We're Here!

Well we made it to Seoul on Friday in the rain!  It was quite a trip and very bumpy.  Thankfully, all 10 of our bags made it off the conveyor belt!  Yay!  We thought we'd have a huge ordeal when going through customs, but all we had to do was give them our card and we passed right on.  No going through each bag and seeing all the boys underwear they had crammed oh so untidily in their suitcases.  Works for me!

Erickson and Andrew from the business office were waiting for us.  Very nice guys.  You could tell they were automatically trying to figure out how they were going to get the 16 (6 people and 10 50 lb suitcases) of us in the little KIS van.  But, we managed.  Quade and I were in the back with 2 suitcases between us so we couldn't even see each other.  Zane and Tre were in front of us with another between them.  I felt like a sardine.  (After being in flight for 16 hours, I think I was equally as slimy as well.)

The ride to the apartment was about an hour long.  The views through the rain were so beautiful.  So green and lush.  We crossed a causeway bridge that was very long and saw many big tanker barges down below.  I think we missed some of it because later we all confessed we'd fallen asleep somewhere after the bridge.

The boys helped us bring the luggage up to our apartment.  3 flights of stairs.  Thank goodness, because I was little help.  Here we met Eunice, also from the business office.  She was too cute ~ And here I wish I'd thought to taken pictures ~ in a t-shirt, shorts, and galoshes.  She had gone shopping and to the bank for us. We had our 'welcome kit':  a loaf of bread, a loaf of cinnamon bread, 2 packages of cream cheese, a jar of peanut butter, a jar of strawberry jelly, 2 large bottles of water, 2 large bottles of orange juice, 2 cartons of milk, 2 bags of chips, and 2 cans of tuna.  She provided us some new utensils, a cutting knife, and a skillet.  The spatula has sunflowers on it and the large spoon and ladle have pink roses which match my Grandma Bertha's kitchen exactly!  (Which is very sweet and interesting at the same time.  They cookware is so 1950's while the Koreans are so much more technologically advanced than the US.)  The bedding is all the same turquoise blue, kinda appropriate I think.  She'd also made some address cards in Korean and English for  us, as well as providing us with 2 phone cards and 2 T-cards for transportation.  They showed us how various things worked in the house and left us to our own devices.

Then I sat down and cried.

I know our house in Farmington was far from being Shangri la, but it was really nice.  And decorated.  And new.  I think after working so hard for so many years to get everything we had, in that moment, it felt like I had stepped back in time to having nothing.  I mean, I have a camper in New Mexico that doesn't have holes in the walls and a peeling floor. All the adrenaline I'd been working on since we decided to take this adventure in December drained from my body in a puddle on the really hard queen sized bed.  There was no toilet paper and they'd forgotten how to show us to turn on the hot water.  So, the cold one did me some good, right?

But, we're here!  So, we went to bed and I got up Saturday morning and put on my big girl panties, started unpacking, and ready to begin our new adventure!

Stay tuned...

야호 (yaho) !