We've moved to Korea.

It's true. It's no longer something I'm anticipating or planning for. It is something I have done. I guess I can't deny it any longer. And all things considered, we're doing pretty well. We have a large enough house, and it's on base. We have already moved in. We don't have our stuff yet, but some of it is arriving tomorrow. We don't have a car yet, but we can walk to every where that we need to in order to lead a normal life here. We managed to sleep through the night last night and stay awake for our second full day. We even managed to take the kids to the indoor swimming pool for an afternoon activity, and then walked to Chili's for dinner (yes, they have Chili's on the base!).

But I am still not prepared to talk about the 12 hour plane ride, the 5 accompanying hours spent in airports, the nearly 3 hours of ground transportation, the 3 adults and 3 cars that were required to get me, 4 kids, 9 suit cases, 6 carry-on bags and two car seats to the airport. Or how I had to say good-bye to my parents at the end of the security line and take the next steps all alone. No, I'm not fully recovered from sitting in detention for nearly thirty minutes in the Korean immigration office because one of the passports fell out of my stack on the plane, and I didn't realize it until I was standing at the front of line at immigration. Or during my thirty minutes in detention with four exhausted kids, not being able to have a complete conversation with anyone around me because they couldn't speak English, so then I started to cry. But in my defense, that was the first time I cried during any of the before mentioned moments. So I think it was okay.

Anyway, I have a few pictures to post of us en route. But in the mean time, I wanted to respond to my friend Kim's post about what's out your front door and back door. Here was the entry that I wanted to post last week. I hope she'll accept my post about it now, even though it's not still what's out my front door or back door. Although that picture would probably be interesting too, but not quite as beautiful. So let's go with last weeks doors...

Front door:

Back door:

P.S. a few other great ideas that happened at beach week:

It occurred to my mom that we might all want a pedicure. But what an inconvenience to have to go to the nail salon, you know, we were pretty busy laying around. So she went to the nail salon, and brought the pedicurist to us! Now that was a great beach week idea. Thanks mom!!



This next idea wasn't maybe great in the moment, but in retrospect it is a classic story that makes my family unique. There are some train tracks that were close by to the beach house, so all the little kids saw the train pass by a few times a day. My parents decided it would be fun to take the little kids on the train and drive by the beach house and point to it on our way past. And to make it even better, they thought they could take the kids and give the parents the morning off. It was only as they were loading into the car that they realized that they might need one other adult to make the field trip successful. I (having the most kids on the field trip) volunteered to come along. The Amtrak automatic kiosk was unwilling to sell my dad eight children tickets with only 3 adults. That kiosk thought that was an unwise grouping. I think in this case, the kiosk did know something that we didn't! Anyway, it was unique and crazy, and reminiscent of my own childhood. But it is how my parents are, and I salute their crazy ideas and ever youthful approach to life and learning, which undoubtedly taught me how to do something like move to Korea with four kids...

I will take some pictures of us in Korea tomorrow. Just as a preview, Jane holds her nose any time we take a step out our front door. I don't totally agree with her. It's not terribly odorous, but I think it's more the figurative symbol that makes me laugh every time we march across our new village. Change is hard and with every new walk we embark upon we tell Jane, "Just unplug your nose for 30 seconds and you'll see, it's not that bad." Trustingly, she does unplug her nose a little longer each time. And so it is for each of us in our own different way. We are all resistant to change, but with each day we get more and more acclimated.

Good night.