One of the things about life in rural South Korea that you can count on is mosquitoes.

Especially when your backyard bumps right up against the rice paddies.

It makes trying to enjoy our rarity of a backyard near impossible.

I had hoped AAFES would ship in those little pop-up gazebos…and they did – at Osan.

[shocker]

But they were just the gazebo…no mosquito netting.

So here’s a suggestion for the AAFES employee that orders our outdoor furniture & equipment.

I realize that you may never have been to South Korea, that you may not be aware of the massive red welts we Americans get from the mosquitoes here – or that you might not realize that they can pass along a wealth of obscure Southeast Asian diseases to us…but it would be really nice (for future families) to be able to get the mosquito netting to go along with the gazebos.

So thus began the online hunt for a cheap, but not too cheap…functional, but not too ugly…portable, but sturdy screen house that had enough head room for Eric to get in…and oh yeah, could get shipped to an APO box by Priority Mail.

I found it online at WalMart – on sale & along with a promo for free shipping…we got a pretty good deal.

But since there’s another solid month of high heat & high humidity here…we’ll have to wait a while before we can really enjoy it.

I’m envisioning eating breakfast while watching the sunrise, late afternoon reading sessions with gentle breezes & even sleeping outside on cool nights. Since we also bought the accompanying rain screen that wraps around 3 sides we’ll have our own little private space.

Eric sat out with me tonight for a bit.

The first words out of his mouth were,

‘Feels like home…guess that means we’ll be moving soon.’

[inside Army joke]

It never fails…by the time you get comfortable enough with your new station, it’s time to leave.

But for now we’ve got another 15 months.

[knock on wood]