This is a long time coming, but better late than never.
It wouldn’t feel right blogging over here, even as
infrequently as I do, and not mentioning Mom and Melissa’s visit over
Christmas.
So wonderful. I’m not usually one to be homesick, but seeing
them in Korea was fantastic. Almost surreal. I mean, you get over here and
everything is so different. Uncomfortable, even. You learn to live, where to
eat, where things are, and you eventually get to where this strange new place
starts to feel normal – pretty quickly, really, and then seeing your mom and
sister traipsing around your neighborhood is just wild.
They came on December 24th (that’s Christmas Eve
for you pagan savages reading this), and we were, as we ever are, working.
Christmas is definitely a thing in Korea, and there are many churches and
Christians, but it seems to me that the “spirit” or philanthropic/religious
aspects of the holiday are understated and the commercial aspects are
overstated (and that’s saying something coming from America). All that to say,
we were working on Christmas Eve.
Working a normal day meant that I wouldn’t be able to pick
up Mom and Melissa from Incheon Airport, where they were set to land at 8 AM.
Incheon is a good ways away from Sunae (my neighborhood) or Seoul – maybe 45-60
min. in a cab, and almost two hours on the subway.
Melissa has traveled a bit in Europe, and is fairly
familiar with airports. Mom has flown plenty of times, but has never been out
of the country. I was a little nervous, but not only were they able to get out
of the airport with ease, but they even made it to my school (I gave them an
address) in time to meet all my kids, my kids’ parents, and to see our Christmas
concert! I was floored!
It was so funny to mingle with all my kindergarteners’
parents in our classroom, and then introduce them to my mom. Or to introduce my
students to my mom. They all call me “Stephen Teacher”, so I introduced mom as
“Sheri Teacher”. Mostly because I thought it was funny, but most kids called
her “Stephen Teacher’s Mom”, which served.
Melissa and Mom got their first glimpse at Korean food at
the potluck that the school threw for the parents, but it was mostly pizza and
donuts and other western junk foods.
After the concert, where my kids performed their Christmas
speeches and our meticulously practiced dance routine to Frosty the Snowman (complete with Jazz hands), Mom and Liss went
back to Maria and my apartment to rest. It’s a long flight.
After work Maria and I went home and found Mom and Liss
asleep. We woke them up for dinner, and planned out the week they’d be here.
It was Christmas Eve, so Mom let us open a present that
night, just like she has every Christmas Eve in my living memory. Christmas PJ’s.
She even brought Maria a set, so we all matched.
We had off the 25th-Jan 4th, and Mom
and Liss would be with us until the 31st, when they would fly home
and do New Year’s Eve in Paris.
I wanted to show them Korea as I’ve experienced it. Part of
that is, of course, the tourist it-list, but more so I wanted them to get a
taste of living in the city and some of the exclusively Korean things that you
won’t necessarily find on a Buzzfeed countdown. Things like the crazy way
Korean recycle everything, or what it’s like to rely completely on public
transit. That probably doesn’t sound glamorous, but I wanted them to get a
feeling of being someplace new. Sometimes I worry that Seoul is such a big,
modern city that you can forget you’re in Korea.
Aside from those goals, both Mom and Melissa wanted to do
some shopping in the markets. They’d heard tales of purses and such treasures.
Maria gifted me a Korean copy of Settlers of Catan for Christmas
(!!!), so we started the vacation by teaching Mom and Liss to play that. Like
everybody I’ve ever played with, they were a little hesitant at first, but took
to it like fiends after one or two games. Soon it became a daily ritual.
Christmas morning we had a good breakfast at the apartment,
and played a lot of Catan before going out to see the Sunae area. That night we
had plans to go out to an “American buffet” with all of my co-workers. That was
a big time. I work with some pretty solid folks.
Afterwards we had a little party at a friend’s apartment.
The rest of our week together was a blur. Catan and the cold
and the subway. Gosh, a lot of subway. We probably rode it 3-4 hours a day.
Everyday. I’m writing this on February 9th, and I’ve probably only
been on the subway three times since Mom and Melissa left. I was about sick of
it by the end. Still, I like to think they got the experience.
The rest of our itinerary went about like this:
Dec. 26: Bau House, the old city gate, Hongdae, markets, and
street food.
We woke
up the next day, played a mandatory Catan game, and then took Mom and Liss to
Bau House, which if you’ve been following this blog you know is our favorite dog
café. It’s a good hour on the subway, but you get to hang out with a room full
of awesome dogs. Worth it. Bau House is in Hongdae, which is a cool part of
Seoul to walk around in. After checking out part of the city, we went to find a
market, which worked out well for me as I found a sweet parka for peanuts. It’s
been getting down to the single digits here and my medium jacket wasn’t quite
cutting it. My favorite part of the day, though, was finding a run of street
food stands and showing Mom and Melissa mandu (Korean wanton/dumplng) and these
sweet red-bean fish pastries that are sold around Seoul. I think they liked
them alright. I ate about four.
Dec. 27: Seoul palace with tour guide and Nam San tower and
the night market
The day
we went to Gyeongbokgung
(you can bet I copied and pasted that) Palace. Maria and I had gone their once in
the summer but it was so hot we didn’t stay long. This time we were given a
free tour guide (who spoke English!), and spent about two hours walking around
the palace grounds. It was waaay better in the winter, and it checked the general
tourist box for Mom and Liss. Just like last time, it was interesting to see
the site, but, again, I’m always a little disappointed with places that have
been so heavily refurbished for extended (and outdoor) public viewing. I prefer
ruins. The feel is more honest, I guess.
The best part of the palace is
that it’s right in the middle of Seoul, so you’ll walk through these old (or
made to look old) gates, and be staring at skyscrapers and an eight-lane highway,
and behind those are mountains.
After the palace we took a train
and then a bus to Namsam tower, which is the big blue tower that will come up
if you Google “Seoul Tower”. It was nice. Touristy, but nice and something that
should be seen. I heard yesterday that the tallest building in Korea is
actually Lotte Tower (Lotte is this huge oligarchy, like Time-Warner or Disney
back home), which is, I think, more impressive. Shame I didn’t know at the
time. Mom doesn’t do heights, but I think she was sufficiently impressed.
 |
| Seoul from the tower base |
After a long day out, I think we
just wanted to be home and warm. You’ve got to remember that you’re looking at
around 4.5 total hours on public transit and it’s about 15 degrees Fahrenheit.
The highlight of this day
though, was finding a food cart that gave out free cups of this hot fish-broth.
They make a grilled/boiled fish-paste kabob (It’s better than it sounds), and
the fish broth was the water they boil the kababs in. Melissa gagged. Mom
soldiered through two sips, so kudos to her. I thought it was pretty good
though, and come on! It was freezing and windy. I drank two cups.
Dec. 28: Pyeongchang Trout Festival
I enjoy
Seoul a lot more than I thought I would coming over. The city is fun, and there
are a million things to do, places to eat, funky shops and cafes to find.
Still, I’ve never felt more in Korea, than when I’ve taken a bus to one of the
smaller cities/towns on the peninsula. There’s a trout festival every year in
Pyeongchang, which is the province where the Olympics will be held in 2018, so
we hopped on a bus and went to check it out.
The
town was tiny, but, again, I like that. As a known hater of most of Panama City, a
little Korean town whose only real economic boon seems to be a trout festival
was right up my alley. I had hoped to get us ice fishing, but it was a little
too warm that day so we were limited to “hand fishing”. That’s where you change
into shorts and a t-shirt (provided by the festival) and lunge around in a knee
deep swimming pool chasing trout. It may have been too warm for ice fishing,
but it was still a goodly 32 degrees in the sun. That being the case, I was the
only one who opted for the hand fishing. I figured, we’re here. We came to
fish.
In the
time leading up to the hand fishing we checked out some ice sculptures, did
some snow tubing, and took a turn on some ATVs, which was a good time. Mom blew
out her shoe, so we had a good time trying to buy her a pair of boots.
After
that it was about time for handfishing, so I hustled back down to the festival
and got dressed. It was pretty nippy, but there were around 50 guys shouting
and stretching and jumping up and down around the pool, so you didn’t feel it
too much. Everyone’s families, and anyone else who cared to watch were crowded
around the pool. Maybe 100 or so folk. A guy with a megaphone shouted some
pumpup chants at us, blew a whistle, and everybody jumped in. I was half
expecting the trout to be a little dazed, but man, they were not. There were
probably around 50-60 trout schooling around the middle of the pool, and when
we jumped in they went nuts. Some guys were diving around, other were standing
still and trying to snag the fish being scared up by the divers. The smart
(though less sporting, I think) guys were scooping up a lot of water and just
throwing the fish out of the pond and picking them off the ground.
The
limit was two trout per frozen idiot, and you only had a minute to catch them.
I guess that was so the trout didn’t all have heart attacks. Maybe it sounds a
little easy to catching a trout in a knee deep swimming pool. I remember thinking
beforehand that it was a little lame. Maybe unfair to the fish. Well, hats off
to eagles and bears because those suckers can move. The only advice we got
beforehand was to grab for the head, which is easier said than done. At about
the 50 second mark I pinned a fat squirmer up against the wall of the pool and
spent the last 10 seconds cheering and stomping around with it held up
over my head. Got to say, I haven’t been much prouder of catching a trout.
Dec. 29: Board game café and gangnam
By this
point in the weekend we were all pretty tired. We spent the morning playing
Catan and drinking coffee and then took a train to Gangnam (you know, like the
Gangnam Style song) for shopping and to check out a board game café.
Dec. 30: Racoon café and Dinomeat and Vanilla Sky
One of
the things that everyone should do when they’re in Korea is go to a Korean BBQ.
So good. I’ve got a whole post on it from when we first got over here. We took
Mom and Liss to Dinomeat (our favorite BBQ place), and gorged like lions. It
was a sweet way to end the day after going to a Racoon Café in the city, where
(you guessed it) you can place with (probably non-rabid) raccoons! They were a
little shy, but eventually one came down and hung out with us for some treats
and scratches.
That
night we took Catan to one of our favorite neighborhood bars, the unfortunately
named Vanilla Sky, and chilled. It’s a “cooler bar”, which is where you get whatever
you want to drink out of these big coolers and then just pay when you leave by
showing your empties to the guy at the register. A cool Korean thing.
Dec. 31: Incheon Airport
Finally,
the day came that Mom and Liss had to go home. It was pretty sobering. I don’t
think I was really homesick until they came. Their flight was set to leave at 2
PM, so we tried to get them there around 12:30. The subway ride, as I said
before, is a long one though, and this being the first time we had gone to the
airport by train, we wound up getting to the correct terminal by 1:10. This
turned out to be a much bigger deal than we anticipated, as AirFrance
apparently closes their check-in a full hour before takeoff and will absolutely
do nothing for you if you show up past that mark.
We were
flatly told that we had missed the flight (even though it would be sitting on
the tarmac for another 50-odd minutes). After raising a fuss, we were sent on a
goose chase around the airport and ultimately, new tickets had to be purchased.
The moral of the story is two-fold: 1. Screw Air-France, and 2. Get to the
airport no later than 2 hours before your flight leaves. A costly lesson.
Despite
all that, the night turned out pretty nice. Mom and Melissa’s new flight left
at 10 or so, and Maria and I didn’t feel right leaving them at the airport, so
we all just hung out and played cards and chilled until the flight came. It was
New Year’s Eve, and we had plans to meet some people downtown, but honestly, it
was a lot more meaningful to spend the day/night playing Egyptian Ratscew with
Mom and Liss in the terminal. Plus, we were beat from the busy week.
When
the time to board finally came, it was a sad goodbye, of course, but I think Mom
and Melissa had a good time. I know that Maria and I did. I don’t want to be too
sappy when I say this, but with our little Christmas tree up (it’s still up on
2/9), the boardgames out, and Mom and Melissa here, it really felt like Christmas
in a way that was a lot more meaningful that I could have expected.
In hindsight,
there are things I wish we would have had more time/energy to do like norabong (Korean
karaoke) or a jimjabong (Korean spa/bathhouse/sauna), but we did a lot. Honestly
it would have been enough just to have us together, that we had in spades. I
mean, you can just about touch all the wall of our apartment at the same time,
so we couldn’t have been much more together.
It was
a Christmas I’ll remember for a long, long time.
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