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What’s A Mother To Do? No Changing Tables In Korea
It's fairly easy to take her out without causing much of a scene, but one thing I've noticed again and again is that wherever we go, if she were to need a changing, there wouldn't be anywhere to do it. Bathrooms just aren't equipped with the necessary changing table and though in the past five years bathrooms around Seoul have generally seen a big upgrade in cleanliness, they are far from clean enough to change a baby if there isn't a changing table available. What's a mother to do?
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Raising Kids In Korea: Blunt Comments From Ajjummas
It's often said that Koreans are blunt. I don't recall hearing any Koreans say that but plenty of foreigners that come to the Land of the Morning Calm do. I imagine if you grow up here, what we consider blunt is considered normal and what we consider polite and non-confrontational could be considered passive and aloof. Going out into public with the new baby is something I look forward to while at the same time brings a nervous jittery feeling I never had before when faced with stepping out my front door.
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Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas From My Family to Yours Twas Christmas morning and all through the house were the sounds of laughter and glee from me, to our new baby and even my spouse. Of course we’d awoken a couple times in the night to cries from the little one but nothing would keep us from smiling bright. We’d invited some friends to join us for a drink and a meal and soon they’d be here to eat, sing and squeal. Ornaments were hung in the window with care and a little tree sat on the table just there. Our little babe was dressed anew, got a massage and a clean diaper too. We’d cooked the…
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The Military Invasion of Jeju Island
Most people that head to Jeju Island, known as the peace island, go with the intention of seeing the beautiful scenery from waterfalls and green tea fields to black lava sand beaches and palm tree lined lanes. Honeymooners go for romance and tourists go for scenery. With the tallest mountain in the country being the biggest draw by far for everyone from the avid hiker to the average Joe just out to get a jaunt and see some views, it’s a wonder that there hasn’t been more done to protect the island from military invasion. Though protesters in the small town of Gangjeong, meaning “Village of Water”, on the southern…
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The Top 5 Myths of the Korean Husband
What is it like being married to a Korean guy? Are Korean guys good husbands? I never realized how many stereotypes about Korean husbands there were until I married a Korean guy and people somehow bring it in to conversation so easily. Admittedly, the stereotype conversation usually comes from Korean men and women who seem to be sure that the stereotypes are true and ask me how I feel about cleaning and cooking everything. Then there are the westerners who have really weird Asian stereotypes. It’s especially odd when Korean women who are married with Korean men bring up this topic as I wouldn’t assume that their husbands are any…
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Why Korean Mother-in-laws Are The Best
Korean mother-in-laws are by far the best mother-in-laws to have. Okay, my title is misleading and the first sentence may or may not be entirely true and that picture is NOT of my mother-in-law. I only have experience with one mother-in-law, from here on out MIL, in particular and she just happens to be Korean because I just happened to fall in love with a man who is Korean, but she is pretty great. Korean mother-in-law’s get a pretty bad wrap in Korean dramas so I wanted to share some positive attributes that my own has shown me. The tales of evil or mean MILs seem to abound, but where…
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Bitter, Sweet, Seoul
If you have an hour to spare and I hope you do, this is what you should watch today. Culling together clips from over 11,000 videos submitted, directors Park Chan Wook and Park Chan Kyong, known together as PARKing CHANce, made this movie using 141 clips from Korean and international submissions to represent Seoul and I think they did an amazing job. It’s not just the pretty view of the city or even the pretty people of the city, it’s real life and real moments with black and white clips of historical moments in Korea from archives to today. There are the kind people we meet on the streets and…
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We’re In The Korea Times Today
Today an article titled “Is dating harder for expat women?” was published in the Korea Times which featured a picture of me and my husband as well as some choice quotes from an over the phone interview I had with the author Kim Young-jin a few months back. The questions centered on why there is much more news about expat men dating Korean women than there is about expat women dating Korean men and how the expat women that have dated Korean men find them. I have to admit that I found the questions awkward because I don’t look at Jae-oo as a Korean man that I’ve married but I…
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The Addresses They Are A Changin’ in Korea
Have you been getting letters in the mail in Korean and you can’t read anything except that you see your address is printed in the center or at the bottom with an arrow to another address? Have you been getting emails from your bank telling you to go online or to your nearest branch and update your address to the new system? You may have gotten an English letter from the immigration office some time back if they have your updated address on file, which they always should. Maybe you have, maybe you haven’t, or maybe you have and you didn’t realize it. The addresses are about to change big…
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Our Christmas Story In Korea
Twas the night before Christmas, and next to the tree the husband and cats were fast asleep awaiting the arrival of he. Who was the “he” that they waited for there? The postman of course, as Santa hasn’t found us since we were in daycare. The tree was done up with ornaments and lights, and the star was on top leaning slightly to the right. The handmade stockings were hung on the TV stand just there, and we were sure the cats would attack them with flare. The postman did not arrive as timely as we’d hoped, and as Christmas morning dawned, we could only cope. Our friends would be…
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A Korean in an American Wedding Ceremony
Back in October of 2011 when Jae-oo and I were first wed, we were in Busan, South Korea and had opted for a very traditional styled Korean wedding with hanboks and lots of bowing. I blogged about it at the time, as my blog is all about my adventures here in Korea, but neglected to blog about my American wedding ceremony some months later in Ohio. Blogging about something that seemed so normal and uninteresting culturally didn’t strike my fancy. Recently, however, Jae-oo and I celebrated our one year anniversary and talked about that American wedding ceremony, as that was the date we opted to go with for our anniversary. Many…
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A Korean Deals with Sarcasm
The second time he came home with me, it was summer and everyone was more comfortable. Jae-oo knew where things were in the house and could get them on his own, though he still wanted me to help him find things in the kitchen, and my family was now comfortable enough to wear pajamas in front of him in the morning. With guards let down, it was inevitable that this would be the first time to really see if there was any discomfort between people without the fake ‘nice to meet you’ smiles on. The novelty of dating a foreigner had somewhat rubbed off and people were starting to act…
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An American Family and a Korean Husband
The first trip home with Jae-oo was a lot of introductions. Not only was he meeting friends he’d heard stories of but just as, or maybe more, importantly he was meeting my family. He’d met my mother on her visit to Korea but was now meeting my sisters and then aunts and uncles and grandparents. That may sound like the whole family, but that is just the beginning. My family is large and large in the sense that my mother’s generation has remained very close to their cousins which made the “aunts” and the “uncles” of my generation nearly triple and which meant we grew up with just as many…
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Halloween with a Korean
This week, I got back to Korea from a month long trip home that I manage to get away for once a year. This year, we were home for Thanksgiving and it dawned on me that for the past four years I have taken Jae-oo home to celebrate a different American holiday each time. And each time I realize it is his first time celebrating such and such a holiday American style. I now have this urge to make a baby’s “Jae-oo’s First” album of the events that transpire. Seeing these holidays through his eyes and answering questions that seem so obvious to me as I grew up celebrating a…
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Getting My F6 Visa In Korea… The End
Take two. I’m going through the process to get my F6 visa here in Korea. Up until this point, I had gathered my passport, my Korean marriage certificate and through a slight debacle hadn’t yet gotten it translated, notarized and authenticated at the US embassy. So, here we are… After going home to the States and coming back at the end of January, I wrote the addresses of the two nearest offices that could translate and notarize our Korean marriage certificate for us once more for Jae-oo. Since I was still on vacation from school I went with him this time to make sure the translation and notarizing was done…
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Getting My F6 Visa… The Beginning
After two wedding ceremonies and a month vacation in the States, we finally made it back to Korea and after a week of resting from the vacation got our rears in gear to get everything filed for the F6 visa. We had started the process a few months ago, but after Jae-oo inadvertently made me make an unecessary trip to the American Embassy, I pushed everything aside until we were definitely ready to get serious about it. At the start, those months back, I had scoured the internet for information on what was necessary and what to expect of the process, but came to the conclusion that it all depended…