Time for some fun!

Mustang Pool

On the weekends the boys LOVE to go to the indoor pool here. They spend the entire time on the waterslide! They are doing so well, too, splashing into the water and swimming to the side. Here is a picture of Andrew splashing into the water:

And here comes Joshie:

Modern Inconveniences

At this point, if we had to summarize our experience with one word it would be: frustration.


The third day we were here, the driver's side window on our van stopped working. All efforts to fix it thus far have failed. A real inconvenience when have to open your door in the pouring rain to show the gate guard your ID to get onto base.


Next was the whole Internet and TV debacle. Something that should have taken one day took 10.


Followed by our washing machine. We were glad to have one but have since discovered it doesn't have hot water. But, worse than that is that it's now completely broken. Whatever spins around on the bottom of the washer to wash the clothes comes right off in the spin cycle, spinning dirty scum all over the clothes. Pretty inconvenient when there are five of us working on a limited wardrobe until September when all of our stuff is scheduled to arrive.


The best story is more funny than frustrating. Our toaster. The American one we had took forever to toast something so we walked down to the local E-mart (told it was like Target but really, very very very remote comparison) and bought a Korean toaster. Easy enough. We thought we bought a white one to match the kitchen as the box and floor sample indicated it was white. Well, it's tan. That's fine, we're not picky. Also in the box, a telephone cord. Humph. That's odd. Whatever. Check the crumb pan, oh, there's already crumbs in there. Nice. We've just purchased a used toaster. Lovely. Just what we always wanted. In an effort to spare ourselves any further frustration, we decided to run it a few times to heat it up and kill off any leftover germs. We figured that was much easier than going back to the store and trying to tell them we wanted to exchange it.

Welcome to Korea!

So, our first two weeks have been spent trying to set up camp here. We worked out a car and an apartment before we left the States so we were ahead of the game. However, our two biggest hurdles have been TV and Internet, the lifeblood of our existence.



Our apartment is already hooked up with Korean cable, so that is great if you speak Hangul. We don't. We managed to find a satellite provider through the base which we thought would solve our TV issues. Now, instead of watching Korean game shows, we are getting government controlled AFN. We have 9 channels, all AFN, all the time. Time to sign up for Netflix!



Getting Internet access proved more difficult since there isn't any vendors on base for those of us living off base. We finally hooked up with a Korean intermediary who was nice enough to take Ainsley downtown and arrange for us to get Internet. On Wednesday, the man arrives at our apartment to set it up and the language barrier made it interesting. A lot of Angela pointing to the router saying "Internet" and "wireless." Somehow we figured it out and life has improved immensely now that we are able to communicate with our family and friends! However, having a Korean IP address has complicated surfing the web quite a bit. When do those language classes start?

Madeline, 4 months old

Sweet little Madeline is four months old! At her check up she weighed 12 lbs 4 oz and is 23.5 inches long. She likes to give people the raspberries, blow bubbles, play with her feet, scoot on her back and has just started rolling over! Madeline slept through the night prior to our move and is just now starting to get back on track. She's a very happy girl and we adore her.

Jet Lag

Ah, you knew it would happen. We were kinda hoping that since we got in so late on our first day that we would magically wake up on schedule.

Of course not! What fun would that be! Getting five people back on track took a full week. Ainsley and I may have succeeded sooner but the kids were all up at different times. On average, we were all up around 3-4am every night. Madeline was up every 2-3 hours.

So, we did what anyone else with no TV and no Internet would do. We cleaned the apartment. Wheeeeee! Are we having fun yet?

A 28 hour day - July 6, 2007

Our story begins in what I like to call the "roach motel," otherwise known as our TLF on base. I am so happy we decided to camp in our empty house for as long as we did. The TLF's at Eglin leave something to be desired, like cleanliness and insect control.

Angela and the kids arrived at the TLF the night before our trip at 10pm. We got up at 4am after little sleep (who can sleep with bugs everywhere?). Hosed the kids down in the shower and off we went. Not an ideal start to the longest day of our lives.

Our plane left the sunny Florida coast July 6th at 7am, arriving in Atlanta for a quick 2 hour lay over. The kids were a mess, they would not let Daddy out of their sight which made things difficult. We took off at 11:30am and didn't arrive in Seoul until 3pm July 7.

The 15 hour flight wasn't ideal, but it could've been much worse. Madeline was the superstar, never fussing and being as happy as can be.

We thought for sure the kids would be enthralled by the selection of movies and TV available to them on the flight. As it turns out, they did not watch anything for more than 10 minutes. They were OBSESSED with the flight map and had to constantly check and see where we were on the map.

I would say they slept a total of three hours MAX. They slept the first hour on the flight and not again until the last 2. It was exhausting!!!! Ainsley managed to rack out for a solid block of five hours or so and Angela slept the last 2 hours. Boy were we tired!!!!

Herman was kind enough to pick us up from the airport in Seoul, for which we are eternally grateful. However, we were not prepared for him to miss the exit off the expressway and the one hour detour through downtown Seoul. Thanks for the tour Herman, but have we mentioned that we haven't slept in 24 hours?

We arrive at Osan AFB about 7pm that evening and we are so tired we abandon our plan to go directly to our new apartment and opt for a ready to sleep CLEAN room at the hotel on base. We had to sleep in two separate rooms, but we were all too tired to care. We got to bed at 10pm, bringing our travel total to a lovely 28 hours. *yawn*

PS: Ten bags WILL fit in a Ford minivan . . . BARELY!