Exploring the island!

We have now been in Korea for a few weeks and another blog post is way overdue! We have been really enjoying our time here in Korea. For the most part, we have been lucky enough to have really good weather which means we can spend a lot of time outside! One of our favorite things to do here so far is to hike some of the different paths - it's such a welcome change from the flatness of Houston! One weekend, we hiked with our friends up to one of the smoke stacks that was used to warn the other Koreans if the Japanese invaded. The hike was great - it started out with steep steps and continued to go up a ways - we are certainly getting in better shape!

This is the sign at the base of the trail; the pebbles wearing pink & blue outfits are the mascots of Gejoe

They had some really pretty flowers up at the top! 

Ryan with the smoke stack behind him

Cory, Rachel, me & Ryan at the top of the hike

Ryan & I with the smoke stack

Good view of the fabrication yard where we work

We spent the rest of the day driving around the island and exploring - these are some of the pictures from our afternoon! 

This woman is drying the little fishes that are caught locally 

Fishing boats on the coast of Geoje Island

 View of some of the islands off of the island that we live on - so beautiful!

Ryan made a friend while we were walking around!

We found our way to a nice beach as well!

We made it!

Wednesday, April 25th was the big day - our travel to South Korea on a ONE WAY ticket began...

We got to the airport early to make sure nothing could possibly go wrong and chilled out in the lounge at the airport...we were just so excited to start our trip! 

Our itinerary was to leave from Houston and head straight to Tokyo, Japan (approximately a 13 hour flight) with a 5 hour lay-over before getting on the final flight from Tokyo to Busan, South Korea. The funny thing about this trip is that Ryan and I have both taken the trip to Tokyo for various business trips many times over the past couple of years (6 times between the two of us) but we had never done this trip together which made it even more fun! It was great to cheers with our glasses of wine during "dinner" of wine and give each other movie reviews throughout the flight. :)




While in Tokyo, we had a lot of time to kill so we took a walk around the airport to get some exercise before our next flight, I finished the second book of the Hunger Games trilogy (thanks, Kim!), and we enjoyed some sushi snacks & drinks before heading to Ryan's favorite part of the Tokyo airport - the massage chairs. This is a bit of a tradition for Ryan anytime he flies through Tokyo, so we got some Japanese Yen and sat down to enjoy! This is how we spent the last 20 minutes of our time in Japan (literally...finished the massage right as they called for us to board the plane to Busan).

We landed in Busan, South Korea around 9:30 PM and it was surprisingly seamless to grab all of our bags, load them on a cart and find our driver to take us to our new apartment. Once we were in the car, it was about an hour drive over a long bridge to get to Geoje island. Once we got to our apartment (which is on the 14th story...we've never been in an apartment that is that high which is really cool!), we brought in all of our bags and someone gave us a quick tutorial on how to use our apartment - it's fairly high tech! We don't have any keys to get into the apartment, instead we have to enter a code on a key pad to get into the building and then to get into our apartment. All of the appliances are also in Korean, so they gave us a book that has all of the buttons translated for the dish washer, oven, washing machine, tv, lights, etc.

This is our living room (sweet view from the 14th floor!!)

Our kitchen!

Our dish washer...luckily I had the instructions because I definitely can't read this yet!

A couple of our friends had come to our apartment earlier that evening to drop off some goodies for us - freshly baked banana bread, baked ziti, coffee - it made us feel very welcome and already start to feel at home...it was wonderful! (Thanks Sam and Mika!) By this point in time, we were totally exhausted so we munched on some food, drank some water and headed to bed.

We were up bright and early the next morning (jet lag has been a bit of a struggle, haha) - hence the sun rise picture of the view from our apartment. We unpacked everything, talked to our families, and then some of our friends (thank you again, Mika!) were gracious enough to take us shopping to get some essentials at the "Home Plus" store - it's similar to a Target/Walmart so we were able to get set up. They told us that we will have to buy fresh produce every few days because things don't last very long, so we'll have to make more frequent trips to the grocery store but I think that's all part of the experience. :)

Afterwards, we went exploring in the city and found the grocery stores (thanks to our tour guide, Rachel) and some other fun stores, including the open air market. I'll have to add some pictures of that in a later post. We also started to get our bearings of how to get around in Okpo which was really helpful. The weather was perfect, so spending the day walking around was great! That evening, we went to dinner at the foreigners club for fish & chip night which was really fun - I never thought that my first meal in Korea would be a British classic, haha, but I think the expat community is a big part of this experience so it was great to meet some new people.

On Saturday, our friends Mika and Sam picked me up to head back to Busan to go to Costco - it was huge and I was able to get some things that we needed. The drive to and from Busan is just beautiful with all of the islands and the water! We also went to their favorite noodle restaurant, too, which was delicious! The jet lag was certainly setting in, though, so our afternoon was a complete with a perfectly wonderful nap! That evening, we went out for Korean BBQ and had an awesome time!

We were definitely feeling the jet lag today, so we had a lazy Sunday morning, but we spent the afternoon hiking Mt. Guksabong. The trail head starts right behind our apartment, so it's really convenient and it was a fantastic hike! Parts of the trail are really steep and I was struggling for parts of it, haha. We went with our friends, Cory and Rachel, who have brought their 2 dogs with them. Their dogs elicit the most interesting responses from the Koreans - they are terrified of these two dogs! Some of the women would squeal, many of them would get off the trail and hide until we passed. I never expected that but it certainly made the hike even more interesting. The other interesting part of this hike is that at various points on the trail, there is exercise equipment for you to use and all of the Koreans get to the top and start doing their additional exercises, including weighted hoola hoops - too funny! I, on the other hand, was tuckered out from the hike so maybe as I get more fit, I will have some energy to work out more, haha. We got to the top and the view was a bit hazy, but it was still really nice! We can't wait to hike more often during our time here in Korea.

 

Packing Up & Shipping Out

Although we've known about our move to Korea for a few months, it seemed to sneak up on us a bit...we were prepared and ready to go, but it took a little while to settle in that we were actually moving half way across the world - it was full of tons of excitement, but also a little bit of sadness with all the people that we were going to miss! Our last few days in the States were a whirlwind of finalizing everything to get ready to go!

It was such a weird feeling to be selling a lot of things after we hadn't had them for very long - our grill, chest freezer, and our CARS! I had bought a Jetta Wolfsburg (with the Turbo engine - so much fun to drive!) when I graduated from college to explore Texas with and now I had to sell her. It turned out that my brother really wanted to buy it, so he flew down and drove her back up to Colorado which worked out really well. It was a fun bonding moment for Pedro and I when I handed him the keys to my (wait, now, HIS) sweet ride!

Ryan also sold his Honda Civic - it turned out to be quite the popular car...Ryan put it on Craigslist on Saturday morning and had a guy drive from 2 hours away to buy it before lunch the same day! It was crazy! He also sold his Texas sized truck...something tells me the cars won't be that big in Korea. ;)

We had already bought all of the supplies we wanted to take with us based on recommendations from other expats (deodorant, cold medicine, etc.) and organized everything into what was going and what was staying - we had a room full of what we were taking with us in our air shipment to Korea and then everything else was going to storage. The movers came on Monday to wrap and pack up our house! They did everything for us so we just hung out - it was a weird feeling to watch them boxing up everything we own while we just tried to stay out of their way...hopefully everything that we intended to come with us will get here and everything that wasn't goes to storage.

We had beautiful weather that day and our friend Kim brought us fish tacos and local ice cream so we could enjoy some Houston favorites before we left! We had a great afternoon hanging out and then got together that evening with many of favorite people in Houston for burgers and beers...it was great to see everyone (I wish I had taken a picture - I was just too excited to see everyone, I guess) and we will miss all of our friends in Houston! We also made some time for some other American favorites - Hooters wings and our favorite BJ's pizza (inclusive of my FAVORITE fried artichokes as shown below! :) )

Now our first house is empty, clean and ready for another family to enjoy for a couple of years while we're off exploring! :)

New England Trip!

One of the most important things that we had on our list to do before we left for Korea was to visit our friends and family in New England one more time. We flew out there for Easter Weekend and had such a wonderful visit - it was so nice to see everyone! We will miss everyone so much, but can't wait to swap stories on what's been happening when we come back to visit!

On Friday, the Prokops (well, soon to be Prokops...) graciously picked us up from the airport and let us stay with them! We headed out to dinner with some of our dearest friends in Boston. I can't even explain to you how great it was see all of them! We are lucky to have such wonderful people in our life! I wish I had taken more pictures but here are a couple from the dinner - thanks for meeting up with us! :)

 

On Saturday, we headed from Boston down to Ryan's family's house in Connecticut. Mama Kendrick had planned a big get together for us to see everyone before we leave. It was tons of fun - lots of food, hugs, margaritas, and plenty of laughs! Thank you to everyone for coming out to see us - we will miss you lots! 

We also spent a day with the Kendricks and took a hike up by their house...it was a beautiful day and we really enjoyed spending time with them! It was also complete with Ryan and Ben racing (Casey joined in, too) - I'm pretty sure Casey won! ;)

Last but certainly not least for our New England weekend, we headed to Nonni's house to spend some time with the Vozzolas! We had the famous Ad's pizza (Nonni's speciality) with a lovely salad made by Aunt Elly and some delicious cupcakes from Aunt Cilest! We were also pleasantly surprised to be joined by my cousin, Crystal, and her two super cute kiddos! You can see us all in the picture below :)

(Aunt Cathy and my cousin Peter joined us as well, but they sneakily left before the picture - we'll make sure to take another one with them in it next time!) 

My friend Vicki came to visit, too and it was great to see her! She's such a world traveler, I'm sure we'll see her in Asia some time! :) 

All in all, we had a fantastic weekend getting to see some of our favorite people! We caught the 6:15 AM flight out of Hartford back to Houston the next day - talk about an early morning and a long day, but it was well worth it to spend the spring weekend out in beautiful New England! Now to continue packing and getting ready...only a little more than week left! 

One Month to Go!

Time is flying by! We can hardly believe that there is about a month until we head out to the Far East! We have booked our plane tickets and will be leaving the US on our way to South Korea on April 25th! 


We've spent the last few weeks getting ready - finishing up some projects around the house, interviewing a property manager, stocking up on certain items (jeans, polos, warm clothes, cold medicine), donating things to Goodwill or selling them on Craigslist, and getting our cars appraised to sell them before we leave! The moving company came to survey our house to see what we're taking with us and what they will be packing and storing for us. On top of that, we've been doing lots of paperwork for the move through work. Ryan already has his Korean VISA and mine is almost here! We'll be all set to head to our new home!

Before we can leave, we had to get plenty of shots - I had 4 shots and my arms hurt for a couple of days! Ryan had to get 5 shots in one day but he wasn't quite as sore - he has bigger muscles than I do ;) 


We've also been enjoying some of the beautiful weather here in Houston and getting together with friends before we leave. We are very excited about the new adventures we will be having but are sad to leave all of the wonderful friends we have made here. 


We'll be spending next weekend in New England to get together with family and friends - we can't wait to see everyone! :)