A Great Weekend

I'm interrupting my picture posting to tell you about our weekend.  Not that it was all that exciting--it wasn't--it was just a really good weekend.  We'd had a couple of days to get re-adjusted to this time zone and get settled back in at work.  Mike came down Saturday morning and we had brunch in town before going to the Samsung Leeum Art Museum near Itaewon.

My handsome husband is always telling people that he is a city boy--that he loves great museums and concerts and such.  I like to point out that whenever we have a free weekend in Seoul he usually just wants to stay home.  I mean, I'm a huge fan of sweatpants Saturday, especially when my husband's participating, but I'm usually the one asking to go out to cultural events, museums, etc.  Since this weekend was my last before the exercise, my sweet husband gave in and let me pick a museum.

The Samsung Leeum is great.  It's three buildings (there's a whole system behind their design, but I didn't pay close enough attention to the details; something about a circular shape for pottery and oxidized stainless steel for modern art...), each with a different theme.  We took a tour through two of the museums--the traditional artifact museum and the contemporary art space--which really helped me understand and appreciate things like the difference between different pottery styles and and why buddha statues were popular and why Rothko's squares are supposed to be meditative.  (Ok, I don't really understand that last one, but I appreciated the attempt at an explanation.)

The third museum turned out to be my favorite.  It's the one that houses the special exhibits, and while we were there the theme was modern Korean history.  It was fascinating--rather than a simple history lesson, the exhibition used art and video and photographs to exploredifferent angles of Korea's history and how it impacts people's lives today.  We especially enjoyed filmed interviews (thankfully with English subtitles) with the descendants of the last royal family.

After the museum closed we wandered back through Itaewon and had a yummy dinner at a tapas bar.  We were going to watch a movie at home, but by the time we got home and into our PJs we ended up just going to sleep.  Sunday we went to church on base, then came home and scrounged up some brunch food and watched My Fair Lady.  (When I found out a couple of weeks ago that Mike had never seen it I had to put it at the top of the Netflix queue.)  We hit the ah-pah-tu gym for a workout and then the sauna for a soak; I didn't stay long as there were too many naked ajummas for me to feel comfortable.  The hot bath is only so big.  Dinner was beef and naengmyon from a restaurant across the street.

So there you have it.  I guess you know that you're old and married when it's 8 p.m. on a Saturday night and you're thrilled beyond belief to be home and in your PJs instead of out at the club.  I'm just lucky to have found a husband who also prefers the PJs to clubs.  And who will take me to a museum every now and again.