quick christmas post

Here they are the cutest, happiest Christmas girls in Korea. We had a great day and the girls enjoyed all the lovely things brought over from loved ones at home. These dresses from Nana Rene and Grandad were a big hit - so incredibly cute.
Christmas cake - this is what Koreans do for Christmas - eat cake. We had to get one to be a part of the experience here but just when we had finished ours our neighbor (at least we think it was our neighbor) showed up at the door with an extra one from their party - so now we have 2 - well actually only 1 1/2 now. John and Netta tried to find the neighbors and offer some of our baked goodies in return but ended up knocking on someone else's door and so they got the goodies.
Netta - very happy about the Christmas Cake.
Paper dolls with Pauline. fun fun
John with Dino the amazing knitted dinosaur that Pauline brought for Olive.

It was a wonderful day. Thanks to all at home and I will try to post more details of our last couple of days soon.

Pauline is here!

Hi all - so as you can see here - Pauline arrived yesterday safe and sound. It is a joy to see her. I am up late posting and need to go to sleep so I will be brief. This is the girls on the subway as we headed out for a day at Seoul Tower. We have been wanting to go check out the view and figured Pauline's visit was a great chance. The weather didn't agree and it was overcast so the view was less than ideal. Oh well - we will have to go back - it was great anyway just being out and about and showing off Seoul.
Here is Olive pulling a face for the camera in Seoul Tower. She had part of her cast removed on Saturday - I have been meaning to post and let you all know. He took off the part that covered her knee so she can crawl and walk easier know. He also told us we can come back on Christmas eve and have the rest removed. Which is pretty thrilling as it is a bit earlier than we had thought and fun for Olive to have it off for the Christmas festivities with Pauline. She is wanting it off and wants to be walking and running again soon.
Sideways John and Olive.....
This is the cool elevator we took up to the cable car area. It was just an elevator on a hillside - neat huh?
This is a shot of the elevator track from the top.
Sideways Seoul Tower - I haven't figured out how to turn pictures here sorry.
John like to call these trees with coats. They put them on some trees here to keep them warm.
Happy folks.
Walking around in the observatory level of the tower.
A speed bump with a flower growing out of it...... not sure why. Ideas anyone?

That's it for now as it is 1 am and we are planning a big day out in downtown Seoul tomorrow. I'll try to blog again soon.

The Snowy Day

So today we awoke to a blanket of snow. Netta was jubilant and had us all suited up and out in no time. I wasn't going to take Olive out with the cast and all but she really wanted to go so we just bagged it up and out we went. Olive even ended up on the swing as you see here. The bare hands did not last long - the mittens went back on pretty quickly. I think the chain was cold.
Here is Netta all suited up and enjoying the snow.
The pristine swing before the butts.

The snow was really puffy and light - so beautiful and fun to brush off of things. I wish this photo was more in focus.

We all thought these little ledges were mighty cute covered in snow.
This is the view we saw from the staircase of our building.

Unfortunately it didn't last long - the day warmed up and despite there being more snow later in the day by the time it came along it melted right away in the puddles. Oh well. It was a fun morning.

Tomorrow we are off to the doctor to check in about Olive's progress.

Then Sunday Pauline arrives - we are unbearably excited about her visit. So lots of cleaning and getting ready is the plan for our weekend.

Doctor visit

So Olive went to see the doctor on Wed. and he checked her cast, did some more x-rays and said everything looks to be healing well and he wants to see her again in 10 days. I asked how long the cast might be on and he said around 4 weeks. He also said it is fine for Olive to try to walk on it with help or on her own. She has not really tried on her own but often asks for help and I am glad to know it is ok to go ahead and help her. She is mostly just dragging herself around on the floor and rolling to get around.

We also had our first real snow this week. It was fun for Netta she ran out to play in it. There was not much but some is still sticking around on rooftops.

So that is a brief check in and update. I will try to write more this weekend.

life goes on

As easy as it is to stay at home and avoid the extra carrying and lugging it takes to go out with the casted Olive we have been venturing out. We live on the 4th floor so we have 5 flights of stairs to carry her up and down every time we go out. I think it is more fun for her to be in the stroller checking out interesting things than staying at home staring at youtube and reading books. So off we go (especially on the weekend when John is available to help) - today we went to The National Museum of Korea. We posed for this photo opp where Obama had stood just a few weeks ago.
Here is Olive with the camera strap levitation device that we created. If her leg is not supported than the cast digs into her thigh in the back. She is wearing my sock to keep her toes warm as she can't wear a shoe on that foot. We put her own sock on her other foot but halfway through our outing today discovered that she had taken it off and dropped it. We were very glad that we had her stroller blanket to keep her tootsies covered on the way home. Don't want to get yelled at by the Korean grandmas when they see her bare toes and don't want her feet to get cold.
Here is a good shot of Olive with her new scarf. It has been tough to get her to wear a scarf - it seems really important to protect her little neck from the cold. I found this at a thrift store and realized that cutesy things like this actually help small children wear the warm things necessary here in the winter. Brilliant - Olive loves her puppy!

First full day with the cast

Hi so we made it through our first day of many to come with the casted leg. It was tricky figuring out how to set up her stroller so that it was comfortable for her. We ended up lifting it with an old camera strap. Pretty weird - but functional. It hurts her without support - it digs into her thigh where it ends.

I found out some clarification on the break - it is the tibia - so I suppose that means she broke her leg not her ankle. As John pointed out you can't really break an ankle as it is not a bone.

Olive spent the afternoon asking to walk with help - she is having a hard time sitting still so much. She tried dragging herself on the floor combat crawl style but that wasn't so fun. It worked better to walk while holding hands kind of like when she was learning to walk. She is very proud of herself when she can stand independently.

It is hard not to worry about her putting weight on it. I wonder if it will affect her healing. It is really hard to keep her off it though. Unless someone is sitting with her entertaining her which is hard when I am trying to cook, clean, do laundry -etc etc etc....

Maybe the lesson is to stop and just hang out with her - relax on the couch and read her books. If only life could stop for that....

Not a good day

So here I am back as promised but for all the wrong reasons. I have news to tell and it is not good news. Olive broke her tiny little ankle. She has a cast. She went down the slide at our local park just a little too fast. The first night we did not take her to the hospital as it was late and we thought it might just be a bad sprain. Although I have to say it was just as others have told me about kids and broken bones - she kept on crying longer than usual. But we waited until today and then went first to the acupuncturist who needled her and then sent us to have it x-rayed. It was x-rayed and found to be broken - not all the way through the bone about 3/4 of the way through and then the doctor put a cast on it. A big cast - not sure how life will be with the cast on. I'm kind of nervous as it was impossible for Olive to sit in her high chair tonight and the top of the cast was hurting as it pressed on her leg. The doctor said 3-4 months although we are hoping this was wrong and a miscommunication/ language confusion. She will go back for a check-up in one week so hopefully it will be cleared up then.

We have a guest now and so I will sign off with that short post. Sorry for the crazy news.

We are all fine otherwise and Olive is a trooper - she did great laughing through it all and letting everyone prick her and wrap her.

I'll write more soon and post pictures now.

photos

Olive getting acupuncture on her foot. We love our acupuncturist!
Olive getting her cast - isn't it enormous?

More shots of the casting process.

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.