Won and Me

I have a problem with won. I've lived in Korea for nearly 9 months now and the problem has only gotten worse, not better. Won looks like Monopoly money to me and therefore has absolutely no connection to real money to me. I think the reason it seems so unreal and unmoneylike to me is that the currency is so inflated. One thousand won is less than a dollar. (The current exchange rate puts W1,000 as equal to $0.85.) Ten thousand won is less than ten dollars. Normally, I'd hear a number like 10,000 and freak out, but here, it's nothing. And so it doesn't faze me to spend 60,000 won because it has no connection to the real American money behind it. I don't think, "I just spent $53" (which in reality, I did), but "60,000 won? That's it? I've still got 40,000 won left in my wallet. Maybe I can buy Park Place."

The other funny thing about won (as depicted above) is that despite their high currency, most Koreans don't use bills bigger than the 10,000 won. They finally just introduced a 50,000 won note but most of the banks still tend to only give out 10,000 notes. (Which gets a little ridiculous when your rent is over 3 million won a month. Luckily, we pay our rent in dollars and our real estate agent exchanges it for us but seriously? Can you imagine paying your $3,000 a month rent in 300 $10 bills?)

It's funny because some things in Korea are insanely expensive. I'll look at a price tag and my head wants to implode trying to compute how much 2,450,000 won would translate into American dollars. But there are other things in Korea that are insanely cheap but because the price tag still says "2,000 won," it still takes me a good little while to process that that's only $1.70.

Right now, it's strawberry season in Korea. The markets and produce trucks are lined with packages and package of strawberries--some small and overcrowded and others big and delicately packaged--and one of the markets near our house has been practically giving them away for free.

So Thursday night David and I bought 3 packages loaded full of fresh and juicy strawberries for 5,000 won. Yes, we spent $4.50 on the number of strawberries that would have cost us well over $12 in the States. So this weekend, we've enjoyed strawberry and nutella crepes, a strawberry and cream cheese tart, strawberry and blueberry smoothies, and pancakes with fresh strawberries. I think I need to go buy 12 more cases before the prices go back up.

Because right now, I'm really loving the won. And the strawberry induced heaven I'm currently inhabiting.

A Sad Tale of Sick Kitty Woe

Spring has finally come to the Korean peninsula and since David had today (Friday) off from work, I had hoped that we could finally get out and see some more sights in and around Seoul (since we've been mostly homebound since the winter set in). Instead, I spent the day with a sick cat.

We noticed on Wednesday night that Suyom seemed unusually lethargic and turned up her nose at her wet food so we decided to watch her on Thursday. She slept all day long (rotating between our bed, the couch and her cat bed) and refused to eat or drink water, which had us really concerned. She felt much warmer than usual and was uninterested in anything around her. I decided that I'd call the vet first thing Friday morning if she didn't seem any better in the morning. She spent the whole night sleeping next to me (normally she gets up and leaves halfway through the night) so I knew she was still not feeling well. I called the vet on base as soon as I got up. They had had a cancellation that morning and so I quickly got dressed, loaded Suyom into her cat carrier and set off directly for the vet's.

After waiting awhile, the vet determined that Suyom had a fever of 104 degrees (a cat's normal temperature is 102) which meant that Suyom had either an infection or inflammation but they couldn't be sure without a blood test. Unfortunately they couldn't do bloodwork at the vet clinic on base so I had to put Suyom back in her carrier, walk to a Korean vet clinic off base, cross two very busy intersections and attempt to have a conversation with the Korean vet about my cat's bowel movements in very bad English. They wrapped Suyom in a blanket and went to draw some blood but she was fighting and clawing her way out of there (don't blame the poor cat) so they clipped her poor claws. After wrapping her little leg with a bandage, Suyom and I had an hour to wait for the results to come back so I decided to head back to base to eat (since I needed all the won in my wallet to pay for the blood test). Just as I was about to enter the base, the Korean vet called to say that they needed MORE blood so I crossed back over the two busy intersections again and walked back to the vet clinic. (And I had so worn the wrong shoes.) Her meows this time were so pitiful and heartbreaking that I nearly started to cry. But she made it through and once safely ensconced back in her carrier, we set off again for the base.

By this time, it was 11:30a.m. and I had yet to eat anything. I was one very unhappy pregnant woman, carting around one very unhappy and picked-on cat. We made it back to base and I had just enough time to eat before I got a call saying the blood results were ready to be picked up and so I walked back to the clinic, crossed two very busy intersections with my abused cat and picked up the results and paid them 90,000 won for the privilege. (And more Korean/English language barrier fun ensued when I asked for a receipt.)

It was nearing one o'clock by the time I got back to the vet on base. But the vet was pleased that the blood work showed that there was no infection in Suyom's kidneys or liver and that it was probably just inflammation. But since Suyom hadn't had any water in at least 24 hours, they wanted to give her an I.V. to pump her up with fluids before sending her back home which would take about an hour.

I went home, picked up David and we headed back to the clinic at 2:30 to retrieve our poor cat. The vet had shaved one of Suyom's arms in order to put in an I.V. but the vessel was blown (from the blood taking) so they shaved the other arm, but that vessel wasn't viable either so they waited for us to get back to show us how to inject fluids under her skin ourselves and to administer her antibiotics. So, for the next three days, David and I get to stick needles into our cat and pump her full of fluids and for the next 2 weeks, we get to force-feed banana flavored antibiotics down her throat. It should be fun. If my arms aren't scratched to pieces by the end of the weekend, I'll be very pleased indeed.


Though she looks rather pathetic here, she is doing a lot better now. I just hope she won't hate us forever for all the trauma we put her through today. It can't be any worse than carting her halfway around the world with us. And she's (mostly) forgiven us for that.

Baby Bump

Ever since that home pregnancy test showed me a plus-sign back in December, I've been anxiously awaiting the day when I would look and feel pregnant. Oh sure, the nausea was a good indication that something was up and seeing the first ultrasound at 12 weeks was nothing short of awesome, but it's sometimes all too surprisingly easy to forget--or simply to doubt--that I'm really pregnant. Every week since the first trimester ended, I've been encouraging Baby to grow so that I could have a little belly to show off. I didn't take any photographs before since it really didn't seem like there was anything there worth showing. (Plus, I find the whole photograph-my-belly-at-every-week thing to be a little silly, and yet, I want documentation. I swear I've lost half my sanity since getting pregnant.) I finally broke down and made David take some photos of me this week. (I felt really stupid. I will probably continue to feel stupid, but I will also probably continue to take photographs every few weeks to chart my growing baby bump.)

So here I am at 19 weeks. (Though according to the OB-GYN, I'm at 20 weeks since they bumped up the due date.) I know it's a little difficult to tell that there is a baby bump there because my breasts have also decided that now would be a fun time to become INSANE. I'm seriously working my way into bra sizes I never knew existed and are impossible to find. I ordered new bras about 3 weeks ago and they still haven't arrived and my old bras can barely contain the surplus. (David, of course, sees nothing wrong with this situation.)

I'm starting to feel flutterings of movement more and more (though it happens so quick and so suddenly that I always question whether it was really the baby or not) and I know David is super anxious for Baby to start kicking and moving so he can feel him too. In two weeks, we finally get to have our ultrasound to find out if Baby really is the boy we're convinced that he is.*

I'm curious......does anyone think I'm going to have a girl?

* For the record, David and I will be happy with a boy or a girl. We just want a healthy baby. But we both just feel that this baby is a boy. And we will both feel like idiots if we are wrong. But we won't be. I hope....

Projects!

I'm happy to report that several of my baby projects are coming along. I finished the blocks for my baby quilt tonight. I've got to sew all the blocks together and then sew on the border and backing but it's fun to see that I'm making progress, especially since I've never taken on such a large project before. (There were probably be many more quilts in my future. I really enjoy doing it.)

Of course, I've rearranged all the blocks a million times and I even re-did several blocks just to have a better selection of fabrics. Even now, looking at this photograph, I want to change about 3 blocks but I have to restrain myself and let it be. Otherwise, I'll never finish this project. Hopefully I'll be showing off the finished product soon.

A few weeks ago, my friend Amanda showed this cute animal hat idea to our knitting group. Since I needed a new knitting project--and since I already had a skein of the perfect tan yarn in my knitting basket--I decided to do it. I started knitting the hat in the round and by the end of the week, I was nearly done. But, as I was transferring my hat from the circular needles to sticks (which you need to do when you have less stitches to work with as you decrease at the top), I dropped a few stitches and couldn't figure out how to fix them. I decided to wait until our next knitting group to have Kathryn, the knitting goddess, fix the mess I had made. But as my luck would have it, sicknesses and cancellations and other events got in the way, and we didn't have any of our weekly knitting group get-togethers during March.

Today we had our knitting group (which often seconds as a group therapy session for all us crazy displaced military wives) and Kathryn was finally able to fix my hat so I could finish making the bear on top. I think it turned out pretty cute.

Here's a monkey (which my mom just sent me) modeling the cute bear hat.

And here's a closer view. It's a little silly but also ridiculously cute. I just hope it'll fit my little baby so I can admire my handiwork more. It's always nice to finish one project of the many I want to do!

A Recipe for Disaster

I'm a big fan of Bakerella's adorable baked creations. So last year, when she posted these adorable Easter cupcakes, I vowed that I'd make them for Easter this year. I mean, how hard could they be? It's just cupcakes with Easter candies arranged on top. I can handle that. (On a random note, Easter has the best candy. Just saying.)

For the last few weeks, I've been eagerly awaiting Easter's arrival so I could finally make the cupcakes. I bought cute Easter-themed baking cups and pastel-colored sprinkles. I stockpiled Easter candies and spent too much money on minature Easter bunnies. I could just imagine the gasps of delight and awe when I gave them away to my adoring friends. And everyone would clap their hands together and exclaim, "Oh Liz! You're so amazing!"

Yes, I realize that in my daydreams, I'm quite delusional.

Anyway, I just finished making my Easter masterpieces and they are anything but that.

In fact, they're an Easter trainwreck. Now normally, I wouldn't come onto my blog to boast about my failed baking experiments except that my expectations were so very high and my results were so very poor that I couldn't help but laugh over my pathetic cupcakes.

I started out by making the cupcakes out of a Funfetti cake mix I've had lying around forever. I figured Funfetti was a festive way to go for cupcakes. Plus, cake mixes are just easy. The cupcakes baked up moist and fluffy, so no problem there. On to the frosting.

I've got a bit of a frosting complex. I've never found a frosting recipe that I've really liked. But then the Pioneer Woman posted the best frosting recipe ever and I figured if PW said it was good frosting, it had to be great. I don't use two sticks of butter on just any frosting.

The ingredients were easy enough and I followed the directions but instead of producing fluffy, whipped frosting, I got a big bowl of runny liquid. I tried to do damage control and add more sugar to thicken the frosting up, but it was beyond repair.

I'm still mourning the loss of those two sticks of butter. What a waste.

Instead, I whipped up a quick buttercream frosting and set about frosting and decorating the cupcakes. I couldn't find any Sour Patch straws like Bakerella had used in her cupcakes, but I thought that Twizzler's would be an adequate substitute.

They were not. The Twizzler's ripped through the cupcakes and started to push out the sides of the baking cups. So I had to ditch the cute Easter basket handle look. No matter. I had plenty of candy to use anyway.

Except that arranging candy on a cupcake is much harder than it looks. The bunnies that I had bought had to be shoved deep into the cupcake to stand upright and the other candies either looked oddly large next to the bunnies or just plain funny.

Eventually, I just got lazy and laid the bunnies straight on the cupcakes like this.

Sadly, I think this cupcake with the pastel-colored bunny sprinkles turned out the best of all of them. How pathetic is that?

Oh well. I'll still hand them out to my friends and I'm sure their kids will still enjoy them even if they aren't the baked masterpieces with the most amazing frosting ever on them. They still taste pretty good.

Not that I've already eaten three of them or anything.....

A mix of random nothings

Life is moving along in Korea though there's nothing extremely exciting to report on....just a bunch of little random tidbits.

-- Baby [some people have cutesy names for their unborn children but David and I like to keep it old school by just calling him Baby] continues to grow. . . . I think. After the excitement of seeing our little baby at our first doctor's appointment, I've lasped back into doubt that there really is a baby growing in there. (Hopefully our doctor's appointment tomorrow will cure me of that idea once and for all.) I'm starting to feel and look more pregnant (sorry, haven't taken any pictures of the baby bump yet) though it's always a tad disheartening that I go to bed with a nice little belly and it's gone when I wake up. I want to always look pregnant! My sister, now on her third pregnancy, says that feeling passes, but I love my little belly and I love being pregnant. I just want it to be much more obvious. (Especially so I can sit in the special seats on the subway for the elderly and the pregnant women without getting stares of disapproval. There really is a baby growing in there!) I think I've felt a few tiny movements but I can't wait until I can really start to feel the baby kick and move and I can't mistake it for gas bubbles.

-- On Saturday, David and I and some of our friends drove down to Osan Air Base, about an hour south of Seoul. (Sadly, it was my first time leaving Seoul. It was rather sad and dismal, but that could have been more a product of the yellow dust storm that blew in from China that day and made everything a sickly yellow color.) Going to Osan made me very grateful for the fact that we are stationed in a big city and not stuck out in the boonies where there is really nothing to do. (And I already have a hard enough time trying to find things to do here!) Osan does have two things to its credit though: 1) a better and bigger PX and 2) a Chili's.

We had heard that Osan's BX had a better selection of baby items but we were still quite disappointed in their selection of cribs, car seats and strollers. We did, however, buy a mattress for our future crib only now it looks like we won't be able to buy a crib while we're here since we can't find anyone who will ship a crib to an APO address (and the cribs we can order through the PX are twice as expensive and take 6 months to get here). So we may just try to borrow or buy a used crib until we return to the States. We did buy a few other baby items and I bought my first set of adorable onesies which I can't stop giggling over. Why are baby clothes so dang cute? And why do I have to wait 5 more months for a cute little baby to fill them up?

After shopping, we went to Chili's. There's nothing better than having a little piece of home when you live in a strange, foreign country where people think fermented cabbage is the staple of life. And even though I was full, David and I still had to order the molten lava cake because we'll probably never go back to Osan. But it was fun to spend the day with our friends.

-- David has started working shift work again this week. I forgot how much it sucks. The nights are reaaaaaaaaaally long and lonely without a husband to annoy.

-- I've been working on my baby quilt and other fun sewing projects for my Quilt Group. The quilt is looking really cute, if I do say so myself.

-- I re-read East of Eden for my Book Club this month. It's still one of my absolute favorite books. For those of you who have stayed away from John Steinbeck since The Grapes of Wrath, I highly encourage you to read it. I also read The Help. Another fascinating book, I couldn't put it down. I love good books.

Umm. I think that's it. Sorry. I guess my life is pretty boring now. But hey, I'm growing a baby here. I reserve the right to be boring. And to sleep. A lot.

Thank You Jesus

I've made no secret of my love for Lofthouse sugar cookies (the most glorious cookies in the world) and I've attempted on several occasions to recreate their deliciousness with very little success. For the last two months, I've had unbelievable cravings for those cookies but the commissary hasn't had them since the Christmas holidays. I go to the commissary every week and walk by the bakery hoping and praying that they would magically have the cookies, but each time, my hopes were dashed.

But yesterday there was a whole table set up with Easter cookies including my precious Lofthouse cookies. (They are quite popular during the holidays and often change their frosting color and sprinkles to match the holiday.) I bought two containers. I'm contemplating going back and buying more and freezing them because I've got 5 more months of pregnancy to go and the next major cookie holiday isn't until the 4th of July.

Anyway, last night at dinner, I was telling David of my rapturous joy at finding my Lofthouse cookies since they'd been gone since Christmas. I said, "I knew Easter would come through for me."

And then David replied, "You should thank Jesus for your cookies. If he hadn't been born and resurrected, you'd never get them."

So thank you Jesus for my Lofthouse cookies. This pregnant woman is very grateful.

(And I hope you don't think that's sacrilegious. I mean, I really love these cookies.)

For Cat Lovers Only

Apparently, there are people out there who don't like cats.....

No seriously. There are.

But I.

I don't understand these people. (And being allegric is no excuse, in my opinion.)

If I didn't have a husband to reign me in or a cat who was genetically opposed to sharing her domain with another member of the feline species, I'd be the crazy cat lady with 10 cats. My mother is to thank (or to blame?) for a love of all things cats. Our cats are members of our family and we've owned more cats than I can number.

And I love our cat. I realized last month that it was our one year anniversary of adopting Suyom and we're so happy to have her around. She's endlessly entertaining, adorably cute, and a great companion for loneliness. (This was especially true when David worked all his long hours and nights. It was always a comfort to have another creature home with me.) Sure, Suyom, like all cats, has her share of annoying habits, like spreading her black hair gleefully around the house (which is a pain to sweep up and finds its way into the most annoying places) or meowing in the middle of the night when she wants to play after sleeping all day long.

But Suyom has also grown more cuddly with time. She was never a very affectionate cat, preferring instead to be pet on her own terms, but since I got pregnant, Suyom has become surprisingly more affectionate. She used to sleep at the foot of our bed but now she sleeps next to my head and will often let me pet her (and myself) to sleep.

Suyom is a lover of boxes of all shapes and sizes and her rats (a few of which she has mercilessly destroyed).

Like me, she loves figure skating.

And preparing meals. (But mostly, she just loves sitting on things that she shouldn't. I think it's all done in an attempt to spread her hair everywhere she goes. Thank goodness I wear a lot of black.)

Finally, Suyom has some mad jumping skills. Every so often, Suyom just can't contain her energy and she has to JUMP. She mostly jumps against door frames but she can get pretty high.

I was finally able to catch her jumping on video but then I realized that I'd held the camera horizontially, so you'll just have to turn your neck to see it. (I naively thought I'd just be able to rotate the video but videos apparently don't work like that.) There's not really any audio to hear, so you don't have to bother with sound. (And apologies if it doesn't work. I've never posted a video before.)

Yup, our Suyom is a fun cat. I wish she'd let me have 5 more like her.

But I guess one Suyom is enough.

One More Thing to Spend Money On.....

My birthday was last month and this year, I asked for a sewing machine. I used to sew many, many years ago, in high school. I took "clothing" for two semesters during my senior year and I loved learning how to make my own clothes. I even made a fully lined jacket for my final project. It looked awful, but hey, sewing well takes a lot of patience (which I'm often short of) and practice. Unfortunately, I went off to college and then grad school and even though my Mom gave me her old Singer sewing machine from the 60's, I never learned how to thread the dang thing and so I never sewed. (And then I gave it to my sister since I didn't want to haul it around the country. That thing was not light.) But I've been itching more and more to pick the hobby back up and now seemed like the perfect time.

David and I looked at all the sewing machines at the PX, which had a grand total of three. Two Singers and one Brother model. I didn't want to spend a lot of money on a new machine, I just wanted something simple and relatively cheap to re-learn on and that would last me for a few years. If I find that I start to sew a lot, then I'll purchase a better machine. But for now, this one works just great. I decided on the Singer over the Brother after reading some reviews, but I feel a bit more loyalty to Singer (even though they use Brothers on Project Runway). It's got a bunch of crazy stitches which I'll probably never use but I liked this model better than the more basic, cheaper model. Plus, fun red.

So why did I want to sew again?

Aside from minor tailoring jobs, I'm not really interested in sewing clothes. I might get to that point again (to make basic skirts and pajama pants) but I really wanted to learn how to quilt and to do some fun home projects, especially for the baby. And as luck would have it, one of my friends in my ward decided to start a quilting group for all levels. She's an amazing sewer and had gotten back into quilting in recent months and decided that she should share her knowledge. We meet once a month to learn new techniques, to get pointers, and make goals.

My first project was sewing this practice square. When I started, I planned to sew a few pieces and come back to it. But I found I enjoyed it so much that I finished it that day. It took me about three hours because I got a little anal and wanted everything to match up perfectly and so I ripped out a lot of stitches. In the end it wasn't perfect, but I find that I like that better. That's a skill I need to learn--to not stress out over imperfections.

This month's project was to work on hand quilting. I didn't want to do it at first. I hate sewing by hand and I'm actually not big on the true quilting aspect of quilting; I like crazy patchwork with minimal quilted design. But after getting started on my square, I found that I really enjoyed hand quilting. It's strangely therapeutic and richly rewarding.

Here's what it looks like once I wiped off the marking. I have a second square which I was going to machine quilt but I like hand quilting so much that I'm going to do that one by hand as well. Then I want to dye these squares to match the nursery and hang them on the wall. (But I'll get to that in a second.)

We're also doing humanitarian aid projects and this will eventually be a colorful wall hanging to be hung in an orphanage or nursery. It's nothing terribly complex or special, but I did have to teach myself a bit about quilt math in order to cut things to the right size and to have my seams match up.

My big project that I hope to get started on in the next week is a crib quilt for the nursery. Shopping around for nursery items, I quickly realized that I did not want to spend a fortune on baby bedding and nursery decor when I could buy fabric and make it myself. And I could make it how I wanted it. There's a lot of cute stuff out there for babies, but nothing I was absolutely in love with.

I headed off to Dongdaemun with absolutely no idea what I was looking for, but at least I had picked my pattern (think boxes inside of boxes). Even though I'm pretty sure I'm baking up a little boy here, I was still a little hesitant to pick fabrics that were overtly boyish. I wandered through five floors of crowded stalls, looking through mounds of fabric and didn't find anything that I really loved. And then I saw it: a cream fabric with red, blue and brown stars. It wasn't blatantly patriotic, but it was close enough to invoke America to me. And I thought, "My baby is an American and it'll be American whether it's a boy or a girl so dangit, it's getting a red, white, and blue quilt!"

These are a bunch of the fabrics I've chosen (the main one is on the far right). I don't know if I'm going to use all the fabrics and colors, but at least I've got a good amount to start with. I plan on making a quilt and a wall hanging (and my hand quilted squares with the Celtic stars will look nice in the nursery as well). I've also been looking for other patterns and tutorials to make stuffed toys as well. I'm really looking forward to getting started. Hopefully, once I get going, it won't take me long. I've got less than 6 months to pull it all off. Whee!

As usual, I always welcome recommendations and tips. I know there are a lot of more experienced fellow sewers out there.

Welcome Baby Malone!

Now that our Taiwan trip has been documented for all posterity (and the internet) to see, I can finally talk about what I've been dying to talk about for 2 months now......I'm pregnant!

I don't think that should come as shock to anyone who frequents my blog since I believe all of you are my friends on Facebook as well and I already made an announcement there. But as always, the blog is a great place to elaborate on life's adventures.

But first I must make a Very Important Announcement. David would like me to assure everyone who has read about our Taiwan trip that the food in Taiwan is actually VERY good and that the only reason I did not experience culinary bliss there was due to my pregnant--and oftentimes very nauseous--state. Again, I repeat, the food in Taiwan is AMAZING but not if you are pregnant. Satisfied David?

Anyway, back to the fun, we're-having-a-baby stuff! (And I'm actually having a baby. I've dreamt I've given birth to a litter of kittens before, so it was a relief to see a real human inside of me.)
Here he is! I say he--and will continue to say he until proven wrong (which we won't be)--because David and I are 95% positive our little baby is a boy. I wasn't expecting to actually see our baby at our 12 week check-up--just to hear his heartbeat--but it was such a wonderful surprise when this image popped up on the screen. I can't feel him moving at all yet, but he was doing back flips and somersaults inside my uterus. It was also just so comforting to know that a baby was, in fact, inside of me. Those first 12 weeks it's so easy to doubt that there's really a baby growing in there (despite the nausea).

We're now headed into week 15, which means our baby is due on August 25th. (The doctor bumped our due date up a week.) While I wish I had more options for doctors and delivery--since we're restricted to the Army hospital here--I'm not terribly nervous about giving birth so far away from home and family since we have a wonderful group of friends here who have already been educating me on all things baby.

David and I are both very excited for our baby. Since arriving in Korea, I'd been feeling more and more ready to start our family but I knew that David was still a little unsure. Then, out of the blue, sometime in October, David told me that he'd been thinking about it and he felt that we should start trying for a baby in December and I agreed. So December rolled around and I got pregnant on the first try. (David will be forever proud of that fact.)

I found out I was pregnant for sure two days before Christmas but we decided to wait until my first trimester was over to spread the news. Apparently, the rest of my family also decided that November/December was a good time to get pregnant since my sister-in-law Elisa, my sister Cassy, and two of my cousins are all expecting babies in August/September. My parents are doubling their grandchildren in a one month period! At least our baby will have lots of cousins to play with.

I'm enjoying being pregnant so far. I haven't been terribly sick--I feel the worst at night--and I'm looking forward to feeling and looking more pregnant. Plus, it's been a great excuse to buy new clothes!