Hwang Sa

Well, we've been here almost 7 weeks now and we're feeling more and more at home, both in our apartment and in the city. We've pretty much mastered subway transportation and now we're working on the buses, which cover a bit more ground. We did buy a car (a '96 Kia that's in decent shape), but we've only driven that off post a couple times. Traffic around here is absolute craziness! Having a car has made trips to the Commissary (grocery store on post where we can get almost all the foods we're used to having back in the states) a lot easier. We do still have to get the groceries from the car into the building, then into the elevator and then from the elevator into the apartment though. The picture is from our very first grocery run (which is much larger than any of the subsequent trips since we literally had nothing to start with!). We bought a little cart after that to simplify the whole grocery transportation process and it works great.

Though we had high hopes of exploring some of the markets in Seoul this weekend, the infamous Yellow Dust kept us from doing so. Yellow Dust, or Hwang Sa, comes from the deserts of China, Mongolia and Manchuria. It's a seasonal thing that occurs intermittently throughout the spring. The view was very limited, almost like fog, from our apartment windows. We could hardly make out the building under construction just a block away! We had to venture out to run some errands in the morning. Upon seeing about 90% of Koreans wearing little doctor-like masks over their nose and mouth (which about 5% do almost every day because the air pollution in Seoul is quite bad), we decided going to the market would be better on a different day. Hopefully we'll be able to go soon. We'll be sure to let you know what we discover!