April showers bring May flowers

Namdaemun Market

Spring has sprung here in the ROK. It seemed to happen almost overnight. Temperatures have been in the relatively balmy 50s and has even hit 60 on an occasion or two. It's wonderful!!! I would never have imagined that I would ever consider 54 degree weather warm, but after several years of absolutely freezing winters, I do. This winter either wasn't nearly as harsh as last winter or I've grown accustomed to the cold. I think the wind wasn't as bad this year and that had a lot to do with it. The wind last year was ferocious and would cut right through whatever you were wearing. Brrr. I was miserable! I most definitely am not a cold weather person. Anyway, spring is finally here and I was pleasantly surprised last week to note that all the trees on post are in bloom. They are quite lovely. I don't think they bloom for very long, so I need to snap some photos before the flowers disappear. Now that spring is here, the monsoon season isn't far behind. The first year I was here there was very rarely a day without rain during the monsoon season. When I say rain, I mean torrential rain that floods the streets in minutes and lasts all day. Even with the giant golf sized umbrellas, you're going to get wet. Water was generally ankle deep everywhere you went and your pants would get soaked up to the knees. My feet were wet for two months straight. Hopefully, it will be more like last summer where we didn't get much rain at all during monsoon season although it was much hotter as a consequence. Time will tell.
It has been really dusty here lately. There have been safety alerts published to stay indoors as much as possible because of the fine yellow sand that is being blown in from the Gobi desert. No wonder you see Koreans with the medical face masks on everywhere. My car is completely coated in yellow dust.
Well, my car got well and truly scraped. I drove Cliff's truck to work one day and I had to go over to my company which is around the corner from our apartments when I realised I had forgotten to return some videos. It was only 1130 and they weren't due until noon, so I decided to run home and get them and avoid the late charges. I parked in the lot and as I passed my car I noticed this HUGE scrape on the bumper. Actually it was a row of about six gouges that went all the way through the paint. I was pretty hot about it. I could tell by the paint on my car that it was someone with a white car that had done it, so I was on the lookout for it from then on. Well, a couple of days later, there's a white car with green paint in the lot. I pull my car up next to it and sure enough the scratches matched. There wasn't an apartment parking sticker in the windshield so I couldn't tell what apartment the person lived in, but there was another sticker with a cell phone number so I copied it down along with the license plate number. It was a Korean plate, so I went over to the realty company to see if they could help me out. Jeannie came over and looked at the cars and said the other sticker was a visitor's pass which was expired. She called the lady and asked her about hitting my car. She denied it. She said she had hit another car at her apartment complex. Pretty coincidental, don't you think? First of all, green is not a common car color in Korea. Their cars are mostly silver, white, grey and black. I think I've seen about seven green cars the whole time I've been here and that includes my own. How amazing that she would hit a green car somewhere else in the same week my car was hit by a white car AND the scratches matched up. At that point I figured there was a slight chance (maybe 1%) she was telling the truth and I was wrong. Then, she hung up on Jean. Jean called her back and told her that if she didn't come down to discuss it, she would have her car towed because since her parking pass was expired she was parked illegally. She said she was coming down, but we waited and waited and waited and she wouldn't answer her cell phone anymore. As soon as that happened I knew she was lying. Jean suggested we go to the management office and find out what apartment she had gotten the pass to visit. I told Jean I bet the woman was watching and would leave as soon as we left. I tried to keep an eye out the window for the car, but I should have stayed outside because I missed it when she left during the five minutes we were inside. As soon as we went back outside and discovered she had left, my suspicions were confirmed. I am absolutely convinced she hit my car - I just can't prove it. An innocent person would have come down and defended themselves instead of refusing to answer their phone and skulking away. I thought about calling the Korean police, but I figured it wouldn't do much good. I didn't actually see her hit my car, so I doubt they would have helped me. I think I'm more mad about her lying about it and not taking responsibility than I am that my car was scraped. If you hit someone's car do the right thing - leave a note! I guess she figured since no one was around, she had gotten away with it. I haven't seen her car since. She's probably afraid to come back. Good.
Not too much has been going on. I've been extremely busy with work, but I don't mind because it makes the time go by faster. We are eagerly anticipating our trip to Texas this summer. It will be good to see Cliff again and be able to spend some time together as a family. We were able to get a direct flight from Seoul to Dallas and from there it is a one hour flight to Killeen. The direct flight cuts out a ton of travel time, so I am very pleased about that. We got dinged on the fares though because of the rise in gas prices. The tickets were 20% higher than what we used to pay. That sucks, but we get an MWR discount, so they are still a lot less expensive than most people would pay. We couldn't reserve seats because of the discount though so I need to get to the airport early and hope there are decent seats available.
That's pretty much it for now. Take care everyone.