Happy New Year 2013

It should be happy, right?
Well, yes...that's what everyone wants. No one wants to be sad--right?
In that sense, in the midst of minus 6 degrees Celsius, right inside my 2-room so-called small apartment, I am writing down this entry.
Last night..or to say...the last day of 2012: 31 Dec....we were spending the night with a bunch of friends in our home.

Mama, Om Wawan, Freya, Eyra, and Tante Ulfa 

What could be more memorable than putting Eyra and Freya on their Hanbok^^ hehehehe.

No, actually they themselves wanted to put the hanbok on.

 We cooked our own food and talked through the night.
Eyra and Freya were wearing their Hanbok.
Well, instead of going out, we preferred staying in the house...since it was so cold last night.
We knew that it would be a pointless idea to go out since that would surely 'jeopardize' the whole night in the shivering freeze.
After all, spending the night at home turned out to be a great choice as well.
So, everyone....HAPPY NEW YEAR 2013

May all the blessings, the good things, the successful stories, the life-fully-lived come to life in 2013.
More beautiful life ahead of us.
Bismillahirrohmanirohim....May Allah Bless Us with All of His Grace. Amen. 

House warming or jibteri

It is a Korean culture to invite friends and relatives to one’s newly built or rented house or homeJ So, we did, too.

We invited some friends to come over and have the food that we prepared and see where we live. Most of them were my friends from other countries who happened to be studying in Korea.  As the pictures show, our friends Laos (Changmi), Ghana (Felix), Uzbekistan (Jobirson), Japan (Chika & Akane), Kazakhtan (Ilya), Cambodia (Borey), China ( Arin & Iwol), Algeria (Maya), Indonesia (Wawan), and our family. Others were also coming afterwards to have dinner with us. 

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The house did become warm since lots of us came and sat together in one place. I thought that the house was big enough to hold all of our friends...but....then....it felt like so small...but that was the whole point. Being one in a two-room house would make the house warm.

La Fonte Spaghetti

What is a house warming party without food? To tease and to sum up the culmination of what we were striving for....we prepared spaghetti for our friends. It is not that spaghetti is our daily staple or anything, it was just that one of my wife’s signature dishes was spaghetti. So, spaghetti it was.

The fact that making spaghetti has been in her niche, it was not a difficult task to prepare to cook some spaghetti for as many as 20 people.  Or was it?

I was or we were so oblivious of the fact that during winter time......the price of tomatoes in Korea was sky-rocketting. Not many people eat tomatoes since these fruits(?) were expensive. I was oblivious that they were....so...despite the fact that tomatoes were soooooooooooo expensive, we did not know or best to say----we were unaware of it.

We bought as many as 7 kiloes of tomatoes or so. ^^. To make it worse, we did not just buy them in one place, so I had to go back and forth from E-Mart, Jinro Mart, a store near our house, and another store and another store just to find some tomatoes. No wonder that some people were staring at me when I was ‘ransacking’ some kilos of tomatoes into the shopping bag. They must’ve thought that I might be crazy to buy lots of tomatoes.

One ajeossi in one store even asked me as to why I needed some tomatoes in this chilling winter....^^

Ok, another thing that I wanted to jot down here was the simplest fact that the La Fonte spaghetti that we bought turned out to be our beloved spaghetti from Indonesia. Oh, it was imported into Korean market for foreigners right here. Wow...that was amazing. 

In front of the house

On our way out from the frontyard of our home sweet home in Imundong, Korea. The 30-minute preparation every time we go out is hinted on the thick jackets with its pheriperal outfits that go along with them. It is Winter: the simplest reason as to why we dress up like this.

The house visage does indicate one of the major characteristics of Korean houses; especially the one for rents. The red bricks dotted the houses’ visage.  We love the house since it has a relatively wide open frontyard where our daughters can play or ride on their bikes in Summer ( a long time to wait, eh).

Being home for the first time...: house warming

Our family was greet by our friends who have been so helpful and dear to us. Wawan, Min Seonhee, and Cha Heeran or our Yuliana sonsaengnim were the first friends to greeted us at home.

It was a relived feeling to have such lovely friends like them. Wawan helped us by managing the first dinner for us.

Once again...we did not have time or better yet...we had not dared ourselves to try any Korean food since it was our first time (at least to my wife and the kids).

So, Wawan ordered Seoul Cheeze Pizza..^^ (another Koreanized western food). It is the pizza near our campus . We eat a lot—to be truthful. ^^. It is relatively inexpensive and delicious. ^^. And...they have veggie pizza and cheeze pizza and potato pizza that we love.

 

Anyway...the first house-warming was held on Dec. 10, 2011...simply because our friends were ready to help us there. Good, eh?
Then, after our friends bid goodbyes for our first night in Seoul.....my kids continued their night-time snacking  before going to bedJ ^^...well, another left-over pizza, then......

I still vividly remembered the first time they enjoyed their time with their Daddy in Korea....^^.
And what’s more: Eyra just loved meeting with her new friends.....lots of dolls that I had prepared for them. She just loves them.

A home sweet home to be

To Be?
well, yes...because I will or precisely my family is going to live there starting from December, next month.
Finally, I booked a house in Seoul. Gosh...it IS so DARN expensive to rent a house in Seoul. The system itself is a bit complicated for any foreigners who might get their first exposure to its renting system--so to speak. Let's see: the so-called jeonse, wolse, etc etc....not to mention the gwallibi and etc etc. oh oh oh. what in the name of ......are those.:)
Anyway...I finally decided my mind to take this two-room house, not that big ...but spacious enough for me to live with my wife and two daughters....
It is just a 3-minute walk to campus!
It is relatively accessible with good neighborhood--I presume...and I hope I am right.
It is equipped with kitchen set (it got to be), the bathroom (it must have one), two rooms (for sure), a refrigerator--an additional advantage:), a washing machine (this one, too), one wardrobe (ok), and heating system (it MUST have one..or else:), and ...one thing for sure...it is like love at first sight.

I've been like going around the neighborhood searching for the right place to stay for like almost a month or so.
Then....it was the last house that I looked into..and it was like zapped me into it. I kinda like it.
A bit expensive....:( But...seeing the fact that it IS so close to campus and it is relatively clean.....made me decide what I should take this one.
So, today...I made a 2-year contract to live there.

Thanks to Ms. Choi from One-Stop Global Service...I got a chance to choose from a list of houses that matches my taste.
Bismillahirrohmanirrohim...I hope that this will be a good start of having a good life in here with my family. I just want to study and learn and to live and to have fun with my family.