He has used it nearly everyday since we moved into our place. He says it works like a champ! He highly recommends it. It is loaded with a bit of testosterone so you may want to save it for Father's Day or some other "boyish" occasion. I myself am a tomboy so I have no qualms using it, I just can't seem to get a chance to.
te with the embroidered heart that says, "I love you"). This week I took them to the dry cleaner across the street and he fixed their little button eyes and put a few stitches here and there where they had popped their seams. Then he gave them a good washing. I love my dolls. Aren’t they precious?
Twice a week, Jim takes the car to work; today just so happened to be his day to drive and so I was left without a car. I’ve been dreading the “no car” day. The main reason is, since we moved into our place the walk to school is about ten minutes longer and it’s just too cold for Maggie. I usually drive (the hill is not nearly as steep in the car) and I try to look at the bright side and figure I will be getting exercise that otherwise won’t happen. So, I bundle everyone up, sling Maggie on my back in a carrier and head out. It is so blasted cold out there! Whoa! Chicago, look out. It is 15 F and Margaret starts crying, James starts crying. I rummage around in my pockets for some leftover money and look for a cab going my direction. No luck. We keep walking. They keep crying. People stare. Finally we get to the “hill” and there are a bunch of cabs coming down. I open the door and the cab driver shakes his head, “No”. I think, “No? You’re a cab. You can’t be partial” (He didn’t want to go back up the hill and wait in the long line of cars. It wasn’t worth his money). The car behind the cab motions to me that he will help. It’s not a cab, but I open the door and a middle-aged Korean man waves me on. I open the back door. Tell the three girls to get in, hand the money to Gracie and tell her to call me when she gets to the school knowing full well that she has no idea what our phone number is; I barely know what our phone number is. I slam the door. Maggie and James are still crying, and I stand there shocked at what I have done: put my kids in the car of a strange middle-aged foreign man and hope that he’s good and honest. I start to cry. Maggie is screaming now. I run home holding James hand.
Yesterday, Jim and I went to the bank so that we could put me on Jim's bank account and get me an ATM card for "our" account. I was anxious to have a little bit of control of the money situation since I spend most of it. We go in; I sign documents for about an hour and Wa La. I have my ATM card. Jim runs on ahead of me because he’s got another appointment and I walk over to the ATM machine to withdraw some cash. Insert my card, ignore all the Korean and push the withdrawl button. The nice bank employee who has been helping me stands nearby and watches me push the $ 300 button. Nothing happens. She shakes her head, “You have zero”. What? Then she points at my balance. A big fat zero. Unbeknownst to Jim and me, we had just spent an hour opening my own brand new and empty account. I don’t make a whole lot of money and it showed on my balance. Jim had to go back to the bank later that day and spend another hour transferring money into my account. All thanks to the tower of Babel.
ning late and really hurrying with the two little ones. I got into my car and opened the garage. Much to my surprise there was a car parked cross-wise in front of me. Great! My only hope was to “sign” to the dry cleaning man across the street that I needed that car moved and hope that he knew whose car it was. I loaded the kids in the car and ran across the street. The dear, sweet dry cleaning man thought that I was there to pick up my dry cleaning and handed me a huge stack of clothes and cleaned me out of all of the cash I was carrying. Okay, that didn’t work. I ran the clothes up to our place and tried again. This time I walked him across the street and showed him my car and the other car. “I need to leave”, I said as slowly as I could. “Ahhh” was his reply and he pointed down the street and then ran in that direction. Very soon after, the car was moved. Okay, now I was late. “Who parks in front of a closed garage?” I think to myself.
o slightly. The car rolls forward. He does the same thing to three or four other cars. Waa, La.
It was this last transition; from our friend’s house to our place that has been the most difficult by far. Tuesday, Jim and I cleaned our place. It was like wiping out the inside of a chimney. For some reason the windows were open when we arrived and we assume they have been open for most of the last year. I had heard that the pollution of Seoul is something to be concerned about; wiping soot off of my floor and countertops brought new meaning to the breathing masks that children and adults are wearing around town. “Should we wear them too?” I wonder when we are out and about walking. We did buy two air purifiers for our place.
ning room window and started to lift all of my belongings up a huge ladder-lift and into my home. I have been so overwhelmed with my life and now the boxes of stuff that my five children have been opening and throwing around our home much, much faster than I can find a place for it has just about pushed me completely over the ed
ge. Endless mounds of toys and clothes and papers and books. How can there be this much stuff? I have cried and cried. I have yelled. And under it all I have had these huge fears that if I put my stuff away and settle here, how and when will I ever get back to the states? Putting my things away here makes it all real and I’m just not so sure I want this to be real. I guess its all part of the transition and not knowing the end makes it tough to accept. It’s been a mountain.
Seoul has beautiful mountains. They are impressive and they can be grueling. When I was a young, I lived on a mountain. Some of my friends lived higher up on the mountain than I did and sometimes (not very often) I would walk to their houses. Those hills were steep. That is what the hill is like where the girls go to school. Straight up. For the last week, I have put Maggie in the stroller, James on the buggy-board and with the three girls straggling behind I have struggled up that mountain to the great gates where the Korean guards manage the traffic of little foreign children who attend this school. As I wind my way up the hill, slowly but surely I have been so impressed with the car
s that whiz by. Not all, but most of them are the most beautiful cars that I have ever seen. Long, sleek, black Mercedes manned by the family driver or chauffeur. The culture of the school has impressed me. It is, like everything else very foreign to me, and a culture of its own inside of the Korean culture. I have asked myself, “How do I fit into this Mountain of Seoul? And maybe the most important question of all, “What will be its effect on my children?”
