Week of Repairmen

 I've been a poor correspondent these past few weeks, I know. I spent the week after New Year's back at Camp Casey attending training. It was a nondescript week in which I missed Daegu's loveliest snow and ate an honest-to-god bean and chicken burrito. When I got back, our heater was on the fritz. My friends can tell you I am a wimpy southerner at heart, and I despise the cold, so I was less than pleased. The next day, our main kitchen light went out. Much to our chagrin, we can't just buy a new light and replace it over here. We've tried. There's some magical third step that requires a professional light bulb installer. Yes, such a person exists, and he has been to our house twice now. In Korea, there's a job for just about everything. Apparently most gas stations (which are all full service) have a professional tire filler.

Bobby's beloved flat screen went out one year and one week after we bought it (!) It's a Korean brand, so Bobby contacted the company, who said “ship it to us and we'll fix it.” We didn't know how to go about doing this, so at a local TV repair man's behest we drove our set down to his shop. He took one look at it and said, “no big TV! Only small TV!” With a giant TV in our car, we headed down the road to Louis, our genial realtor who has been known to help in a pinch. Louis walked with us to a Korean post office, where they said “too big” but referred us to a shipping company. Louis called the shipping company, arranged for a pickup, and told Bobby to have the delivery address translated into Korean and be prepared with cash payment. Our neighbor, Jin, translated the address and the delivery guys showed up and carted our TV to Seoul for a mere 25,000 won (about 20 bucks).

Four days later, we were getting nervous when Bobby got a call from someone who spoke no English. I did a reverse look up on the number (being married to a former reference librarian has its advantages), and saw that it was the shipping company. Bobby called the TV company, got through to the one guy who spoke English (the president), who said he would call the shipping company and get our TV. Our TV has now been delivered to the company, but it got a little hairy there in the middle.

We decided, since we were at it, to finally get our dryer fixed. We spent the summer happily hanging our clothes on a line on top of our building, but now that it's cold we can't do that. It's been a week of repairmen.

Maya loves balls

The view from our roof

Jin and Maya

The restaurants and the road