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.