Cats Know How to Party (by Tang)

Mom and Dad - Being a cat is awesome, especially with your parents out of town.  Felix and Oscar came over the other day with some cat nip and things got a little crazy.  

Sorry about the new curtains in the baby's room.  I pretty much shredded them.  Oh, and that "scat mat" on the changing table has been disabled by Oscar.  That cat has some mad tech skills.

I am feeling some remorse today though, so I'm hoping you'll come home soon to help save me from continuing to run with this bad crowd.  

Bring me home some Korean wet food or something.  I'm pretty sick of Whiskas.

Later,

Tang

Learning Seoul (by Bob)

With still another 2 days until we finally get custody of Bo, Colleen and I have been making the rounds in Seoul.  As much as we would prefer to get Bo now and leave to go home, it is good that we have this time to get to know his birth country a little better.  We've done a lot of reading on the country, its history and its culture but experiencing the people gives a whole new dimension.

Yesterday, we had a full day touring parts of Central Seoul, including the Changdokkong Palace and shopping in Insadong (also Central Seoul).  The weather has turned cold here so I was well underdressed for the outdoor tour of the palace as you can see from the picture on the left.  The traditional architecture was pretty fascinating and we learned that descendants of the royal family lived there as late as the 1960s selling souvenirs to make ends meet!

After the palace, we met up with a friend of a friend of a friend (Austin) to get some food near Hansung University where he teaches English as a second language.  The scene at the university was fast and furious with mobs of young students frequenting countless bars, coffee shops and stores.  We ended up at a Korean BBQ house cooking our own food over a grill in the middle of our table and drinking cheap beer.  Once you cook meat, veggies, garlic, etc on the grill then you wrap it in lettuce, add some cabbage or seaweed or other items and eat it like a lettuce taco.  Very good stuff.

Today, we continued the exploration by visiting a traditional housing village where Colleen met a new friend (see picture to left).

What a couple, huh?  For some reason every costumed mascot in the city seems to make that peace sign when you take a picture with them.

We finished off the day by cruising around the streets of Myandong (another outdoor shopping area) which had ENDLESS streets of shops and restaurants.  It is remarkable how much commerce takes place here and how many consumers there are.  Austin quoted 25 million people in the Seoul metropolitan area and all of them seem to converge on a few key shopping "arcades".  Some other observations:

1) You can't take 10 steps without tripping over another coffee house.  Many of them are corporate, Starbucks-type chains, but there are a number of good locally owned businesses mostly fashioned after italian cafes or euro-internet cafes.  Good coffee all around though.

2) Judging by the number of golf shops and the amount of golf on TV, Koreans seem to be very focused on the game.  I guess the success of some South Koreans on the PGA and LPGA has increased its popularity greatly.

3) It's very difficult to find a la cart sushi here -- it's almost always a set menu which Colleen and I haven't had the guts to try yet.  Who knows what sea monsters would come out on our plate -- we prefer to have say over what raw fish we eat.

4) Some of the best food around comes from the street vendors.  There are droves of vendors roasting chestnuts, cooking meat on a stick, flipping sweet rice pancakes, etc, etc.  You could eat a million calories for about two dollars from these guys.

Well, that's about it for now.  We are moving to the SWS (adoption agency) guest house tomorrow to prepare to receive lil' Bo on Monday.  We can hardly contain ourselves with the anticipation of finally welcoming him to our family.  

More to come...

So, I can't say "agua" here to get water, huh? (By Bob)

Before I get started debriefing on the day's exploration, we wanted to thank everyone for their emails and blog comments -- hearing from all of you makes it feel like you are here with us and makes the experience that much more rich and less isolated.  Thank you all.

Now on to the blogging...

These days are days of distraction until Monday when we get to pick up Bo for good, so we've been keeping busy by sampling the local fare.  We've been pretty adventurous, going to various local restaurants that clearly do not cater to tourists.  Some have English subtitles on their menus and the wait staff speaks some English, but in others we have been in over our heads.  Everyone is really nice though and go out of their way to help.  

For example:

We decided we wanted to have mapo (dumplings) last night and found a hole in the wall place that looked popular but ended up having absolutely no English on the menu. There were a few pictures on the wall, but we couldn't match the captions with what was on the menu.  We asked the waiter for help, but he did not speak English and just kept saying "Peek" (this makes more sense later).  So we pointed at some dumplings and some round, scallop looking food in a chili sauce that the people next to us were eating.  They brought it out in a flash and it was delicious -- absolutely awesome -- and CHEAP.  The whole meal was about five dollars.  The dumplings were very much like gyoza that you get at Trader Joe's (only about 10 times better) and the scallop looking things were made of rice and had the consistency of gnocci.

While we were finishing, an older woman came over from the kitchen, "What you say American?".  Colleen and I look at each other, look back at her, smile and say "Good!"  -- thumbs up.  She looks puzzled, shakes her head, thinks on the situation for a moment and decides that she needs to rearrange her sentence.  "In American, What you say?" and points to the gnocci-like dish.  We say, "ohhhh...", discuss it for a minute or two (we have NOTHING remotely like that in the states) and can only come up with "Gnocci is the closest but it's Italian".  She asks us to write it down and then shares it with the other staff.  For the next 10 minutes they are all running around saying "gnocci" and laughing their heads off.  She returns, and again points to a picture on the menu that looks like sausage and repeats "In American, what you say?".  So we try, "Sausage" which she instantly rejects because "Sausage, beef.  No peek."  "Peek?" -- we question her and eventually find out through various miming efforts (including Bob flapping his arms and clucking like a chicken) that "peek" is "pig".  She debated us for a full 10 minutes on whether or not sausage could be made from pork.  We never came to an agreement. Very funny stuff.

Overall, we are enjoying the food although we've needed a few breaks to get something familiar.  One of the best parts of exploring for food is seeing all of the back streets and the different displays in front of the restaurants.  Some have all of their seafood swimming around 

in tanks out front.  Some have staff outside to steer you into their restaurants.  

Today we also took the metro to an enormous indoor market called "Doosa".  There were nine floors of vendors in a maze of storefronts and departments.  We ended up buying some pjs for Bo that were made in Korea, Colleen got a few tops and we went to see the new James Bond movie (good stuff).  

Back at the hotel now and we are beat.  Tomorrow we plan to see a museum and do some shopping in a more traditional area of the city. Then we are meeting some friends of friends to have dinner in the middle of Seoul.  We'll report out more later...

The Trip Over (by Bob)

Hello from Seoul, Korea!  We made it to the hotel about 8pm, Tuesday local time (about 6am Eastern) after a long flight and more cabs than we originally intended on taking -- more on that later.

First, a debrief starting from the trip over.

We set off on Monday morning at 8:30 am from Silver Spring.  Kevin and Claire dropped us off at the airport with plenty of time to spare and the plane was on time.  

Korean Airlines is awesome -- very professional staff, clean and comfortable seats, great food and an unbelievable entertainment system.  Colleen tried Bee Bim Bap on the plane (although we had it before and Joe and Erika's) and we both ended up watching 3 to 4 movies each.  By the way - the new Indiana Jones flick is worth watching if you like the originals. 

 

The demographic of the plane passengers is worth mentioning -- I would estimate about 95% were of Korean descent.  This makes sense given that it is not tourism season, however it made it feel like we were in Korea before we left the tarmac!

The flight was roughly 14 hours and landed ahead of schedule.  We flew through customs and caught a bus by 5:20 pm local time on Tuesday.  Everything was going really well and then I had to open my big mouth.  We were on the bus coming up on the hotel and I said to Colleen, "Watch this not be our hotel".  

When we went to check-in, we discovered that we didn't have a reservation and it was not our hotel.  Long story about a typo on the map from our adoption agency, a few assumptions made by your truly and a name change by the hotel, but we ended up in a great hotel down the street for about a third of the cost by 8pm.  We tried to stay up, barely able to talk and eat because we were so tired -- ended up in bed by 9:30 pm.

On to more important things:  Today we get to meet our son!!  We are getting ready in the hotel right now and will meet the local adoption agency social worker at 9:30 am at their site.  She will escort us over to the foster family's house for our first visit.  We'll give a full report out afterwards.  Stay tuned for more on the Bo Chronicles....

A post from Dulles the Dog: I don't remember being asked my opinion

I haf a bone 2 pick -- I did knot get consulted regardink this babee coming 2 lives with us. I warmed ups 2 da idea and even promised to share somez of my toyz. But that's when I thawt I wud be going to Ko-ree-ah.

I wuz all ready 2 go -- i had my bag pakked and wuz sittink by da' door when they sed I wuz goink to grandma's and uncle petes. Don't gets me wrong -- I LOVE GRANDMA and uncle petes, buts I thawt I'd get to fly ekonomy class wit my parents and meets bo over there. Oh wells, at least I will get free rawhide 4 the next week.

Gud lucks, momz and dad. I luv u and promise to bee nice to Bo as long as he leaves my kibble alone. I can't promise the same for the cat.

Getting Ready to Go

Well, the day is finally here after a long long wait -- tomorrow we leave for Korea to pick up Boryung! We're beyond excited...and a little nervous.

We're doing our best to travel light since we know we'll have the baby to handle on the return trip. The heaviest stuff by far is all of the cameras we are bringing (point and shoot, SLR, and video) plus a laptop. It will be a well documented affair.

The flight is about 14 to 15 hours, which isn't so bad considering it's the other side of the world. We're taking a nonstop flight from Dulles to Seoul that was surprisingly the cheapest. When Ellie flew to Korea 40 years ago it took several days and she had 3 or 4 layovers!

We'll write more once we get there and find an internet hotspot (15 hours offline might be as much as we can handle). Wish us luck and enjoy "The Bo Chronicles"!