Gretchen in Seoul

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Valentine's Day! Our actual Valentine's left much to be desired. After working all day, I went to Costco in the afternoon with two other married men. Apparently their wives didn't have an exciting Valentine's either!

But, Eric texted me while I was gone and let me know that he'd secured a babysitter for the following evening, so we were able to go out on a date last night. We thought about heading back to On the Border. (Remember this story from last fall?) But, it's still so cold! So, we headed to a new "fancy" restaurant in Itaewon--one that we wouldn't bring kids to! It was Bulgarian--yet another new experience for us. It was really good, and we had a very nice evening.

These pictures are from the week after Thailand...while we were still on Christmas break...remember that? It seems so far away now! Anyway, my dad's wife, Gretchen, had to fly back early because she had to get back for school.

She had a twelve hour layover in Seoul, so we offered to show her around for a few hours. It was the first time that we had a guest and didn't go to the airport to pick her up. We gave her directions for how to get on the bus and where to get off, and then Eric waited at the Hyatt Hotel near our house for her to arrive (her flight arrived around 6 am, so we would have had to leave our house around 4 am to meet her!).

Waiting for her to arrive was definitely the most stressful part of her visit! The bus comes through about every 20 minutes, and I think Eric waited there for about two hours before she arrived because we wanted to make sure we didn't miss her. We were certain we'd lost her somewhere in Seoul! Who do you call when you've lost a human being?!

She finally arrived, though...you never can tell how long it is going to take someone to get through immigration and customs at the airport! The kids were so excited to show her our apartment. Then we took her to the school and showed her our classrooms and she met some of our co-workers. We even had Korean BBQ for lunch.

It was FREEZING, of course; I think it was about 10 degrees that day (and she did not have cold weather clothing!), but we trekked up to Seoul Tower anyway. Can you come to Seoul and not look down from the tower?

That was really all we had time for, though. We dropped her back off at the Hyatt just a few hours later. She was on her way back to Seattle, and we were waiting for our next guest to arrive...

The sad thing for us is that it still looks and feels like it did in early January. There is still a lot of snow on the ground from last week. Our highs are in the low 30s (with lows around 5 in the middle of the day last week!). We're all starting to wonder if spring will ever arrive in Seoul!