'Tis the season to be jolly!! =)

Wow it's been busy!! 'Tis the holiday season once again!! =)

We are now all moved into our new apartment and settled in, it is beautiful! pictures soon.

We had such a great thanksgiving, Tim and I went over to our friend Lindo's apartment along with 30-40 other people from the same platoon. We made it into a potluck and everyone that had access to a stove brought food. I made the mashed potatoes/gravy, and pumpkin pies, and cherry cheesecake. yum! There was sooo much food it was crazy! I think there were like 2 turkeys, 2 hams, and 1 duck. (first time I tried duck) There was just a ton of food! We all stayed there pretty much the whole day eating away and playing card games. Tim and I had to go gome a couple hours to take a nap, we were so full it made us tired! Then we went back! haha

It's gotten extremely cold here the last few weeks, it actually snowed last night but didn't really stick. No one has yards here so the only place it has to stick is roofs or roads and all the traffic turned it into slush. Tim had to ride home from work on his bike in the slush, he said that was deffinetly an adventure. It's hard enough to keep from geting hit because drivers here don't care about hitting pedestrians, tim's been cut off on his bike once already.

Christmas is coming! we are soo excited! Our first christmas together. =) We put the tree up the day after thanksgiving and decorated. I have the nativity set Grandma gave me displayed on our coffee table. I always enjoyed decorating for christmas, it's kinda my thing. =) Tim was very proud to put his "The Simpsons" ornaments up on the tree.

Everything has been very busy, and it's so hard to get to the library to be able to post anything so I would not be suprised if I don't return before christmas, so happy holidays to all!!

Love,
Ruthy

11-08-08

This is going to be a quickie but I just wanted to give an update on how things are going.
For starters, I took a look at that highrise at hillstate apartments last friday, and it was fantastic! It is on the 21st floor!! Amazing view of course, it overlooks the base and then all of uijeongbu, to the right you see the mountains which is no furthur then a mile away. It's a 3 bedroom, 2 bath, big living room/kitchen area..lots of closet space. It's just really nice, we are moving in on the 21st!! Yay us! =)
Our plans for Thanksgiving will be going to Lindo's new apartment for dinner along with several other people from Tim's work. My new friend Sutton(Megan) may be coming to our new apartment either the night before or that morning to cook up some american food, because we are not really cool with eating filipino food on thanksgiving. Don't get me wrong, filipino food is great! It's just we want it to feel like thanksgiving back home and I just love thanksgiving food.
I won't be able to update a whole lot, because one our computer is broken so I have to go to our CAC center to do stuff, and two moving and thanksgiving is going to make us uber busy.
Well, I am out of time here, so I wish everyone a great thanksgiving! Miss and love you all!!
Ruth

Chapter 11: 10-29-08

It's been awhile!
A lot has been going on, I don't know where to start.
Update on the Apartment situation.. we were still waiting to hear about the one we had looked at that was supposed to be open soon. We stopped by the office and asked about it, she says December at the earliest =( Too long, we asked if there was anything else available and she told us of a few places, so we are going to look at one on friday that is supposed to be ready in 2-3 weeks. Oh, I so hope that it is nice and that it really will be ready soon! It's just a bummer since we had so many plans already for the apartment we were waiting for.
Tim had a 5-day weekend this past weekend, it was awesome! He hardly ever gets that much time off! Not unless everyone else is also..but since this new sargent has got here he's changed the scheduling for the better and I guess everyone is really happy with it.
Last saturday, we went to our friends baby shower, soo much fun! It was a weird mix of people though because the wife is filipino so all of her filipino friends were there and then there were all these soldiers, and then two wives(incl. me) and one 10 y/o girl..oh and like 3 babies.. We were cramped into their small apartment, same size as tims and mine..quite an experience. We had a lot of fun though. =)
Tim went to a meeting yesterday, and found out we are now able to get command sponsored! More paperwork, yay, but atleast we will be able to ship all our stuff back without going through UPS.

10-05-08:Chapter 10

Happy Birthday Daddy!! =)


Today started pretty darn early for me, about 1 am. ughh. I hate being off schedule with sleep, it's so screwed up right now. I do like that I had been waking up at 5 with tim, I know that's odd, but it's nice to get up and make breakfast for him while he showers and be able to sit down together before he leaves instead of him waking me to say goodbye. but 1 am?!? I did fall asleep around 8:30 last night, lame, haha I'm geting old.


Tim had the day off yesterday, he was pretty sick with a sinus headache and all the fun stuff that comes with that so it started out pretty slow. I ran to the store and got him medicine and hot tea, he started to feel better towards mid-afternoon. So, I tortured him in the bathroom and cut his hair. I was actually pretty nervous because I've never cut guys hair before, I didn't do so well with fading on one side but the other looked pretty darn good. he wore a hat to work today haha! I also cut my own hair too, he helped with the back to make sure it was even. Somewhere in the middle of this process he ended up cuting the chain on my neclace!!!! =( Only he would manage to do that, and then continue without noticing.





We went to the real estate office again yesterday to let them know we had OHA now, looks like we have to wait another month before something is available =( hmrph.


Our friends downstairs, Tony and Danika, let us know of their baby shower in a few weeks, they found out their having a boy!! Tony was hoping for a girl, but doesn't every guy want a little baby girl?

I'm in the middle of possibly the best series I have ever read before. Twilight. There are 4 novels, soon to be 5. Margaret let me borrow 1-2 and I didn't think after the first that oh, maybe I should order the next one's now since I finished the first one in 12 straight hours. So, now I am waiting, very impatiently for 3-4, re-reading 1-2! If mythical, romance, fiction novels are your thing, I highly suggest this series. It's outstanding.

10-02-08:Chapter 9

A very crazy thing happened last evening, almost suprising. Tim and I were taking our trash out on our way to go buy some movies at a store down the street. We had just set it out on the curb when this lady hauling a little cart was passing by. As soon as we had set the bags down she jumped on it and was already searching through the bags. I was so suprised by this I couldn't help but give her a nasty look like what do you think your doing?! My first thought was maybe she was looking for recyclables, but then I realized they don't recycle here. Then it dawned on me that this lady was either looking for dinner, or she was searching for our documents to see what she could get. I just looked at Tim and he didn't seem to be bothered one bit. As soon as we were out of hearing distance from the her, I asked "is that lady seriously searching through our garbage? In front of us!" he answered in a matter-of-fact kind of way(like I was supposed to know this) That he was warned people go through everyone's garbage, and we were supposed to shred any documents that would have our s.s.# or anything on them. Of course as we were on our way in, I noticed the garbage bags had been taken. At least it was only our kitchen garbage, so I am certain all that was in there was rotten food and trash...
Note to self: Shred all documents, asians are crazy.

09-28-08:Chapter 8

It's been awhile since I have updated, so I will fill all of you in on the very few things that have happened since my last entry.
Tim was on night shift the last 2 weeks, so that was difficult to get on the same sleep schedule and all, now he is switched back to day shift.
We finally received OHA and won't need to dig into our savings to pay for rent. Next week we are going to the real estate office to let them know we can move and make sure they have an apartment available still. So, hopefuly everything will workout and by next month we will be at our new place! I am really excited for that because it is really nice there, and we will need the extra room for when people come to visit. There just isn't enough space here.
I think that's all I really have for now.

09-17-08:Chapter 5

I'm going to be an aunt!!! =) Margaret has now spilled the beans that she is a couple months pregnant. She doesn't blog so I will be the one to share her secret with the online world. I'm not sure exactly how far along she is, I think she will be due sometime in April though, more updates on that as I find out though.
As for me and Tim, not much is going on... Tim has been worn out a lot lately with his unstable schedule, he's been working a lot of nights off and on. He hardly ever knows when his hours are until the day before so he doesn't usually get a lot of sleep. Sometimes he works from 9-5(with p.t. at 6am) other days he'll work 6a-6p(or vise versa) today he is working from 9a-9p. It's very frustrating, and difficult for me to keep him happy... he tends to get a little grouchy without his sleep. poor guy.
I of course have just been keeping up with the apartment, and just trying to take care of my dear ol' husband. I mentioned before of how we really want to move, well, yesterday I went down to the real estate office and spoke to a lady there about the SK apartments(the one's our friends live in) sounds like there will be one open in a couple of months when we are ready to move. This afternoon, I have an appointment with her to go tour the apartment, even though I have been in our friends a few times, it'll give me a chance to ask her any questions that we have. I can't wait to be in a nicer place! We are deffinetly living in the ghetto, of the ghetto.

09-12-08:Chapter 4

Tim gets promoted today to E3! woohoo for that!! =) On top of that, since he worked the night shift the last two nights he doesn't work today, Friday. So, we have a 3-day weekend starting, now!
He has a class at Camp Humphrey starting next Tuesday and will be gone for 11 days. He's supposed to have Monday off too because it is a Korean holiday but they may be leaving on Monday for the class. we're thinking of getting me a hotel on the base for the weekend he will be there because he won't be in class, Humphrey is in Seoul, so we want to do some exploring.
Work has been pretty good for him, he works in this thing called the hub, it's the central part of the communications network. I think there are about 7-8 select few that work in there with him, it's like the elite of communications I guess. I believe he enjoys it though, they just have to make sure everything is working so half the time they are sitting around playing video games or facebooking, until something breaks.
As for me, I'm just keeping up with things, housework's a lot harder when you don't have a dishwasher or a dryer.. our washer is very interesting, it washes then dehydrates so you have to hang dry everything, but when it dehydrates it makes everything super wrinkly!! It's pretty lame. Oh, did I mention I can't wait until we move!! =)
My next challenge is finding a beauty salon that speaks English =/ There are sooo many salons here!!(probably 100+ in our city) It's just hard to communicate with them to make sure they don't chop off all my hair! We've found so far that communicating is somewhat easy, whenever we've shopped we've been able to talk to the Koreans, a lot of the younger Korean generation knows English since they learn it in school now. Every once in awhile though we come across an older sales clerk that knows none and we have to point and they tell us how much by using a calculator. It's very interesting here, but we've managed to learn how to get around things... We may want to start learning more of their language though.

09-08-08:Chapter 3

Waking up at 5:30 really sucks. A piece inside of our toilet(the one that connects from the handle to the little chain inside) broke yesterday and our landlord told us someone would be up here early morning to fix it.

blahhh............I can't even look at my bed without longing to be there cuddling with my fluffy pillows!

09-07-08:Chapter 2

This weekend was great!

Friday night Tim and I went over to Lloyd and Gina's for their house warming. So many people showed for that! About 20. We had a lot of fun eating Filipino food, playing games and singing karaoke. Tim actually got up and sang "Piano man" with his buddy Richardson, yes, I have a video!! One of the guys brought his guitar with him so of course Tim joined in and took turns playing songs. I tried a Filipino's version of spaghetti, it was pretty much spaghetti with ketchup and slices of hot dogs. =) Very interesting, but good. I am trying to learn some recipes from these girls because I'm afraid Tim may leave me for their cooking... =) not really.

Saturday, we slept in a bit. Tim took me to the underground mall again because I was looking for some fall shoes. Just something to cover my feet so they don't get cold, because as of right now my wardrobe includes about 3 pairs of flip flops and 2 high heels... I didn't have any luck there, not with shoes anyway, I managed to come home with a complete outfit somehow though. =)

We decided to stay in the rest of the evening though and watch movies, sweeny todd was the pick of the night. I made some popcorn and we just relaxed. Afterwards, I decided to call my parents to say hello and catch up. That made Tim miss his mommy so we called her also! She informed us that Tim and I are a new aunt and uncle! =) His step brother and sister in law gave birth to their second child, a healthy 8 lb 8 oz baby boy, Vaughn Edward(I hope I spelled that right!) He was born the morning of the 6th. The big sister(Juliette) was highly confused when they left for the hospital she asks Grandma "uhm, where are they going?" She's very excited to be a big sister though!

Today was another lazy day. The church that we have been attending wasn't having a service today because of some picnic, so we stayed in for half the day. Later in the afternoon we went bowling.. then came home! =)

It was a nice relaxing weekend for the most part, now it's back to work for Tim tomorrow morning. He's back to working 12 hour shifts everyday so it'll suck not seeing him as much but I won't complain since we just had a 3-day weekend.

09-05-08:Chapter 1

Today has been a very relaxing day for Tim and I, he was given the day off since he had to work on his birthday(Wednesday). It's not that soldiers usually get their birthdays off but Tim wanted to take Wednesday off and wasn't able to since it was the first day back after a 4 day weekend.
Anyway, it's been really nice having him home and being able to just be with each other. Usually on his days off we are on the base getting things done. We did have to have our apartment inspected today by the first Sargent so that it could be approved for OHA(Overseas Housing Allowance) now it just needs signed by the commander. At the moment we are digging into our own account for a $1200 apartment, so it'll be good to have money to spend on things other then rent.

Tonight we are going over to Lloyd and Gina's for a house-warming party, they just moved into their apartment this week. They're living in the building we want to be in it's more expensive but much nicer then where we are. Our apartment is in a convenient location(the base is just across the road from us) but our building has a horrible smell from all our neighbors having a ton of dogs, I think the guy just next door has over 10 dogs. The inside of our apartment is just fine, but our neighborhood is a little run down looking, very trashy. We would like to move to a nicer place once our 1 year lease is up here.

I don't mind the apartment itself though, there are some nice features(it's completely furnished). We have a huge armour in the bedroom, and a pretty makeup vanity. There's a security camera in the hall so whenever anyone rings our doorbell the screen on our wall will turn on to show who's there, we can also pick up the phone to talk to them. Our living room came with a big screen TV, but then we only have a washer, no dryer. The washer has a cycle on it that dehydrates the clothes but then you have to hang everything to dry so that's just annoying. I don't think the washer works correctly anyway it just doesn't seem as though things come out as clean as they should. Other then that though, the size is just fine for the two of us.

09-04-08:Prologue

Tim was stationed in S. Korea back in mid June for a year, leaving me back home for a few weeks before he was told that I could go live there too. He had to AIP(Army Implementation Plan A.K.A. Avoid Iraq Program) an extra year in order for me to join him.

The process for me getting everything ready to move was quite frustrating, it seemed as though everything that could go wrong went wrong. I had a lot to do in very little time, and with things going wrong it just added to my load. I booked my flight for Friday, July 18th. The Saturday before I was to leave I had been getting things done and decided to check the status of my passport that was supposed to arrive by Tuesday. Of course just like everything else going wrong my passport wasn't going to arrive in time because it said I hadn't sent the right documents (so nice of them to contact me and tell me that.) I had to cancel my flight, order my birth certificate from California(I had sent the abstract instead of a long form b.c. since that's all we had) Once I had the correct documents I sent them in and a week later (July 22) received my passport. I booked my new flight for July 28th and boarded the plane bright and early (5:30AM)

Below: Danika, Rose and Me.
They told us to do the hear no, say no, see no evil. I was the only one that did it!

After a verrry looong 18 hours on a plane, I finally arrived to Seoul where Tim and his friend James greeted me. We took a bus to Uijeongbu(the city that I live it now) and then a taxi from the bus stop to our apartment. I got a pretty good look at our city while on the bus, then Tim showed me around the base the next day.

South Korea is about the size of Indiana with over 49 million people, so it is a very crowded country. Everything is so different from America, but easy to get used to. I've adapted pretty well so far. It's nice that we have a commissary on base though so that I can buy American food! I think I would get very tired of rice every day.

Below: Camp Casey Marketplace.

Over the first few weeks Tim showed me around Korea and took me to some marketplaces outside of other army bases. They have a ton of pawn shops and stores with clothes, shoes, and purses. You can find some good deals there but if your not careful some of the pawn shops will try to rip you off because they know you are from the u.s. My favorite marketplace we went to was Itaewon right outside of camp yongson. In our city there is a TON of shopping, we have a really cool underground mall over by the subway station. The area is about a mile long filled with just a bunch of clothing, shoe, and phone stores. Then above there behind the subway station is like the downtown area and they have several stores, restaurants and bars there.

I've met most of Tim's buddies here and some of their wives too, all the wives I met are Filipino (that's very common here that soldiers marry either Filipino or Korean girls.) The couples that we hang out with the most are Anthony and Danika,(they live in the same building as we do) Nick and Rose, Lloyd and Gina. We grill out at our apartment almost every weekend, it's a lot of fun!

Just last weekend all of us(minus Tony and Danika) went to a Korean restaurant where they have grills set up in the middle of all the tables and you order the same thing for your whole table. They bring out all these different sides of veggies and soups, and raw meat for you to cook on the grill to how you like it. The first kind of meat they brought out was fantastic, but the second was very bland and dry. I got a taste of kimchi for the first time, I don't think I will be having that again, a bit spicy for my taste! Tim tried the tofu/vegetable soup they brought out but once I saw his spoon full of whole fishies with the eyes and everything there was no way I was going to try that!! The boys were all complaining because we had to sit on pillows and they weren't flexible enough to cross their legs! It was a pretty good experience but everyone else told us not to base our opinion of Korean food on that restaurant because it wasn't as good as the rest of them I guess. Also, this restaurant was VERY pricey..

Below: the fishy

This weekend Tim had a four day weekend so we just relaxed, we were going to go to a circus on Monday that they were having at camp Casey but then he got put on duty from 8AM-8PM. That's how it usually works out for us though, whenever we make plans for his day off he gets put on duty, and he even had a pass approved so he's not supposed to be put on duty.

In our spare time we go to the CAC center(Community Activity Center) to play pool or board games, it's a good time of bonding for us. =) Even though we are both very competitive, we still have fun. There's also a movie theatre and bowling alley here on base, the theatre is free we just have to pay for the refreshments.

Below: Our special friend, Nick.

There's an FMWR(Family Morale, Welfare & Recreation) here at our base that organizes events and trips, just recently they took a trip to China, their next trip will be to Thailand. I'm not sure if Tim will have enough leave built up to take these trips any time soon though. There's a very pretty Island here by Korea called Jeju island that they have taken trips to, i hope to catch one of those because I've heard it's awesome!

Hope the pictures work because they're silly! =)