Pictures and words.

You really deserve better from us. We haven't posted in weeks. I won't give you the "we're so busy and tired" song and dance because it doesn't matter. What's done is done. Now we should move on.

I'm going to try to catch you up on this wild ride. This will include a copious amount of photos and sentence fragments posing as sentences. I might break it up into multiple posts. Who knows, right? Anything is possible!

You should know that there is a mondoo (steamed pot sticker dealy) across the street from my school. It is about $3 for about 10 mondoos. The guy steams them when you order them and they are delicious. I'm starting to salivate a little thinking about it. Or maybe this is how much I normally salivate... I'm not actually sure. Anyway, having such easy access to mondoo is awesome and a little dangerous. Sometimes I bring some home for Scott. Doesn't he look so young and handsome eating those mondoos? I couldn't agree more.


One night we made pajong (I making up the romanization as I go, so just roll with it). Pajong is a savory Korean pancake, they usually eat it as an appetizer, but we made it for dinner. Turned out pretty well. Took forever to cook though. Doesn't really look very impressive, but we were proud of ourselves. This is it:


So, the weekend after the family fun weekend we went back to Busan. This time Scott's mom's friend from the good ole days picked us up and brought us to there (it is where she lives). She fed us, told us to sleep in, fed us some more, took us to walk along the beach, answered our random questions, took us grocery shopping, and brought us back home. Her name is AS Han and she is the shiz. Scott is going to get mad because he doesn't like this picture, but I do, so here are Scott and AS:

So what if he looks like an awkward robot. Betcha didn't even know robots could look awkward. And here is one of AS and I. There is another one with her and I that I look better in (not quite so tired and confused anyway), but her eyes are closed, so I am magnanimously posting the one with her eyes open (that I look worse in). I'm so selfless. Or am I? You'll never know. Or will you? I could go on, but I won't. Or will I?

Isn't she pretty? Korean woman age really well. And you'll score major points if you tell them this. Here is the room we ate in:


AS made sure we had a room that you could sit on the floor, but the floor under the table was sunken, so you didn't have to sit American Indian style. And the floor was so warm. What a delight. A bunch of other people joined us... so Scott's mom has three best friends from the old days: AS, JA, and JB. I don't know why they all have initials for names and I'm not complaining. So, they were all there with a variety of family members. The restaurant was an upscale galbi house (Korean barbecue on the table). It was delicious and we both were sick due to overeating. Multiple times I wanted to stop eating. Multiple times I did stop eating. And then AS would order more meat, cook it, and give it to me. Koreans are really hard to turn down. Here are the hot coals that cook the food:

Here is AS multitasking:

And here is AS preparing our meeeeeeat:

They use scissors here like we would use a knife. And they don't use knives (outside of the kitchen, only for preparing food). A knife on the table is sort of barbaric. I tried explaining that we actually are barbarians so using a knife is okay. I actually didn't do that. And they don't eat off of individual plates. Also, I like that last photo. This is a photo of the night time view from AS' apartment parking lot, Scott was impressed:


The next day AS took us to the Paradise Hotel for lunch. And wow-e-wow-wow, it was nice. The food was pretty good (there was even some Western food!), the atmosphere was real mod, and the clientele were obviously rich. It was somewhere we would never be able to go on our own. AS has a membership or something, which gets her a discount, but still. It is right on Haeundae beach (Maybe Korea's most famous beach? I'm shooting from the hip here.). Scott had his first decent cup of coffee here (it was from one of those machines that you set your cup on and press a button). He sprinkled some cinnamon on it and I took a photo:

And that is the inside of the buffet. I was trying not to look like a weirdo taking a photo of other people eating, so please excuse the angle.

I don't have a photo of it, but I ate an obscene amount of food from the dessert bar. There was this chocolate icecream, ahhh, it was a dream. And next to the ice cream bar there were little ice cream spoons. And I took one. And for those of you who don't know, I steal small spoons when the opportunity arises. They have to be spoons and they have to be small. And there can't be a chance that the staff will somehow notice. So far, in Korea, I have taken three small spoons. One from a coffee shop, one from the Paradise Hotel, and one from a different coffee shop. Aside from becoming the new owner of a small spoon, the best part about stealing small spoons is when I tell Scott about it. He always has this mixed reaction - part dismay (that his wife would do such a thing) and part pride (that his wife would do such a thing).

After we ate tons of food we took a walk along the beach. It was sunny and pleasant.

AS always asks, "Sleeping?" after you take a photo of her. She is asking if her eyes are closed. This is funny so I've incorporated into my vocabulary.

This is AS pointing to somewhere on that hill... to the nice place where Scott's parents spent their honeymoon a long, long time ago.

You should know that I've saved the best for last. This is a little treat for the people who actually read to the end of this post. First, there was a Korean man with bleached blonde hair driving a Rascal. This picture doesn't do it justice, but it should give you an idea:

I wasn't satisfied with that picture, so as we walked by I tried to get a better one:

As you can see, I took it too soon. I was trying not to get caught (by AS or the guy). Second, here is the gorgeous beach and view:


And third, drum roll please, the pièce de résistance:


Don't ask me why because I don't know. Just let it wash over you. Koreans are generally really modest folk (by Western standards).