Returning

I will go back to blogging - I will - I will.

Sorry to have been lagging so long. The trouble with photos has been getting me down and keeping me away from the blog.

But I will do it soon - not now as it is 12:30 am, but soon.

We had our first snow today - we looked up and saw sweet soft white flakes falling from the sky - beautiful - Netta was thrilled.

I will be back soon - I promise.

Address reshuffle

When we first moved to Nakseongdae, I spent some time walking around and learning the street names. Not that there was much point; street names aren't used much in Korea. The traditional system of house addresses is to number all the houses in a neighborhood or "dong" according to the order they were built. Needless to say, it's often impossible to find things.

About a month after we moved here, the names of the bigger streets suddenly changed. (e.g. "Gwandong gil" became "Solbat ro.") They changed not just in our neighborhood, but all around Seoul. Later, I would find out that the street names were changing across the entire country. It took a few weeks for them to get around to changing all the street signs on the little streets, but eventually, our street changed from "Gwandong 5-gil" to "Haengun 4-gil," and our old number plate was switched out in favor of an updated one.

Yesterday, a lady came to our door to explain the new system. On Jan 1 2011, all the addresses in the country are changing from the old time-sequential dong system to the European style sequentially-numbered-along-a-street system.

So... address is no longer Seoul, Gwanak-gu, Bongcheon 6-dong 148-81, but rather Seoul, Gwanak-gu, Haengun 4-gil 55-18 (Bongcheon-dong.) Our address has changed, but we haven't moved...

photos finally

I am so bugged by blogspot

I can't get my photos to load - here are the few that worked. I have tried three days at different times and they won't load. GRRRRR....

Sorry but I may need a few days off to find the inspiration to come back to the blog. Maybe I can just do writing without pictures until the site works better.
These photos are from the Seoul Latern Festival. The camera battery died so we only got a few shots. It was beautiful. I apologize for the picture orientation as well.

photos

Can't post now - won't load - internet annoyance!

Later!

Foreign Food Market in Ansan

Hi folks - well it has been another busy week for us here in Seoul and now I have time to write about last weekend.

We had been wanting to visit a market that we heard about awhile ago so, when the Craiglister selling the humidifier we need for the winter was located in Ansan, off we went.

The market is in a neighborhood where a lot of people from India, Vietnam, China, Uzbekistan, Thailand, Pakistan, and other countries live. I was excited to try to find some cilantro and other ingredients and spices that I have been missing here. Netta has really been loving Dal and we needed more so I was hoping to find some there. I found the last bag in Itaewon but thought it might be cheaper elsewhere. It was really quite fun to wander through the market as it has a lot of Korean style but is different in many ways. There was cilantro ---yay and cheap too. I wish they had it in my neighborhood. We also discovered some yummy fried bready doughnutty thing that was from China.

We decided to have Indian food there, although I was tempted by the recommendation from the humidifier guy for Uzbeki food as I have never had it before. He said it was the cheapest and best foreign food he had eaten in Seoul - oh well next time. Netta was set on Indian so we found a nice little spot and had some yummy food. Too spicy for Netta though so in the end we had to get her some Pho from the Vietnamese restaurant. She tried to fill up on Naan ---haha!!

Next to the Indian restaurant I found a small Indian grocery owned by a Korean lady and found my dal (not cheaper) and some spices like bay leaves, cumin and even some ghee. Yay!!

It was a fun outing. Many of the folks spoke English as I guess it is the language they have most in common. The restaurant menus were in English and it made things easy - for an afternoon.

I'll post photos next......

Pictures from Phillipa

Here are pictures sent by our new friend Phillipa. They are better than our photos from the trip so I thought you might like to see them.
Netta and John above Hahoe - you can see the village below.
Netta and Phillipa in Hahoe.
All of us dressed up for the concert with a fun sculpture/bench of a cat outside the concert hall at the Andong Art and Culture Center.

That's all for now!

More photos

A ginko tree - so yellow.
Netta and Phillipa
The river and bridge in Andong.
A statue in Andong.
View from the temple that has the oldest wooden structure in Korea. The colors are really beautiful - the cell phone photo didn't really capture them. Forgot the camera.....

An unclear photo of the strange performance with the traditional instruments being "played?"
A commoners home in Hahoe.
Sorry for the sideways picture. I can't figure out how to change the orientation once I have imported the picture..... View in Hahoe.
Door in Hahoe.
Some cool carvings on the way into the village of Hahoe.
That's all until next time.

Pictures and More Story

This is in the garden at the traditional Korean house. There were lots of beautiful rocks in the garden. Some were shaped like animals, some were very large and others were patterned in amazing ways.
Here is one of the dogs and its little house.
The master of the house. His family has owned the house for many generations.
The inside of the roof on one of the buildings.
More of the garden. Netta took this picture - I really like it.

Some of the snacks they served. Presented in this lovely box - dried apples and figs, dried persimmons stuffed with walnuts, what we call ancestor donuts (which are used during Chuseok to honor the ancestors), and dashik (traditional tea sweets).
Drying persimmons.....
Shot of a window in the house from below.

So on with the story:

After the ancestor meal we went to a beautiful temple. I didn't actually hear any of the talk at the temple because Olive was enjoying playing in the leaves too much.

So much fun!

After this we went to another temple to eat dinner and watch some music. It was really cold and we hadn't been told to bundle up because we were going to eat outside. So John trekked back to the bus for warm things and while he was gone we were shown inside the building where the room was being warmed for us. They warmed it by making a fire under the floor. It was amazing almost too hot at times - I had to sit on my sweater to keep my bum from cooking.

Then there was a strange performance with 3 ladies "playing" traditional instruments in skimpy clothing (outside in the freezing night). John thought they were not really playing as their technique was not right. They played modern music and had a really showy presentation. There were also speeches by the mayor of the town and the woman whose organization sponsored the trip ( Korean Women's Forum).

Then dinner finally. Then we went back to the bus and some of the folks got off the bus - apparently they were staying at the temple to sleep. Netta was very upset as she wanted to sleep in a traditional Korean house. We went on to our lodgings and here again it gets weird.

So we stayed at the guesthouse of the local Andong Hospital. I thought it was a type o on the agenda that they meant hostel or something but no we pulled up to the hospital. Patients were outside smoking and sick people were wandering the halls. They checked us in and we went up to the 12th floor to our rooms. Our family actually had a traditional Korean set up with thin mattresses on the floor so that we could stay in one room together. It was strange - from our window we could see in patients' rooms. I kept thinking how in the US hospitals are the place where strong bacteria thrive and staying there seemed crazy. Oh well the room was very nice and we headed off early in the morning. Not before buying a few necessities in the many shops on the first floor of the hospital.

Off to breakfast in the morning. This was definitely Netta's favorite meal of the trip. All bready things and sweet tarts. While we were finishing up Olive and I went out and wandered the neighborhood a bit. We found a flower vendor and Olive oohed and aahed and smelled all the flowers. The man was so sweet and he gave Olive a beautiful rose. She was very pleased.

When we got back to the bakery Netta was jealous of Olive's flower so they headed over to the flower stall and she came back with her own free rose.

Next we went to the overlook cliff above Hahoe Village. John did this exact walk on his trip so it was fun to hear his info that he had found out on his trip. It was a nice little hike to a beautiful spot. Then before we went to the village they fed us again. We were all still full from the bready breakfast but we went to the same bulgogi restaurant that John had been to. It was amazing and there were hundreds of pots of duenjang in front of the restaurant which was cool.

Then we went to Hahoe Village and walked around. One interesting thing we learned was that when a traveler approached a village he or she would look for the highest gate and then go to that home knowing that was the largest home in the village and would provide lodging. Basically any traveler could stay for up to 3 months for free in exchange for information that they could provide from the outside world. Sometimes they would overstay their welcome and the food quality would go down until they "decided" to leave.

After Hahoe we saw the mask dance. This was the same dance we saw at the cultural festival in Bucheon only a better production. It was fun - hard to understand some of it though.

Next we went to another temple which was the oldest wooden structure in Korea. It was beautiful - the fall colors and the old buildings made a lovely setting. I will load some photos in the next post.

Netta made a friend on the bus, an English teacher from Trinidad. She was a lovely woman and we will see her this month when Netta and I go on a tour of the baker's market in Seoul.

Then lastly we went to the concert venue. There was a big reception there with lots of suits. This was another time when we thought "what the hell are we doing here?" But it was ok lots of places to play outside while the speeches happened.

Then food - Netta boycotted the food so John and Netta went out and found pizza while Olive and I played.

During the concert Olive and I played in the lobby. She played with a few other little ones and it was really sweet - jumping together and making each other laugh with spinning and such. She also befriended an usher who spent a lot of time entertaining her with her phone. It had music videos on it and games where you could pet a cat and make it purr and record your voice.

Then after the concert we headed back to the bus for the ride to Seoul. We all fell asleep on the bus and got home to Seoul and then took a taxi home.

It was a fun weekend - kind of strange but fun too.

I am behind on posting about our lives - it is hard to find time to post during the week as John is working all day and I am trying to be present with the kids. I will try to play catch up on the weekends as much as I can.

Diplomatic weekend in Andong

So here begins another strange tale of our life in Korea. I read a Facebook page called Korea for Kids and awhile ago there was a post about a weekend trip to Andong for the mask dance ( cool Halloweeny trip I thought) it said to e-mail someone so I did. She e-mailed me back and let me know that we were welcome to join the trip but the return bus on Sunday would not get into Seoul until midnight. I figured we could pull that off - Olive would just sleep on the bus and it was all free. Food - lodging -busing and tours.

So we decided to go, it seemed great and the agenda heading told that it was a trip for Diplomatic and Foreign Families. Who would be along? We assumed there would be other kids and some diplomats. Well we were right about the diplomats but not about the kids.

We had to meet them at 8 am at a hotel in Itaewon which is pretty far from our house so we set off early around 7 am. Well we approached the hotel in a funky way and wound up being 30 minutes late anyways. We had walked up a huge hill (the back entrance of the hotel) and were all hot and tired. They were all waiting for us --oops. We boarded the bus and not another single kid was along. It was mostly older folks and a few youngsters mixed in.

Off we went for a 3 hour bus ride to Andong. Strangely enough Andong was one of the places that John had visited on his trip so we were anticipating a lovely time. Olive slept on the bus and I think Netta did a bit too. The first place we went was a traditional Korean home. It was really beautiful and old and they treated us to a lovely snack. We saw the women working in the kitchen and the garden where all the food is grown. There was a beautiful garden there and some dogs with little dog houses that Olive loved. I will post photos in the next post.

There was an old building there that was used for a shrine and it was really beautiful. It was a bit weird there because apparently women are not allowed in the shrine building. Also the women were so obviously working their asses off making all the food and more talk was made of thanking the host than the women who were working so hard. We, of course, thanked the cooks and complimented them on the amazing snacks. The snacks included some lovely rice drink with ginger, peanuts and cooked rice. It was spicy and yummy.

Then on to lunch - which was an ancestor meal. Basically the people in this area practiced honoring the ancestors with food so often that the food became a meal that is very popular in that area. John had eaten at the same restaurant with his tour so you have already seen the food if you read his post.

I can't seem to find the time this week to finish this post. So I am publishing it unfinished and to be continued. Hopefully there will be time to finish the tale this weekend.