Hello to all! We are now almost through our second whole week of living in Korea. It has been alot of fun and very interesting so far! Last Friday we were able to go see a professional baseball game with Tim and his co-workers and a few of their families! It was very interesting as in Korea they have cheerleaders for their baseball teams, the have girls in little short skirts for bat girls, and the fans wear suits and high heel shoes to a game! Yes we Americans sort of stuck out like sore thumbs with our t-shirts and jeans on!! One of the great things about baseball games here is the price of things...you don't have to refinance your home to have great seats! We paid 10000won each(about $10) to sit right near home plate on the lower level!! Then the food and stuff is just as reasonably priced...I think we spent a total of 80000won on the whole night! The kids had alot of fun and one of the teams won the game!!! Sorry I'm not much of a baseball fan:-(
Monday we went to a picnic with a bunch of our new neighbors here in our compound! Our new friends have fallen in love with my fruit salad and my banana cake! I can do one thing right at least!! We have also been going to the pool everyday since Sunday because we have hit the 80's for our daily temps here!! The kids are enjoying it but the water is just a tad to cold for my body to handle! Got to run for now to go walking with my friends!
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Seoul, South Korea
Our welcome to the neighborhood gift!
Our building with the playground in front of it!!Hello all! Sorry that it has taken so long to get a post up on here. We just got internet access yesterday afternoon and by the time I finished catching up on our e-mail I was falling asleep sitting at my computer:-( For those who haven't heard from us since our departure last week I will give you a rundown of what has been up with the Utter family clan:
Thursday May 14th we arrived in Incheon Airport at a little before 2pm Korea time(1am NY time)!! After being picked up by Tim and 3 of his coworkers we came to our new house in Hannam Village, which is in beautiful Seoul! The kids were amazed by the huge bridges that are all over the place here. As well as the high rise buildings which are quite numerous as well! Our flight was very long but we survived!
On Friday the 15th we had to go and do a bunch of inprocessing so that we could get on and off post as well as our compound which is military as well...we did a lot of walking and by the time the day was over we were pretty well spent! We were able to get TJ & Emily registered for school, they had to go have 2 shots in order to start! We also went shopping at the PX to get things we needed for the house, I was able to get a cell phone so I could have a way to call home:-) The kids went on their first cab rides and truly enjoyed!
On Saturday we went shopping at the Commissary(grocery store) so we could get food for our house! After we got home from the store the jet lag kicked in and we had a quiet evening. The kids and I were all falling asleep at 6 at night:-( Made life pretty interesting!
Sunday we went to church for the first time as a family since last June! It was so nice:-) We went to the Chapel service here at Hannam Village and it is a pretty large group. Service was great unfortunately it was the head Chaplin's last service as he is leaving South Korea in a few weeks! There are many families that are going to be leaving our community this summer which is nice for me because it will be more than just myself as a new person around:-) Sunday afternoon we rested as our jet lag was still kicking our butts!
Monday I had to go to my first day of class for inprocessing into the Army in Korea...it was interesting to say the least! Tammy & Elijah got to go to the daycare for the day and meet some new friends. TJ & Emily stayed with Dad and went to orientation at their school and to the hospital to get their TB test read. Tim unfortunately had to go back to his work/home on Monday afternoon.
Tuesday I was back in school for the day...this day was all about learning about the Korean culture!! Started to learn some Korean words and phrases!!
Wednesday TJ & Emily finally started school! They both are enjoying and getting to know their new friends. TJ managed to lose his bus pass on the first day!!! It's amazing how listening to Mom when she says to put it in your backpack it might have prevented this from occuring!!
Today was their second day of school and they are getting settled!
As for Tammy and Elijah they are just going on like always! Everyone is looking forward to this weekend because the pool opens in our community and Daddy will be back home with us at last.
I hope that all of you are doing well and know that we think of all of you daily!
Love & Prayers!!
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Date is set!!!
We went this morning and picked up passports, visas and plane tickets!
We leave from Syracuse Airport at 6:40 am on Wednesday May 13th. Yes that is less than a week from now. We have to be at the airport at 2:40 in the morning. We will fly a little over 2 hours to Atlanta, where we have an hour and 25 minute layover. We will then get on a 777 for a 14 hour 55 minute flight to Incheon Airport in South Korea. We will arrive there at approximately 2:20pm on Thursday May 14th. Tim is taking Thursday and Friday off from work so that he can help us get set up. The weekend after that he has a 4 day weekend for Memorial Day so he will be with us then also. We are very, very, very excited!
We leave from Syracuse Airport at 6:40 am on Wednesday May 13th. Yes that is less than a week from now. We have to be at the airport at 2:40 in the morning. We will fly a little over 2 hours to Atlanta, where we have an hour and 25 minute layover. We will then get on a 777 for a 14 hour 55 minute flight to Incheon Airport in South Korea. We will arrive there at approximately 2:20pm on Thursday May 14th. Tim is taking Thursday and Friday off from work so that he can help us get set up. The weekend after that he has a 4 day weekend for Memorial Day so he will be with us then also. We are very, very, very excited!
Passports have arrived!!!
Hello to all! Yes you are reading that correctly my friends they have arrived. At Ft. Drum that is, but only for a few more hours:-) I got the call on Wednesday at about 3:30 in the afternoon and I think that all of Geneva could have heard me screaming because our house has got quite the echo to it right now! Jackie was there to celebrate with me(even amongst our tears)!
Monday the packers came and took the rest of our stuff to storage, so the kids and I have been living out of our suitcases at my Mom & Step-Dad's house in Weedsport and commuting back to Geneva every day. However this morning we are taking a bit of a detour on the way to school and driving up to Ft Drum to get our passports. Tim is supposed to be at the transportation office in Korea right now making our arrangements to get over there. He is aiming for us to be arriving there next Wednesday, which would put us leaving here on Tuesday morning. Will keep everyone posted when I get more exact information.
This is a bitter sweet time for the kids and I as we are all so very excited to see Tim, but sad that we will be leaving all of our friends and family behind. Our Geneva family is the greatest...words can never express how much all of you mean to us(especially myself). You have helped me go from the lowest valleys to the tops of mountains and been my friend the whole time. Every one of you will hold a special place in my heart for the rest of our lives and we now have a great place to come visit on vacation:-) To our friends that I haven't been so good about keeping in touch with since Tim has been gone I am so sorry and I seriously think of you all the time but when it comes to sitting down and actually being able to call...it has been impossible. The times I think to call are in the middle of the night cause that is the only time I have to sit still. Thank you all for being our friends and we love you very much.
To our family...I know this is going to be a very difficult and emotional transition but I also know that God will help you through it. He has big plans in mind for you that are going to keep you so busy that our time apart will be quick and you will barely have time to miss us. We will be able to talk to you on almost a daily basis, you can eat your dinner while we eat our breakfast:-) Thank you for all of the help and encouragement during the past year as we made this huge decision to first go back into the Army and then the more to Korea. This has been one wild roller coaster ride but I know that God has big plans for us while we are there. We love you all very much and can't wait to see everyone when we return.
Monday the packers came and took the rest of our stuff to storage, so the kids and I have been living out of our suitcases at my Mom & Step-Dad's house in Weedsport and commuting back to Geneva every day. However this morning we are taking a bit of a detour on the way to school and driving up to Ft Drum to get our passports. Tim is supposed to be at the transportation office in Korea right now making our arrangements to get over there. He is aiming for us to be arriving there next Wednesday, which would put us leaving here on Tuesday morning. Will keep everyone posted when I get more exact information.
This is a bitter sweet time for the kids and I as we are all so very excited to see Tim, but sad that we will be leaving all of our friends and family behind. Our Geneva family is the greatest...words can never express how much all of you mean to us(especially myself). You have helped me go from the lowest valleys to the tops of mountains and been my friend the whole time. Every one of you will hold a special place in my heart for the rest of our lives and we now have a great place to come visit on vacation:-) To our friends that I haven't been so good about keeping in touch with since Tim has been gone I am so sorry and I seriously think of you all the time but when it comes to sitting down and actually being able to call...it has been impossible. The times I think to call are in the middle of the night cause that is the only time I have to sit still. Thank you all for being our friends and we love you very much.
To our family...I know this is going to be a very difficult and emotional transition but I also know that God will help you through it. He has big plans in mind for you that are going to keep you so busy that our time apart will be quick and you will barely have time to miss us. We will be able to talk to you on almost a daily basis, you can eat your dinner while we eat our breakfast:-) Thank you for all of the help and encouragement during the past year as we made this huge decision to first go back into the Army and then the more to Korea. This has been one wild roller coaster ride but I know that God has big plans for us while we are there. We love you all very much and can't wait to see everyone when we return.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Update on our progress
Hello to all! We are still patiently waiting for the arrival of our passports so that we can move but in the mean time I have set up the packers coming and taking our remaining belongings to storage so that once our passports do get here we can leave ASAP. In the mean time we will be staying with my Mom and Clint. They come Monday morning and will be all done by Monday evening. Then I will have some time to get our old house all cleaned up! Tim goes to Yongsan on Thursday to sign the lease on our new apartment and our stuff that I had shipped there is already there waiting to be delivered as soon as he signs our lease. The nice thing about this is the kids will leave a complete home here and go to a complete home there with all of their favorite toys that they have been missing for the past month. Tim will then be staying at Yongsan for school until the 9th of May. The kids and I went and applied for passports and visas about 6 weeks ago so hopefully they will be in very soon.
In the mean time we have been enjoying our wonderful summer like weather in NY. Here are some pics I took of the kids down at the lake this past weekend.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Strong Museum of Play
Well this week is Spring Break in the land of the arctic blast(aka. New York in April)! The sun has been shining but we have had this awful wind that takes all the warmth out of the sun. Anyways. Yesterday we went to the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester with our friends the Pool's and the Haley's! It was 3 moms with 9 kids! Yes we did discover that we don't really have eyes in the back of our heads...but the good thing is we went in with 9 kids and came back out with the same 9 kids!
The kids all had alot of fun and that was all that really mattered! Here are some pics of our adventure...
The whole group together!
The whole group together! 
All the kids playing with the train table, we need to find one this big for our house!
The train ride!
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Slow but steady progress
Well it has been almost a whole month since I started this and I somehow managed to not share this blog site with anyone...wonder how that could happen with all the insanity in our lives. Let me just share with you what has been going on and how God is working in this whole situation:-)
Tim went to his housing Orientation at Yongsan on March 31st, at the end of his meeting he was informed of how much our BAH(Basic Allowance for Housing) would be for us to get housing off post and it worked out to be about $2800 and the building which we had been looking into moving into the 3 units we found online were over $4000 a month. But instead of fretting about this I shared with Tim what the Lord had been telling me...which was to be still and wait. So after a bit of an argument he did as I said and started to pray about. On Friday, April 3rd he happened to be back down at Yongsan for something to do with work and as he was driving around post the Lord told him he needed to go to the housing office right then. So Tim did as the Lord led him and went into the office. The woman in the office informed him that some how we were never put on the waiting list for housing but that if he could come back on Tuesday, April 7th she would be able to show him a 3 bedroom unit which was available immediately. Tim of course said yes he would be there. Now we fast forward to Tuesday and Tim goes for his tour with the inspector...he was originally supposed to see a 12th floor unit and ended up seeing a 4th floor unit. Our patio looks out at the playground. He also found out on this day that there are 15 people on the waiting list before us for housing that we somehow got to the head of the list. He of course took the apartment knowing that this was God's work and he couldn't interfere. He will sign our lease officially on April 30th which is good because it looks like we will not be able to leave here until after the 1st of May because our passports are not back in yet. We are praying that they will come in sometime in the next 2 weeks so we can get there the first week in May.
Tim will be able to stay with us the first week of May because he has to take a class at Yongsan. The other good thing is since they came and packed up and shipped our stuff for Korea on March 30th hopefully it will get there before if not right when we get there:-)
The kids and I are getting very anxious to get there as you can imagine. Tim is also getting excited about us getting there also. We will be living in Hannam-Gu(aka. Hannam Village) which is in Souel. When Tim was there Tuesday he found out that there is a Pizza Hut and Kentucky Fried Chicken less than a block from our complex...so we will see! Well I guess this is it for now! To anyone that I haven't talked to lately...I am very sorry but it seems that our days come and go very quickly around here. You are all in our thoughts and prayers and we plan to keep in touch with everyone!
Love and prayers
Tim went to his housing Orientation at Yongsan on March 31st, at the end of his meeting he was informed of how much our BAH(Basic Allowance for Housing) would be for us to get housing off post and it worked out to be about $2800 and the building which we had been looking into moving into the 3 units we found online were over $4000 a month. But instead of fretting about this I shared with Tim what the Lord had been telling me...which was to be still and wait. So after a bit of an argument he did as I said and started to pray about. On Friday, April 3rd he happened to be back down at Yongsan for something to do with work and as he was driving around post the Lord told him he needed to go to the housing office right then. So Tim did as the Lord led him and went into the office. The woman in the office informed him that some how we were never put on the waiting list for housing but that if he could come back on Tuesday, April 7th she would be able to show him a 3 bedroom unit which was available immediately. Tim of course said yes he would be there. Now we fast forward to Tuesday and Tim goes for his tour with the inspector...he was originally supposed to see a 12th floor unit and ended up seeing a 4th floor unit. Our patio looks out at the playground. He also found out on this day that there are 15 people on the waiting list before us for housing that we somehow got to the head of the list. He of course took the apartment knowing that this was God's work and he couldn't interfere. He will sign our lease officially on April 30th which is good because it looks like we will not be able to leave here until after the 1st of May because our passports are not back in yet. We are praying that they will come in sometime in the next 2 weeks so we can get there the first week in May.
Tim will be able to stay with us the first week of May because he has to take a class at Yongsan. The other good thing is since they came and packed up and shipped our stuff for Korea on March 30th hopefully it will get there before if not right when we get there:-)
The kids and I are getting very anxious to get there as you can imagine. Tim is also getting excited about us getting there also. We will be living in Hannam-Gu(aka. Hannam Village) which is in Souel. When Tim was there Tuesday he found out that there is a Pizza Hut and Kentucky Fried Chicken less than a block from our complex...so we will see! Well I guess this is it for now! To anyone that I haven't talked to lately...I am very sorry but it seems that our days come and go very quickly around here. You are all in our thoughts and prayers and we plan to keep in touch with everyone!
Love and prayers
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