Want to go on a Korean Rail ride?

Zak and I decided we would take you all along on our subway ride to a neighboring city! Are you excited or what! :-P We really love living right next to the train station, it has been very convenient! Whats even more convenient are these cards called "T-Money Cards" that you can refill with Won (the Korean dollar) and use on just about anything, cabs, trains, buses, pay phones, even soda machines! You can get them in pretty much any design or character you want, mine is Hello Kitty, because I have let the little girl out in me while living in Asia and cannot help but think anything Hello Kitty is cute and I must have it. So here it is, your first "Korail" experience:



I just love how the rain and humidity makes my hair look.

Another college semester has begun for me, at least here in Korea I get to do some face to face classes and can have a little break from taking all of my classes online. Zak decided that he wants to take part in my Korean class at my college starting in October, I am really looking forward to that!

Another thing I love about Korea.. Bubble Tea...

 We are off to get Pip in a few days, I can't wait to meet her! I hope everyone has a great week.

A night in Seoul!

Let me preface this blog by saying that there will be a medical update at the end, and when I say that the picture is absolutely not for the squeamish I-mean-it. Don't click it if you can't handle blood ... and an incision that has exposed all layers of the dermis, right down to the muscle. Seriously.

On to non gut wrenching adventures now..

Zak and I took a trip to Seoul this weekend, it was great! We started off our trip by going to a hotel that Zak used to frequent when he stayed in Seoul a few years ago, since we had our back packs full of overnight things we wanted to drop them off before we started adventuring. Thats how we would have liked it to go anyways.. After being denied by about 8 hotels (why we were denied by so many I still have no idea) we decided to just skip that mission and head to the Coex Mall with back packs in tow. This was by far the busiest mall I have ever been to in my entire life! I got excited when I saw a familiar store on the mall map, and when I finally found my American store (Abercrombie and Fitch) I realized that the store was actually just one shelf of A&F product in a large department store, sad face. So then I ventured into a Korean store, similar to Forever 21 and crossed my fingers that I could find something to fit me! (In Korea a size M is equivalent to an American size XS!) I almost passed out when I saw a size large shirt, I knew I had a chance! It is actually great to be a bigger size in Korea because most of that clothing gets put on the 50% off shelf. I did score some great new tops!

Zak didn't get anything from the Coex Mall, it was just way too busy to keep shopping comfortably so next we headed to the Kimchi Museum! I didn't realize there were so many types of Kimchi! Here are a few photos from the Museum:

Little Koreans making little Kimchi!

Kimchi cures cancer... you didn't know?

Zak barely fit in the exhibit! 

After we left the mall we got on the subway and headed to Itaewon to meet up with a friend from Texas! It was great to see a familiar face in Korea! Faun took us to a bar called the "Bungalow" where we sat on swings and the floor was covered in sand, like a beach. We had a few drinks, met some of her friends, ordered ka-bobs that came with hot dogs on the end..

After Bungalow we went down to what I named the Seoul river walk. It is a man made stream that has fountains and a lazer light show! Mostly everyone was interested in the Korean street performer:

And a blurry picture of Zak and I:

By the end of the night, Zak was exhausted and so was I we finally found a hotel in Itaewon and got some sleep! We were going to do some more sight see-ing the next day, but due to Zak's medical issues, we decided it would be best to not over do it and just go home. (See mom's we listen!)

Now on to the juicy stuff (literally) yuck, I can't believe I just said that. Zak went for his post op check up a few days ago, and low and behold there is another complication. I feel so bad for Zak to have to endure all of this, but he assures me that it is not as bad as I think it is! lol So the doctor realizes that Zak has a seroma underneath the lower 1/3 of his incision. A seroma is a build up of fluid in an empty space that basically just keeps killing flesh and draining forever if it is not fixed. So apparently the only way to fix a seroma is to re-open the wound. There we were, just had eaten lunch, and the doctor whips out his medical scissors and starts cutting Zak open. I felt the color drain from my face and could no longer watch this process. The doctor cut about 2-3 inches wide and it opened up the cavity which is about an inch or so deep. We have to keep this cavity packed with gauze until it heals from the bottom up, which will take a few weeks. Like I said before, please do not click the picture if you do not think you can handle it.. 

(If you said YUCK or OMG to this one dont click the next)

To see more picture from our night in Seoul, click here.

We are adopting Pip!

Who is Pip you ask? Pip is a rescued puppy that came from a puppy farm here in Korea. She has been fostered for about 5 months and at the end of this month she will be our new puppy! We (mostly me) are so excited!!! I have gone back and forth for over the past year about wanting an animal, and while it would have been nice, our life just wasn't matched to have a pet. Now that we are settling down in Korea for a few years we have more time on our hands to take after one! Most of the streets here in our city have pet stores on them, and while they are just too cute for words staring at me in through the windows with their beady little puppy eyes, I couldn't help but think about all the puppies in the shelters here that needed homes too. Here are a few photos of Pip that I got from her foster mom:

 (Apparently this is Pip's favorite toy donut and she goes crazy over it!)

Ok ok enough with the cute little big eared puppy...

     Zak is feeling much better this week! He is still having trouble getting around, but overall I think his health is improving every day. His large incision is having some issues with leaking plasma, but we were assured that this is normal, his post op appointment is on Wednesday so we will see what needs to be done about that situation then. We are crossing our fingers that he will be able to go back to work late next week, I know he is getting so antsy sitting around the house all day. Without all of our things here it can get pretty boring, all we have to do is watch movies on the computer and online shop... but hey, im not complaining.. I am so happy to finally be in Korea!

     Another piece of good news is that we finally got word that Zak is released from his re-call back into active duty. Whew. It sure would have sucked for him to go to Iraq after all of this happened to him. We also had our dryer repaired that I broke, and now have that and the washer hooked up to a 110v transformer so we don't have any more voltage issues. Now the only issue we have is a leaky faucet which should be taken care of tomorrow with some handy plumbers tape. Since Zak has been out of service I have become quite the handy woman. :)

Thats all for now, hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend! Lots of Love xxx

A week long trip to the hospital

As much of you know, from my emails and Facebook posts, Zak has been in the hospital for the past week. Thankfully  he was released yesterday and is now relaxing at home on the couch. He went to the emergency room when we suspected that his appendix was rupturing, and 8 hours later they confirmed that for us. Soon after he was diagnosed he headed into surgery where they discovered that his appendix had already ruptured. An appendectomy is a pretty routine procedure, and most people can even go home the next day. But when you have a ruptured appendix it can be life threatening due to the toxic fluid being released into your body. His first surgery went well for 48 hours until he started to bleed out of one of his incisions. (it was laproscopic so he had three small incisions) They tried to patch him up with gauze, but it was pretty much like a geyser coming out of his abdomen. So he was again admitted into surgery. This time it was not so easy to find the problem so they had to make a very large vertical incision to see everything that was going on inside his abdomen. They fixed his clotting issue, and cleaned him out. It was very scary for the first 48 hours following his second surgery, we all wondered and hoped that nothing else would go wrong. He was released yesterday (Friday) and I think he is much more comfortable at home! Recovery is going well, we even walked around the city a bit today. He wanted me to post a picture so he could give everyone a thumbs up.. I warn you he looks a bit bruised and battered.

And for those of you interested in what his scar looks like... Click on the censored photo below to link to the up-close photo.

Thanks for all the well wishes everyone, he really is feeling much better.

While Zak was in the hospital I was in charge of moving into the apartment, getting the couch, washer and dryer delivered and hooked up. Everything went well, and I love our new couch! 

It is actually dark brown but it looks black in the photos.

The washer and dryer are brand new, but they are 110V and the hook up in the apartment is 220V. So silly me- I thought you could just use and adapter and everything would work. Nope. Wrong. I am pretty sure the dryer is ka-put. We shall find out when Zak is well enough and he can inspect it! I couldn't find the hot water switch all week so I was taking cold showers and hoping for the best, but then I found the plug to the hot water heater... woo hoo! I am so happy to have hot showers again. :) Not much more to update, didn't do much traveling around Korea this week besides going back and forth to the hospital. Take care everyone, have a great weekend and week to follow! 

We signed a lease, and caught the "crud"...

This week Zak and I decided to venture into Suwon, Zak had never been there before, and obviously neither had I. We took the metro and it only took us about 30 minutes to get there. The station in Suwon is like the station in Pyeongtaek, it is a giant mall! But the one in Suwon also has an underground mall. We looked around the mall (AK Plaza) and I found the holy grail of make up! I was so convinced that Korea did not have any brands of make up that I am used to using, but little did I know it was all hiding in this mall. :) As we were walking through another level, we spotted some odd "art"... if you can call it that? Apparently someone has a fascination with making dead bugs smoke cigarettes and battle with each other...

And me with an alligator made out of scraps:

After we shopped around there a bit we went outside of the station and starting looking around at all the stores in Suwon. We were pretty hungry at this point and decided to go to a Korean BBQ, where you do the BBQ'ing yourself. They just give you a bunch of meat and a hot stone, and your supposed to know what to do with the rest! We winged it by watching what everyone else was doing, and must not have been doing it right because a waitress came and re-arranged the whole thing for us! Here is a picture of Zak while we were BBQ'ing:

After we ate I went into a beauty store that I had scoped out before we had dinner. Upon entering I was handed a basket of free goodies such as lotion, face wash, and ICE CREAM! And I also ended up buying some more face lotion.. and got more free samples! I love Korea!

Some time between then and now Zak and I caught the dreaded Korean crud. It is known that most countries have different organisms and germs hanging around and we were bound to be plagued by them at some point no matter how much we used germ killers. It really is not fun to describe how we are feeling, but I think we are getting better... until we meet up with some new germies.

On a better note, we signed our lease for an apartment! It was quite a process, being that our realtor and land lord are Korean. Our realtor speaks broken english, and the land lord doesnt speak a bit of it. We had to do negotiations with them and then go on Camp Humphreys with them and sign the lease with the housing office. Im happy with the way it turned out, since we have such a nice place! The only expense we need to cover is our cable and internet. We will be moving in this weekend, our first night will be on Monday. Since we have none of our house hold goods yet, we will be sleeping on our new sectional until some time in September, hopefully earlier! But I would rather be in our "home" than in a hotel, and I don't mind sofa sleeping. :) Here are some pictures of the new place, they aren't very good... but they will suffice until I can do a video walk through for everyone!

I forgot to take pictures of the master bedroom, and the two other rooms that will be our workout room and office. After we move in I will post the walk through video! :) Have a great weekend everyone! 

A week's review of Korea

I think this has been the longest week of my life! Between all the jet lag and adventuring around Korea we were more than ready for a lazy Sunday! Earlier in the week I said how Zak and I discovered the great shopping mall in the Pyeongtaek metro station, but failed to mention the awesome pizza we had at the Pizza Hut here in Korea. They have an American menu and a Korean menu, and the pizza's can get a little crazy! (Im talkin' sweet potatoes crazy) So we went kind of low key and ordered their version of a Hawaiian Pizza, which comes with awesome cheesy fondue bites as crust! You rip off these sweet potato and cheese filled bites and dip them into a bowl of cheese fondue.... they are delicious! Here is a picture so you can get an idea of what I am describing:

Later in the week we decided to make a trip into Seoul, well Yongsan actually but we were basically in Seoul.  We visited the tallest mall I had ever been to, I think it was about 8 stories tall. We rode an express train which only took about 45 minutes, as opposed to taking the metro which would have taken us well over 2 hours because of all the stops. It is 4,500 won (equivalent to about $4) to ride the express train into Seoul, so it is well worth it! Here I am on my first train ride!

And this one is of me in the center of the mall where it is all outdoors, it kind of looks like I am on a ship:

We picked up a few things at the mall, and I quickly realized that I don't fit in most Korean clothing.. due to the hips my mother blessed me with! lol But we had fun nonetheless and also ate some grrrrrrrrreat sushi! I still can't get over how inexpensive food is here.

On to other things- Korea has a store called "Skin Food" meaning food for your skin, lotions, face wash, make up, etc. Zak and I decided to pick up some face masks to see what all the hype was about, and here is my detailed review/demonstration... enjoy!



Haha, pretty crazy huh? And while my skin did feel rehydrated by the "Alaskan glacier water" that is supposedly in this product, I don't think I will be buying it again because it felt as though I had a jellyfish on my face.

Yesterday we were invited to go to Zak's co-worker, Brett's home to have dinner and go out. Brett and his wife Kathy are great, and we also met up with another one of Zak's co-workers named Danny. After munching on some turkey and having a few pre-game beers we headed out for our first night on the town! Korean clubs/bars are a bit different than American bars but are still just as much fun! The main beer here which is served in all bars is called "OB" and tastes like Miller Lite to me. And all bars have Soju mixed with different flavors depending on where you are. We tried just about every flavor last night and are paying for it today! Here is a picture of Zak breakin' it down on the dance floor:

And me enjoying some Soju Slush! (It is VERY humid in Korea so please excuse my mop of hair going every direction)

Hope everyone is having a great weekend, much love to you all xxx

We are in Korea!

Yay! We finally made it to Korea! I am so excited to share some of the pictures we have gotten on our first day. Traveling was to be expected....long! I was so happy to get off the flight. We had the best service ever on Asiana Airlines, even though we sat coach I felt like we were in first class. You know, the steam towels, great food, slippers...etc. Here is a picture of Zak and I leaving the hotel on our way to the airport!

And one of me before we went to our gate:

Here is the plane we were on to Korea, I think it looks like a whale with that hump on the top:

So after we landed and went through customs, we were greeted with a man look for "Jack and Nikky" (pronounced NEE-KEE) The ride from the airport to our hotel was a bit long as well and Zak and I didn't get much sleep on the airplane.. well none actually.. so we were fighting to stay awake during our taxi ride. It is weird to not tip anyone in Korea, and they are all about customer service, more so than the American's who work in customer service that get tipped. Our hotel is nice, they have a great breakfast and free laundry service... but the toilet is a bit weird, it has lots of buttons... and the shower has eight shower heads...yes, eight. After we got some rest we woke up this morning ready to go walk around Osan (where our hotel is) and Pyongtaek (where Zak will be working). Here we are in Osan:

We took the train into Pyongtaek, and when we got out of the train station Zak had thought we were in the wrong place but quickly realized we weren't.. there has just been so much built up in the last 3 years to recognize what he remembered. The have a huge shopping mall in the Pyongtaek train station, its 6-7 floors with a movie theater and pool on top. Here is a picture of Zak playing with a claw machine in Pyongtaek:

(They have these everywhere)

So we had a pretty successful first day in Korea, I have learned how to say "hello" and "thank you" and I have also learned how to use the money (won) here. Off to conquer some more jet lag....