Sunday, January 27, 2008

yogo

it's been very gloomy and cold here lately. my friend told me about this yoga instructor who can come to your house for a lesson. i was all over it since the only muscle that's been challenged in any way since our arrival here has been my aging brain trying to discern 9 from 10 in polish. my friend told me that it's pretty rigorous so i thought i needed to practice a bit before i dive into an hour class. good thing i did. i can barely do 15 minutes without feeling nauseous. so i've been trying to regularly do yoga as soon as i wake up (since having any food or even water makes me queezy) i also realized that having a hairy old male instructor doesn't really motivate me (i.e. dvd borrowed from a friend) so i've been doing it with this attractive model on youtube - yay for youtube. so since i kick everyone out of the computer room while i do it, it ofcourse peaked my kids curiousity. ever since then, they've been into "yogo" as they call it. they insist on using my mat as well watch the video while they do it. so here are some moves they did on their own without any coaching. i think that yogo is a way to go for mak, not ballet!

p.s. we're off to amsterdam on tuesday!

warm up
there's got a be name for this pose!
ethan downward dog with one leg up
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Saturday, January 19, 2008

children's jewelry

time to reveal my children's jewelry line!

yanghwa, since you're the only one with kids with piercing, let me know which one jana and anna likes and i'll send them over.

i really want to develop my kid's jewelry more so than the adults - it looks like it's hard to find quality jewelry for kids - it's either made out of plastic, too loud, too childish or too expensive. each one measures to be about 2cm - perfect for little ears. i tried it on myself but it's way too small for adults. . . . they are all made with sterling silver, freshwater pearls, swarovski crystals, czech glass beads and bali silver beads. named after some of the girls of my readers :)



laura
natalie elliearwen
maddie abbychloe
jana makayla

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Christmas in January

Well, yesterday was another Christmas in our household. The package that halmi and uncle Jay sent took a whole month to get here. Thank you :) Kids are in snack heaven - we had to hide the box from the kids in my craft room. Guess who gets to eat most of them? Puahhahahahhah, not the kids.
Thank you Halmi!

Makayla has moved on to the package from her uncle but ethan is still trying to open a snack.

The lure of books have pulled ethan away from his chocolate but as you can see, he is reading it upside down.
Thank you uncle Jay!

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Tuesday, January 15, 2008

super talents

since i shared a video of my super talented daughter, i must post one of ethan. after watching breakdancers on the market square, this is what he started to do at home. i know it's mind bogglingly amazing but please don't post it on youtube or anything. i don't think i can bare my children getting bombarded with requests to appear on various morning shows. the background music is provided by my paparazzi avoiding singer who is so talented that she writes her own lyrics and music - in a language all her own. don't try to decipher what she's saying, it's so profound, it can't be translated.

p.s. i hope you guys are familiar with my sarcastic ways and not taking this seriously. . . .

Sunday, January 13, 2008

nothing to report :P

i've been away from this blog for a week - my goal is to post 6 a month - if you look at my archives, i've been very faithful to that goal. but anyways, my new venture has kept me away this week. what's the new venture, you ask? i think i need another couple of months before i unveil it - and seriously, it's nothing exciting, just something that'll keep me busy and entertained.

on craft note, i've been working on children's jewerly. will post pictures later but i've realized that i don't know anyone's children with pierced ears. so if your kids have pierced ears, let me know, since you'll be my target audience. i guess most of my friends' kids are too young. . . . and i hit a jackpot at ikea the other day on clearance fabric so i'll be turning some of them into capes. no silly, not for me, but for the kids :P

other than that, nothing too exciting - oh yeah, we're going to holland at the end of january. we got this crazy cheap tickets - $250 for the FOUR of us!!! can you believe it? actually, i'm kind of scared - and i keep telling joe, "oh well, if something happens, we'll all be together." it should be okay, right??????? i can't wait to go and have some decent seafood - i'm craving fresh fish so much!

Sunday, January 6, 2008

hard earned license plate

Behold, our new Polish license plate.

It was 6 months of grueling process, i tell ya. This is another painful part of being in a developing ex-communist country. Many growing pains, but it's only in the recent years that DMV has gotten their act together a bit in the States so what can we say about the equivalent of it here?

Here's a step by step.

1. First, we had to register our address - this was done in the first two months we were here - and had a nice little visit from the police who asked me where my husband worked, where his work building was, etc. i just get nervous of police asking questions, what can i say, it's a side effect of being harassed as a second class citizen in the U.S. with a student/working visa. (apparently, every time you move, you get a visit from the police, nice.)


2. Next visit was to register our car, but we got REJECTED in the first window - where they check the documents. even though we had ALL the papers mentioned in the list, they told us that we needed our residency papers, not just the address registration. I was told from the person helping us, that the requirements often change depending on who you're talking to (not surprising, i grew up in korea after all) and sure enough, we ended up with a mean lady.


3. On our third visit, i went with everything i needed. then you know what happened? they told me that my address registration was in my old name and that residency paper was in my new name - so we had to change the address registration. i kinda figured that would happen so we went upstairs, waited another 30 minutes in line to talk to the lady to fix the address registration.


we were standing in that window for over TWO HOURS negotiating to change my name. there were tears and screams involved - no kidding. all i heard the lady say was: "asdasjdfjsldf.....KOREANSKI.....asd;lkfajsdlfj;sljfalsdj.....AMERICANSKI.....adflkjsljf;lasjdl.....KOREANSKI, AMERICANSKI....." I got the gist that she was confused as to what happened to my status. I explained that in the short time we were here, I went back to the states to become U.S. citizen with a whole NEW name. Mind you, I had total sympathy for that woman - I mean, who the heck comes back in 3 months with a new country and a name??? but my patience was wearing thin, she just kept pointing out the problem and offered no solution at all. I was ready to say, "let me meet with whoever is highest up here and if s/he can't figure it out, i'll leave the county!!!" yes, little dramatic i know but i was so tired of it.


my poor translator was trying to keep composed. and then the lady who was doing the car thing earlier must have heard that there was a crying, yelling, asian lunatic demanding to change her name - she came upstairs to see what was going on. she then said that she would register the car under my old name and i would have to carry both passports. when we decided that that would be the worst case scenario - a phone call from Warsaw. 2 minutes later, i had my new name on my address registration. Praise the Lord.


It was already almost 5pm when i got the license plate - as i was handed the plates, she told me "you have to get new car insurance dated TODAY" - huh? i already had car insurance but they told me that i had to get a new one under the new plate - TODAY!! so conveniently, there's a insurance place across the street and i ended up purchasing car insurance for a year with who knows what. i felt like the time i had to choose my name with the INS guy, i had to decide something important in a matter of minutes. initially, i thought i can just purchase for a month and change it after some research - no such luck, the first insurance has to be for a full year. I'm just not sure what the heck is going on. oh well, you have to go with the flow and get ripped off when you're in a foreign country, that's part of the charm.


I didn't mean to spend the whole entry talking about the license plate. Actually, I wanted to talk about the translator who went with me. He was such an interesting guy. There was alot of waiting time so we got to talk quite a bit. We were talking about skiing and stuff when he mentioned that he's a "caver" - what the heck is that?

I was like "ummm, you go to caves to discover new species of bats?"
M: "no"
J: "why do you go into caves?"
M: "just to explore"
J: (still confused) "you just go in and out of caves?"
M: "uh-huh"
J: "why?"
M: "that's what we do. some people like to do mountain climbing, we like to go underground."
J: (lightbulb moment) "Oh, okay, that makes sense" (not really, b/c i don't understand the appeal of mountain climbing either.)
M: "what do you like to do?"
J: "ummmm, i like to sew and make jewerly. (feeling like a total loser)"
M: "that's cool" (yeah right, the way i think caving is cool - actually, i do think it's kind of cool - darn, i'm the only loser here.)


don't worry, the story doesn't end here, i know it's too much excitement in one entry. . . .i'll do a part II since i have to go back to the office next week to get my PERMANENT registration card versus my TEMPORARY one. Fun.

Thursday, January 3, 2008

Mysteries in Krakow

The first day of 2008 started off interesting.

Joe and I decided that we need to be more intentional about teaching our children Korean and Chinese. So we started the day with a good intention of expanding our kids' language skills. Whenever I spoke to them, I tried to speak in Korean and English. and then Joe would talk to them in Chinese. After about an hour of this madness, Makayla broke down and all of a sudden started to sing really loudly in Polish. This was our cue to stop overloading their brains. She then proceeded to tell us that she is Polish American, mommy Korean American, daddy Chinese American and ethan just American. talk about identity crisis. this should deter us from moving to another random country but we shall see.

There are many mysteries when you live in a foreign country. Partly b/c of language barrier, partly b/c of our ignorance but some things are just plain mysterious.

Oh, before i talk about that, i wanted to ask - is it totally rude not to accept those little things people give and throw at you on facebook? i just don't want to have gazillion applications on my page so i end up not opening it or whatever you have to do. for those who send me thing, it's appreciate it but never gets on my profile page :P but do give me things, i just know that you thought of me. . . . oh, and does it totally drive you nuts that i weave in and out of using capital letters?

Mystery #1 Balloons shrink at ridiculously slow pace here. When we use to get trader joe's balloon in the states, it shriveled by 2nd or 3rd day, if not popped on the way home by Ethan. However, the balloons we got here from McDonald's lasted, no joke, 2 months. It was kept in the kids' playroom indefinitely so we had to actually pop it. hmmmmmmm.

Mystery #2 Eggs are sold unrefrigerated here. This freaked out one of my American friend here to no end. She would talk about it every time we got together - she would joyously share that she discovered a supermarket who would sell them refrigerated. It didn't freak me out so much but it did make me concerned to see stacks of eggs 5 feet high - "how long has this been here?"

Mystery #3 We received this mysterious letter one day. Full of dates and different street addresses. We obviously couldn't figure it out so we thought it was some kind of road construction schedule. That was our guess. When we finally asked Joe's co-worker, this was the answer we got. "The mail tells when the neighborhood priest will visit to bless your home. Jesionowa is Monday, January 7th, starting from 15.00. "Gather your whole family if possible ... prepare a cross, candles, [kropidlo], and holy water. If you don't have holy water, tell the minister who precedes the priest. Shut off your tv and radio. Children should prepare their catechism worksheets." Joe's co-worker is quite a jokester so we were both like "he's kidding, right?" but it was confirmed by our babysitter asking us "so when's the priest coming to your house?" what is a catechism worksheets?????

To end, i would like to share why Mak will never enter the American Idol. WARNING - lower your volume, especially if you're at work!




Translation: "hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon..."