parental visit

Hi Folks I have been out of the blog for the past week due to my parent's arrival in Korea. I am going to go back to the day they arrived which was Chusok and post some photos from our day at the Namsan Folk Village where we spent the day with our new friends Mei Ling, Kendra, Tera, Ayla and Jonathan. It was a fun day - we even went live on the radio and did some interviews for an English radio station in Seoul. We supposedly won tickets but haven't heard from them since so who knows. Anyway here are the photos.


John and I took a walk up the mountain and found this lovely shrine. It was really a beautiful spot.
This is the marker for the shrine.

Netta painting a fan at the Chuseok festival.

John and Olive loving a tree on our walk.
The view of the city from our walking path.
A lovely waterfall.
Netta dressed as a courtesan......
Netta really wants a hanbok for her birthday this year.
Some performers - they were actually practicing their dance here.
Olive making friends - anyang.......
John on the radio.
Ayla - such a cutie...

The view of Seoul Tower from the folk village.
View through an arbor of the pond.
Most of the children at the festival were dressed in hanbok. It was unbelievably cute.
This is a teeter totter game where one person lands and sends the other jumping into the air. Netta and John tried but it was a lot harder than it looked. These ladies were amazing.

Local festival

Netta, Olive and John observing a tea ceremony at our local park during a traditional Korean festival for Chuseok. Chuseok is this week and it is a harvest festival celebrated by returning to your family home, honoring your ancestors and eating food. At least that is what we have gathered about it so far.



This is the place setting for the tea service. Lovely....
These are traditional tea sweets. They are made from bean powders mixed with honey. Olive packed away so many that the ladies were worried she might get a tummy ache. Never happened. The mixture is pressed into a wooden form to make these beautiful designs. We are looking for one so that we can make our own at home but haven't found one yet.

This is lotus flower tea - beautiful and tasty.

Olive looking a little worried about where she might be going. Olive loves to look at this picture recreate the face and laugh.


John and Netta playing a game - trying to toss the arrows into the container. It took some practice but they both got quite good at it. Eye exercises for the day!
OK it only looks like she is tossing this at Olive......
Olive writing Os with her arrow in the sand.
Netta receiving some drum instruction.
Netta and John drumming. They spent a long time creating rhythms, combining them and then performing duets.
Olive looking up at the ducks on a stick. This is a very old craft in Korea. John said that in the folk museum one was featured in a display about the bronze age in Korea. Netta and Olive both received small hand crafted ones as gifts before we left the festival. Netta because the lady who taught her the wedding bowing ceremony was so impressed with Netta and Olive because once Netta had one she just went over and took one off the table. They graciously gave her one of her own.

All in all a lovely Saturday afternoon at our local park learning about traditional Korean culture.

As a side note I am beginning to feel like a member of our neighborhood - as I walked to the park I ran into 2 people I knew. Even in this big city - wow!

ketchup

Hi checking in here to catch us up on life in Seoul.

I think I am due for a post from our zoo trip although with my memory acting like it is I may not have too many details at my fingertips almost a week later.

We went back to the zoo that we visited with Netta last time we were in Seoul. It was actually Olive's first visit to a zoo. Netta remembered so much about it from last time - I was amazed. It was a great day. The zoo is huge we have yet to see all of the animals there.

We did have some highlights this time. The elephants were very lovely - they were kind of swaying in a dancing kind of motion which was fun to watch. Also the hippos - last time we were there we saw a darling baby hippo - this time we got to see one hippo grooming(?) the other hippos mouth. The one stood in the water with his mouth open while the other one kind of rubbed and bit at his mouth - they were either grooming or kissing. Netta said "eeewww gross Mom" when I suggested kissing. Olive and I also got to see the monkeys (Netta and John were on the skyride). The monkeys were fun and Olive enjoyed watching the baby monkey jumping and playing.

There were lots of amazing birds (some in cages that I felt were too small). Last week Netta and I read an article about a girl who was going through gender reassignment to become male and Netta couldn't quite understand why she would want to go through all that. Netta said she would just dress and act like a boy and that was enough for her. But when we saw the birds Netta told me that if she could have a species reassignment she would want to be a bird --lovely. Oh to be a bird and get to fly.

We wore ourselves out at the zoo- spent too long and want to go back for more. We then grabbed some food out and went to check out hotels for my mom and dad. We found them a lovely love hotel and we hope we made reservations although I'm not sure we need them as these places survive by having rooms available at all times. Then we went home and collapsed into bed.

The rest of the week passed pretty uneventfully. John and Netta met with Netta's teacher from school and she gave us permission to attend the Korean classes at the school without Netta attending regular classes. I am very excited about this as it will help both of us and we were having trouble finding free classes that we could attend together.

We also had our first Skype meeting with Deb from Ocean Alternative and that was so great. Fun to see her and fun for Netta to get to share with her some of what we are learning here.

So here we are in the next weekend - John has the girls at the park and they are riding bikes. I am heading over there soon as John called to let me know there is some kind of cultural festival happening there. So I will pack lunch and go meet them. Apparently I need to bring band-aids as Netta fell of her bike - oh dear.

I'll take the camera and hopefully be able to post some photos of the festival later.

Our new camera

This is an almost images only post - 1)I'm too tired to write 2) we just got a new camera and have been having fun playing around with it.

I still need to write about the zoo - sorry I just don't have it in me tonight. I will write more this weekend I hope.

comments

OK so I just found where the comments are in my blogging "dashboard".

There are so many sweet comments on there. Sorry I haven't answered most of them.

I now know where they are and will enjoy connecting with all of you lovely readers.

It was fun to read them and feel the love,

Elana

full weekend

Hi Folks time to fill you in on the weekend. It was a busy one. Two full days out and about in Seoul.

On Sat we went on a free museum tour that our friend Joe hooked us up with. It was pouring rain so Joe opted out but we had fun anyways. It was part of a campaign by the government to promote the G20 and show happy foreigners enjoying Seoul. So they gave us free t-shirts and took lots of pictures of us enjoying Seoul. We are expecting to see our photo plastered in the subway any day now. It was a diverse group which was fun - some Koreans, South African English teachers, students from China, Thailand, and India and a few Americans as well.

First we went in a big tour bus to the home of the first presidents house. It was incredibly lovely with amazing gardens that included a waterfall down a big piece of granite. It was interesting as the president had a fascinating life which included being imprisoned by the Japanese and studying in the U.S.

The whole time we were at the home Olive kept asking for "fooo" her word for food and as she had already eaten all of the snacks I brought and we were apparently in the only location in Seoul without a convenience store we were a little out of luck. But Olive was so charming that the tour guide gave us her personal Subway sandwich that Olive then gobbled down. Strange as it was - some sort of sweet meat with spicy peppers and sweet pickles --not my cup of tea but it did the job with Olive at least for a few minutes....

Next we went to a folk village. It was beautiful there - however the tour was on a schedule and it was rush, rush, rush. I could have walked around there for hours but we did get to participate in a tea ceremony and a drumming session. Both of which were so fun - Netta had a blast. She and Olive were the only kids on the tour which was a shame I thought but after warming up to the other folks she enjoyed the attention. She even sang "I love Egg" (you should watch this on youtube - I tried to link it but can't make it work) over the microphone to the whole busload of tour goers.

Then they treated the whole group to lunch at a meat restaurant. We had bulgogi which was yummy - not for Netta - but the rest of us enjoyed it. At this stop we were very close to our favorite thrift store that we rarely get to visit. The last two times we have tried it has been closed. So we escaped the group as we were finished with our lunch early and went and found some bargains. Although not the butter knife we are desperate for.

Lastly we went to the Korean Folk Museum. Everyone got a free headset to use that explained the items in English. Netta really loved this and spent a long time in the museum. So long that the group just left us there as it was the last stop and we went home from there. Netta is such a good listener she really paid attention and spent time in that museum. Olive slept through it all.

It was a good day - we were all exhausted when we got home.

The next day Netta set her mind to a visit to the zoo. We went with it - Olive has never been to a zoo. It is late here so I will leave you hanging and post about our thrilling visit to the zoo soon. I know the suspense will drive you crazy. I'm employing the oldest trick in the book to keep you reading......

Busy week

I'm still exhausted from the last few days, because had a lot going on. There was the brahms concert with the somewhat annoying choir, followed by a big celebration. Foolishly, I tagged along when they said hey let's go to the noraebang (like a karaoke room) and suddenly it was 2 am. Then, There were the Nong concerts, people from California and concerts of contemporary music. That was stressful because my players weren't entirely feeling the polyrhythmic groove I had written for them. But it went quite well nonetheless. Netta thrived in the company of the composers, eloquent and gregarious. Then I gave a lecture to the Royal Asiatic Society, and I think that went well. I was nervous about that too; I'm not sure I'm a real intellectual... But I think I gave an interesting presentation about contemporary music/gugak collaboration and grounded it in current debates about cultural exchange... I was so glad that talk was over because it had been eating up too much of my time.
It's raining an awful lot. Signs of Fall are appearing, nuts falling from trees, blistering hot days less common... I like it here.

update

Hi friends,

Well time to update - lots of activity here this last 2 weeks. I will try to fit it all in before I crash and fall into bed. We have had two late nights in a row as the crew from UCSC has been visiting and we have been joining in on the festivities.

On Friday John's friend Maayan arrived from UCSC and she came one day early so she needed a place to stay. It was really fun to have a guest and show her around the neighborhood. Both the kids really liked her and had fun talking to her.

We went swimming on Sat with the family of John's friend. It was confusing but fun. Olive could not swim and that was a bit of a bummer but she wasn't really too bugged and seemed happy enough hanging out with the mamas while the kids swam. Netta seemed to have fun until the end when she needed the key to her locker and had a hard time finding me. The place was kind of a maze with stairs and dressing rooms and pools and waiting rooms. In the end she found me but she was hungry and mad by that time. Then we went for food and tried to get Netta some pasta but it came with seafood and spice even though I asked the host if we could have it plain. He said we couldn't get it plain so we gave it a try but she didn't like it. This was with a group who are constantly going on about Netta and food. How is she eating - does she like Korean food? It kind of stressed me out because she was so hungry and wouldn't eat. If they had not been there I would have just said ok don't eat - you can eat when we get home but instead she ate a muffin. I feel bad when people treat us to food and she doesn't enjoy it. I know it is kind of weird but I feel bad. Oh well. Her food did not go to waste at least - the others ate it.

On Monday John's music was performed at Seoul University of the Arts. It was a concert of student composers with music written for western instruments and traditional Korean instruments together. John's piece was lovely and it was nice to get to visit with old and new friends from UCSC. It was great for me because I thought I would miss the whole thing as Olive is not yet of the concert going age, but outside the theatre there was a waiting area with a video of the stage showing the performance. It was great to be there but not need to worry about Olive's behavior. Netta sat with John and had quite a lot to say about which pieces she liked and why - John reports that Netta is his new favorite concert companion.

After the concert we went out for Chicken and Hof - or chicken and beer. There are about a million chicken and beer places here but we had not been to one yet so it was fun to go. Netta had a great time entertaining the crowd. She was so happy to have people to converse with in English and all the guests paid her lots of attention. She was lit up! Olive fell asleep on John's back about half way through the night and then we all caught the bus home. It was a late night.

It made me glad that Netta had decided to give up school. So here I will insert the school story - or maybe just some of it. Netta made it through one week of school. Our initial idea had been to have her try it for 2 weeks but it became clear very quickly that it was not working. One of the reasons we had enrolled her was to allow her the opportunity to make some local friends. However, on the second day she called me from her cell phone to tell me that she felt cooped up because they never left the classroom. It is hard to make friends at school if there is no time for play. The day is short but there is no recess. It was of course also hard because Netta does not speak Korean. This was another reason we had thought school would be a good place for her. But we decided that she can take a Tae Kwon Do class in the neighborhood here and have some immersion time and maybe also make some friends. It is not free- as school was- but it is pretty reasonably priced and will better suit her needs. I am kind of bummed because the school offers a Korean Class for parents with their children and we can't take this unless Netta is enrolled. But really I feel like we can study Korean at home. We have committed to spending one hour a day studying Korean together and we are looking for another class to take together. So that is the school story.

I am excited to be homeschooling again and we have been trying to set aside some regular time everyday to focus on projects.

OK back to the NONG Festival ( the festival that the UCSC crew were here for). Last night was the professor's pieces and that was also a great concert. Afterwards we got to go for meat and soju and that was fun too. It was another late night.

It has been fun but busy and I am happy to have a night at home with the kids in bed. We have all caught our first Korean cold which is a bummer and kind of bad timing with all of the running around but we are muddling through it and no one seems too bad off.

We are looking forward to visitors again in 2 weeks. My parents are coming and we are all excited about it. We just need to plan and clean in the next 2 weeks!

photoless

So here it is Saturday again and I finally have the time and the heart to write. It has been a very busy week. Netta started school and that was a whole adventure. I will write an entire entry about that next. But right now I am typing on our new wireless keyboard (Olive spilled tea on our old new keyboard) and it is really frustrating. I can't write for too long as it is always making mistakes like doubling letters and then I have to go back and fix them and it is really annoying. Netta is on my computer but she is going to sleep soon and then I can type more freely about our school experience. This post is about how we have no camera now. Hence the title photoless. For now our posts will be without photos. John left the diaper backpack with the camera in it in a taxi. Pretty slim chance that we will get it back. Maybe we will look for a new one at the Electronics Market but it won't be very soon and we have very little extra money we are able to spend.
Boo Hoo!!!!!!