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.

The Lake

I'm going through my pictures from our time in the U.S.  I didn't take many in Alabama, except when we went out to the lake.

And I took a picture of my brother, who flew in for the weekend.  I love this guy.

More to come from our camping trip...

Back to Work

Back to Korea, back to work.  We're about to be really busy here with an exercise.  

We had such a good time with family in the U.S.!  I have almost 1500 pictures to sort through, mostly of the Yosemite camping trip.  Here's one of my favorites:  cousin Emily with a campfire marshmallow.  This girl is seriously cute.

I'm already looking forward to coming home again!

Weather

It has rained more in the last 24 hours than I have ever seen.  Ever.  My walk home from work yesterday felt like wading through a really long river; the water was almost to my knees in some places.  Apparently it's the most rain Seoul has had in a really long time:

SEOUL/CHUNCHEON - The heaviest downpours in a century pounded Seoul
and its surrounding areas on Tuesday and Wednesday, triggering
multiple landslides, urban traffic chaos, power outages and flooded
streets, roads and residential areas.

And my poor husband is in the field.  Stuck in the field, actually, since the roads are covered in water and many of them are closed.

Praying that we make our flight back to the U.S. tomorrow...

**Update**

Mike made it back to Dongducheon!  The trip that usually takes 45 minutes took over 5 hours (and we owe the Sergeant who came out to pick him up BIG TIME).  Kyoungmin Unnie called me around midnight to ask whether Mike made it back--right around the time they finally got back to base.  Unnie said that half of the base is flooded--she had to leave her car and literally swim home from work.

**Update #2**

It took Mike a couple of hours to get from the front gate of base to his office:

"turns out when I called you we were only through half the battle... the front of Casey was flooded... water level up to my shoulders.  They wouldn't let anyone cross the intersection to the front gate (there were floating cars = crazy!)... I was somehow at the right place at the right time (God's grace) and the Korean rescuers gave me a ride on a kodiak boat... weird."

Summertime, and Getting Dirty

I haven't posted in a while, I know.  Since we've been back from our Pusan trip at the beginning of the month, I just haven't had much to talk about.  Work hasn't been very much fun, but I've been doing a lot of it; my sweet husband has been in the field a lot; it's hot, and monsoon season's effects are definitely being felt--I think we had 21 rainy days in a row.  Highlights are few.  Here's one--I have been enjoying these:

"kwa-il bing su" (although this is a picture of a "buh-loo-bae-ri bing su"--they're not usually this purple or this sno-cone-ish looking).  The original treat is "pat bing su", but I prefer to have mine minus the "pat"--sweet red beans, so I usually go with the fruit (kwa-il) option.

Anyway.

I finally have something fun to share.  This past weekend, while my poor husband was in the field--again, I went to the Boryeong Mud Festival with Kyoungmin Unnie and a few of her friends.

The area is famous for it's mud flats, which appear along the beach at low tide.  The mud is supposedly good for your skin, and maybe your health in general if you believe the tourism website.  I was happy to discover that the city processes the mud before it sets up the festival, so it's "clean" mud--not chunky or mixed with rocks or sand.  There were a bunch of activities set up--you could paint yourself with mud, race a friend in mud (with the winner getting to pour a bucket of the stuff over the looser), slide around in mud, or play a group version of a game the kids at the school next to my apartment play on their fun days--the caller will yell, "5 people in a group!" and everyone tries to get in groups of five, or "two girls and one boy!" and so on; anyone who can't follow the instructions and get in an appropriate group goes in the middle after the turn, where everyone splashes mud all over them. 

Needless to say, it wasn't too long before we all looked like this:

I don't know if my skin was improved or rejuvenated, but I am happy to report that it is not sunburned--mostly because every time my mud started to dry out I made sure to reapply.

When we'd had enough of the mud, we joined a whole lot of other people in the beach area and ventured into the chilly water to wash off.

It was really a great weekend.  The festival itself was a lot of fun, we had a bunch of good food, and the weather was even pretty nice.  The best part though was spending time with Unnie.  I feel really lucky that I'm getting to hang out with her while we're in Korea, and I'm really glad she invited me along for the weekend!

Busan

We had such a great time in Busan last weekend.  It was our first weekend really getting out to another part of Korea, and the city was fun, but what really made it a great trip was spending time with family.  We drove down with Komo, Kyoungmin Unnie and Jeunie; I also got to meet Mike's aunt--"Kun Komo" (Korean for "elder aunt on the father's side"), and her husband "Komobu" for the first time, since we stayed at their house in Busan.  They are truly wonderful.  Kun Komo met us at the curb with a huge smile, and I don't think she stopped smiling the whole time we were there, except maybe to eat.  Despite my still-embarrassingly-pitiful Korean, I really felt like part of the family.

I regret not taking more pictures!  I don't have a single picture of Kun Komo and Komobu, or of Komobu's awesome barber shop, which looks like I imagine it did 23 years ago when Komobu started work there, or even a good picture of Jeunie.  I'll do better next time.

Here are a couple of shots of our adventures at the aquarium, Haeundae Beach (which we couldn't really see because of the fog), and the fish market.

 

A Midnight Conversation

I worked the swing shift yesterday, so I couldn't leave to come up to Dongducheon until 10:30 p.m. or so.  I knew my hardworking husband would be asleep by the time I got to his place, so I was surprised to get a call around 12:30.

Me:  Hi handsome!  Why are you awake?
Half-Asleep Handsome Husband:  I was worried about you.
Me:  I'm fine, I'm almost there.
HAHH.:  Did you take the train?
Me:  Yep.
HAHH.:  Should I come pick you up?
Me:  No, I'm literally about 100 yards from your door.
HAHH:  Are you ok?
Me:  Yes love, I'm fine.  Go to sleep--I'll be there in a couple of minutes.
HAHH:  Hrmmmmgh.

A couple of minutes later I crawled into bed.

HAHH:  You're here...
Me:  Hi handsome.  Go to sleep.  I love you.
HAHH:  Love you to...
HAHH:...
HAHH:...I had a weird dream.
Me:  Yeah?
HAHH:  I dreamed your train stopped in Uijeongbu, and you were too stubborn to get a cab, so you started walking the 35 miles to Dongducheon...
Me:  I'm not that stubborn, I would have at least taken the bus...
HAHH:  I was worried about you in my dream, so I called you, but you were furious with me for some reason; you were so angry that I couldn't understand you.  So I hung up.  But then I felt SO guilty.  So I called you, only that time I wasn't dreaming.
Me:  Love, that's terrible!
HAHH:  I'm glad you're not mad at me.  I would have come picked you up in Uijeongbu.

I'm not sure what this says about my marriage.

But do I have a great husband, or what?