Its been a whirlwind of a week here in Songdo. Monday, the final day before work started, we decided to venture into the depths of Incheon. After two mis-stops on the subway, we arrived in Bupyeong (third time is a charm) where we visited a traditional market with narrow sidewalks between vendors, baskets of fruit and vegetables, and glass containers filled with an assortment of live eels. Beneath it was the largest underground mall in Korea. Vendor after vendor of shoes, clothing, jewelry, and fragrance products. My younger sister, Melanie, would have been in heaven. We even found a movie theatre and a dollar store.
Tuesday John and I found ourselves doing the official change of roles. I got ready for work in the morning while he prepared to stay home with Finn. It has been eye opening for both of us to turn the tables. For me it feels like I am going non-stop all day long and for John he can't understand how he can busy all day and feel like he hasn't gotten anything done. Its good to spend some time in each others shoes.
Work has been good. Lots of information during orientation, coupled with learning our way around the city. There is a great group of teachers here and many families. Even another stay at home dad with a one-year-old daughter, and numerous trailing husbands that will be looking for people to do things with during the day. I don't think John will be lonely!
The school also scheduled a trip to Costco, an hours bus ride away. What I thought would be a small taste of home in this foreign land. I was so excited and John was dreading the whole thing. Little did I know that despite all of my food buying trips where I had 6 carts and spent thousands of dollars on food for courses, that this would be the worst Costco experience ever. The costco was two stories and we had one and a half hours to make it through and back to the bus. We felt like ants in an ant farm. We could hardly push a cart through the hoards of people while trying to fill the cart as quickly as possible with all the goods we needed. It was like being on supermarket sweep, but at the end we still had to pay for all of the groceries. Despite the people, the heat, and the time crunch, we were excited to find oatmeal and cheerios, two staples for Finn, and coffee THE staple for John.
Today we took the bus to the airport to return the cell phone (so those of you with that number, we no longer have it), and decided to find a beach to play at. To get a visual of the beaches here, imagine any popular beach in Los Angeles on a busy summer weekend and then imagine it twice as full, umbrellas next to one another, tents lined up behind the umbrellas, and people sitting on the grass in the shade behind the tents. The water looks like one of the wave pools at a waterpark like waterworld; people in tubes, people swimming, and children everywhere. I definitely had one of my eyes bulging out of my head moments, feeling overwhelmed when we saw all of that. Luckily, we were able to find a small amount of space at the next beach and were refreshed from the heat and humidity in the cool water of the Yellow Sea. Finn had a blast playing in the ocean. He was so sad to have to leave.
Tonight we are preparing for the coming typhoon, but by preparing I mean we closed the windows and are waiting for the torrential rain. My new bike arrives Wednesday, which will make this city more accessible for the three of us. The city really isn't that big, and almost everything is within walking distance if you are willing to walk about an hour, but it will be nice to be able to get around more quickly together. We are enjoying our time here so far, Finn is finally sleeping through the night and is back on his routine, and Songdo is beginning to feel a little bit like home, or at least I can see how it could start to feel like home.
