A bit of this and a bit of that.

I was looking through my pictures, and I've found a few that I wanted to share, but there isn't really a cohesive story to bring them all together. So I decided I'd just toss them up here for you to see.

This is one of our usual taxi drivers. The military has its own pool of taxis, and since we were without a car for so long, the cab drivers saw us a lot. This man seemed almost surly the first time we rode with him, but now he will literally stop his taxi, roll down his window, and shout "LEAGAN!" if he sees us on the street.

One of the things I'll miss when we leave - random people in animal costumes roaming downtown. This one had pamphlets for a local cafe.

Banana milk! I really like this weird drink. Not as weird as some of the other stuff Korea has to offer, but still not something I'd seen in the states. It's sweet and refreshing - really good for a summer day.

This one is just for my mom - "Bubble, bubble, bubble." It was at a cafe in the Lotte department store, obviously advertising bubble tea. But it made me miss my silly momma.

This doesn't actually have to do with Korea, but Aiden looked so distressed to see that Dobby had been made into a fabric runner that I had to share it with you.

David and some men from the branch took the monkeys ice skating on Saturday. David is preparing to challenge Kim Yuna.

Our Awesome Interns

For the past three months we have been attending a Korean Cultural Club at the elementary school every Thursday, and yesterday was our last day. It's run by Korean interns, who put a lot of time and effort into preparing interesting and engaging lessons for our kids. It was a bit frustrating that hardly any other kids knew about the club, but then again I felt pretty lucky that we could spend as much one-on-one time with the interns as we did. 

Here is an example of one of the projects they did with the kids - teaching the four gracious flowers of Korea. 

We are definitely going to miss you guys! Thank you for working so hard to teach me and my kids!

Cats and Bats

Lillie Mac's birthday was last week, and instead of throwing a party (since we really don't do parties) I told her I'd take her and Reagan up to Seoul, just us girls, to go to (gulp) Hello Kitty Town. There is a playland with a train, a ballpit, a massive climbing structure, a cafe, a dress-up room with princess gowns, and all sorts of other things to attract your typical seven-year-old girl. She went bonkers. A whole weekend with just Mama and her sister AND HELLO KITTY?! And a HOTEL?! For some reason, hotels have major adventure status for my kids. Funny, since they have spent a significant amount of time in them.

Sadly, it seems Hello Kitty Town isn't around anymore. Or if it is, I couldn't verify it since the website is down and the phone number goes straight to recording. So rather than go to Seoul, we stayed here in Daegu and went to E-World. Again, Lillie was really excited about the prospect of hanging out with me and her sister for the whole day, no boys allowed, but when I mused, "Huh. Maybe we could get a hotel room just for Friday night too, for fun," she literally started jumping around the room.

So Lillie's belated birthday weekend! We stayed at The Palace, which evidently has a nightclub or something on the 8th floor, because there was music all night long. Till, like, 4 AM. I have no clue how the monkeys slept, but they did. Lucky beasts. And before they went to sleep, here is one of the sweetest, most fulfilling images I could dream of as a mother. They are reading in bed. Legit reading, not just looking at pictures.

After a night of no sleep, I thought I'd take a picture of our room key too, because it was so different from American hotel key cards, at least the ones I've used.

After you entered the room, the "keychain" part was inserted in a slot, which controlled the lights in the room. Pretty cool, actually. Also, the check-in process was shockingly easy. It would seem I was the only foreigner they had staying that night. I went to the desk and said I needed to check in. The desk agent held up a folded post-it note with my name on it and said, "You?" I laughed and said yes. He gave me my key and pointed to the elevator. Didn't as for any ID or anything. :D

So, moving on. Night of no sleep leads to daughters getting their nails did, and funky hair colors. We found hair chalk at the PX, so after they had their nails painted I put some streaks in their hair.

This is what I get when I say, "Show me your nails, sweetie!" You can sort of see Lillie's pink streaks here. Reagan's were blue and purple, with gold nails. They looked awesome. On to the park!

Girls posing with stuff!

Girls playing in hamster balls in the pool! Reagan was sad because she couldn't share one with Lillie, so she just kind floated around directionless.

Girls riding junior bumper cars! They were the only ones on this little track, so they just rammed each other, very happily.

 The soundtrack from Frozen was playing on the carousel. There were a lot of people singing along.

E-World has a "zoo". It consists of farm animals and bunnies, mostly. You could feed the bunnies, but they seemed pretty well-fed already.

Lillie's favorite part - this is Lilian's Lovebird. She wanted to stay here forever.












While we were out, the menfolk were busy being manly. Which of course means eating lots of pizza, drinking lots of soda, and watching lots of Batman.

I think this should be an annual thing. It was a lot of fun to hang out with my girls, and Aiden kept telling me how much he loved hanging out with Papa. Best weekend in ages.

In which we go to a movie, and then I get terribly lost.

Long time no see! I'm back with some fun stories for you. Let's start with our trip to the movies.

We went to see "Frozen" at a Korean theater, and I thought I'd show you a little of what the experience is like. First, the theater we went to was on the top few stories of the Lotte department store, which seems to be pretty normal here. There isn't room to build out, so they build up. And up. And uuuup. So we take a bunch of escalators to the 6th or 7th floor, I think, and buy tickets.

The really cool part is that you can choose your seats. Also, these screen kiosks make it significantly easier to go to movies here, since we don't have to deal with the language barrier.

The next step, of course, is the snack bar.

There is the familiar butter popcorn, as well as cheese popcorn and carmel corn. My favorite is getting a bucket with half butter or cheese, and half carmel. They put a little divider thing down the middle so the flavors don't mix. 

They don't have candy, but there are nachos, hot dogs, and ice cream. And of course fried squid. Because what is a movie without your fried squid?  :)

And here's a shot to show you the lobby. You buy your tickets here, and go up another floor or two to your theater.

Now for my tale of sorrow and woe, the night I got lost.

I had a tutoring appointment with a new student, a ten-year-old boy. His mom doesn't speak much English, so we'd been communicating via text and using translating apps, which is always fun. And by fun, I mean a bit nerve-wracking. Anyway, I was to meet them at their apartment and she gave me their address in both English and Korean, and since I have a total of three navigation systems I figured I had a decent shot of finding their place even though actual street addresses in Daegu are absurdly difficult to get/find. They aren't really big on street names or house numbers. To get places they mostly seem to rely on landmarks.
       I made my first attempt to input the address into one GPS. No go - it couldn't find the neighborhood (side note - Daegu is divided into something kind of like districts, and then further divided into neighborhoods. They live in Dalseo-gu, Wolseong-dong.) So I tried the second GPS. It got the neighborhood, but not the actual street number. I figured meh, as long as I get to the general area I can figure things out. So off I set, not knowing the impending horror to come.
      First off, my trusty GPS took me in a literal circle. Twice. Not like around the block, but u-turn after u-turn. So I made a turn that forced it to "recalculate". Eventually I found myself on the expressway. Since we haven't had a car long, I'm not very experienced in driving in Daegu, and I just thought, "Okey-dokey. I guess this will just get me there quicker?" Oh-ho-ho no. Where it got me was OUT OF DAEGU. Literally outside of the city. My poor '94 Hyundai was attempting to keep up with the 100 km/hour speed limit without completely disintegrating, as I tried not to panic. Eventually I found a way to turn around, and found myself at a tollbooth. Of course. So I attempted to pay the toll, but it seemed that I needed some sort of pass or ticket or something. Eventually between two different tollbooth operators it became aparent that I needed to go somewhere else for some reason with the ticket they gave me. I drove off, trying to puzzle out what they were saying, and as I looked around I zoomed right past what looked like some kind of station. I assume I should have stopped there, but it just wasn't gonna happen.
      I followed the expressway back into Daegu, and then turned off my GPS (I may have sworn at it and thrown it on the floor while cursing its lineage). I decided to use the navigation system on my phone to get home and just text my client to let her know I'd need to reschedule since I was half an hour late. Again, the trap was set by the navigation gods. Somehow my phone decided to betray me. It took me all over the stupid city (I'm sorry Daegu - I don't mean that. I still love you). After a while it sent me down an alley. I thought, "Huh. This is weird. Maybe it's some kind of shortcut. I'll see where it's going." The alley got smaller and smaller - and it was already small to begin with, since people park their cars on both sides of the street at all sorts of happy, jaunty angles here. And at this point - heaven forgive me - I became that stupid woman who follows her GPS blindly into a river. Okay, not a river, but a freaking market. Yep, I ended up in a MARKET. It wasn't a big one, just one of the small little neighborhood markets, but since the alley was so small and packed with people's cars, I couldn't turn around and I ended up hitting stuff. Stuff owned by the market people. Water jugs, and some poles, and I was soooo humiliated. Just the worst night ever ever ever. I stopped my stupid car, cheeks flaming, and rolled down the window as a man came walking up. He didn't look angry, just a bit concerned and amused. I showed him my GPS and said, "It lied. I'm lost." He nodded, stood behind my car, and directed me back in a 147-point turn to get me mostly out of the market without hitting further objects.
      At this point, I asked if he knew where Camp George was. More specifically I said, "Camp-uh Jo-ji?" Which is how every Korean person says the name of our post. He pointed off through the alley and gave basic directions in Korean, which I understood, but then a woman came up to my window and said, "Camp-uh Jo-ji? My husband work. I show." And this woman, the greatest Korean to ever live, just climbed in my car and directed me home. When we got back to the post I told her I would call her a taxi and she just chuckled and said, "No, I walk."
     After reflecting on that experience, I thought about how different it would have been in a city of comparable size in the states. Can you imagine what would happen if you destroyed property of any kind in a big city - think 2.5 million - in the states? Cops would be called, there would be a big tumult. Here they were like, "Aw, poor little nummy-head. Let's just get this poor puppy home." Seriously, not a word was said about their broken stuff although I apologized profusely in Korean. These people were amazing. And thinking about it further, if I'd had my kids with me I don't doubt they would have offered us food. LOL
      So that was my terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad driving experience. I think from here on out I'll stick to mostly subways and taxis. :D

Korean Food, Y U SO Tasty?!

It's about time I updated this thing, since we've been out and about a few times lately. Let's start with our last trip downtown where the girls spotted a person in a kangaroo outfit. Why? Because Korea.

Earlier this summer we went to an art museum with our friend Yun. Yun is an English teacher, and is therefore fluent in English. However, when she asked me if I wanted to go to the museum I briefly wondered about her language capability because her approach was to ask if I like polka dots. :D I thought that was such a funny way to ask! In my mind I was like, "Hm. I've never really considered my feelings towards patterns. How DO I feel about polka dots?" She explained that there was an exhibit by an artist that revolved around polka dots, and it turned out to be a really fun trip.

This was a room where we took off our shoes and put stickers EVERYWHERE. The kids loved it. Yun and I even had a few on us.  Also, a couple of girls asked to have their pictures taken with the girls, and I had them text me one. So cute!

Aiden on the second floor of the museum with the hanging polka dot balloons. He did not like being on the first floor, because he felt like the balls might drop on us. I couldn't seem to get him to understand that they were full of air, so it wouldn't matter.

My friend Brittany and I went out for lunch and decided to eat at Pizza Hut. Koreans do pizza in the most interesting way.

This one had bacon and potatoes on it, and then I think it had a sweet potato filling in the crust with cream cheese drizzled over the top. It sounds so weird, but trust me, it's really good!

Here is a picture of Lillie and Sue - I mentioned Sue in an earlier post, she's the one who approached me about teaching English. I meet her once a week to just have English conversations to help her brush up on the language. She has taken quite a shine to Lillie, and has actually asked to be able to spend a day with her. Lillie calls her Omma Sue, which means Mama Sue in English. LOL

Finally, some friends invited us out to a place that has something called shabu shabu, which is basically (to my understanding) a broth with a bunch of stuff in it. :D You start off with beef, and then add whatever you want. This place also had make-your-own spring rolls, which was so fun.

Full of tasty goodness. We're so lucky to live in such an amazing place where we've met such fantastic people. I'll be so sad when we have to leave!

It Was A Night Out...

So we went out to eat at a "beef and leaf" with some friends tonight - that's a restaurant where you grill the meat at your table and then you wrap it up in a lettuce leaf and nomnomnom it down. It was so tasty!




Samgyeopsal (pork belly)







Galbi (beef)





And here's a full shot of our table:

By the time we left we were joking that there must be some sort of contest with the waiters to see how many bowls they can leave on our table. Seriously, there were seven people eating but like 20 bowls. Oh, and for dessert there was bingsu! It's sort of like shaved ice, but then they put stuff on it like mango and pineapple and red bean. 

So that was dinner, and it was awesome. The kids all tried some of the meat, and then settled down with their rice, and afterwards the kids and I took a cab home in the rain. Sadly, this wasn't one of the cabs that can go on post, so we had to get dropped off at the gate and walk to our apartment, which is in the far back corner. Well, since it was raining and my tummy was full of bap and samgyeopsal and galbi and bingsu, I was happy. Therefore, puddle-jumping.

So far the only downside of the evening has been listening to the clunking of shoes in the dryer. :)