Keepin' House

We have a housekeeper.  She's glorious!  Without kids, pets, or entertaining anyone besides close close friends, we truly don't need one but it's a much better way to spend money than on marriage counseling, right?  Just kidding..... sort of.  Our first football season here, when Andrew had to dodge evil glares from a vacuum-wielding wife who was waiting for a commercial break to turn it on, we figured Korea must be one of those countries with access to cheap labor, right?  The quote from our realtor was a cleaning once every two weeks for roughly $45, not the major bargain we had envisioned (a live-in maid for $10 a day) but at this point I could not be deterred so she started the next day.  My mood improved tenfold on Saturday mornings knowing there was nothing waiting to be cleaned when I got out of bed.

The reason I'm writing about this is that the housekeeper speaks very limited English (although vastly more than I speak Korean) and we've had some funny encounters.  For a while she would fold our dirty laundry and put away dirty dishes out of the dishwasher.  Try as we might our signs and drawings wouldn't stop her, so now we do our own laundry and dishes on the night before she comes so she can fold the clean clothes and put away the clean dishes instead.  She uses chip clips to organize all the loose papers on our dining room table.  One time when we wanted her to wipe out the fridge, Andrew had the idea to put a sponge and cleaner on the floor in front of the fridge with a sign pointing to it, but with a smiley face so she knew we weren't mad.  She must get the chuckles too about the crazy way Americans do things. 

Recently we had another silly incident.  Here's what we came home to on the kitchen counter:

Does anyone know what ^^; means?  A very off-centered smirky smile?  Well, we didn't care at all that she broke the toothbrush holder but we were very, very glad to finally learn her name.  Here's the amputee's friends hanging in the bathroom:

Yesterday the housekeeper cleaned again, and this time I got a call from the realtor/translator saying she had bad news.  Eun Ha had broken something again.  This time it was a doll.  I had to rack my brain to think of any dolls in this house (aside from Andrew's GI Joes of course) and couldn't come up with anything, until further description indicated she meant one of the mini terracotta warriors we bought in Xian.  She beheaded the Captain, too funny!  But not surprising considering they were made in China and likely also made of dirt.... yes they were dirt cheap.  We glued on his head and the army is battle-ready again.  Sidenote: I set up a battle of terracotta warriors versus Nutcrackers and snowmen during the holidays.  Dorkfest!

Eun Ha made me realize that apparently I don't buy any souvenirs over $5 and there's nothing in my house I really mind breaking as long as I can sleep in on Saturdays and Andrew can watch sports in peace.