gimhae International Airport, and although the instructions were a bit sparse, we seemed to be following them easily. We went through the first toll, as instructed, and our next instruction to follow was to stay straight until we got through a second toll, then to take the first right after the second toll. Easy enough. What the instructions didn't mention was the highway was going to fork and you had to make the decision ahead of time to get into a left hand lane to stay straight (where the 2nd toll was) or go right and go into the city. I was looking at the city scenery around us, not aware of this conumdrum (sp?) when all of a sudden Jay started YELLING, "LEFT OR RIGHT?!! LEFT OR RIGHT?!! WHAT DO THE DIRECTIONS SAY???! LEFT OR RIGHT??!!" Confused, I refocused on the task at hand, saw what was happening on the road, quickly looked at the directions which told us to continue straight to the 2nd toll. Stupidly, I started yelling back, "TOLL!!! TOLL!!! TOLL!!!" not quite sure which way (left or right) was straight. Mia, of course, had no idea what we were yelling about and started her frantic, panicky scream-cry which only added to the tension Jay and I were suddenly feeling, and Jay took the command decision and veered right, while I kept yelling, "NO!!! NO!!! NO!!!" Too late, we were now in the midst of a city with no English street signs, no neat street markings, too many cars, too many pedestrians, too much chaos. We both knew instantly we had made a BIG mistake.



After driving around in circles for what felt like an eternity, yelling at each other about whose fault it was we were lost in the first place, and trying to shush or placate a crying Mia, we finally found our way back onto the highway we should never have gotten off in the first place. We have both agreed in the future, we will never drive in the city after this experience, and will learn to take the subways and buses if the need ever arises to go downtown. We did manage to get back on track, and we finally found the Lotte Hotel which is to be our temporary residence for the next 3 weeks or so. Of course, we drove to the wrong side of the hotel and stood around looking like idiots waiting for someone to come take our bags and park our car (our super stylish 1994 Kunsan Special), until Jay went into the lobby, found the guy who was to help us get settled, and drove to the right side of the hotel where we were met by the hotel greeters and everything started to fall into place.



Right away, we realized we were at a hotel far nicer to what we are usually accustomed to, and we both felt out of place in our "road trip" clothes of old jeans, pullovers, and sneakers. We also both admitted how silly we felt pulling up to such a nice hotel in our beater (and got valet parking for it, too) and wondered how silly we must have looked to everyone else as the hotel greeters pulled the massive amounts of luggage out of our car that was squished into every conceiveable space we could manage to fit something into. Yeah, we were feeling pretty "Beverly Hillbilly"-ish, and that feeling hasn't quite rubbed off, yet. I'm hoping soon it will. Oh well.



So the guy who met us, Paul, a very nice gentleman from Georgia, who likes to gamble and insisted we weren't putting him out, he came to gamble anyway, helped us find our way to check in, we went directly to the 33rd floor where they had an express check in for "club members" and we were given our keys and such for our room on the 34th floor. We went to our room, and were both astounded by how posh everything was. We have an incredible view of downtown Pusan with mountains in the background, everything is high tech, up to date, very, very nice. The bathroom alone is the size of Jay's entire apartment in Kunsan. The tub is one of those extra long ones, so we don't have to bend our knees when we sink all the way in. The commode is, get this, electronic, and it has a bidet (that has a pulsing feature, too), a butt spray, and a butt dryer, and... a HEATED SEAT! We both think Mia will be quite eager to potty train once she sits on the seated heat. I even have my own vanity to put all my makeup and hair crap so it isn't in Jay's way and the counters aren't cluttered. The bed is king sized so I can sprawl out and not kick Jay, and the mattress is so comfy, I could live in this bed!!! Mia loves the bed, too, but she has to sleep in her pack n play so she can't sneak out of bed during the night or in the morning (which she has done before when we forgot the pack n play on other trips).

This hotel also has a department store, with stores not found in ordinary department stores in the U.S. There's Prada, Gucci, Chanel (a lot of Chanel stores), Missoni, etc... . You get the picture, way too expensive for me. Not that I don't fantasize about being brave enough to shop in any of those stores someday, just not yet. There's also a supermarket on the bottom floor, and a subway right next to the hotel. There's a cinema on one floor, and loads of restaraunts like TGIF, Subway, and Krispy Kremes. There's also a CoffeeBean across the street from the hotel (SWEET!) although, I don't think I'll be spotting Nicole Richie or any other celebrities there.

Yep, we're staying in a 5-star hotel, in the middle of downtown Busan, and I'm feeling a bit spoiled. I'm glad I kept my expectations low before coming out here, because now I'm pleasantly surprised at how beautiful everything is, and eager to do some exploring and learning about Koreans during these next few years. Seriously, if any of you want to visit, I don't think anyone will be disappointed visiting Korea... just don't fly over with a toddler, unless you like your pleasure with a little pain and suffering...