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By Marty, April 29, 2011 4:12 pm

I hope you have never seen one of these and never will see one

MyeongHee’s hairshop got updated this week to the 21st century. She rents a small building with an adjacent bathroom. Prior to this week, the bathroom was just a concrete shell over a ceramic-lined hole in the floor. They used to be fairly common when I first came to Korea but more and more the western toilets are the norm. I really abhor these, because they aren’t meant for toilet paper to be flushed down them. That means that if you wipe you booty with tissue, you’re supposed to leave the tissue in the bucket next to the “island.”  So even though they may wrap up some fouled tissue in a wad of clean tissue, there are still little piles of poop sitting in that bucket for days until someone cleans it out. Very clean and tidy. Smells lovely, too.

You have seen these before, I hope

One of MyeongHee’s friends came by the hairshop to chat and then used the bathroom.  For a man, these islands aren’t such a big deal just to do #1  – we can simply unzip and let loose. Women, however, particular if they wear pants, are not so fortunate and must squat with pants all jumbled up.  After doing her business and having had to work the pants issue, she spotted MyeongHee’s landlord and then bitched him out because of the ancient toilet he maintains. Two days later, apparently shamed into action, he remodelled the hairshop’s bathroom with a tile floor and real toilet.

Progress marches inexorably onward.

Now we can comfortably do our business and without the leftovers from the last person sitting in the bucket next to us.

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By Marty, April 28, 2011 11:47 am

Less than two days after the bike was stolen I got it back!  Woo hoo! I must be living right!

It turns out the thief sold it to a “friend” and the “friend” brought it to OMK Bicycle shop in Ulsan. OMK is one of several bike shops that know me, but these guys do all the mechanical work on my bike and are also my business partners on my other website, Ulsanonline.com.  They have been regular advertisers on the site and regular mechanics for me. It was no surprise they recognized the bike since a) I just had some work done on it last week and b) the seat was still raised high enough to accommodate a 6’1″ dude.  I’m betting the “friend” is the thief himself and unloaded it as quickly (and as far from my house – 5 miles) as he could. The bike shop owners convinced him the police would be looking for such a bike (they weren’t – I didn’t even call them since the thief had a mask and hat) and that it would be foolish to openly ride it around town.  They called me on Wednesday evening and I picked up the bike Thursday.

Honestly, I think it pays to be a white-face among a sea of Asian faces. Lots of Koreans know me because I look so different. But if I see them outside of the normal environment I have come to know them (i.e I see the butcher not at his store but at the park) I don’t always recognize them.  Back home in teh USA I’d be just another forgettable guy whose bike was ganked.

Anyway, as I expected, when I got the bike  the compact air pump was gone, as was the saddle bag with tools and spare tube. The thief also took the speedometer/odometer but he left the sensor on the front wheel so that’s useless.  All minor problems.  I immediately bought a hand-phone case from OMK BIkes (I love those guys) that will let me clip the phone to the handlebars and I can run Endomondo, a GPS-enabled application on the phone that will track my speed, miles, calories – an even better tool than a mere speedometer/odometer.  Now I just need another air pump and tool bag with tools and I’m set for the long rides into the mountains.

The only bad news from all of this is that my bike now lives in the apartment where we really don’t have room for it.  Even chained to the metal handrails on the stairwell outside the apartment offers no protection from a bolt cutter.

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By Marty, April 27, 2011 10:56 am

My bicycle was my gym. I rode it, not to get around town, but to keep the fat off. It wasn’t a terribly expensive bike, but it was expensive enough to withstand the weight I put on it and have it carry me up the hills and mountains here and then stop me well enough on the way back down. And I had plenty of extras on it, including a compact air pump,  a speedometer/odometer and a saddle pouch filled with spare tubes and patches.

And now it’s gone.

We left the house on Monday morning about 10. It was raining and I had just taken the dogs outside and left my umbrella hanging on the bike’s handlebars while I went back inside to get MyeongHee and take her to work.  After driving her to the hairshop, I went downtown to meet another prospective employer and was there until 11:30 or so. When I came back at 11:45, I almost didn’t recognize my own apartment: the bike that is always present near the front door was gone. I had to double-check the door number to make sure I was at the right apartment.

I immediately ran down to the security office to have them check their CCTV videos. It didn’t take long to find out what happened.

Here is the guy going into the building. The bag he carries likely has a bolt-cutter

Just a few short minutes later, he carries out my bike

And then, once outside, he cuts the lock and rides off into the sunset

So, nothing to go on except a guy in a black and blue jacket. He wearing a mask, which doesn’t even rate mild surprise in Asia where masks are common given the level of pollution and, in spring, yellow dust from the Gobi desert. He’s got a cap, too, so almost nothing of his face can be seen. He must’ve known where he going and what he was getting as he spent just a short time going up the stairs and then back down. My friends say he probably saw me before, watched where I went and then staked out the place, waiting for us to leave. We were gone less than one hour when the CCTV snapped these pictures.

And it was about 90 minutes after that that I took these pictures of the video with my hand-phone and then walked the neighborhood looking for a short fucker in a black and blue jacket. No luck, obviously. Probably a good thing as I was angry enough to do some real damage had I found him.

Once before I had a few things stolen off the bike – I suspect by kids since they stole useless electronics like the former speedometer I had but left the sensor and wireless transmitter.  So now it’s twice I’ve lost things.  I just spent $110 on the bike late last week getting new gears, chain and sprocket.

And while I’m not broke and can buy another bicycle, that’s money I didn’t want to spend.

Sadly, posting my loss on facebook brought out a number of other friends’ stories of what they had stolen from them. Nice not to have been singled out, I supposed.  And this won’t be the last, either. I’ll just have to find a place inside the apartment to stash the next bike I buy.

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By Marty, April 17, 2011 10:35 am

And so on and so forth…

Getting back to Korea from my long vacation in the USA was no big ordeal.

Getting from the airport to home was indeed an ordeal, however.  In an effort to make the flight/airport time (i.e. time in a kennel) easier for SaTang, I tried to get the most direct route home.  I usually fly out of Busan to Tokyo and then on to DFW. For whatever crazy reason, even though people were avoiding Japan due to the radiation potential, flights through Tokyo were double the cost of fares to other cities. Flying to Beijing and then on to Busan was cheaper by half but far longer in time to be cooped up in a kennel. Same with Hong Kong or Singapore.  I chose to fly direct to Seoul and then use the trains get to the opposite end of the peninsula.

We got into Incheon airport near Seoul after a mere 14 hours flying time. Happy to have come through security and animal customs cleanly and avoided the Japanese radiation, I took SaTang out of her kennel and we headed for the train from the airport to the main train station. Trust me when I tell you that process is far easier for those who travel light. I had a rolling bag and heavy backpack and a kennel to carry through the numerous escalators and elevators to get just to the train was  a trek.

Once on the train, we had about 40 minutes to ride to the central Seoul Station where I could hop the fast KTX train to Ulsan. We got to the station and had to navigate our way through several levels upward to the station itself from the tracks. Getting into or onto a combination of escalators and very slow elevators with all my gear and dog was extreme. I hope to never have to do that again.

At the train station, I showed the ticketmaster at the counter the email with the ticket number MyeongHee had already purchased for me. Although she bought it almost two weeks prior, it was standing room only.  I would have to stand the two hours on the train. Furious, I told her to cancel that and I’d get another train. No dice – everything on Friday night out of Seoul was standing room only. I could have taken a bus home but that would be five hours more and I wasn’t up for it. I repurchased a ticket and waited for my ride/stand home.

While I waited, I tried to take SaTang outside so she could pee or poop. She’d been in the kennel for a long while and hadn’t done either. Outside the train station in Seoul is a virtual circus of humanity. More than a few drunks and derelicts expressed love and affection for my cute doggie and had to be literally beaten off before she bit them. Like myself, she was a little peeved and irritable from a long flight. I smacked one drunk to the ground and bundled up our stuff to get away from them. We had to go down the ramp rather than the stairs because of all I carried and that’s where the drunks prefer to pee since the ramp had waist-high concrete walls to shield prying eyes. I threw rocks at one drunk in our path who was peeing and finally got him to make way. SaTang got the hint, however, and decided this was as good a place as any to pee and let it rip.  I decided it would be better to wait inside where the drunks and retards weren’t so populous. I bought us both a hamburger at McDonalds and gave her the meat. I had to fight off a few more drunks and homeless who wanted my hamburger, the dog’s hamburger, me to buy them one or me to just give them the money.

Perhaps its the vast difference in price between planes and trains and buses, but I find far less drunks and derelicts in the airports. What a place.

Already up for almost 24 hours by then, I was waiting to board the train when someone asked me if I shouldn’t be getting on. My watch said I had two hours to go but it was actually 14 hours behind – I forgot to change the time from Dallas, CST.  I had mere minutes to get on the train and I ran (or more like hobbled) with SaTang, my rolling bag, backpack and kennel to get through two more escalators to the tracks. I missed my train by seconds and was left pounding on the doors as it pulled away. Arrrgh!

I got on the next train a half hour later and was finally on my way home. It was only a two hour ride from Seoul and standing was only part way. Once some of the people got off and various cities along the way I could take a seat and relax. MyeongHee picked us up at the Ulsan station at 10:20pm and we were home by 11, a whopping 24 hours of non-stop travel.

Now that I’ve had a day to relax and adjust to the time zone, it’s time to get busy here in Korea. Lots to catch up on, including this blog, but some photos to post, videos to make and, not least, find a new job.

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By Marty, February 25, 2011 11:22 am

There is a countdown timer on the right side of this page. It shows when next I’ll come back to the USA.

I had left it up knowing I might have to alter the D~Day event significantly if I got the job at UNIST.  It would have been summer, a season I had come to abhor in Texas. But now it is as it always was. March 6th I will board a plane for an extended visit home.

I decided not to take the job they offered. The contract negotiation session yesterday was a sad affair in many ways. I was prepared for a low ball offer but not that low. Although after walking out on giving them my final offer they called back and upped their offer. It was still too low by a far cry, especially considering what they wanted : a technically oriented teacher who could teach writing. That was me and rhey even admitted there wasn’t another candidate with the skills they wanted.

They wanted steak on a hotdog budget and I told them those exact words. After having done an interview and returned to do a presentation and returned again to discuss money I just felt they were having me jump through a lot of flaming hoops for a salary I can get anywhere in this town. Moreover, I have talents other candidates do not have. (Modesty has no place in job negotiations, by the way.)

And if small money was not enough of a reason, the rest of the negotiation session revealed the real deal: split shifts in the summer, student counselling and what they considered the cherry on top – proofreading professors’ technical papers. Not even teaching.  Nothing about it made me excited about the job and I’m actually very happy to have turned them down. One should be excited and enthused about a new job and I was neither. It didn’t take me long to make my final decision. On retrospect, their campus revealed as much about their mindset as their offer: beautiful buildings and landscaping and an air of wanting to be a part of something special. But they do not appear to value their human assets near as much. No budget for salaries but an enormous budget for polished marble, etched stainless steel and even LCD displays on rooms announcing the schedules therein.

So my immediate future is set. I will finish my contract on March 4th and be on a plane on the 6th. When I come back at some, as yet, undetermined future I will be just a hired gun, teaching English where ever there is a need and a fistful on won.

Got English. Will travel.

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By Marty, February 20, 2011 10:49 am

We pulled a Matrix stunt this weekend while on a bus trip to the resort. Bullets, in the form of bus wheels, flew off. Near misses. No bodily harm caused but lots of fear.

The weekend ski trip is a pretty cheap deal here in Korea. For less than $90 you get a 4 hour bus ride there and back, lift tickets and ski or board rentals. Our trip started at 4am and I rode my scooter at 3:45 am to join my friends. Once on the bus, we chatted briefly and then we all leaned back in our seats for a snooze while we drove to the ski mountain. I had a hard time sleeping as I was sitting near the rear of the bus and kept hearing a strange harmonic “whop whop whop” sound and a slight shimmy.  I’m not bus driver so I didn’t worry too much about it. I figured the bus driver knows his bus better than I.

Less than 2 hours into a 4 hour drive I heard a bump and the driver pulled off the highway. I though we were stopping at a rest stop but the driver got out and started talking rapidly on his cell phone. Not a good sign. I got out to see what the matter was.

Where is our second wheel

It was still before sunrise and a little hard to see. But clearly, we were missing something here. Our bus was listing hard to the left and the rear tire was dangerously compressed. It wasn’t immediately clear what really occurred. A quick look at the right side showed us what it ought to look like:

There should be two wheels on the rear of the bus. This is the right rear side and the wheels and tires extend to the edge of the bus body. Then looking again at the left side it was clear what the shimmy and whop-whop noise was: We had a flat and the driver ignored it. He ignored the noise and shimmy for so long, in fact, that we lost the entire wheel. It must have worked itself right off the studs.

We went back on the bus to wait for a repair job. Then we learned that it would be a two hour wait for a new bus to pick us up and continue the journey. A new bus? Why?

It was after dawn before we realized the truth of what really happened.   Once the sun had come up enough to give us some light, this is what we saw.

both wheels are off the studs with one wheel completely missing

We had nearly lost both wheels. We clearly dodged a bullet. I think the final bump we heard before pulling off the road was the remaining wheel slipping off the studs and resting on the hub.  Metal shavings littered the hub, wheel and ground and left a trail for many meters back along the highway. Nowhere behind us was our missing wheel, which means it must have fallen off quite a while back.  Our bus had come very close to pulling a Fred Flintstone and simply rolling over on it’s side. Had that happened at highway speeds of 100km/hour (70mph) things would have gone very badly. Instead, the driver pulled over just before things got really frisky and our biggest headache was a two hour wait for a replacement bus.

Once we were on our way, we got to the ski mountain late, but just in time for lunch and skiing. Our package was for 9am to 4pm but the tour group adjusted the lift times for us (quite complicated here in Korea compared to the simple full-day or half-day prices back in the USA) and we skied from 12:30 until 6pm. We arrived back in Ulsan around 11pm.

On the top, the obligatory photo

We went to “High One” a resort in GangwanDo province. Not a very big ski resort by most standards, but adequate. Only 18 runs are placed around a mountain, the top of which is only about 1200 meters. There are just a few beginner courses, completely overrun with people and more of a roller-derby game than skiing. An equal number of intermediate and advanced and a couple of professional runs and snowboard technical courses dot the higher slopes.

I spent the early afternoon getting my ski legs adjusted. It had been a year since I skied and didn’t want to go too far, too fast, too soon. I’m an old man, after all.  Once I felt comfortable skiing and had my carving skills honed by dodging the thousands of beginners on the easy green slopes I took to the blues and reds.

Experts Only. But I did several of these

No hill for a stepper like me. I plunged down the “expert only” red slopes (in Korea, red is what American’s would view as a blue or perhaps double blue diamond run) and found them to be only steep and fast with almost no moguls (bumps). Of course, I felt a little studly going down the expert runs, but no serious skier would consider these expert only. If you’ve ever been to Taos ski mountain, these would be a difficult blue there. But at least I had the runs mostly to myself and I could ski with abandon. The easier slopes were too crowded with people.

Mountainous Gangwan province, complete with brown haze

Since we arrived late and our lift times were adjusted onward to 6pm, the slopes started to clear off after 4:30. Quite a few other one-day bus trips left at that point and the only remaining skiers were those spending the night in pricey hotels or, like us, leaving later. The higher slopes were shut down, but the lower, green slopes, although easier, were cleared of most of the people. Overall, despite the bullet dodging, not a bad day.

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By Marty, February 11, 2011 10:17 am

I get to present on the 22th of February to UNIST.  Until then, I’ll know nothing about whether I come home in March or June.

I submitted my presentation yesterday. I decided to do it on proper emailing, a subject most Koreans truly suck at. I took a presentation I’d already done for a company I teach at and prettied it up for a the academic crowd.  Should be fun, as the ones who have emailed me already regarding the position are guilty of most of the egregious errors in spelling, grammar, cultural usage, etc.

Today at my regular school, the director is bringing in another foreigner for the day.  He says he’s not hiring anyone full time to replace me and wants to just have a native English speaker once or twice a week come in. I guess he wants to break them in right while I’m still there. He hasn’t said anything else about it, but I suspect I’ll have someone else shadowing my classes for the day.  I hope it’s someone I already know.

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By Marty, February 6, 2011 10:32 am

Yesterday we got into a car accident. Not a big one and no one was injured. It was startling, though, and we were all shaken.

We were travelling back to Ulsan from a trip to Costco in Busan. We had a load of groceries in the trunk and were just dealing with the massive amount of traffic on the roads. This week was Lunar New Years and being Saturday, the 4th of a five day weekend, many people were heading home and the roads were jammed. We were on the new interstate between Ulsan and Busan and we weren’t going very fast – maybe 40km/hr (about 25mph) and were in one of the many tunnels that burrow through the mountains between the two cities.  Dim, yellowish lighting in the tunnel makes it difficult to see so all of the lanes are marked off with a solid white line, which means no lane changing. This being Korea, however, rules are rarely followed.  One man decided my lane was better than his and he decided he wanted to be in my lane. Unfortunately, we were still in it. He side-swiped us while along the right from the front passenger door to the bumper. His van was scratched from end to end. Koreans generally don’t (nor are they taught to) look in their blind spot when changing lanes (I berated MyeongHee about this for weeks when she first got her license) and this guy was no exception. Had he look, he would have seen us: we were just to his left when he careened into us.

No worries, though, as it was just a flesh wound to the car and everything still functioned. It was only a matter of getting the official things done.  MyeongHee called the insurance company who came out to the scene within 15 minutes or so. He inspected the accident, took a few pictures and then asked us to drive out of the tunnel and out of traffic (I’m sure we caused an even great backup while we sat in the middle of the tunnel) so he could take better pictures in daylight. We spent another 10 minutes there while he took our stories of the accident. He figured ti would take 2 days or so to fix our car and asked if we needed a rental. Yes, we told him, we would. He then suggested we follow him to a repair shop where we could drop off the car  and pick up a rental. We still had a trunk full of groceries and I thought this would be a long, drawn out trip through busy Busan traffic followed by a stack of paperwork.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.

We drove maybe 10 minutes through heavy traffic to a repair shop, spent all of 2 minutes doing paperwork and then were on our way home again in a new rental, our groceries safely transferred to the new trunk. I thought that was pretty efficient, but that sometime this week we’d have to drive back down to Busan to pick our car from the repair shop. Wrong again. They deliver. MyeongHee gave them the address to her hair shop and they’ll drop it off when they’re finished and pick up the rental.  Although any accident is a hassle, this was absolutely almost zero hassle.

Say what you will about Korean drivers and their lack of blind spot checking, rule following or whatever. But the efficiency they have in getting things done, as experienced by this accident and by last week’s highly efficient apartment move, and we’re pretty happy campers.  By contrast, the last time I moved in America was from Plano to Farmer’s Branch and Circe hired a moving company to get it all. It took nearly all day and twice the price they quoted her (and 2X what we paid here.)  And the last car accident I had in America was an exercise in dealing with insurance company estimates, finding a garage, dealing with the rental agency and then returning said rental; a far from almost zero hassle experience.

One final bright spot was that this accident will also repair a nice long scratch on the car we got a month ago when we had our first snow storm and slid into  a parked truck. We were prepared to fix that on our nickel but this guy yesterday was nice enough to side-swipe us and have his insurance company fix it for us.

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By Marty, February 2, 2011 9:37 am

My contract is up next month at the private school I now work at and I’ve already got a ticket home. But it’s still a maybe in my mind. Although I had applied for a couple of university positions, nothing had come of my applications until mid January. That’s when friends of mine, who already worked at these colleges, submitted my application again with their personal recommendations. Of course, it’s always been that way – it’s better to network than simply throw resumes to the wind.

Anyway, two colleges here in town, one a nursing college and the other a national technical university, decided they’d better get busy and hire a native English speaker for their spring semester which starts in March. I interviewed at the nursing college last week and then at the teach uni this week. Both times I knew my competition – other friends here in town. That makes it nice because if I don’t get the job I’ll still have a friend there for next year when they need another teacher. The nursing college has already decided and they didn’t choose me. No worries, the winning applicant was Alan, a guy who used to live in Watertown, SD and partied at The Prop, the old watering hole by the lake near Lizzie’s former home.  I’m happy for him. On the plus side, he has a private school of his own he’ll have to hire a teacher for. Maybe I can be his boy there when I come back.

The tech university is a much bigger school and they’re hiring a couple of teachers. They wanted writing instructors, and with the novel I’ve written and continuing writing on my other website, Ulsanonline.com, I figured I’ve got a good chance. My competition is Dee, another good friend who has written for the same website and for the local newspaper we both wrote for a few years back. Dee is also a rock climbing partner and we’ve spent many a Saturday together clinging to rock faces. She’s got a leg up on me on this job as she’s midway through her Masters degree in journalism. She’s also younger and prettier, which is something the Koreans tend to value more in their native English speakers than they do quality or ability, of which she has plenty of also. Regardless, this would be a nice job if I get it, but I’m not holding my breath. If I get, I’ll stay through May and come home. If not, I’ll come home in March.  I hope to know definitively within the next week or two.  I have to admit, though, that even though I’d like the job, I’m more than ready for a break and am homesick. Part of me wants to be passed over  for the job so I can simply go home for a while. The other part of says that rejection still hurts and I want the job, more so than the nursing college job I was already rejected for.

This week, February 2nd through the 4th, is Lunar New Year. It’s one of the two biggest of Korean holidays and the country nearly shuts down while people travel in packs to their hometowns to celebrate. We’ll be going to Pohang and I’ll be sitting on the floor again for a couple of days.  Next week, beginning on the 7th, people will be back and work and thinking hard about who they’re going to hire. I should probably know something that week.

Until then, ta ta for now… and Happy New Year

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By Marty, January 25, 2011 10:48 pm

We’ve Moved.

Not nearly as traumatic as moving day has been in the past. In fact, it was relatively easy. With a few exceptions, of course.

It started at 10:30, which was probably the biggest exception. The movers were supposed to arrive at 12:30, so we still had time to make some breakfast, drink coffee, lounge a bit and take showers and get dressed. We did almost none of that. I had time for only one cup of coffee and everyone was else was still in their pajamas. I had already gotten up and taken the dogs out to the park so I was at least dressed.  MyeongHee complained that they were too early, but they just barged in and went to work.

And work they did.

on the left, nephew ChangHyun, DongHyun and MyeongHee stand amid a sea of boxes and crates in our old home

Within one hour, this team of five or six people (they moved so fast I didn’t really count them) had everything packed. They marched in a boatload of reinforced boxes and proceeded to unfold them and load them up. One woman stayed in the kitchen and wrapped dishes in bubble wrap and filled boxes and then did the dry good and then worked over the refirgerator and freezer.  The mean worked on the living room and bedrooms and packed books, beds and clothes and armoires. They had their business down to a smart science.

MyeongHee tries to act happy even though she's had no shower or breakfast

It was really amazing how much stuff we had. Especially considering I moved to Korea with a suitcase and duffel bag of clothes and a few sundries. Of course acquiring a wife means also acquiring a lot of other things, such as all her pots, pans, dishes, refrigerator, and her clothes. Add in her teenage son and all his accoutrements and we had a 2-ton truck filled. And even that was amazing. No trudging up and down stairs for this moving team.

The ladder truck

Once everything was packed, the ladder truck arrived and they began moving things down into the truck.

The platform is moved into place on the front balcony

A test ride up on the platform

Boxes and crates moved with ease from the 4th floor to ground level in mere seconds

While the men on the 4th floor loaded the platform with boxes and crates, one man in the truck rearranged them into the truck for a tight fit. They would send down a new platform of boxes and he would quickly slide everything into the truck and send it up again for another load while he stacked them.

Just less than one later they had everything moved from our apartment to the truck and we’re pulling out. An amazing time of slightly less than 2 hours to pack and load and entire 3-person household. We packed only our wallets, money, important papers, sex toys (just kidding) and passports. They did everything.

And they were off. MyeongHee and the two boys (her nephew ChangHyun has been staying with us since Christmas) took off with the car while I stayed behind. I cleaned up some and then took off on my scooter to join them

preparing to load the new apartment

And then the process begins anew – only in reverse. Boxes are loaded on to the platform in the parking lot and shuttled up to the 3rd floor.

One man waits for the platform to bring more boxes

A new sea of boxes and crates is formed

This time, we got involved in the process. We knew where we wanted things and how we wanted them arranged. To let them do it all would have been possible, but we’d have probably redone a lot if they did. Our clothes was another small exception to the day – they unpacked them and didn’t seem to notice that my underwear, which are quite a bit bigger than MyeongHee’s, all went into the same section of the armoire.

At just after 2:30 pm the team left with their now empty truck. A total of 4 hours to pack, move and unpack and entire apartment of goods. That must be some kind of land-speed record. Nothing was scratched, nothing was missing and nothing was broken – not even the many eggs that were in the refrigerator. A testament to efficiency of the Korean moving team. I was very impressed. That cost us about US$900 which I thought was a good value.

Still, we spent the next several hours setting things up, hanging pictures, redoing the pond and waterfall. The final exception was the gas. We had none until the next morning so it was a bit chilly and we had to cook with just the microwave. Truly a small price to pay for a mostly effortless move.

The New Apartment, including Sparky the dog

I was going to take several pictures of the new place. This will have to suffice. If you really want to see it, you can come and visit us.

Here’s our new address:

Ulsan
Namgu,Yaumdong 701-1
Hanla Ace Apt. Bldg 101 No. 305

The phone, if you want to call is 82-052-266-5941

That’s all the new for now. Love to everyone.