Unexpected Adjustments

The Hatch House has successfully gone global, moving 14 time zones ahead to the Eastern Hemisphere!  Now that we have been here a month, I can take a minute to reflect on the unexpected adjustments our family made in the first few weeks.  For example, we did not realize that the belongings we shipped in advance of our leaving the USA would not be in our apartment waiting for us when we arrived.  It's a good thing our kids are so adaptable to change and don't complain about not having basic comfort items, like forks or furniture or WiFi. 

July 5, second night in our apartment.  We had bowls and chopsticks, just no furniture.

July 6, sleeping on the bare floor.  We had one actual pillow and everyone else used stuffed animals as pillows.  We had one fitted sheet and 2 blankets we slept on top of.  

July 7, day 4 of eating on the floor.  We established this space on the floor as our eating area, where our table would go, if we had one.  

July 7, our only WiFi connection was in that window.  We were watching Kung Fu Panda streaming on Netflix on an iPad.  We bought pillows and pillowcases so that we didn't have to use stuffed animals anymore.

July 9, after 3 nights of sleeping on the floor, we got 2 mattresses delivered.  The 3 kids shared one while Eric and I slept on the other.  This arrangement with the kids took the most amount of compromise between them.

July 9, eating over your bowl without a table requires bending very low to the floor

July 12, making homemade toys.  Willow was the most creative, making a car from cardboard boxes, cutting out pictures from Time magazine to make paper dolls, and using torn pieces of Post It notes to design a board game.

I want to take this time to thank all of our friends and family back home in the States, who gifted us with treasures the last few weeks we were in country.  If it hadn't been for the 2 mugs my work friends gave me, we wouldn't have had anything to drink out of for the first month.  If it hadn't been for the kids' friends and our family giving them small toys as going away presents, they would have had nothing to play with except for cardboard and paper cutouts.  We did make friends in Songdo within the first few weeks who loaned us forks and cups and butter knives, but it was the small gifts we received from our loving friends and family back home (which we had to buy an extra suitcase just to be able to bring with us) that kept us cheerful and optimistic as we waited for our belongings to arrive.  So again, thank you.

Ah, but don't fret.We didn't spend much time in our apartment.  We had many grand adventures outdoors, that I will write about in other blog posts.

I'm also including a two-part video of a tour of our apartment.  The camera is a little shaky and not always pointing in the correct direction, but I can't be in front and behind the camera at the same time!  Forgive my children, the amateur videographers.  :)