2015 | A Year in Photos

A look back at 2015 …

January

Moving to Korea was obviously the biggest thing that happened to us in January (and this year), but before then we rang in the new year at home with family and then took a road trip back to Atlanta, stopping in New Orleans along the way. In the several weeks prior to moving to Korea we sold off or donated a lot of our belongings, repainted and updated our entire house, lived in a hotel, drove to Houston, stopped in Atlanta, Nashville and Memphis along the way, spent time with family, drove back to Atlanta via New Orleans, and then flew to Korea.

As we drove through the Southern US I fell in love all over again with the South. Everything was so intensely familiar and so comforting — the food, the people, the Southern drawl, the friendliness, the deeply ingrained nostalgia… So much of my life has been spent moving as far away as possible from the South and yet here I was wondering when I could come back. It was — it is — home to me. And now we were saying goodbye. Again.

There’s so much I still want to write about this transitional time in our lives that, once we arrived in Korea, I sort of left by the wayside. (In particular I want to write about New Orleans and the surreal experience of staying in the same hotel where my parents stayed on their honeymoon.) Looking back on life one is always able to pinpoint the moments his/her life changed but rarely is one fully aware when the actual moment is happening. For better or worse I knew that our choice to move abroad would forever shape our lives, and that was exciting and terrifying and wonderful and heartbreaking all at the same time.

February

Our first couple of weeks in Korea were spent in Seoul after which we made our way down to our new home of Daegu where we lived in a hotel room for the next couple of months. When I was younger the thought of living out of a suitcase, in a hotel, seemed the most glamorous and fun thing imagineable. In real life though: not so much. Especially when your room is tiny and not set up for long-term living. Since pets were not allowed at the hotel (grrrrrr) and since the closest kennel was not set up to adequately house cats (double grrrrrr) our newly-made friends graciously offered to let our kitties stay in one of their spare rooms.

February was such a weird, disjointed, and transitional month. And it was freezing cold. In between keeping late night hours at work Sly traveled a lot. I spent most of my time at our friends’ house with the kitties and my friends’ two sweet pups. And we both made one too many trips walking to and from our hotel down what we nicknamed “the loneliest road,” the coldest, windiest, longest, bare, skeleton tree-lined road that linked our hotel to civilization.

On the other hand, hotel life forced us to get outside, even in the blistering cold. We spent every weekend and spare moment not spent with the kitties exploring our new city and new country. We visited our first cat cafe, explored outdoor markets, ate at an airplane cafe, celebrated Lunar New Year, and spent Valentine’s day in Seoul.

March

Finding an apartment in Korea was an interesting ordeal to say the least. Because most expats move around summertime there was a shortage of available housing. We saw maybe five places total, three of which weren’t even very good options (very outdated, no modern appliances, etc.). To even get a chance to see the apartment we ended up renting involved constant pushing by our real estate agent, interviews with another real estate agent, and a ‘good word’ by the previous tenants, who we also met. And the drama didn’t end there.

When we finally moved into our apartment we were ecstatic! One of the very first things we did was go on a hike on a trail across from our apartment. While waiting for our house goods to be delivered we spent about a week sleeping on the cold hard floor wrapped up in every single piece of clothing we had to keep from freezing, and huddled together with the kitties to keep warm.  Honestly we didn’t care. We were all together in one place and it finally felt like we could really start living — and enjoying — our adopted country. No more “loneliest road” for us — now we could spend hours figuring out how to order Korean food using Hangul-only apps and setting up Netflix so that we could watch it via a VPN. Months after arriving in Korea we finally started to feel like we were settling in.

At the end of March we celebrated Sly’s birthday in Daegu by enjoying a nice day outdoors and by being kids again at a Korean amusement park.

April

Finally, Spring! As the weather became warmer we explored more trails found right in our backyard. I often hiked solo in the mountains near our home and on weekends Sly and I strolled along the river in search of river otters. (I will find you, river otters!) We took a mini road trip to Jinhae to attend the famed cherry blossom festival. Despite the cold, the rain, and the crowds it was hard not to be impressed by all the beautiful pink blossoms and admire (and eat) all the street food!

April also brought the sad news of my Aunt’s unexpected and sudden death from cancer. For the first time living in another country really hit me hard as I was not able to go back home to be with my family. I always have found grief to be a very personal and at times very isolating mix of emotions, and it was especially so being overseas when the rest of my family was together in Texas. I found comfort in stuffing my face with hamburgers and taking long meandering hikes in the mountains.

May

May is probably one of the best seasons to be in Korea. The weather is warm but not stifling hot, flowers are blooming everywhere, and there are so many festivals. Some of the festivals we attended were the Colorful Festival, a tomato festival, and a lantern festival and releasing ceremony. We enjoyed being outdoors every chance we could whether it was hiking in ‘our backyard’ or hiking to a wild azalea field. One weekend we took a day trip to Daejon to have lunch and desserts with one of Sly’s old Naval Academy buddies. Talk about a small world.

For Memorial Day weekend we frantically purchased last minute tickets and flew to Jeju Island. Even though Sly traveled a lot for work (mostly to Japan) and we often took day trips to nearby cities, our trip to Jeju was the first real vacation for the both of us since moving to Korea. And we had no plans except to hike, relax and eat good food, which is exactly what we did.

June

Summer in Korea was everything everyone said about it: hot, muggy, humid … mosquitoes.

Let’s talk a little bit about Korean mosquitoes, shall we? We live on the frickin’ 17th floor of a frickin’ high rise. WHERE THE HELL DID THE MOSQUITOES COME FROM? HOW WERE THEY GETTING INTO OUR APARTMENT? WHY WERE THEY ON THE 17th FLOOR? While we often slept with our windows opened, all of our windows had screens. We never even opened the screens! We even sealed up every single hole and crevice as well as all of our drains when they were not in use just (Korean houses have open draining in the floor) to be sure they weren’t magically living and flying through the pipes.

To truly understand our hatred for these creatures you should understand the nature of a Korean mosquito. These f’in things only emerged at night, at around 1 or 2am, or at the exact moment my paranoia of getting bitten by mosquitoes subsided long enough for me to fall asleep. Then the buzzing would begin. I jolted awake, nudged Sly (the mosquito killer) to wake up, located the mosquito, and then in the split second before Sly smashed the wretched thing the bastard mosquito would disappear into thin air. We would search the room for hours, in the dark, with a flashlight trying to lure the damn thing out of hiding and then, HOURS LATER instead of finding the stupid thing clinging on the wall as one would expect we would find the mosquito CASUALLY WALKING ACROSS THE FLOOR AS IF IT WERE TAKING A SUNDAY STROLL. WHAT KIND OF MOSQUITO PREFERS WALKING OVER FLYING? Korean mosquitoes, is what.

It was like how people describe life with a newborn child, except we were losing sleep over swatting mosquitoes. (BTW the mosquitoes persisted well through fall, even in the cold weather. Of course.) We consulted so many YouTube videos and read everything we could on the internet, in particular everything we could find on the elusive floor-walking-disappearing-ninja-Korean mosquito (like did you know they could ‘hide in walls’ for six months without feeding. F’ing gross dude). After one too many restless nights we finally purchased one of those zapping mosquito tennis rackets and a mosquito net, which we had been avoiding because the kitties slept with us at night. Once our items arrived, guess what? No more mosquitoes. Let’s hope it stays that way bc omfg it was absolutely maddening. Like Caddyshack. But with mosquitoes.

For some reason whenever our friends or family mention visiting us, it’s always during the summer months. Dear friends and family planning on visiting: if you visit during the summer you will be hot (because there’s no such thing as central AC and our home only has an AC in the living room and in our room) and you’ll probably get bitten by mosquitoes. Even on the 17th floor of a high-rise. 

But anyway, where was I? Yes. June.

Outside of chasing mosquitoes and (more) work travel for Sly we didn’t plan too much. We were so hot that we didn’t want to do ANYTHING although that didn’t stop me from working out in the world’s hottest (non-air conditioned) gym in our apartment or wearing a sweater and jeans to see a pop up panda exhibit. You know how in the olden days movie theaters had big neon signs that said “air conditioning?” I remember seeing those old signs as a kid (or pictures of them) and thinking, what a waste of a neon sign because who didn’t have air conditioning. After a summer in Korea I can fully appreciate the act of going to a movie theater or even walking around the frozen food section of a grocery store just to feel the gloriously crisp polar-ice-cap-melting chill of central air conditioning.

In addition, we spent the summer stressing over home renovations and home owner’s insurance claims (our water heater exploded while our tenants were away on vacation. The drain was clogged and the lower level of our house flooded) and finding a contractor that would meet my OCD standards of laying a slate floor in a herringbone pattern (because I need to keep things as complicated as possible). Everything worked out, I mean as far as we know anyway. It may be that if/when we return to our home we will discover that only a few patches of floor were tiled — the ones they took photos of as proof — and the rest of the floor is sprouting mushrooms. Anyway, being a home owner when shit goes wrong is stressful as hell. Being a homeowner when you have tenants and things explode while you’re living abroad in Korea approaches head-explosion level.

Did I mention the mosquitoes?

July

MERs hit Korea pretty hard over the summer and people were over-the-top freaked out about it. Many people stayed indoors, trips were canceled, Koreans weren’t allowed to travel, and other Asian tourists stopped visiting Korea. But other peoples’ misfortune meant that nice hotels were empty and ridiculously cheap in Seoul, perfect for last-minute planners like us. We found a great deal on a cute boutique hotel and spent the 4th of July holiday exploring royal palaces, eating at fancy places, exploring new neighborhoods, getting reprimanded in museums, and sweating profusely through it all.

One weekend we attended Korea’s most well-known festival (at least for expats) — the Boryeong Mud Festival, also known as expat spring break As the name implied there was lots of mud, but also street food that included Hawaiian sno-cones with booze, mud slides, beach raves, kpop concerts, freshly grilled seafood and “firework fantasies.” We may have been the token old people in a sea of newly graduated expat English teachers and I may have been hit in the head no fewer than five times with a wet, muddy, plastic, beach ball, and we most definitely were overcharged for our motel room, but we had a lot of fun. And our skin felt fantastic afterward.

At the end of July Sly and I took separate flights to Hawaii — Sly took the fancy direct flight paid for by work out of Seoul and I took the backpacker express to Beijing, where I was held captive for a day laid over for something like 15 hours. Flying internationally is the closest you can get to time travel. I literally lived the same day…twice.

August

As mentioned above, in August we returned to Hawaii for the first time in eight years. Yup, still loved it. Sly was busy with work stuff the first week so I spent most of my time reading books on the beach, reading books on my balcony, filling in crosswords on the beach, filling in crosswords on the balcony, blowing through all of our food vouchers stuffing myself with tropical fruit from the buffet, trying trendy restaurants that didn’t exist eight years ago with Sly, and riding the bus to visit museums, old houses, and thrift stores. Tough life. Being back in the states for the first time in seven months was disorienting. I stared googley-eyed at a barista when he took my order, confused and elated that he was speaking to me in English. It was like being in some strange dream. But at least that dream was in paradise.

We spent the next week on the North Shore in little (sweltering hot) beach side bungalows, returning to a place we once camped eight years prior. The North Shore had totally built up since we had last visited but at least the beaches still looked the same.

Just as we started to unwind Sly received very sad news from his mom that his grandmother passed away. We spent the next day at the nearest Starbucks using their free wifi to rearrange plans. If there was a plus side to all of this it was that since we were already in Hawaii Sly was able to travel back to California a lot easier and faster to be with family.

August closed out with heightened drama with between North and South Korea. We were in Seoul meeting up with family (and also because Sly had to be there for work) and everyone was freaking out. Oddly enough I was pretty ambivalent about the whole thing, which was totally not in character for me. All I could really think about was how to get back to Daegu and rescue our kitties if things really got heated. Finding kitty sized gas masks was also a huge concern. Sly told me that such things do not exist. I think we have our next Shark Tank winning idea.

September

We were more or less homebodies in September, opting to spend most of our weekends at home, though we did manage to get out and grab brunch with friends and to eat chicken and drink beer at the Chimac festival. With the weather growing cooler almost overnight all we wanted to do was eat baked bread and watch Netflix. So… basically not much different from any other day/time of year.

I tagged along on yet another one of Sly’s work trips to Japan and my head nearly exploded from eating sushi, late night izakayas, push button ramen ordering, bad ass French bakeries, all night video arcades and basically everything you’d expect from Japan. I must have said to Sly at least a million times, “I can’t believe I’m eating sushi…in Japan,” or the variation:”I can’t believe I’m eating ramen in Japan!” Pretty much fill in the blank: I can’t believe I’m ______ in Japan! I loved Japan. I told Sly we should move to Tokyo stat.

If I squinted my eyes Japan felt very familiar; like Korea in many ways. But the food. I love Korean food but I LOVE Japanese food. I feel like a traitor admitting that but Japanese food, like everything else in Japan, is such an art form. Everything we tried was essentially the best version of that dish we ever ate. We waited in line to eat ramen, coffee, gyukatsu, and chocolate croissants (in Tokyo!), and it was always worth it. I wish we could have eaten more.

October

Fall is my favorite season and after a hot summer, I was really looking forward to spending time outdoors. We managed to squeeze in a glamping and hiking trip to Gyeongju before flying to Thailand to celebrate our fifth (!) anniversary. We found ridiculously cheap last-minute tickets to Phuket partly because it was off/rainy season and partly because our flight included long layovers in Malaysia. Neither of these factors dissuaded us. We slept in a cargo container hotel and I tried durian again. This time, instead of tasting like petrol, durian actually tasted pretty good.

Phuket is notoriously touristy and resort-y which initially concerned me, but we rented a car and did it the way we liked to do — off the beaten path and away from crowds, tours, resorts, and people in general. And what can I say that doesn’t make me sound like a total bragging dbag? It was awesome. It was neither of our first times in Thailand but it was our first time together. 

We returned just in time to celebrate my favorite holiday – Halloween.

November

Autumn in Korea meant more festivals, camping, hiking, outdoor fires, roasted sweet potatoes and gold ginkgo leaves magically floating everywhere we walked.

We fell into a bit of a slump by the time fall rolled around, but we pulled through with sushi dates and more home-baked bread.

Then we were off to Vietnam for Thanksgiving…

December

…and to celebrate my birthday.

Sly calls our Vietnam trip “the best trip he’s ever taken.” Once again we skipped the ‘bucket list’ sights like Halong Bay and spent most of our time chilling out in the countryside. We hiked, took hot herbal baths in tiny wooden tubs, rode motor bikes, befriended a pig, taught an English class, slept on the Orient Express (I always thought that was a made up train only found in Agatha Christie novels), and so much more. It was definitely a trip we’ll never forget.

Living in Korea has allowed us the opportunity and means to travel easily and inexpensively to so many awesome places. I don’t think there’s ever a moment when my inner voice hasn’t said, “holy crap we are actually here, right now, doing this, together.”We have been so lucky to be able to see so much in 2015.

On the other hand, living in Korea also meant that we didn’t get to spend the holidays with our families. The distance felt nearly palpable, and it wasn’t until Christmas Eve, amid plates of spitzbuben and spiked mull cider, that it finally started to feel like Christmas. Christmas took a long time to show up, but a million German Christmas cookies later, it finally did. And it was a good one.

As for 2016? I’m not much of a bucket list or resolutions type person but in addition to all the usual New Year’s stuff like reading more/being more active, etc, I’d like to:

• really commit myself to learning Korean, this time for real
• adapt some Korean recipes so that I can cook healthy Korean food regularly at home
• learn and use the crap out of my GoPro (and actually edit the video into movies). Also, take more than just photos of the back of our heads. 
• write more in this space instead of always lagging years behind in posts.
• buy a folding wagon so that it doesn’t take me 50 trips up and down the elevator to take our separated trash to the recycling bins. 
• go on a multi-day backpacking trip, snowboard in Korea and/or Japan, go tent camping, tune our bikes/get some push scooters
• photograph a river otter. WHERE ARE THEY HIDING?
• get my hair cut more than once
• dust off my old sketchbooks and watercolors. Maybe draw in them once or twice too…
• plan trips in advance instead of always waiting until the last-minute, usually a day or two before, and then losing my mind
• Skype more with family, be better about mailing postcards and answering emails in less than a month.

And as always I hope we can explore even more places in this part of the world; together.

Previous Years in Photos:

A year in photos: 2011
A year in photos: 2012
A year in photos: 2013
A year in photos: 2014