so we have completed our first week in Korea and my head is still spinning. we left Detroit and flew to japan very comfortably in business class (thanks Transocean). we were suppose to have 3 seats and a bassinet, however, last minute that was changed due to seating problems and we ended up with the whole front row of seats which essentially meant 5 seats plus the bassinet. ethan, of course, took full advantage of this and transferred back and forth thruout the flight. the flight attendants didn't seem too bothered by this except and meal times when we were all in different seats when the food came. addison, true to her easy going nature, fell asleep for nap right before we got on the plane and woke and played and ate for a small amount of time before retiring to her bassinet on the wall where she of course slept the rest of the way. i hope she always stays so mellow and cooperative. ethan slept next to me, leaving rick with the 3 seat stretch but oddly enough did not sleep much. i know this because i do not sleep on planes and i tend to look around at everyone. every time i looked at rick he was looking at me and would signal i love you by pointing at his eye, his heart and me.

landing in japan i looked around and thought the scenery was beautiful. we had to go thru security again (which we thought we did not initially) and just made it to our plane. they were waiting for us and were helpful getting things moving. addison and ethan were very tired now because we had to wake them up and it was about 3am Detroit time for them. addison was crying now because she needed to be changed, i could barely concentrate and the flight attendant said here, go ahead and change her in here. He took me to a bathroom and said the takeoff could wait a minute but there was no changing table in the bathroom. i had 2 wipes left, a very tired and stinky baby and i had to balance her on the back of a toilet seat, get her clean and not drop her. the whole time i did this i just kept saying"look at mommy addison, its OK, its a great adventure" she just stared at me and i realized that this is how its gonna be now. as long as it seems like every things OK to me, it will be OK for them. no pressure.

we collected all of our luggage when we reached busan but still had a 2 1/2 hour car drive to our apt in okpo. as soon as we got to the airport in korea, the touching started. two young korean girls took ethan by the hands and told him "welcome to korea" and gave him a little donut shaped like an animal. addison was strapped to me in the baby bjorn and everyone tried to touch her. i was trying to be polite but protective of her too. i was really tired and not used to this kind of attention. i held her close and held ethans hand with my other and we headed outside where the drivers were ready to take us. addison cried almost the whole way there because she was so over tired. ethan talked non stop because he was so over tired. our korean driver rarely spoke so it was a long ride. i went to my happy place for awhile to avoid the crying and excessive talking. i think rick knew that this would not be a good time to give me the i love you signal so we just drove on in silence.

our apt is a highrise, 16 floors i believe and is called mijn palace tower. we are on the 8th floor and have underground parking. we did not know the names of the people who took us to the apt. a few of them spoke alittle english but not much. i had seen pics of the apt before coming here but really at this point had no idea what to expect. when you walk into our apt there is a foyer. it is lined with closets and has a motion sensored light. ethan went running into the apt and tripped and fell down on the marble floor due to a step up he did not see (he was fine). this would not be the only incidence of this happening. next there is a long hallway which leads into our living room. very big, at night a very nice view of the ocean and the lights. during the day you see the shipyard and alot of construction along the water front. very noisy, not so pretty. our dining room is nice as is the kitchen. we have a seperate laundry room which also has a refrigerator, a kimchi refrigerator and a washer dryer combo which is consistently running and makes me hate doing laundry even more than i did before. in total we have 3 refrigerators, since we also have a small one built in in the kitchen. we have a ton of appliances, we even have a cutting board sterilizer, rice cooker and other appliances that i do not know what to do with yet. the storage is impressive throut the apt. i am surprised that when they sent pics of the apt that they did not include the finer points and more decorative areas. one of these finer points for me is that i have a built in vanity with mirror and little stool like i have grown accustom to at home. ah and then there is the forskin. the forskin is the name of the shower (honestly, written right on it). it has 3 seperate settings, one reg spray, one removable, and one that is like being at a water park and shooting water at just your body from the side. the forskin is great, only problem is you have a difficult time regulating the water temp properly so you need to move quick if someone say flushes a toilet or something. forskin will either freeze you or burn you, neither one is good.

ethan loves his room. he has an enclosed patio off of his which sounds worse than it is because the windows lock, then there is a screen and built in decorative metal bars. i do not allow the window to open and i have put the toy box in front of it so it took care of the problem. he has 2 doors into the room due to the patio which of course causes all kinds of door slamming with constant "sorry mom" s heard. addisons room is in the front. we had the bed removed so its pretty large but definitely needs some pretty- ing up.

with our apt came a ten page laminated instruction manual for how to use everything in the house from the washing machine to the bidet in the bathroom since everything is written in korean. we struggle still and ethan loves to remember the sequences for turning everything on. he has become my trusted assistant for all chores and turns everything on for me daily. we have a cleaning lady who comes once a week but i'm not sure if she actually disinfects anything as i was there when she cleaned this week and i'm pretty sure she did not. when she cleaned the bathroom she went in, took everything out, turned on the removable shower head and sprayed the whole room down from top to bottom. i was amazed but disturbed. she spoke no english, kept trying to touch and hold addison and eventually called two other men to come over where they all talked very loudly in korean about something i think i was doing wrong. turns out they have this whole recycling system in okpo which basically consists of using these red bags (which we didnt really know about) and we were doing it incorrectly (per one of the men who translated for me). she was at the apt for almost 3 hours and i decided that i would find somewhere else to be next time because it makes me uncomfortable not to be able to communicate.

well ethan starts school next week so maybe i will take addison somewhere during that time.

we have walked around alittle outside of apt but it is very hard with the baby. it is so not a stroller friendly area with the streets very rocky and hilly. we actually live on what is nicknamed ski slope drive because it looks just like a ski slope. it is very frightening. i walked with ethan and addison 1/2 way down one day to explore and was blown away with how steep it really is. once you pass that though there is a little town area with shopping and a quiznos and other restaurants. i am trying to figure our how to bring a stroller for shopping but how to maneuver safely up and down this hill. rick told me that one of his new buddies at work said they used to tie a rope to their stroller to make the descent easier. i thought that sounded like the most unsafe thing in the world and would not even think about trying it. rick and i frequently differ on issues of safety like the time he tried to clean the gutters of our 2 story house balanced on a ledge with a power washer.