Monday, June 22, 2009

House hunting in land of the morning jackhammer

There has been construction going on here for the past several months. It's almost sent me over the edge a few times. These days, the super huge jackhammer truck starts doing its thing both in the morning, and around 4:00 every day, right around the time Grace needs her late afternoon nap to get her through 'til bedtime. When this nap doesn't happen, bath and bedtime aren't fun and it's harder to put her down. She finally went to sleep just now, thankfully. Hopefully she's getting used to the constant racket around here.

Speaking of bedtime, we're majorly off schedule now. I'm so disappointed. For a while now, Grace has been doing wonderfully, going to sleep around 7:00, waking around 12am and 4am to eat, and up at 7 or 8am for the day. This gives me time to do my work at night and veg out. But we took an impulsive out-of-town trip the other day to go house hunting and didn't make it back home 'til 9:30pm. Surprise, surprise, she wouldn't go down last night 'til 9:45pm. Lesson learned: get your butt back home in time for bedtime, especially with a young baby. Even one night can throw them way off.

We've been looking at places in Bucheon. Housing prices are good and many places are new. It's a 1/2 hour bus ride in to Seoul Station. Lots of schools. Parks, too. We're also going to check out Ilsan and Uijeongbu, but we're leaning towards Bucheon mainly because of location. It's so close to Seoul. The Mok-dong area is very close, too, and there are tonnes of jobs there.

Sejin has the hard part of doing the actual hunting. He will narrow down the list of potential places and I will go and view them another day. Then comes the fun part of showing up and seeing whether me being non-Korean has any affect on our negotiations. In the past, owners have expressed concern over renting to foreigners, as apparently foreigners are irresponsible and noisy. Strange, as my current Korean neighbors (beside and above and below) are incredibly noisy, coming in at all hours, slamming doors, shouting in the hallway, cleaning house at 1am, etc, etc. Whatev.

Crap, she's up!! The fun begins. The question is, do I go about bedtime routine as usual, starting around 6pm, or work down from last night's 9:45 bedtime? Hmmm.

6 comments:

MommyCha said...

I'm sorry to hear the trip messed up Grace's schedule! Hope you get things back to normal soon! I love the new layout of your blog, it is so cute! Hopefully your house hunting goes well. Tom says if you guys need him to look for some work for Sejin, let him know!

akoto said...

I love your new layout!

All the best with the house hunting. It's never any fun, no matter what country your in. I hope you're able ot find a great place soon!

Sarah said...

Oh, it was my fault for not getting on the road early enough... We'll work our way back down to 7... Little by little..

We may just be calling you for help when we get back from Canada! :)

Anonymous said...

Oooo the new layout looks good.
Bucheon is kind of far :(
When do you go to Canada again? Sorry about this week and not meeting up... I'm not good at keeping track of time/guessing how long it'll take to plan a new course. I'm done at 3 everyday for the next 3 weeks - free to meet up?

Sarah said...

Well, I'd rather stay in Seoul, but if we want a bigger place with somewhere to take Grace besides coffee shops, we've gotta go. Sucks :(

Yes, I'll Facebook you about meeting up :)

HLee said...

hey the new layout looks good :)