...and all her earthly possessions. For what I have been ASSURED is the last time.

On Saturday, Trish and I moved all of our possessions from Sinmyung Skyview building #1807 to Sinmyung Skyview building #1803. As to WHY we moved? Well, our boss doesn't own the weygook apartments (he just leases them), so when the person who owned ours decided to sell it, we had to move again despite the fact that we now have less than 2 weeks left in Korea.

So the 16th was chosen as moving day. For me, our current apartment is the 5th one I've lived in in the past 13 months, so to say that I wasn't thrilled to be moving again would be a huge understatement. But all the crap was duly packed up, and we were ready to go. If you ever wondered what a year in Korea LOOKS like, this is it:





Before anyone asks, NO we're NOT planning to take anywhere NEAR all of that crap home with us. A lot of it will be given to friends, thrown out or left in the apartment. We didn't throw everything out now because we have to live here for the next couple weeks.

Anyway, the best part of the whole thing was the help we got. Two of our Canadian co-workers, one of our Korean co-workers, our boss and his friend all came to help us move. The friend had a truck which made things a whole lot easier (the two buildings are in the same complex, but are just far enough apart that it would have been miserable to have carry it between them). Anyway, I was sitting with the pile of stuff with at the old place while the others were at the new place. This meant that I got to help the Korean-speaking friend load everything into the truck.

Have you ever moved (heavy, cumbersome) furniture with someone who doesn't speak the same language? If you haven't, it's a major life experience to look forward to.

The KSF (Korean-speaking friend. Sadly, I never learned his name) would wave indicating that I should pick up one side of a fill-in-the-blank (fridge, couch, washer etc). He would then shout incomprehensibly in Korean, sounding vaguely like this "hubbadahubbadahubbayo" (yo being polite). Of course I had nooooo idea what he meant, so I'd lift the heavy fill-in-the-blank up, which would cause the KSF to shout "noooooooo", followed by "hubbadahubbadahubbadayo" again. So, I'd shift it down. Same reaction. Forward. Ditto. This went on for about five minutes, with the heavy fill-in-the-blank getting heavier.

Eventually our differences were resolved, but gaaaaah. Tons of fun.

So we're safely ensconced in our final Korean resting place. It's pretty identical to the last one, with the advantage of being closer to the garbage party (which was great, since the last inhabitants left a whole pile of really random stuff to be disposed of). Lessons learned: moving sucks. And it's a good thing to have a friend with a truck.