The Last Couple of Weekends

Note: I wrote this at least a week ago, but for some reason I didn't publish it.

The last couple of weekends have been rather eventful for us. Although there are no pictures, we did some cool stuff and had quite a bit of fun. We also have gotten really, really worn out.



The weekend before last (September 19) we went out of town. PapaFish went all the way to Camp Casey - a good 1.5~2hr subway ride from our place in Seoul - to play board games n' such with some guys. He had fun, but it was a long day.



TheFry and I opted out of this kind of gaming, and so we went to hike Soyosan instead. I was winded after about 20 minutes of climbing up the hill.



Soyosan was a little disappointing. To its credit, it had been largely destroyed during the Korean War and it looked as if there was a lot of renovation still going on. Nonetheless, there were plenty of piles of random crap on construction sites, intermingled with lovely statues, buildings and scenery in general.



The waterfalls are made to look much more impressive in the marketing, but they were still graceful and sweet.



The temple had been recently reconstructed, and included a gift shop. I understand that it's customary to sell candles and incense and other things necessary to make offerings at holy places in such locations, but there was plenty of jewelry and cellphone accesories alos, which was quite disappointing (along with the coffee vending machines, and big black plastic sewage pipe running down out of the waterfall into the cave of worshippers).



Furthermore, hiking a mountain on a weekend is like asking for advice from every Korean grandmother in town. There was plenty of advice to go around, mostly to keep TheFry from getting crooked teeth and a cold. I didn't mention that he already had a cold that weekend, and no one seemed to notice or care, either. They also didn't seem to care that I understood very little of what they were saying, but the power of miming pushed through.



I was thinking of going there later in October because they supposedy are having a red maple leaf festival, but I don't think I'll make it. It's not worth the 3,000won to go inside the park - the outside is just as lovely, as far as maple trees goes - but traveling that long and tiring journey with a toddler in tow just to see the outside of a park whilst getting parenting advice from strangers in a language I don't fully understand doesn't sound like a relaxing time at the park for me. I think we'll stick closer to home, and hopefully by then we'll have a camera to share pictures of all the wonderful fall goodness.



This last weekend (September 26~27) we had a full weekend of events. On Saturday we went to Myeong-dong and Dongdaemun (and wound up walking through Namdaemun in between destinations) on a hunt for yarn so I can make myself a fall sweater. I've shrunk my other fall sweater, and my post partum self is just not fitting anything I own properly anymore. I'm too cheap to buy clothes in Itaewon, so I'm going to be making my own sweaters and such come fall and winter. Since I hardly have time to get this stuff done anymore, I thought I'd start now.



I ended up buying yarn in Dongdaemun. I remember thinking to myself (and actually saying out loud once) that there was no decent selection of yarns in Dongdaemun. That's probably at least partially due to the fact that I have a tendency to show up at the wrong time on the wrong day(s), which can really happen to anyone. Also it is partially due to the fact that a number of shops only display their thinnest, thread-like yarns on the outside, keeping their wooly yarn of delicious heavenly goodness on the inside for serious browsers. It also seemed, the first couple of times I went there, at least, that the kinds of items people like to make are those fishnet-esque sweaters and caps with tiny yarns and tiny tiny hooks...I'm just not interested in that.



This time, it must have been the right day, the right time, and I actually carried with me a recommendation list of stalls to go to. I picked up 1000 grams of super-soft yarn (I think it was wool, but I'm not sure) for 24,000 won (sold in 500 gram increments). I know for a fact that you can buy yarn even cheaper than that at Dongdaemun; last time I bought 500grams for 6,000 won each, which is comparable to Wal-Mart! I think that kind of yarn only comes in fruity bright colors (I bought royal blue and a lighter shade of blue) but if you're doing something fun then it's worth it.



There were also a fair amount of stalls that had boxes of miscellaneous yarns for 1,000~1500 won apiece outside their stores. I thought about sifting through some of those but I decided I'd spent enough time already.



Last night (Sunday) we went to the Grand Finale of the Seoul Drum Festival in Seoul Forest Park. It was an interesting show. The announcements were made in both Korean and English, to our surprise. There was a fusion group combining Korean traditional drumming and Peruvian music, a group from Mexico that mostly danced, and several other groups fusioning traditional Korean drumming techniques and modern music. It was interesting, but we could have done with out the techno beats in the background. Furthermore, every time the audience applauded, TheFry started freaking out and crying. It would have been sad, but after the 10th time or so, he wasn't crying anymore, he was just screaming, as if that's how he felt he was supposed to react. It was hilarious.



The weekend was long and exhausting, but we got to do some free stuff, so it was not all in vain.

Jjajang Baby!

This is one of those posts I just really didn't want to write without pictures. However, it's just too good to pass up.

Recently, TheFry has decided he will not go to bed before midnight. This is probably partly due to the fact that MamaFish gets home from work at about 10:30 at night, and he likes to wait up for her. Therefore, in order to retain some semblance of sanity, the Fish family goes for a walk around the neighborhood every night at 11:00.

There are many things to see on this walk. Sometimes we go to HomePlus Express and buy groceries or an ice cream bar. Sometimes we get ice cream at McDonald's. Sometimes we even get ice cream at the Family Mart in any of the buildings nearest us.

There is also a park near our place called Paris Park. It is complete with fountains, basketball courts, a therapeutic walkway (sharp rocks! ouch!!) and exercise machines, bench presses, and a running path. We usually stop by so PapaFish can bench press and MamaFish can take a stroll with TheFry.

The past couple of nights, however, we've been stopping by a certain noodle tent. The noodle tent opens up at night right outside of the building where MamaFish teaches. It sells two kinds of noodles: udon and jjajang.

The tent is actually more than just a tent. It is a truck that has been converted to a restaurant. The truck's sides fold down and the truck bed and tailgate are covered with a kind of linoleum that looks like wood. The tent is set up and attached to the truck, and it houses a few plastic tables and stools.

In the truck bed there is a gas tank and hooked up to the gas tank are four large burners that are used to boil water and keep the sauce and broth hot.

I'm not sure about the actual mixing of the dough, but the noodles are cut fresh right in front of you, then boiled on the spot. When we go, we order jjajangmyeon, which is a kind of noodle served with black sauce. The sauce is salty and savory and about the consistency of country gravy.

TheFry loves jjajangmyeon! And by loves I mean he screams at me until I feed him the next bite. Of course all the passersby exclaim how cute he is, how he eats like a doll, and that he eats so well. I can't help but wonder, though, what they think of his constant yelling.

When we eat out with TheFry, it usually goes like this: MamaFish holds TheFry in her lap and feeds him for 3/4 of the meal. When PapaFish is down to his last few noodles, he cuts them up, takes TheFry onto his own lap, and feeds him while MamaFish can enjoy the rest of her dish! This usually works out pretty well, and everyone is happy in the end.

At the end of the night, TheFry crashes on his little makeshift bed, his face still covered with brown sauce, and he falls into a deep sleep rather quickly. Am I introducing him to bad eating habits? Perhaps so, but I don't think we've made this a habit quite yet. Still, we love jjajangmyeon!

Things I Love about Korea!

I go to work every afternoon at 2:30. That means that the time I get to spend with my family is in the morning, when I am refreshed and happy (I'm a morning person if you didn't know). In my previous life, I worked eight hours at a job that drained me completely, so that by the time I got home - even if I hadn't had to think or move around or really do much of anything at work that day - I was totally exhausted and wanting to be alone or just veg out and watch TV and eat. Mostly, I just wanted to eat. TheFry would be either taking a nap or just waking up when I got home from work. When he woke up, he would be happy for a little while, then he would want to eat. We would eat food. I would put him in the living room so I could clean the kitchen. I would put on a half hour baby video so I could crochet for a few minutes. Then we would go for a half-hour walk together. Sometimes we would watch Korean dramas on the Internet together, but other times we would play. TheFry would take a long bath, have a bottle, and go down to bed. I would spend a few hours watching TV and crocheting. It was rather bleak.

Now I get up with TheFry. PapaFish gets up when breakfast has been prepared and we all eat breakfast together. Sometimes we go out for a walk in the morning. There is a park near our apartment that has a huge pool with a ton of fountains. Also there is a bunch of exercise equipment at the park, from bench presses to rowing machines. There is a "therapy walkway" which is a path of different sized rocks arranged in various patterns; you take off your shoes and walk on the path, and it's like getting a massage or acupuncture in your feet. It feels wonderful afterwards.

Sometimes we just go to HomePlus - our local grocery store. It has 3 floors. It's like Super Wal-Mart and Macy's combined and on crack at the same time. There's a huge food court and all three of us can share a meal there for about 5 bucks. It's cool to just go and look and see what they have, to plan out the things we might buy to improve the living conditions of our apartment, or to just dream of what we could make the place like. But the food court is reason enough for us to pay HomePlus a visit on a weekday morning.

Sometimes we just hang out at home. TheFry takes a morning nap. I crochet. We watch NCIS back-to-back for about 2 or 3 episodes. I go to work a little early to use internet or to prepare for the day.

I get off work at 10pm. After work, Seoul is even more alive than it was before. The park fountains aren't going anymore, but the park is full of people playing basketball and hanging out with friends. On Thursday, we went for a walk to a playground that was in a nook between several high-rise apartment buildings. There must have been about 10,000 people living in that small portion of the neighborhood, but it was completely quiet. There were no loud cars, loud music, loud people being obnoxious. It was THURSDAY, and it was almost midnight. We played on the see-saw, swang on the swings and slid down the slides.

There are many things here that are different than back in the United States, but we have found that we are adapting rather easily. TheFry has also been doing very well. He loves the attention he gets and he loves going out people-watching in the middle of the night. We love going to grab an ice cream bar for the rough equivalent of $0.40 and walking around the neighborhood. There is always something new to find, always somewhere new to eat. It is going to be a really fun, exciting year.