What We Drank

The day after our Seoul Tower trip was a Monday--the Monday before Christmas Eve. Eric and I still hadn't done any Christmas shopping at this point, because we usually get a sitter and make it a date (of sorts). Since my brother was going to be here (and we had been in school and busy!), we figured we would just wait for him to hang out with the kids while we did some shopping.

Shopping was the only thing on my agenda on that Monday, but it doesn't need to take all day--especially now that we have a car, so we decided to squeeze something in for the morning. The War Memorial is always a favorite among guests, plus it's close to our house, so we figured it would be a perfect trip. The day did not end up turning out quite as I had planned.

Only after we arrived did I remember that many of the museums are closed on Mondays. Including the War Memorial. What a tour guide I am! After checking out the airplanes and tanks in the outdoor part of the museum, we decided to try to salvage the day by heading to Namdaemun. We had barely even started walking through the rows and rows of booths and stores when we ran into one of Kennedy's best friends from school. I had never met either one of her parents, but I'd been emailing her mom about setting up a playdate, so we had something to talk about.

I'm not exactly sure how it happened, but pretty soon we were wandering through alleys trying to find a Korean BBQ restaurant that would seat a party of ten--most restaurants here are really tiny, so it can be a challenge to find one large enough to fit that many people. It was an interesting lunch as it turns out that the dad knows a lot about a lot of things, does a lot of talking, and he's also quick to replenish drinks! For only being in Korea for a few months, he knows a lot about it, and he taught us a few words, as well as the best way to drink Korean beer (with soju mixed in).

After one of the longest lunches I've had in a long time, we were on our way again. We took a bus home, and Eric and I were still able to get our Christmas shopping done. It certainly wasn't what I had planned for the day, but it turned out pretty well in the end. Sometimes expat life (or any life, for that matter) means you just have to roll with the punches. I think we rolled pretty well with that one!

I've now slowed to a post per day of Travis' visit--there's no way I can keep up that rate, so I'll have to pick up the pace after I get through the Christmas posts. Thankfully, things are pretty easy at school right now since we're at the beginning of a unit, so I don't have too much grading to do yet, but it will be getting busy again soon. We've been enjoying our weekend downtime lately, too. Last weekend, we took the kids to see Frozen, which we loved (and have been singing songs from all week!), and this weekend we're going to find our way to the biggest Toys'R'Us in Seoul. Nice, easy, indoor adventures. Nothing is ever as easy as it's supposed to be here, but we always manage.

Seoul Tower

On Monday, we had our first snow day of the school year, and it was great! I'm so glad that we moved to another place in the world where we can get the day off from school for an inch of snow on the ground. It was a great day for it, as we got to see the Seahawks win the NFC championship in real time at home in our PJs, rather than in class while distracted by other things.

By the end of the game, the roads were clear, so we decided to take advantage of the mid-week afternoon to head to Costco. It may have been the emptiest I've ever seen Costco! We were able to get in, get out, and return home again within a couple of hours. It was a good thing, because the blizzard began before we'd even gotten out of the car after arriving home.

On Trav's first Sunday here, we decided to go up to Seoul Tower. It's always an important trip to get in early, so that one has a better perspective as to the size of the city and where things are. Eric, Travis, and the kids decided to hike up to the tower, but I wasn't feeling up to the trek in the cold weather, so I planned to take the bus.

The kids started off their morning right. They were so excited by the many cereal options that my brother had brought along, that they couldn't choose just one. Cade had the brilliant idea to have his cereal in his sectioned lunch tray for school. Kennedy was feeling left out, so she went the muffin tin route.

They took off not long after breakfast, and I leisurely made my way to the bus stop. I'll never forget this trip to Seoul Tower, as my cousin called while I was on the side of an eight lane highway waiting for the bus to tell me that my grandma had passed away. I was thankful for the Viber app that day--even without wifi I had great reception, though the traffic made it difficult to hear.

I was grateful for the bus trip that day; it provided me some downtime to process and grieve before sharing the news and pretending like I was happy to be at Seoul Tower with the crowds.

We all walked back down after a lame lunch of hamburgers and fries at what is advertised to be the restaurant that serves "Seoul's best burgers." No one ever advertises "Seoul's smallest hamburgers."

Cade enjoyed finding very large sticks. He looks even more like Elmer Fudd when he's holding that thing!

After our walk, we looked up flights and talked about flying home. We procrastinated on calling back home until we were all hungry again.

Travis had been craving some bibimbap--which I think he had in about 10 different restaurants in the time he was here--so, we went to the first Korean restaurant that we went to when we first arrived. He had his dolsot bibimbap and the kids and I had bulgogi--only the second time we've had it in a restaurant since moving here.

It had been an emotionally exhausting day, and I think we were all glad when it was over--not that you can tell from these pictures of the kids. They were enjoying wearing Uncle Fraffy's hat and gloves! (And, since there is not a single picture of Seoul Tower itself in this post about our trip there, I figured I should at least link you in the right direction--our last trip there was last March--when I did take pictures of the tower!)

What We Ate

It is quite possible that in the almost four weeks that my brother was here, we saw more of Korea than we have in the last 2 1/2 years. As a result, I have a lot of pictures to share. Eric joked the other day that I will probably be sharing pictures until April, but we all know that's not a joke. It usually takes me about 3 months to get through all of our summer pictures, so it may be about the same!

Travis got in the evening before our last day of school. I actually didn't have to go to school that day (officially, anyway), so we had the great joy of driving to Cade's school an hour after we'd put him on the bus to drop off his tuition. Long, bad story. We made it back to school in time to take care of a few things before the middle school Christmas lunch at the new BBQ place in Itaewon.

That evening, we went out for galbi at our favorite neighborhood Korean restaurant. Cade loves galbi--even the bones! (Ironically, these pictures of him were edited with a preset named "Sweetheart"--he looks like anything but a sweetheart in these pictures!)

Gyeranjjim, or steamed egg, is one of my favorite side dishes.

Saturday morning, we gave him the truly Korean experience of heading to Costco to fight the masses. All was well until Eric said that he needed to push the cart, too--otherwise you haven't really experienced Korean Costco. An experience that he does not need to re-live!

After Costco, we headed home to unload groceries and headed out to meet a friend for lunch. We went to the much-acclaimed Everest, in Dongdaemun. I'd been hearing about this Nepalese restaurant for the past year and was excited to finally try it! It was delicious! And, Ross, having lived in Nepal, said it was pretty authentic.

Have you noticed a theme here? I think that oftentimes our days revolved around food--and sometimes when we neglected to do so, things went downhill quickly. Our afternoon culminated in Legos, of course, and some good ole' spaghetti for dinner. Nothing like flying to Korea to have spaghetti from a jar. That's right. We're classy around here.

If I have a post for every two days that Travis was here, then it will probably take more than three months to make it through this--I'll have to cut down!

December Fun!

December flew by for us, as I'm sure it did for many of you. But, I still have loads of pictures from that month, so we'll be re-living that month here on the blog!

December is typically a pretty chilly month here in Seoul (though not as cold as some of the temps in the Eastern US last week!), so I'm always trying to think of things to do that are inside.

So, one evening we went to one of the malls across town to check out the Christmas decor and have some dinner. Kennedy took her first-ever picture with Santa Claus. I can't believe it took us seven years to do that! Cade wasn't up for it, though.

He was too busy looking at the "snow" coming from the snow machine. (It was actually soap.)

Kennedy also had a pretty fun Christmas party at school.

It happened to take place in the time that I have to eat lunch and work before I have to leave to pick up Cade, so I was able to be there.

The kids did a little craft and some goodies provided by the room moms.

One of the parents even brought supplies and taught the kids how to make chocolate-dipped fruit that they were able to take home!

The room moms here are pretty amazing!

Her teacher also put together a little booklet of songs and then the kids traipsed through some of the hallways and did some caroling. They were pretty cute!

My brother just left town yesterday, and things are slowly starting to get back to normal around here. Our office, which has been his bedroom, is once again full of laundry. I've finally managed to clean the floors and the kitchen a little better. We're three days into the second semester. It's hard to believe that another school year is half over already!

Christmas break continues...

It's hard to believe that we only have one week of Christmas break left. I still have a lot of work left to do, which is a small part of why things have been quiet around here.

But, really, we've just been busy! We've been to palaces and museums.

We've been to the jimjilbang and the noraebang.

We've eaten food from about ten different countries.

We've traveled 300 km/h on the bullet train to Busan.

And we've built a whole lotta Legos.

Tomorrow we're off to find snow (and an indoor water park) in Seorak because we haven't had any snow since our week in mid-December when it snowed every day. We're looking forward to actually getting out of the city this time!