Opening Presents

Opening presents has a whole new meaning when you're overseas...

See that computer screen in the bottom left corner?

That's not us just leaving the laptop in the middle of the room...

that's our Skype date. That's a grandma getting to watch her grandson open the birthday present she sent him.

That's technology that allows us to keep close relationships with our family back home. 

That's getting to see the joy on the face of the person that you bought a present for even though he's across the world.

This is us being grateful for that technology (and those presents)!

Communication Clicks

For those of you who haven't seen my constant Facebook updates (I try not to put the same things on the blog that I do on FB), we are now wired and ready for communication! Last Monday, we FINALLY got our Alien Registration cards and we are now officially legal in Korea for the next year. The reason that is so exciting is that in Korea, you cannot get cell phones and internet until you are officially legal. So, on Monday, we got our new iPhone 4s (I know, we said we were NOT going to do that, but they turned out to be cheaper than they are back home and the ability to have GPS and bus and subway routes in our hands at all times seems pretty invaluable at this point!). I was especially grateful that we'd ordered them when I lost my iPod touch a week or two ago! More to the point...for those of you that we tended to be in constant communication with before (and that happen to have iPhones), we are in the process of finding apps that will allow us to continue that communication via text and voice for free. So, send one of us an email and we can get it figured out!

Additionally, we are wired via the internet at home now, too. Yesterday, we went and got a wireless router and in spite of the fact that the directions are all in Korean, Eric still managed to get it hooked up by himself, so now our 3 laptops, 2 phones, and iPad can now access WiFi at home! Yay! In the last week, we've talked to our parents and other family members via Skype and FaceTime. If you need contact information for us, let me know. We'd love to talk to you!

One more benefit of internet at home is that I am finally able to upload pictures! There are new slideshows here on the blog (remember if you click on a picture, the slideshow will open in a new window. The pictures will be bigger and you can leave a comment if you'd like!) and on Facebook. I've been having a lot of fun learning how to use Lightroom and my new camera. Hope you enjoy!

Living in a Techno World

We're living in such a time of modern technology! And, I have to say I'm a bit relieved that we won't have to learn to live without our technology in Seoul. We now have laptops, iPods, an iPad, and a Kindle. We can email, Skype, FaceTime. Our kids know how to operate the iPods and iPad. They can watch movies, play games, and color. Kennedy works on her letters and numbers and Cade learns about zoo animals. We're not packing any books for Eric and I because we just use eReaders. We're not packing a TV or DVD player because we'll just use the laptop to watch tv and movies. Seoul has one of the fastest Internet infrastructures in the world, so we should be set. And, according to the girl at the Apple store, there is Wi-Fi everywhere there (though she has never been there, she is an expert!), which is good news because we recently learned that we have to have our Alien Registration Card in order to get our Internet set up in our apartment, so it may be a couple of weeks before we have that. We are planning (at this point) to use Skype and FaceTime (for those Mac users), and of course the blog as our primary means of communication. We'll try to post updates on Facebook too for those of you who are FB addicts! Email will also play a big part as it will be hard to be available on Skype all the time. It is amazing that we will still be able to see our relatives and talk to them face to face even from around the world! We’re sure going to miss those hugs, though!