Yes, I'm alive.

And, not only am I alive, but I have both my computer AND the internet connected! The computer took a little bit of figuring out because of the change in currents here, the plug thingies are pretty weird looking but a co-worker of John's stopped by the other night and gave me a plug that would work with my computer and with the outlet here. Woo-hoo! And internet was even easier. Thank goodness for Wi-fi; I was able to connect to that pretty quick. So I am here, in Ilsan City, South Korea, on my computer and on the internet.

I won't lie though, it's all been VERY overwhelming. It's a big city and we're near the downtown area. I'm still suffering a bit from jet leg and get tired at odd times here. Natalie does too though she's actually holding up right now which impresses me. Then again, she actually slept in a little bit today and by sleeping in, I mean she didn't wake up until 7:30 in the morning as opposed to around 6am. Since we're all sleeping in one room, this has not really helped the rest of us get any sleep and having some alone, ADULT time has also not been easy (though one good thing to that I guess is that I probably won't get pregnant anytime soon). I'm hoping that eventually she'll be able to hold off on sleeping until around 8 or 9 pm giving John and I some time to ourselves. But it does require that we get dinner done pretty soon after he gets home which requires actually knowing what we're having for dinner in advance and so far, it's been by ear each night.

The apartment is VERY small. I would be willing to bet that it is smaller than the livingroom of the last place we lived. If it's over 300 square feet, I would be surprised because I cannot imagine it being much over 10 feet by 15 feet. The bed fits both John and I at least but it's hard, just slightly softer than sleeping on the floor would be. Natalie sleeps on the couch.

Some good things though (besides being able to get online here). The water pressure here is REALLY nice, the water stays hot, and I'm able to find a lot of my favorite shows in English on the TV here. Though I will say this, watching Dora in Korean where they emphasize the English rather than the Spanish is just a little on the ironic side, to say the least. But even a lot of those shows are in English and Natalie doesn't seem to care about the ones that aren't. She was quite happy watching Thomas the Tank Engine in Korean. Commercials though, are a bit strange and I've yet to find the closed captioning though the English shows do have Korean subtitles (and usually have the actor names in Korean as well).

One of the big things to get used to is how people react to Natalie. She is a BIG TIME oddity. American children are not common here and one with blue eyes, I'm guessing, rarer still. She REALLY attracts attention. In fact, in one place we stopped at, one of the servers took out her cell phone and was trying to get pictures of her! They also come up to talk to her and to touch her which can be a little unsettling. And many people say she's pretty or has pretty eyes. We stay here too long, she's going to get a big head!

The plane ride here wasn't too bad. It was my first time on a plane and I was very nervous but it definitely could have been worse. We got to the airport early enough to get through security and all that with few issues (other than Natalie having a breakdown when she had to leave the car AND when she had to take off her coat and shoes) and got to our gate with little time to actually have to sit and wait. Getting to the gate took a little longer because I was specifically trying to avoid escalators (I HATE them with a passion). Natalie, on the flight to San Francisco was VERY excited to watch the plane go up (meanwhile my stomach was flopping around like a fish) but was out cold five minutes later. Still, once my tummy settled down, it was nice to see all of the scenary below. It was a clear day and the view was VERY nice. We flew over Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah, and California before finally landing in San Francisco. Having only been in two of the above states, it was very different for me.

Getting to the gate in San Francisco took about an hour (again, stupid escalators and it took a while just to figure out WHERE to go) but then we had a little over an hour before boarding took place. So we took the time to sit down and relax (Natalie spent her time looking out the window). Since she slept most of the way to San Francisco, she wasn't quite willing to go back to sleep when we got on the plane again. She was up for the first four hours and was a bit of a pill too as she did NOT want to stay buckled in. There was DEFINITELY some turbulance going on too which was VERY interesting, to say the least. But fortunately, I knew what it was and I wasn't too freaked out. Still, it was over 12 hours of flying and the shades were down most of the time, not that I could see all that much anyway as just about everytime I looked outside, there were clouds below. It was light out all the way to Seoul, where we landed. The sun set just a little bit before our arrival and it didn't really get dark until after we had been there about an hour. That in itself was disorienting considering that it was light out when we first flew out of Chicago and when you consider that we didn't land in Korea until around 4am Chicago time, that was ALMOST 24 hours that we had light out which definitely didn't help my body figure out what time it was.

Landing in Seoul was very interesting. Natalie and I had to take a train (basically a subway) just to get to the baggage claim. John did NOT warn me of that at all but I guess he didn't have to do that when he flew in since he came in through Japan, not San Francisco. But we made it to the baggage claim, got all of our bags (they all arrived there safely) and after a little bit, figured out we needed to go through one more door in order to get to John. He was very happy and relieved to see both of us make it there okay.

The rest of the evening was pretty adventuresome but I'm going to take off for now, I'm getting kind of beat here. The time change has been a bit difficult to get adjusted to and I still get tired during the day.