Best Fruit Ever.

Three boys, gorgeous weather, it's a combination that doesn't lead to much computer time. Most emails have been answered at the playground, me hunched over trying to shade the screen so I can see those tiny little keys. Many phone calls ring, unanswered, in the house. And my blog. Here it sits. Patiently waiting for me to get to it. My followers, however, have not been as patient. Ahem. You know who you are.
To get me back into the swing of things, here's an easy topic that everybody loves. Food. I've been eating a lot of it. Here is the scoop on the local produce.

The produce here is fantastic. The veggies are great. Delicious, fresh, and a wide variety. I've eaten many greens that I've never seen before! But the fruit, oh my, the fruit...

Strawberry season was bliss. They were everywhere. The grocery store, corner market, backs of trucks, everyone had tons of these incredibly delicate, amazingly flavorful strawberries for sale. We couldn't get enough. I'm currently mourning the fact that strawberry season is so short. Thankfully we appear to be starting cherry season now. I purchased some from a guy with a truck full of cherries and they were amazing.
Also making a daily appearance at the corner produce market, grape tomatoes that taste like you grew them yourself.
                

And now a confession. I have never cared much for watermelon. I can hear you now..."Gasp. Is she really American?! This is sacrilege. She must hate toasting marshmallows over an open fire too!". Hear me out.

I have to admit, they look promising. Giant, heavy, beautifully skinned things, calling out to you from roadside stands all summer. They show up sliced and pink and juicy at every potluck, ready to weigh down your paper plate. I always fall for it. Call it hope. And then, the true test. A big mouthful...of disappointment. A mouthful of vegetable flavored slush peppered with bug-like seeds. Fooled again.

Until now. I viewed friends with skepticism when they raved about the delicious -albeit expensive- Korean watermelons. But could it be true? Hope remained in a tiny part of my heart that hadn't been crushed under the tasteless watermelons of summers past. Reluctantly I shelled over the cash and hauled a heavy melon home. And thus my life changed. Friends, did you know that watermelons can actually taste like something?! They can be sweet, juicy, wonderful things. A melon truly worthy of taking up half your plate at a BBQ. This is the watermelon that I was thrilled to introduce my boys to.

Oh, right, this is why kids always have to eat watermelon outside.

Intro to Seoul part 2

Our first trip to Seoul, part 2

Day Four:
So after so much bopping around at shopping malls, I decided we should do something educational. I opted for the National Museum of Korea. This place is huge! In retrospect, I probably could have chosen a more interesting place for the boys. I, however, had a great time. The boys and I managed to tour the entire first floor of exhibits on the history of Korea before children dying from boredom became an issue. Too bad, because I think the other floors may have been a little more attractive for kids (art and pottery exhibits I think). There were a couple gift shops and they looked beautiful, I look forward to browsing there when I don't have quite so much assistance from small boys. I had heard there was a children's wing to the museum, so we attempted to visit it next. Unfortunately they only allow a limited number of visitors at a time and they had already given out all the available tickets. So back to the hotel we went.

This is the entry way/plaza between the two parts of the museum.

  For dinner my dear husband joined us on a trip to Itaewon, an eclectic area containing restaurants and shops of many different ethnic origins. We decided on a third floor Thai restaurant, so the older boys and I trooped up the stairs while lucky Daddy carried the stroller and baby. The boys had their usual favorite, chicken satay, while I enjoyed mine, a coconut milk/lemon grass soup, and I shared Pad Thai and coconut curry with my husband. The food was fantastic of course.

        

Far past their bedtime, the little boys obligingly clung to the back of the stroller for the ride home. Until we stopped in our tracks. We were enveloped in a heavenly cloud of warm, snicker-doodle scented air. Trance-like, I ducked into a tiny cookie shop. I eventually stopped trying to inhale all the air in the shop and emerged with a box of expensive cookies. Sadly, the cookies were not as amazing as I was hoping, but I'm still impressed with the marketing tactic of venting their oven out onto the sidewalk. We also stopped at a Mediterranean bakery and I tried Turkish Delight for the first time. Confession: I said "I" because I didn't share.


Day Five:
The three boys and I took a tour to a Korean Folk Village. Our group took a bus there, and arrived early afternoon. I was the only one in our group who brought children to keep me amused, so the boys considerately tried to keep everyone entertained. Being a village designed to exhibit how people lived many years ago, there were no paved sidewalks. Pushing the stroller through the spring mud was a bit of a workout. We started off with an exhibit by traditional Korean dancers and drummers called Pungmul. The drumming was very loud and the boys were amazed to see the dancers leaping around swirling the ribbons on their hats wildly. The tour continued around the village, and ended with some time in the gift shops. Again, they looked very interesting, but a little difficult to navigate with a double stroller. On the way home the bus stopped at a jewelry store near the American Embassy. This store featured jewelry made from amethysts which are mined here in Korea. Boys #1 and #2 told me I could buy whatever I wanted and were quite charming to the sales ladies.

One of my favorite things. See that cylindrical basket in the upper right hand corner? I think our tour guide called it a "wicker wife". She explained that in the summers everyone would get too hot and smelly and it was too hot to cuddle with one's spouse. So the man of the house would cuddle with this cool, comfortable basket instead.

Turning the millstone was their favorite part.

Later that afternoon we attempted to go to another children's cafe. We ended up taking two taxis, my dear husband took boy #1 and I took boys #2 and #3. My cab took us to the correct address but it turned out to not be a kids cafe after all. In fact, the business wasn't even open! However, I couldn't seem to communicate to the cab driver that I wanted to be take somewhere else and he remained stationary. Exasperated  I finally just got out of the cab (I'd just like to take a moment to point out that almost every other cab driver I've had has been kind and helpful). I had recognized some of the area we had driven through and figured I'd just walk back that way. Turns out my husbands cab couldn't even find the address and had dropped him off in Itaewon. So I piled the little boys onto the stroller and started back the way we had come. Apparently I must have underestimated just how many narrow, mountainous alleys the taxi had driven through after leaving the area I was familiar with! I soon found myself lost in a maze of very steep, very narrow alleys that wound their way around expensive homes that were almost completely hidden by high walls. To add to the excitement, it was almost dusk, we were hungry, and expensive cars with foreign flags were frequently speeding by me. I kept heading down hill and alley led to alley led to alley and I began to despair that I'd ever find a real street again, let alone a familiar one. I kept in contact with my husband, but as I couldn't find any landmarks (yay, another house with a 10 foot high cement wall around it), neither he nor a taxi could find me. Finally, as I am about to burst into tears, I spot a row of tall buildings. Civilization! I knew it was there! Just on the other side of those buildings is traffic! I can hear it! So, I should go there. Unfortunately  all of these buildings are touching each other. What that means is I'm faced with a solid wall of buildings keeping me from where I want to be. I walk on. Finally I spy a gap!  My spirits soared only to crash and burn. Between me and the passageway between the buildings was the steepest alley I have ever seen (and I have done some pretty impressive hills with this stroller at this point). This hill was so steep I would have been afraid of walking down it by myself, let alone exhausted with 80 lbs of stroller/children dragging me down it. Hearing a noise, I glanced over to my right and realized I was not alone. I was being watched. By a large German shepherd. Decision made. Keeping one eye on the dog and one on the treacherous slope, we began our decent. Making boy #2 walk with me so there was less weight on the stroller seemed like a good idea until half way down when we discovered the alley was covered with broken glass. Too late, press on! Miraculously we arrived safely at the bottom! And behold! There was the street! Amazingly, we had popped out right in front of the Thai restaurant we had eaten at the night before! Thank you Lord! A tearful phone call and a few minutes later I was safely eating in a cozy Korean restaurant with my dear husband and all my children safe and sound. I slept well that night.


Day Six:
"Yes, the zoo is easy to get to by train!" said the girl at the tourist desk. I guess she had never made the trip with a stroller. Incorrect signage and out of service lifts did not stop me though. I finally found my way to the correct train! And made it to the zoo! The zoo was great, well worth my efforts. We went to the Seoul Grand Park Zoo. The entrance fee for me and the three boys was about $3.00! There was a fair amount of walking involved as (like many things here) the zoo was built on hills. Almost all of the signage was in English and Hangul, so it was easy to find where to go. We spent at least 5 hours hiking around and still didn't see all the animals! I spotted one other English speaker there and my boys were almost a zoo exhibit themselves! They had their pictures taken a lot and one nice couple even offered to arrange marriages between their very young daughters and boys #2 and #3. Some very tired boys and I hiked back to the train where we met my dear husband and ate dinner purchased from street vendors.


Day Seven:
Something educational again! We visited the War Memorial of Korea. The boys of course wanted to start outside with the static displays of military equipment. The museum has many fantastic pieces outside and boys #1 and #2 enjoyed climbing all over them. I was pleased to discover that almost all of the signage was both in Hangul and English. Inside I think we covered about 75% of the museum before my little troopers gave out, although they had a great time while we were there. Unfortunately we missed most of the displays on the Korean war, so we're planning on going back again. The displays we saw were beautifully done and almost everything was available in English.

Being pirates. Yes, they brought swords to the museum with them.

Afterwards we met my dear husband and took the train back home. Not too bad for my first trip to Seoul!

Intro to Seoul part 1

First trip to Seoul, Part I

Seoul is one of the biggest cities in the world. According to Wikipedia, 10 million people reside in Seoul. If you look at the whole metropolitan area, it contains over 26.5 million people. That makes it the second largest metropolitan area in the world. HALF of all South Koreans live in the Seoul area along with over 600,000 international residents. There are a lot of people here.

So. Back to me. And three little boys. 

We had the opportunity to spend a week in Seoul while my husband did a week of training there (in other words, we'd be on our own for the most part). For our first foray into exploring Seoul, this was intimidating but I was up for a challenge. I mean, come on, the hotel has a "Discover Seoul" desk staffed with folks that will help you find stuff to do. How hard can it be?

Day One: 

Our car still hadn't arrived, so we took the train to Seoul. It took just over an hour, with one transfer to another line to get where we were going. Since we were going on the train, packing light was a necessity: stroller, purse, and two giant back packs. At the transfer station we discovered that there was no elevator to get to the other train, so my dear husband hoisted the double stroller, the baby in his car seat,  and a backpack up and down several flights of stairs while I followed with the other two boys and a pack. We didn't know at the time, but all transfers (so far) do not have an elevator. Some have a wheelchair lift, but the one that I tried wouldn't work, so we've resigned ourselves to just hoisting the stroller up and down the stairs ourselves.

We discovered that we were staying close to the IPark Mall, so we walked there. The IPark Mall is very nice, clean, and huge. In general, my boys aren't fond of shopping malls, but we discovered this one had a Huge children's cafe on the top floor and boys #1 and #2 suddenly fell in love with this mall. In order to avoid walking back to the hotel in the dark, we hopped in a taxi. However, the taxi driver seemed to have no idea where our hotel was. We even had some very kind passersby translate for us and the driver still tried to claim ignorance. He finally realized we weren't going to get out of his cab until he took us somewhere (it took a long time to get all of us and the stroller and bags into a cab, no way was I doing it twice), so off we went. Suspiciously, he went right to the exact place we wanted to go. 

The Giant Kids Cafe

At the Kids Cafe we saw the coolest fire extinguisher I've ever seen.

Day Two:

 We had been delighted to discover that they have Lush Cosmetics stores here too and decided to find our way to one. The "Discover Seoul" desk folks supplied us with an address for the store written in Hangul and a card in Hangul that gave directions back to the hotel. Prepared to face the taxi drivers, we departed. The Lush location was in another big fancy mall (a Shinsaege mall I think), and upon our arrival we discovered a large clothing market in the streets near the mall. We wandered for a while and saw all sorts of clothes, fur coats, socks (there are always lots of socks for sale), knock-offs of fancy clothes, tiny dog clothes, boiling pots of edible bugs, tiny sit-down restaurants in tents, toys, and treats. I have to confess that I'm always in too much of a hurry to get away from the edible bug vendors to take a picture. I'm not fond of the smell. However, here's a link to a page about edible bugs, and the picture of the beetle larvae looks like what most of them sell. I haven't looked too closely though. 

After lattes for the grownups and freshly blended strawberry juice for the boys (nothing but the best for the little princes -eye roll-), we ventured into the mall. Once again we found ourselves in a huge mall, this one even fancier than the first. I don't really understand the setup of the malls here, but they seem to be anchored by a huge department store type thing that covers many levels and contains many stores, all in a very open floor plan. For instance, there's a children's floor with different sections for stores like Gap and Colors of Benetton divided by aisles. And then there are other stores that aren't in the department store section. Sorry if that confused you more. I find it a bit perplexing too. 

Strawberry Juice!

A tiny part of the street market.

 

I have never actually purchased any clothing in a mall here. Each section is attended by one or several employees. They are dressed flawlessly and while they wait for shoppers they spend their time re-arranging merchandise, shifting it a millimeter at a time on the display table until they're completely happy with the placement. Should you wander into or simply pause too long near their section, they are instantly there to offer a smile and their assistance. You are not left to browse the racks alone, they hold up items they think you might be interested in, fetch appropriate sizes, and shadow you the whole time you're there. And sometimes, they stand very, very close to you. This can be very, very awkward if you are, lets say, trying to select the appropriate size of underwear. We did however manage to find the Lush store area and the sales ladies there were ever so nice and kindly respected a much more Americanized "personal space" rule. 

We went to the food court to eat. We had great choices but the boys were instantly enthralled by Sushi 360: a sushi place with a conveyor belt that carries little plates of food past you and you select what you want to eat. We had a great meal and the boys had fun making friends with the sushi chefs.

Yes, this is what a mall food court is like here.

Boy #2  is still working on his chopstick skills.

Day Three:

We explored the area around the hotel for a while and then decided to find the Coex Mall. Our taxi driver was a charming man who was happy to practice his English on the ride to the mall. He dropped us off at the World Trade Center and recommended that we enter the mall there. I was a bit confused but the kind guard at the desk showed me to the elevator, escorted us to the basement, and showed us the doorway into the underground mall. The boys and I wandered, enjoying the sights. Cotton candy eaten from cups with tiny forks, hall upon hall of interesting shops, an underground movie theater, and finally we found what we were looking for. The aquarium. Yep, an all-out aquarium in an underground shopping mall. Awesome. For about $20 the kids and I got in. I honestly wasn't expecting much, but we were treated to a full size aquarium with displays of local fish, a fish-tank-as-an-art-object display, sharks, giant turtles, manatees, seals, penguins, jelly fish, otters, beavers, pretty much everything except whale sharks. We had a great time! We did have a bit of trouble finding our way back out again though (there was only one tiny elevator in the whole aquarium). After eating at McDonald's (it seems to be cool here), I decided we should head back to the hotel. Except I couldn't find the secret entrance back into the World Trade Center. "No Problem!" I thought. "I'll just take a different elevator back up to street level.". Easier said than done. After wandering for the better part of an hour, I finally gave up and carried the stroller up two flights of stairs. Thankfully the taxi ride back to the hotel was uneventful. 

The smallest, slowest elevator ever.

Entrance to the aquarium.

 

To Be Continued...

Difficulty

Technology-induced procrastination, sick children, and boring things like cleaning bathrooms are producing infrequent blog posts. Sorry. My computer has died. In it are trapped almost all of the pictures I've been saving up to blog about.

In the mean time, I'm monopolizing my Dear Husband's computer to write a boring, picture less post.

One of my dear sisters asked me what I'm finding the most difficult here. Besides the bathrooms (yes, they'll get a whole post to themselves eventually)? The language barrier.

I hesitate to write this post. I don't want to sound like I'm complaining. I appreciate this culture and I understand that I am a guest here. I also understand that I have a responsibility to learn as much as I can about the local culture, customs, and language and that doing so will eventually make my daily life easier. I guess I'm just suddenly realizing that the base of consumer knowledge that I've  had nearly 30 years to build is not as useful here as it is at home.

It's not that I have trouble getting around or doing the basic things I need to do. I can get a cab, go where I need to go, buy food in a restaurant, shop for groceries, all the basics. But my days as an informed consumer are over. I'm sure there are a myriad of stores here where I can get exactly what I want (a nice wool area rug with a pattern I like and cotton backing for example), but simply finding that store is difficult, let alone knowing for certain that I'm getting a quality product for a good price. Prices here are not always posted, and even if they are, you're supposed to bargain it down. I can't just drive around town and spot furniture stores because 1.) The signs are in Hangul and 2.) I'm either walking or in a taxi and taxi drivers don't exactly specialize in "Sunday drives" or vague instructions like "take me to a store that sells nice area rugs". Searching for local stores on the Internet is crippled by the language barrier as well, so I mainly rely on word of mouth from other expats, many of whom have been here for a short time as well. And bargaining for a price?! Incredibly intimidating, especially when I don't know if I've just offended them by my offer or if that's just part of the bargaining process. I don't want to look like a tacky American, implying that the goods they're selling are sub par, but I also don't want to be an easy target.

Somethings, like grocery shopping, are made better by adding a little adventure. Spice up my grocery shopping any day! And most days the language barrier makes everything exciting. Some days though, I just want to buy a rug.

I do run into nice surprises though. Although stocking my home with houseplants is not quite as urgent as finding a couch and a rug, it's still on my list. I happened to discover a lovely little flower shop near my home. A peep into the windows on our walk the other day revealed a nice variety of house plants in lovely pots. I did not relish taking all three boys into the shop however as boys #1 and #2 love nothing quite so much as digging in the dirt, so actually gaining entrance and purchasing plants has been saved for another day.

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