The Happy Is Some More

Things have been pretty slow lately, but this weekend was nice and full. Our friends Nick and Lauren came up Friday night and stayed till Sunday. We were hoping to go to this really cool-looking ice palace on Saturday, but the wind made it super cold - more than I think the kids would have dealt with - so we just made a quick trip to Olive Mart for some treats and then headed back to the warmth of the apartment. I felt sort of bad, because I just kept stuffing Nick and Lauren with crappy American food - on Friday night we had pizza for dinner, and Saturday morning we had cinnamon rolls for breakfast.

                                                  (Lauren anticipating the cinnamon rolls)

Saturday the missionaries came over for dinner, and I made cheesy enchilada chowder. Someone challenged Nick to eat it with chopsticks (that someone may or may not have been me...) and this was the result.

Today I had an appointment with a neurologist, which was interesting. The doctor and nurse both spoke very good English, but I had to go to Yeungnam University Medical Center. It was crazy busy, and Reagan and I were seriously the ONLY white people there. There were a few soldiers in American ACUs, but they were all Korean too. It was very overwhelming. All the signs were in Korean, and everyone was looking at us as I tried to determine where to go just to sign in. Of course Reagan got the usual "Aigoo!" and "Kyoo!" with plenty of cheek stroking and grins. A woman sitting in front of us turned and asked how old Reagan is (we've been asked this enough times that I've started to recognize it), and Reagan held up 4 fingers and said, "Net." She's awesome. 

On the way back to the subway we passed this fantastic shop. I love it when they use English!

I will always remember that The Happy Is Only Some More. 

And to refresh ourselves after the very draining trip through the hospital, we stopped for subway waffles. These were AMAZING. They were topped with miniature marshmallows and chocolate syrup. Holy cats they were delicious! 

In my opinion. The Happy Is Only Some More Subway Waffles.

The One With The Yums

I got my new lappy working fairly well, and have named her Delphi (those of you who know me well know that I name almost all of my gadgets), so now that I have a working and named laptop I think I'll be able to keep up on my blogging while David is gone. He leaves tomorrow bright and early and will be gone until March 2. Independence in a foreign country, here I come!

Today is our video game/veg out in front of the TV day, so I decided we'd use up as much of our Korean change as possible and go get some treats at Olive Mart. And I even remembered to get pictures of everything, since that's what most people requested. :)

 

Here's what it looks like when we wander down the little aisle in Olive Mart to pick out some candy.

 

 

The kids' favorite candy here is something we call Popper Toppers. The actual name in English is Fun Caps, and the name in Hangul reads something like "kan chyo".

They are little round cookies with chocolate inside, and little pictures on the outside. We call them Popper Toppers because the first time I had them was when I visited our friends the Guzas who were living in Seoul at the time, and they called them that presumably because they came in a cup with a little pink lid. I dunno. Seemed like a fitting name.

Next up is what Aiden chose - we actually have these in the states, even in regular grocery stores. I think over there you'll see them as Pocky Sticks, but the name here is Peppero.

 

I chose something that looks sort of like giant Coco Puffs, and it tastes like deliciousness. I'm not sure what it's called in English, but the front of the box says the brand name, which is Ghana, and then the Hangul says "pongtyoo", which sounds a lot like fondue. So we just call it Ghana Fondue.

 

I also picked this bag of sort of honey cinnamon corn chip things that we hadn't tried before. They were pretty good.

 

 

The Hangul in yellow says something like "kooksak palmol". I have no idea if that's the name.

 

Then the girls got their usual drinks, Hello Pandoli, and Aiden got a fruit juice.

 

 

And for a super special after-the-kids-go-to-bed treat, David and I got ice cream. :) Yep, totally good for 10 degree weather. But these are so good! I may have already posted a picture of these.

 

 

So that's what I have for food pictures this week. Later on this week Reagan and I will probably go out to eat at a beef & leaf, or maybe just the snack bar on Camp Walker, which has really good ramen (super common here), and I'll get some pictures of that. Aiden has mastered chopsticks, and Lillie is starting to get the hang of them.

 

Oh, the food here... so so yummy! Come over and try it, especially if you like hot and spicy stuff. :)

 

 

Another Day, Another Weird Picture

There's not a whole lot going on lately, but here are the few pictures I've taken in the past week or so.

I got to see Les Mis this weekend with our friends Nick and Lauren, and it was amazing. If you don't cry at that movie, you have no soul. Doing anything as mundane as going to a theater here, however, is always an adventure. Luckily the theater wasn't too far, so we only had to go a few subway stops away, but then we had to do a little bit of wandering because the theater itself is on the top floor of a department store and it's sort of in a secret little alcove that isn't particularly well-marked. But we found it, and Nick was able to get tickets and concessions without any major problems. Well, except for poor Lauren's cold churros... not a tasty situation.

Anyway, this is a sign that was in the lobby. I wish I knew what it was advertising. Possibly some sort of strange flavored squid snack? It's a popular concession here. Not a pleasant smell when you're trying to enjoy your movie.

Next, I wanted to give a shot of how people move into these apartments. We live on the 4th floor of a 5 story apartment, and I don't know how it's done in the states but here the movers use a really cool conveyor belt sort of contraption to move our stuff. Our front door opens onto a sort of open corridor, kind of like a motel, instead of like a normal apartment building, so when someone is moving in or out you'll see this giant conveyor belt thing propped up against the wall and the movers at the top taking the stuff off.

And today's last picture has nothing to do with Korea, but I wanted to show Aiden in the cutest hat ever. My sister-in-law made yoda hats for both him and David, and I got pictures of both of them, but I can't technically post David's because he was wearing it while in uniform. I'll get another one of him later and post it, probably when I put up the one of me wearing the awesome headband and scarf my other sister-in-law gave me. We seriously have the greatest family.

I finally got a decent camera, so I have a list of stuff to take pictures of while I'm out and about over the next couple of weeks. However, David will be out of town with our good laptop till the beginning of March, so it will be a little more difficult to blog. Hopefully I'll get one post in before he gets back. If not, I'll just have more time to get pictures of Shin Woo and Olive Mart and our church and ... hey, does anyone have any requests? Anything specific you'd like to see? Let me know! 

Engrish Around Daegu

I'm going to keep this one short. We went out and did a little shopping today, and I saw enough Engrish that I thought I could add a few examples to the blog.

Outside of Donga Mart there is the Forever 21 for nerds...

 Just a few shops down, there was a place that had a big sign reading, "Let's Go Art!" It looked like an art supply shop, but David and I couldn't decide what the sign meant - David's take was, "Come on, Arthur. Time for your drawing lesson." I think they were using art as a verb, like "Come on, let's all art!" Or maybe they just left out a comma...

Anyway, I also found this wonderful bag. I had to get two shots.

"We are bang bang bad guytrio." Indeed you are. Of course I had to go in for a closer look:

David tells me that his hungry does come on like a tsunami sometimes. I should have bought this bag for him.

And on the way home we bought pastries here:

Korea, seriously, I love you. Don't ever change.

Post-Christmas Blog

It's been a good couple of weeks. A few nights ago I was reflecting with David on the past few months, and it occurred to me that I am more happy than I have been in a very long time. Of course, the next day we got confirmation that David has to leave for a six-week school in the middle of January, but in the meantime I am finding I'm doing okay at staying in the present and being conscious of all the blessings I have. Life is really, really good.

Korea continues to amaze and amuse me. They just had their presidential election last week, and I LOVE how South Korea handles elections! Candidates can campaign for the 30 days before the election, and during that time you'll see polititians' names everywhere. Billboards, posters, buses, and I even got TONS of texts from all of the candidates. They were all in  hangul, but I have a handy little translation app so I could figure out what they were saying. Oh, and trucks with dancers on the roads! The week of the election there were trucks driving around with people dancing on them and music blaring with their candidate's name on a sign. Anyway, Park Geun-Hye won this election, and she can stay in office for 6 years and that's it. There is no chance for a second term. I think that is brilliant.

Remember how I've mentioned that Koreans seem to like my kids? I've had friends on Facebook say the same thing happened to them when they were living here, and it doesn't seem to be limited to just fair-skinned light-haired kids. I have to assume it's just foreign kids? Anyway, things haven't changed in that area. We always get people talking to the kids, and wanting to sit near them on the subway, and whenever they use their few words of Korean (they have around 5 I think) people just freak the heck out. I didn't get to witness the latest episode of Korean Talbot-Kid Madness because I was home with a sick Lillie, but David called to tell me about it. He and the kids were on the subway with our friends Nick and Lauren, and there was an ajeossi (older man) who was clearly enthralled with Reagan. He was smiling and waving and talking to her, but she wasn't really responding, which is weird for her. Normally she's practically in performance mode. Anyway, this guy sat down across from Reagan and Nick, started talking to another man, and eventually leaned across the aisle and tried to give Ray some money! We have no idea why. David's theory is that since she was only wearing one mitten, he was offering cash so she could buy another one. :)

That leads me to another thought - adjimas (older women) have no problem yelling at me. I've been yelled at for Reagan not wearing long enough pants, for her not wearing her mittens, and an adjima actually physically took Reagan's thumb out of her mouth once. I don't let it upset me because I know this is their culture, but man it's weird! It occurs to me that Reagan gets a lot of notice - it's just because she's the one that is with me most of the time. The other two are in school so Ray will go wandering around town with me, which means she is the one that gets all the love/reprimands from the adjimas and ajeossis.

On to picture time! First off, here's one for you Sheyann. This is a typical table at a Korean restaurant. This is in front of a shop down the road from us. You sit around it, the waiters bring you food and barbecue it for you on your table, and there's usually a little button on your table so you can call them back if you need them. Otherwise the staff pretty much leaves you alone. It's nice.

Lillie and Reagan have both been coughing a lot lately, so we have done the Korean thing and bought them masks. These are disposable, and have pictures of "Dibo, the gift-giving dragon" on them.

It snowed a TON this weekend, and we noticed dozens of snowmen around town. They weren't made by only kids, either! David and I saw this one being built by a guy in his early 20s outside the subway station near our apartment. I love the face!

And finally, here is a picture of our Christmas tree. We didn't pack our fake tree, and we didn't want to spend a lot of money on something we wouldn't be bringing back to the states in a couple of years, so we found a pretty inexpensive vinyl stick-on tree. :) All the ornaments and candy canes are removable, and so is the star (perched all gravity-defyingly atop the tree by David), and the kids loved "putting up the tree" this year.

Hope you all had a great Christmas, and were able to give everything you wanted to!

Subway Dance Practice!

Every Sunday we look forward to the trip home from church, because we get to witness Sunday Afternoon Subway Dance Practice.

 

I can never tell what the music is, but they do this every Sunday.

I think that in their minds they are Girls' Generation.

Exercise Equipment, or Torture Device?

I have been trying to come up with interesting topics for this blog, and I think I have a couple, but until I really get those pulled together you can enjoy more pictures of random weird stuff. I know! A total departure from my norm here, right?

We took the subway to Home Plus today, and as soon as we got out of the station this is what greeted us.

They're hula hoops, but there are bumps all around the inside. David thinks they are some sort of exercise thing. Frankly, I think that exercise is cruel enough without needing to turn childhood toys into torture devices.

Inside Home Plus we looked around for mittens and stuff, and perused the toy department as well. That's where we found these bizarre entities.

The top ones reminded us of Catbus from "My Neighbor Totoro", although these are somehow a little creepier (if that's possible). The bottome one isn't that awful, till you realize it's a ram. There is just something very off-putting about a fluffy pink ram.

On the way home we passed a car that had the Korean version of a "Baby On Board" sticker.

 

Like so many things here, the English is technically correct, but somehow seems a little off...

 

Tune in later for a video of "Subway Dance Practice!"