I'm so full.

Everyone keeps asking me about the food. Obviously I can't cover all of the delicious things to eat in one blog post, so expect this to be a reoccurring theme. This particular post is going to be fairly random.

Restaurants are everywhere. The area where we live has streets lined with tall buildings and there are stores on every floor. If you don't read Hangul than figuring out what's in the building is challenging, but chances are there will be a bunch of places to eat. There are also sidewalk vendors, food trucks, and people selling fruit out of their cars. I can't believe people here are so skinny, there's delicious food everywhere!

First of all, let me just point out that THIS is the oven I'm working with at home. This is one of my excuses for eating out a lot. See all those stickers on it? Those are handwritten English labels so that I can work the oven. Unfortunately they don't help much. This is the most confusing oven/microwave/fermenter/grill combo I have ever tried to use. I attempted to make dinner in it the other night and after 15 minutes of trying to remember the magic combination of buttons that would make it bake things I got desperate and started pushing all the buttons randomly. Surprisingly it worked! 30 minutes later we had a perfectly edible Apple Oven Pancake. I'm not betting that I can ever make the oven work again though.

Also interesting (perhaps only to me), my eggs have Hangul stamped on them, and my Styrofoam meat tray has wood grain printed on it!

 

 Restaurants here seem to like to advertise with pictures of raw meat. Lots of very large pictures. This particular one is just one in a series of floor to ceiling pictures down an entire hallway. I don't know how pregnant women can stand it.

 

 I enjoy browsing in the bakeries. They have beautiful cakes and desserts and so many delicious looking breads. The small square one on the left was labeled "Milk Rollin". It was a dense and slightly sweet roll. The homely looking piece of bread on the right was delightful. It was disguised as an ordinary loaf of sliced bread but upon removing a slice I discovered that it was so much more. It's super light, fluffy white bread pre-buttered with whipped, sweetened vanilla butter. Yes, I realize that's essentially frosting. But it's OK. Because I say so. I purposely haven't purchased more of this because I ate all far too much of the loaf last time.

 

 This is another picture of what Americans apparently like to call a "beef and leaf" restaurant. So named because you typically take a large lettuce leaf and fill it with meat and various toppings and eat it taco style. Everything I've tried at this type of restaurant has been delicious.

 

 

 This, dearly beloved, is Schneeballen.
We went to a very fancy mall (more to come on that later) and this is what my dear husband came home with. By the name I presume it's German, but as we found it in Korea it's going in my blog. It's kind of like unsweetened very crunchy ice cream cone wadded into a rock-like ball and coated in flavored powdered sugar or chocolate. Or cheese if you're so inclined. To eat a Schneeballen you smash it with the hammer and then you eat the shards. I was not a huge fan but the boys (including my husband) seemed to be quite pleased to get to smash their dessert with a hammer before eating it.

 

 Sorry, terrible picture, but this tasty dish still deserved a mention. Half an acorn squash filled with candied potatoes, walnuts, and dried bananas. All soaked in honey. They served it to me cold but I think it would have been fantastic warmed up. Yes, those are white potatoes. I don't know how they got them so crispy and sugary on the outside, but they were great.

 

 My dear husband whom I love very much has had some tough luck ordering food for us. Several times now he has managed to order the spiciest food I have ever eaten. (I can't fault him, I don't know what we're ordering either!) This dish of soup is called kimchi jjigae. It had such a good flavor and was so good I just kept eating it but I was crying by the time I was done. We still don't know what it was that my husband is eating in the picture. Some sort of breaded meat covered in only slightly spicy sauce. And about 5 french fries artfully drizzled in ketchup.

 

 Just for fun. A new restaurant opened and a Korean clown on stilts gave balloons to the boys. Yes, I believe the girl behind him is bopping him with a balloon.

 

 I took the boys to a "traditional Korean porridge" restaurant. They had pumpkin porridge (soup) with very chewy little dumplings in it and I had porridge with rice, chicken, and vegetables. It was delicious! I foresee many porridge deliveries in our future.

A side note: Most restaurants give you lots of yummy little "side dishes" that can contain any number of things like different types of kimchi, seasoned veggies, bean sprouts, fish cake (I don't know what it's made out of but it tastes good), and sometimes meats. I've seen people just eat them or add them into their main dish. Sometimes you also get a little cup of tea or barley water.

 

 Yes, we can get pizza delivered here too! The easiest thing to do is to order a "set" (what we would call a combo). This place included pasta and cheese bread. Oh, and sweet pickles, Parmesan, and spicy sauce. Also, the pizza crust was green. But it was pizza and it was good.

 

 

Our Adoring Public

One of the things we're having to get used to here is all the attention. Or maybe I should say I'm having to get used to the attention my children are getting. No one really pays attention to me except to marvel that I'm the mother to ALL of these boys. The boys aren't having trouble getting used to it, they love attention!

When we're waiting for a train we actually attract a crowd. Anyone over the age of 35 seems to be charmed by our kids. Men and women will go out of their way to come and talk to them, pat them on the heads, touch their faces, and sometimes take pictures (good thing I'm not too nervous about germs!). If we're in an office or restaurant and our kids start fussing or crying there's instantly someone there talking to them or offering them candy.

Some restaurants and businesses have play areas set up for kids. We ate lunch at just such a restaurant this weekend.
We met one of my husband's friends from work and he took us to a Korean Barbecue place he likes. We removed our boots in the entryway and were seated on pillows at very low tables. The waiter brought many "side dishes". There was kimchi, lettuce, salad, sliced garlic and onions, beansprouts with some sort of kimchi on top, sauces, and some sort of Korean coleslaw (like all my very technical names for the food?). They lit a little charcoal grill in the middle of the table and pulled down an air vent over the grill (you can see it in the pictures below). Our friend gathered a plate of raw meats from the refrigerated buffet case. He cooked for us and we enjoyed quite a feast, as it was "all you can eat" style. This restaurant had a clever twist on "all you can eat". If your eyes are bigger than your stomach and you leave food on the table, they charge you a fee for being wasteful. Near our table there was an area with a TV playing Korean cartoons and about half a dozen mini retro arcade games.

We had been seated next to a Korean couple and their friend. They watched and smiled at our kids all through the meal and when we were finished eating they started trying to talk to them. Their English was extremely limited but the boys were happy to put on a performance and chatter away in English. The woman managed to communicate that they'd like to take a picture with the kids. I offered to let them hold the baby and they were ecstatic. With a lot of gesturing and help from a translation app on my phone, we figured out they wanted to text the pictures to me. The waitress even got in on the action and carried boy #3 around the restaurant for a while, showing him to the other servers and even some of the other customers! The woman showed me pictures of her two kids, they looked like models! I then saw one of the men hand boy #1 some money and told him to get ice cream (he knew the English word for ice cream!). I tried to refuse it, but he gave it to my son anyway and kept smiling and saying "ice cream!". I thought it was 1,000 Won (about $1), and didn't realize it was actually 10,000 Won until the cashier handed us change. I had #1 try to give him the change, but the man insisted he keep it. Hopefully we followed the proper procedure though, I've read that when given a gift you're supposed to try and refuse it at least once.

As you can see, the boys love the attention.

She insisted I get in the picture too.

I'm starting to think that seeing South Korea "with kids" is the only way to go! With them along the boundries of culture and language seem permeable.

Waffles to Write Home About!

Today we decided to do more exploring around the area we'll be living in.

After the train ride where we experienced the now familiar mob of people that flock to our children, we set out to find lunch. As we walked and stared in awe at the seemingly millions of restaurants awaiting us with menus written in Hangul, a small sign with pictures of waffles on it beckoned to us. Boys #1 and #2 started cheering for waffles, so in we went.

 Little did we know, we had just discovered the most delicious waffles in the world. Really. These were the best I've ever had. I was actually pretty disappointed that I had ordered something else and had to let my adorable little boys decimate the entire plate of waffles. Next time, boys, Mommy will have her own plate of waffles. And she's not planning on sharing. Oh, and to top it off, the waffle comes with a mountain of whipped cream, fruit, and a dish of gelato. Brilliant.



Before

 

After

We wandered around for a while, visited our first E-Mart, and drooled on the windows of at least 5 of the bakeries that I will soon live by.

Turns out the temperatures here are so cold that the beautiful, grandma-made mittens we brought with us are not quite warm enough when we spend hours wandering around outside. Today boy #2's hands got so cold I had to lend him my mittens. Then my hands were so cold that I ended up popping into a children's boutique and buying two pairs of ridiculously expensive (but thankfully quite warm) mittens for the boys so that I could have my mittens back.

We then got brave and ate at a little noodle shop! The employees were quite kind and smiled while we pointed at what other people were eating and held up two fingers. I felt pretty silly, but it got us two huge bowls of hot noodle soup. The boys are being really great about trying new foods. Boy #2 even tried cabbage kimchi but wasn't a big fan. I think I may be starting to understand why people here eat it with everything. It's really good!

Also, I made an interesting discovery. After looking in one of our Korean phrase books we discovered that not only are people complimenting us on our boys and how cute they are, they also frequently think that #2 is a girl (too cute for his own good I guess), and they also sometimes offer to take the boys off my hands! One lady today even tried (jokingly) to lead #2 away with her. He wouldn't go with her, just gave her flirty little smiles and hugged me.

And finally, just because every blog post is better with a baby picture...

#3

The building is on fire!

So, after hearing my glowing description of The Little Prince kids cafe, my husband decided that that's where he wanted to go for dinner yesterday. Needless to say, boys #1 and #2 were delighted when the elevator doors opened, revealing heaven for the second time in two days.

The boys got right to work on wearing out the playground attendants and my husband picked out a table. We ate a leisurely dinner and decided we had enough time for coffee before we headed back to the train. We pushed the call button*, placed our order, and started chatting again.

We were so involved in our conversation that we didn't really pay attention when we started to smell smoke in the air. We didn't really pay attention when a few people started peering out the windows. In fact, we were totally oblivious to the animated conversation between all the other adults in the restaurant as they started to grab their children. One kind, English speaking Korean man took pity on the Stupid Americans and made his way over to us. "Sir! The building is on fire! Please leave!". Well that got our attention. I packed the baby into the car seat with his blankets while my husband went to retrieve the older boys from the playground.

And then I became the Crazy American Lady. I started laughing. Yes, I realize that it's totally inappropriate to laugh at a room full of parents trying to evacuate their children from the 5th floor of a building burning in 20 degree weather. Especially when I am one of those parents. But you see, I couldn't help laughing. One of my big fears of living here was being trapped on a high level in a burning building and having to drag three children down multiple flights of narrow stairs packed with other scared people. And so here we were! Great, let's get this out of the way first thing. Bring it on.

I joined the other parents in stuffing my crying children into coats, boots, and hats (in retrospect, yes, it would have been safer to deal with the burning building problem first and the cold problem later). Just as we started to head out another employee came running in and said something. Everyone instantly relaxed. The nice man translated for us again. The building NEXT to us was on fire, not the one we were in. So everyone unbundled again and sat down. My husband and I were hesitant because, come on, these buildings are all essentially touching. They might as well be one building. And the people across the street were still standing there staring at our building. But hey, when in Korea...so we sat down.

We all watched out the window as the firemen finished putting out the fire and rolled up their hoses. The waitress explained in broken English that someone had thrown a cigarette into the space between the buildings and some debris had caught fire. She also asked that we "please remain calm" (perhaps because of my laughter earlier?). We looked later and discovered that the space between the buildings is maybe 2 feet wide.

So we relaxed, drank our coffee, and took the train back to the hotel. I dreamed of burning buildings all night. Even so, I was up and ready for more adventures today.

*The call button is another fabulous thing they have here. It's a small button they install on every table. When you push it the waitress instantly appears. If you don't push it, you're left in peace! America, let's do this.

The Little Princes

Today I ventured out on my own. Sort of. The boys and I were escorted to the train station by my dear husband. There we met up with a friend who escorted us to a Fabulous new place. There's a chain of restaurants here in South Korea called "The Little Prince" (here's their US website http://www.littleprinceusa.com/). And yes, it's loosely based on the famous book by Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

American moms, get ready to be jealous.

We walked in and were immediately asked to remove our shoes and put on a pair of foam slippers. The kids were tagged with stickers that contained their name, time of arrival, and shoe locker number (all written in Hangul). Then the kids were released.

Flashback to a play place in the US. At a play place in America, this would be the time when you grit your teeth over the grossness factor of the playground and hang around the edge of the play area, listening to other kids teach your kids bad words and waiting to break up fights.

OK, now back to The Little Prince. My boys were guided into one of the play areas by some incredibly patient, sweetly smiling playground attendants. These women proceeded to supervise the kids, pick up toys, and clean the toys and playground while the parents hung out. And we weren't sitting on uncomfortable benches around the edge of the room. We were seated on cushy chairs in a beautiful sunny room near TV screens displaying shots from security cameras placed around the entire restaurant. We were handed menus and ordered food! Actual food! Fancy food! And it was delicious! And as we ate and chatted, the kids ran around and had fun!

America, this is a brilliant concept. Why have we not picked up on this?

The boys had a fantastic time. I must admit, I did too. It's always fun watching my kids have a blast. For a little while they got to escape the stress and boredom of the move and just be kids. Boy #1 found a Korean boy who spoke enough English to play superheros with him. Boy#2 was a hit with the playground ladies and got lots of attention from them. Boy #3 only woke up long enough to eat.

We stayed longer than we had planned, and as we had nothing more pressing than a giant pile of laundry waiting, I was happy to stay and drink another coffee.

 (This is the very one I was served. Impressive, right?)

So here we are.

We arrived in South Korea five days ago. I hardly feel qualified to analyze anything I've seen or experienced. In a way, the last five days have been very similar to our normal life: we eat, we sleep, etc. Except that even mundane daily activities are tinged with excitement.

--Showers are more exciting because of a strange shower head that provides fabulous water pressure. It also shoots water violently out of the shower when it is perched in its holder, and sprays everything in sight when it occasionally falls from its perch. Add to this a hair-trigger faucet handle that can instantly turn a warm shower into a scalding fire hose of pain.
--Going to breakfast is more exciting because it involves navigating an icy hill with a stroller and two preschoolers who simultaneously complain about the cold and joyously stomp in any snow they can find.
--Riding in cars is more exciting because it involves nervously peering into other cars and seeing the other drivers texting, counting money, taking phone calls, or calculating if it's safe to run the red light yet.
--Let's be honest, riding on trains is always exciting. Especially when you have no idea what 95% of the signs and announcements say.

So with the mundane activities being so interesting (and killer jet lag forcing us into bed before 7pm), I feel like we've hardly had time to enjoy many actual adventures! We have managed to squeeze in house hunting, meals with friends, train rides, and meeting many new people. The food we've had was delicious, the people we've met have been wonderfully kind, and I'm looking forward to the many adventures to come.