We moved to our new apartment on Saturday. Of course we were excited to be moving to the new place, but the timing was a little difficult. In some ways it was a good thing, because it kept my mind occupied during what has been a very emotionally difficult time, in other ways it was even harder because all I really wanted to do was sit down and cry my eyes out.

The movers arrived promptly at 8am, and began packing our stuff. No moving boxes or packaging tape here! Nope, they just threw everything into big plastic crates and loaded it up. The scariest part was the electric pulley system they used to get everything out of our old place, and into our new place. This is not some high-tech advanced pulley system. It literally was just an electric pulley that extended from the back of a truck with some plywood to pile things on. It’s a very good thing we’re not attached to any of our furniture we have here. It wouldn’t be unimaginable to see this whole thing fall apart and a couch fall from 5 stories! Luckily, our movers managed to get everything in and out without any accidents or fatalities (another concern). Can you believe that everything we own here in Korea fits in the back of a pick up truck? For those of you who have been to our house in Florence, you know our living situation. After the arrival of the twins, we have simply outgrown our living space. I bet there are a few people who are shocked that we're able to live so sparingly (I know I am)!
A load of our furniture being readied on the pulley. A load of our stuff hangs perilously in mid-air.
Oh it's such a scary system!
We also had an enormous amount of help from the kids’ ah-jee-mah. She came over to help keep an eye on Ella and Sterling while we were dealing with the movers. Well, I’ll be the first to admit we may still be moving if it wasn’t for ah-jee-mah being here. The movers spoke absolutely NO English, so we were really having a time with trying to communicate before she arrived. Although her English is limited and my Korean even more so, she and I have begun to fall into a very easy pattern of communication with each other. So, it was a huge help having her here to direct the movers. And where we were unable to understand each other, she just took the lead and made all executive decisions. There is definitely a hierarchy that exists in Korean culture. They feel very strongly about honoring your elders. So ah-jee-mah pulled a chair into the center of the family room, and sat with both babies on her lap handing out orders from her “thrown.” The movers did exactly what she told them to do, and within no time all our furniture was arranged the way she wanted it!

I also told ah-jee-mah we’d like to buy the movers’ lunch, could she possibly call somewhere and order some food to be delivered? So, here comes the delivery man with three bowls of Chinese noodles (for herself, Michael, and me) and five plates of fried rice for everyone else. Guess she didn’t feel they deserved the Chinese noodles! I hate to be “common,” but the fried rice actually looked really yummy, and honestly, Chinese noodles are hard to eat with chopsticks. Think chicken noodle soup eaten with chopsticks- somewhat tricky.

By early afternoon I was soooooo over moving. It was definitely time for the movers to leave. Koreans are very dedicated hard workers. If you hire them for a job, they’re not just going to stand around wasting time. After everything was brought up they wanted to unload everything, right down to the last toilet paper roll. I appreciate their wanting to help, but I would just assume unpack myself once I’ve decided where I’d like everything to go. Seriously, I didn’t even have a say in which cabinet my pots and pans ended up in! At one point I found a mover trying to put the food up- she was putting soda cans in the freezer! And, even if you’ve grown up in a Buddhist country, and have no idea what Christmas is, and you’ve never seen Christmas tree ornaments before, what part of a box of shiny red balls seems like it belongs in the medicine cabinet? Like I said, I was ready for everyone to leave so we could unpack ourselves. Thank God they left around 3pm! By night time there was some sort of order being established. The only room that has been completely finished is the nursery, of course, but all the other rooms are moving in the right direction after a lot of reorganizing. Don't you just love moving?
We're finally not staring directly into our neighbor's apartment! This is the view from the window in our family room. We're up towards the hills that surround the city, so we look down towards all of Waegwan. And as you can see, we finally got a break from the rains of monsoon season. We actually had beautiful blue skies for a day. It was perfect timing so all of our stuff didn't get rained on. Now it's back to raining again, but it was nice to the sun for a change.