Expat Diaries: Shoebox Apartments

Welcome to the third installment of the Expat Diaries! Go ahead and link up you expat/travel stories below and make sure to stop by some other bloggers and say hi! I so look forward to reading everyone's stories each month! Thanks so much for being a part of this!

So let's get started shall we?

We live in a small apartment here in Korea. Well, let me rephrase that to say that in American standards, we live in a small apartment. We feel very blessed and fortunate to have the size apartment that we do because we have known couples whose work has provided them with a 300 square foot studio apartment for the both of them. How they're both still alive is beyond me. But needless to say, all three of our apartments in Korea have been smaller than what we're accustomed to back home in the States. And while some things on this list may not apply to our current spot, they all could have been said about at least one of them.

So if you're sitting there wondering what qualifies as a small apartment or wonder if yours fits the bill, this should help. You know you live in a small apartment if:

.It takes you 15 minutes to clean the entire thing

.It takes just as long for it to look like a train wreck again

.It's impossible to lose or misplace anything

.You can vacuum the entire place without switching wall outlets

.You have an oven the size of a toaster oven and even that you have difficulty finding a place for

I'm just impressed we could fit a turkey inside. Even though it was so close to the elements that it had lines on it.

.You can see every room from one spot

.When the trash bag is full, you can smell it from every room

.If you leave the door open when showering, all the windows in the apartment fog up

.Your kitchen table is where you do most of your cooking because you can barely fit a cutting board on your counter.

Our first kitchen. I did most of my cooking on the table since I could barely fit anything besides a plate on the counter.

.It takes about five minutes for the place to cool down or heat up

.You don't have seasonal decorations, not because you don't want them but because you don't know where you'd store them

.You have a dorm sized fridge because you can't fit much else. Thankfully we were able to upgrade to at least a half sized fridge

.You don't have to yell or even raise your voice in order for another person to hear you across the apartment or in another room

.Your social events have a max capacity guest list

.You have to find new and unique places to store things...like under the couch

This is where we kept out out of season clothes

.You are constantly switching out the clothes in your closet because only one season fits at a time. The rest go under the bed or in our case...under our couch.

.Every time you buy something new, you have to get rid of something. Not because you think it's the  ethical thing to do, but because you don't have enough room.

.At least one or more people have to sit on the floor when they come over...good thing we live in Asia and this is seen as normal.

I just want to end this by saying that even though we live in a place smaller than what we're accustomed to, we now very much prefer it and no longer want to get a large house when we move back to the states. It's funny the things you can get used to!

<a href="http://www.postcardsfromrachel.com"><img border="0" src=" http://i1269.photobucket.com/albums/jj583/postcardsfromrachel/ExpatDiaries1_zpsc8244472.png" width="200"/></a>

Some roads less traveled

Robert Frost (1874–1963).  Mountain Interval.  1920.

         The Road Not Taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;
       

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,
       

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

 

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

There were two major reasons I decided to spend some time volunteering at Tamarac NWR in Minnesota that were of equal importance to me.  One reason was the fact that this refuge required 24 hours/week/site.  I’ve grown tired over the years of having to put in 32 hours/week in my retirement.  Seems too much like a job to me.  The other reason was the opportunity to participate in doing the Minnesota Breeding Bird Atlas project that is in its last year.  That would afford me the chance to traverse roads that are closed to the public on the refuge.  In the name of science, I would be on some of those roads less traveled… and it does make a difference to me.

Even though the skies were overcast with a light rain all day, I set out to become familiar with the three blocks of habitat for the atlas that are located on the refuge.  During the next month or so, I will be documenting what birds are here, and their breeding activities.  Over twenty years ago, I was a contributor to the New York Breeding Bird Atlas, and found that to be my kind of birding.

It’s just not ticking birds off on a list, but watching their every move to determine if they are breeding here.  Things like the males singing and defending a territory, finding a nest with eggs or young, seeing adults with nesting materials or food for young in their beaks, or carrying out fecal sacks (baby bird poop in a bag).  This kind of citizen science study is not for everyone, but it purely gives me joy.  I’ll be covering as many habitats as I can in each block as different habitats support different bird species.   One of the truths of doing this kind of research is that after several hours in the woods and back roads, there are some biological needs to take care of.  I’m thinking it’s a lot easier to be a guy at this point that can just pull down a zipper.  You ladies will understand.  Can I just say that the emerging mosquito hatch found some nice fresh territory, and I walked away with several itchy welts down under?  TMI??

I may be looking for birds, but I couldn’t help but notice the first columbines are just beginning to bloom in the forest.  Columbines have always been my favorite wildflower.  I hope to get some better photos on a day when the sun is shining.

Today was just a day spent getting familiar with my study areas, but I just couldn’t pass up this shot of a male American redstart singing to his sweetie.  “♫ Oh Sole-A-Mio ♪”  It warmed my heart.

Thanks for stopping by… talk to you later,  Judy

Perspective Series-To Korea

This week I'm happy to introduce Beka from the blog Sunshine to the Square Inch for the next installment of the Perspective Series. This is a series about expats sharing their experience of living and traveling abroad and how it inevitably changed their outlook and perspective on life. I'm especially excited because Beka is a close friend of mine that I met while she was teaching in Korea. We spent her year in Korea sharing classroom antics, trying to learn how to cook with our limited grocery options and her trying to spread her love of running to me (it wasn't the most successful thing). She's had a huge impact on my life and I can say that living in Korea just isn't the same with out her! *hint hint come back!* You definitely need to check out this sweet girl's blog where she talks about her adjustment from living in Korea to now being married in Oklahoma.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Hi! I'm Beka and I blog over at Sunshine to the Square Inch. I'm so excited to post over here on Lost in Travels. Not only do I love Chelsea's blog but she was one of my closest friends when I lived abroad in Korea.

I decided to move to Korea for several reasons. Mainly I needed a change from my non-stop busy American life and I wanted a year away to refocus and re-prioritize my life. My friend Alisha mentioned that she was thinking about teaching in Korea and I asked her if I could join. We got all our paper work, stuffed 4 suitcases and 2 large carry ons and off to Korea we went and WOW what a year it was. Alisha and I say it was the best year and the hardest year of our life.

Our teaching job was real interesting. Honestly, when I left for Korea I forgot I was going to go teach. However, that didn't last long because when we arrived in Korea around 9pm and our school had us work the next morning. Hello jet lag! School was the "hardest" part of my year. Our school owners had us work from 9am - 6pm and that's a lot of teaching and wore me out. Ironically school was also one of the "best" things in Korea. I taught the beginners students who knew no English. It took a few months but I absolutely fell in love with those kids. Getting to know them personally, see them grow and develop is something I will always treasure. Another best part about school was that I got to tell the kids about Jesus. Some had never heard of anything Bible related and they were so curious.

Another best part of Korea was my church. I attended Okpo Foreigners Church, where I met Chelsea. It's an English speaking church, has about 30 members and has approximately 23 different cultures represented. They were my family for a year and I met so many people from other countries but our common bond was our faith in Christ.

Korea also is filled with wonderful people. I absolutely loved building relationships through sign language, charades and broken English/Hangul. I learned that kindness and a smile goes a long ways.

Ever heard of long distance dating? Yep, I did that in Korea too. My boyfriend, Dave, was kind enough to let me leave for a year to learn and grow. During our time apart we wrote over 600+ emails, filled up 6 journals, had countless of hours of Skype, traveled together to Taiwan for a week and I flew home for Christmas. Was distance hard? You bet! Was it worth it? Yes! I got home February 6th and married Dave on March 24th: and I'm so glad I did!

Coming back to America was major. reverse. culture. shock. I can't fully explain why but leaving the slower paced land of rice and kimchi to the faced paced land of pizza and burgers took some readjusting. Korea taught me that I could live without Walmart, that I could eat smaller portions, that I could walk and not drive and I enjoyed it all. I left America as one girl and came back as another and I couldn't be more grateful.

Thanks so much for writing Beka! Be sure to stop by her blog and show her some love! 

You can read more of the Perspective Series here.
Linking up with Rolled Up Pretty and Shanna, Rekita

Mother Nature vs. Human Nature

When I went in to work this morning, I was given a rather exciting, to me, assignment.  One of the biologists was going to blast out a beaver dam that was threatening to flood a major county thoroughfare.  I was asked to photograph not only the explosion of the dam, but document how other volunteers would close the road while the blasting took place.  In stepped Mother Nature.  Seems with all of the recent rains, half of the dam was washed away, so no blasting was necessary. So that assignment was cancelled.

That left Student Conservation Association intern (SCA) Rachel and I with an assignment to spiff up the Woodpecker walking trail that leads to an overlook on Blackbird Lake.  Thankfully, she is young and strong enough to operate the weed-whacker while I cleaned the interpretive signs along the trail.  We both had all the required safety equipment with us…hard hats, safety goggles, and ear plugs.  We ended up making three different trips to this short trail today trying to fix a problem with the signs.  We weren’t totally successful, so it will take another trip.

We had several other stops around the refuge to clean up viewpoints and trim vegetation.  At the Balsam Lake Kiosk we were able to document the nesting site of a pair of common loons.  The biologist will be interested in that.  We enjoyed watching mama sitting on the nest site while dad loon brought her dried vegetation to build up the nest.  It was quite a ways away, so we did most of our viewing through the scope at the kiosk. 

After lunch, we were off to tackle the job of dealing with the results of Human Nature along several refuge roads.  AKA: litter pickup.  Skies had once again clouded over which posed a problem with picture taking.  The beauty of litter pickup is that we can stop whenever we want to observe wildlife we encounter along the way like this little song sparrow.

Surprisingly, we found an Eastern wood-pewee willing to pose for a few seconds along one of the lakes.  They’re usually high in the trees along forest borders.  Most of our time was taken up with plucking beer cans from the roadside, but we progressed to wine cooler boxes and then on to hard liquor bottles.  Seems a lot of folks like to drink and drive the back roads, and toss their beverage containers out the car window.  I remember doing that once in my youth, but only once.  Rather disgusting if you ask me.

We found this large animal bone stuck in a tree surrounded by all sorts of cans and such.  I’m thinking people go down the road and try to hit the bone with their rubbish.  Get a life, people!

There was a massive trash pick-up day on the refuge just before I arrived, but that didn’t stop us from gathering enough trash to fill three big black bags.  It’s so sad that people disrespect our wild places.  I’d like to pop all those folks in the nose.

                                               I think I’ll mentally fly away instead…. THE END!

Thanks for stopping by… talk to you later,  Judy

A Very Diamond Wedding

When Jeremy and I were married over two years ago we not only hired a photographer but also a videographer. I wasn't too keen on the idea and thought that it might have been a waste of our wedding budget. But after seeing the finished product, I couldn't be more excited that he talked me into it. So why did it take over two years for us to see our wedding video? Instead of paying to have the videographer edit it for us, we just had him give us the raw video and Jeremy did all the work. Life and travels have gotten in the way these past few years but I've tried to be patient while he made it perfect for us. So without further ado, we have our wedding video. And let me tell you, it was worth the wait. 

Our Wedding! from Lost.in.Travels on Vimeo.

National Trails Day

Yesterday, June 1, was National Trails Day and was celebrated country wide.  It was an extra special day here on the refuge for two reasons.

First it was the grand opening, and ribbon cutting ceremony, for the Tamarac NWR section of the North Woods Trail.  This trail is similar to the Appalachian Trail and covers 4800 miles from the New York/Vermont border to the middle of North Dakota.  Over half of the trail has been officially completed at this point, and Saturday was the official opening of the 14.5 miles of the trail that traverses the refuge. 

Secondly, it coincided with the 75th Anniversary of the establishment of the Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge.  What cold, wet, windy, and generally miserable weather we had for two such auspicious occasions.  After listening to too many speeches by visiting big wigs, the ribbon was finally cut, and the anniversary cake was served.  We did have about six brave souls who did a through hike of the entire 14.5 miles during the day.

My assignment for the afternoon was to help with the three hour photo hike.  When I’m helping with a hike that someone else is leading, I generally bring up the rear to keep any stragglers moving forward.  We had two places along the North Woods Trail that we would be hiking, and were bussed to each location.  At the rear was a good place for me especially on the first hike.  It was a very up and down hike.  One of the things about the type of hip surgery that I had in January is that they cut some of the muscles during surgery.  I’ve found that the most challenging thing to get back is the ability to easily go up and down stairs.  A steep up and down hike is similar to doing sets of stairs.  Needless to say, I was the last one back to the bus by a long shot.  However, I’m happy to report that the only straggler was me! 

For the second hike, I told the group to go ahead, as I didn’t think I could keep up.  My muscles were telling me that I could most likely make it to the destination, but getting back might be iffy.  My total hike was probably two miles, and I’m happy with that at this point. 

One important thing I learned on this excursion was to identify poison ivy.  It’s quite common in the woods here.  One of the participants pointed it out to me.  That’s about all I learned.  I don’t know.  Somehow I was expecting to learn something about photography on a photo hike, but the leader was too busy taking pictures of his own to be bothered with talking to the participants or give any hints or pointers.  Guess I was a little off base on my expectations.

The sun finally came back today, so Emma and I returned to the second hike location from yesterday to complete it on our own.  The woods were just alive with singing birds.  Emma continues to have patience with me when I tell her I want to take a picture.  She stands still until I’m done.  That is so out of character for her it always amazes me.

Once again, there seemed to be American redstarts in almost every tree.

We also found lots of mushrooms this afternoon, but sorry to say none of them were morels.  We sidetracked into the woods in several places to see if I could find some, but no luck.  Oddly, Emma is not a good shroom hunter.  Were I to let her off of the leash, she would zoom around all over the woods, but on leash she just wants to get back to the trail. 

We stopped at one wetland area on the way back from our Sunday drive to admire this preening trumpeter swan and male wood duck.  It was so nice to have a calm sunny day, and further along one of the roads I stopped to pick a bouquet of fragrant lilacs.  I’m sure years ago before it became a refuge the place I stopped may have been a farmhouse location as the row of lilac trees was impressive.  The smell of lilacs is now permeating the rig.  Lovely!

Thanks for stopping by… talk to you later,  Judy

Traveling for Pennies

Ok, not really pennies, per say because who are we kidding? Traveling can be expensive. But it can still be affordable.

I was born with the travel bug. And as I've grown older, this has only gotten worse. I feel very fortunate to have been able to travel as much as I have been but it's not because we make a ton of money and it's definitely not because someone sponsors us to travel (even though I'm pretty sure this would be everyone's dream). We do three simple things to make our travel dreams come true.

1. We prioritize. Would we love to go out for dinner more often? Sure. But for us, saving for trips and being able to travel more often is more important. We also live very strictly off of the envelope system each month and this has helped us save so much more money than we would have otherwise. What is the envelope system? Well, we figure out what we want to spend each month on different categories such as groceries, entertainment, household, or our personal spending. Then we put that amount of money into labeled envelopes and once it's gone, it's gone! We have found that when we don't put money in there we're a whole lot more likely to go shopping and spend a few dollars here, a few dollars there, which can quickly add up!

2. We budget on our trips. For us, budgeting for everything on trips let's us do more, see more, and best of all, travel more often! I actually carry around a small notebook with me when we travel to keep track of our purchases, including meals. I know exactly how much money we have in our budget to spend each day so if I keep track and find out at the end of the day that we have some left over, we can save it for something in the future or go out that night for a nicer meal.

3. We use some tried and true travel tips. If we find something that works on a trip to save some money, you bet we're going to repeat it on every trip after that. Here are some that we've tried in the past that have worked for us:

.look at renting an apartment or house instead of a hotel. We like to search sites such as Agoda, VRBO, Gogobot, House Trip and AirBnB.

.book hotels and flights in advance. Booking in advance versus last minute has the potential to save you tons. Plus, I can't tell you how many people we saw walking around from place to place in Thailand looking for a place only to find that they were all booked. Larger cities such as Bangkok, you won't have a problem finding any place, it just may not be the one you want. However, smaller cities such as Railay, where there are a limited amount of places, you want to book before you go to avoid inflated prices and booked up hotels. Which leads me to...

.before you book a hotel give them a call and ask if they have any upcoming specials that may not be advertised yet.

.check to see when high or low season is. In high season, prices will of course be higher and book up faster. However, if you go just one week outside of high season, prices will be dramatically lower and places will be easier to find. We're actually going to Cambodia this summer during low season. Low season also means monsoon season. But after doing some research and talking to people that have lived there, they raved about this time of year. Sure, it rains. But not all day. Plus the pools at Angkor Wat are a vivid green this time of year. If your travel dates are flexible, it would be worth looking into going during low season.

.pick the cheapest room at a nice hotel. I have a friend who swears by this. They picked a higher end hotel which therefore had great service, amenities and food, but booked the cheapest room the place had to offer.

.you don't always have to eat at restaurants! While we were traveling in Japan we frequented grocery stores and shopping centers to eat meals. We often saved our money so we could eat at a little nicer spot for dinner.

.book early morning tours. Sometimes companies offer a discount if you book their first tour of the day. Why? No one likes to get up early. Unless you're my husband.

.check which companies your hotel is affiliated with. At our hotel in Chiang Mai, we got a much cheaper deal on zip lining than any of the other competitors because they struck a deal with the place we stayed.

.plan for everything, even the unexpected. In our travel budget we have a special category for the 'unknown'. You find an unexpected attraction you want to try, your clothes get ruined, you find a piece of artwork you just can't live without. These are bound to happen and it's nice to know you won't blow your budget on it.

.rent a car, motorbike, bicycle, walk, or use public transit. Many times, any of these are going to be cheaper than taking a taxi. We figured it out in Thailand that for the price of an all day bike rental, it cost us the same as a round trip taxi fare.

.get insurance. When you are traveling, the unexpected is bound to happen at some time or another. Lost luggage, canceled flights, rabid dogs biting you (actually happened to a friend of ours who told us about travel insurance!) You can never be too safe. We use World Nomads travel insurance. For the both of us getting advanced coverage (included scuba accidents) for two weeks, it cost around $100. The price depends on where you are going and where you are coming from but we also found some coupon codes online that helped us save money as well.

I hope some of these tips help you plan your next trip!

These thoughts and advice are based solely off of my own experience. I fully realize that everyone's situation and experiences are different. 

Linking up with  Carissa, Rachel, Logan, Leann, Molly