Day trip to Daejeon

Ok, we are back! All better now. Sunday was kind of a bum day, but I think you allowed one bum day on a trip. We stayed close to the hotel and slept too much. We missed the meeting due to, I don't know, not fully understanding that although South Korea is not a large country, it will take you 4 hours and a will of iron to get anywhere. So that was disappointing!
But Monday made up for it. Mom's sister stayed the night at the hotel ('Emo'-aunt in Korean) and after breakfast we all took off for a train ride back to where Emo lives, Daejeon. It is about 2 hours away. It was nice to sit back and watch the countryside. This was the farthest we have been out of the city. We passed rice fields and farms, and began to see some mountains.
Emo's husband (Emobu) picked us up from the train station. Our plan for the day was to meet with some friends. That is about as much explanation as we received. Emo started studying the Bible about 2 months ago, so she wanted her sister to meet her study conductor. She was a very sweet sister. Then we met up with a special pioneer couple and headed to lunch.
So, our first cultural experience! We went to a Folk Village/Museum in Chubu. It was in the mountains, which  were so pretty and green. The foggy day had cleared and the sun came out. It was beautiful. The village was landscaped so nicely, and we walked around a bit before heading in to lunch. (And we have yet to reach a limit to how many times we can reference 'Dae Jang Gum'!)

Doenjang jars-for fermenting the soy bean paste

So we have another huge and delicious meal. This time I order bimbimbap (note to self: eat more bimbimbap! It is so good!) and again we all overeat. They also order makgoelli, rice wine. Interesting. It is not my fave, but it goes well with the meal. The special pioneer sister knows some English, so we talk a little. They were assigned for many years near the DMZ.

Digging in

After we eat, we head to another little house for tea time (or in my case, caramel macchiato time). We go in and they make us go upstairs where we sit on the floor at little tables and have our drinks.
We take more pictures, every possible combination of the 7 of us. The pioneer couple heads off, and we head on to Gyeryong Mountain.
Everything is so green and pretty. (Dare I compare it somewhat to the Tennessee mountains?) We do a little light hiking (is there such a thing?) and then head back.

The sisters, taking a stroll

We get back to the train station and say our goodbyes to Emo and Emobu. It is 8pm and we have a two hour train ride ahead of us. We settle in and promptly fall asleep on the train.
Oh, but wait! The best part! We were able to exchange money, ask for a subway map, buy food at a store, and ask for postcards, all on our own. Without having to repeat ourselves. People understand us! :)

Jet lag...

...is no joke.

Banchan gone wild and lots of traffic

First off, a note:
-I hate the romanization of Korean words. I am not very good at it; our first meeting in Korean the friends threatened us if we even looked at romanized words there would be serious consequences! So forgive the wildly irregular spelling of Korean words. It is what it is.
Ok, that's off my chest. Let's begin.
So Saturday is very overcast as we set out in Samjoon's car. (Maybe no hyphens, per Joe's suggestion.) We pick up his wife and son, and head over to see Joe's grandmother's mausoleum. It is sad, but everyone is ok. We then head to the grave of my mom-in-law's younger brother, which is in a very beautiful setting out of town on a hillside. Won't it be wonderful when these beautiful places are not filled with sadness?
After that we drive, oh, I don't know, all over the place. Traffic is crazy, as I was warned about before we came. People drive with abandon, and the cars dart in and out of lanes at will. I sit in the back seat and concentrate on the conversation.
I am trying to pick up what the discussion is about. Listening so hard it hurts. Some is understood, some my mom-in-law translates. I use my few phrases to try and chime in. Joe, on the other hand, is sitting in the front seat holding on for dear life. :)
At first we were intimidated trying to use our language skills. People automatically use English when they see us. (If they know it.) So we try to answer them in Korean. Now we have gotten more comfortable, and everyone responds well to our efforts. It is so fun!
We tool around for awhile, and then make our way to lunch. The restaurant specializes in cholodoh hanshik (traditional Korean meals). We sit down at a long table, and I am wondering why until they start bringing the food.
Banchan means 'side dish' and Koreans love them. Little sides of kimchee, seaweed, noodles, tofu, kimchee pancakes, all sorts of things to eat along with the main dish. I have had my share, usually we have 5 or 6, but this? Was insane. See below:

The banchan army

They filled the table with them! Along with 6 whole cooked fish. (True story: as a child I was seriously scared to eat fish because I thought I would choke to death on a bone. Yeah, my food issues go way back.) So I dig in to all the banchan and am successfully avoiding the fish when Samjoon motions to me to take a fish. ('But the fish, the fish is smiling at me!' hee!) So I smile and nod and wonder how I am gonna get out of this. He apparently sees I am not making a move so he removes the head and takes the skin and bones out for me. Thank you! So I eat the fish. (Small bites, making sure no bones...)
After stuffing ourselves we get back in the car and drive some more. We go through a National Arboretum and it is lush and so pretty. It is raining but still nice. Everything is so green.
We go to a yogurt/coffee shop (with a great name, see below!), and meet a couple from Joe's aunt's congregation. They are very nice and we have some conversation, but goodness we don't understand much. We try to catch what we can then have to get mom to fill us in every so often.

Best restaurant name so far!

We are heading back to the hotel in awful traffic and rain, it is about 3:30, when, like narcoleptics, the sleepiness hits Joe and I. We must, at this moment, go to sleep. No choice. So we are rocked to sleep by the motion of the car careening in and out of lanes.
Still full from the lunch of a thousand dishes (seriously, they must wash so many dishes a day in these restaurants!) the three of us relax in the hotel in the evening and have some nice conversation. We discuss family, and memories, as we look out over the Seoul skyline. The day called for some reflection.
And tomorrow we hope for some sun. And to take the subway.

Settling in and chowing down

Friday evening...

It is rainy and foggy weather, and colder than we expected. Joe's Sam-joon ('uncle', mom's older brother) picks us up from the airport and we head to the hotel. The hotel is in an area (strangely) named 'Times Square'. It is very nice, and connected to a very upscale mall (the look but don't buy kind). I think it is a newly developed area, no one seems to be familiar with it, and it looks like there are new shops and buildings next to old ones.

Time for dinner! (When traveling, it's

 always about the next meal.) We head out of the hotel, cross the street and walk down a block or so and I am on my first Korean streets. Food and neon assault my senses. Street carts, cafes, restaurants and bars, all lit up by flashy neon signs. We walk past some delicious smelling food carts (I will be back to see you later!) and enter a restaurant. This is a real, Korean, take your shoes off and sit on the floor place.

Everyone say 'Kimchee'! I don't think everyone did...

Food is ordered as well as mek-ju (beer) and so-ju (clear liquor). They bring the meal, nae-ji bok-kum (squid soup? Close enough) and tae-ji pul-go-gi (korean pork bbq). Thanks to my good Korean friends in America, who exposed me to all foods scary, when the waitress brings the food and begins chopping up the squid in the dish (with her surgical instruments), I sit back, sip my mek-ju, and snap a picture. :)

Yep, I ate it. And it was good!

The food is really good, and the kimchee is very spicy. One of Joe's cousin's shows up and eats with us. The last time Joe saw him he was 5. Now he is in college.

We head out, and walk down the neon flooded street. We end up at another restaurant for round two of eating, I guess. I miss a lot of explanation. :) This place serves grilled chicken and ttok (rice cake—mmm!) with a sort of take on teriyaki sauce and it is called “Hoolala chicken”. Love the name! It is good; we are stuffed though. As we sit in the restaurant my eyes start crossing, it is not even 9 pm but I am so tired I can hardly walk back to the hotel.

However, a good nights sleep has alleviated some of the bags under my eyes, and, well, the makeup can handle the rest. It is still raining and foggy this morning. A full day in Seoul awaits!

Time zone madness

We are here! In Seoul! And it is Saturday! I am not sure where all the time went.

But let's go back.

Thursday morning at 11 am we board the biggest plane I have ever seen. And this time we are in Business class. If you must spend the better half of a day sitting in one place, this is the place to be. They really think of everything to make you comfortable, and to make you forget you are hurtling through the air. (It looked like the kind of place you would get Incepted. Ha!) We get settled into our seats and the flight attendant comes by with glasses of champagne and before she can say “Would you like some...” I say yes and promptly procure one for myself and one for my mom-in-law. I begin to relax.

So, the flight takes off and my favorite thing is that they have all the window shades drawn. They feed us and then it is lights out. Like one big sleepover, everyone around us reclines their seats, pulls up their blankets, watches some tv and goes to sleep. After a big meal and two glasses of wine, I do too.

The lights stay off for most of the flight. Around hour 8 I think I had had enough sleep and was ready to eat again and wake up. We introduced my mom-in-law to our favorite Korean drama “Dae Jang Gum” and let her watch the first two episodes on the computer. She loved it of course!

We caught a tail wind or some such flight lingo, because we landed one hour early. Of this whole trip, the thing I was looking forward to least was the flight. And it was really good. It didn't feel like we spent all that time on the plane.

We land in Seoul at 2pm Friday.

On our way!

At the edge of the continent

So it has begun! Our adventure began this morning at a lovely 3am, and now we are relaxing at the hotel in San Francisco. It was a good day, although a long day, and we may have tried to walk Joe's mom to death. Inadvertently.
Our flight took off at 7:30 am. We were able to cash in every airline mile, frequent flier point, and Piggly Wiggly Greenbax we had to get 3 sweet first class seats. So the flight takes off, I am flipping through the Sky Mall magazine, and I see the flight attendant bring a guy two seats ahead of me a Budweiser. In a can! My first thought, um, it is 7:30am!; my second thought, Dad, is that you? (Just kidding! Love you, Dad!)
Beyond that it was an uneventful flight (and my mom-in-law can never go back to coach! Ha!) By the time we got checked in, took the shuttle to the subway and got downtown, we were all starving and basically ran into the first restaurant we found. Good little Chinese restaurant; we had dumplings, and basil chicken fried rice, and these pan fried noodles with seafood. The noodles were crunchy (unexpected) with a thick white sauce; different but yummy.

Pan fried noodles, what's not to love?

 We decided to  head down to the Wharf area and walk around some, which ended up being a lot, which ended up almost ending Joe's mom's trip as soon as it began. We took the trolley back, so crisis averted. It was a lot of walking, but hey, we will be sitting for 13 hours tomorrow, so it all evens out...

See, she is fine!

Tomorrow, on to Seoul!  

"More kimchee, please!"

And other phrases to make it in Korea...
Less than one week away! We are gearing up for departure. So many details to be taken care of before we get out of here.
While we (ok, mostly I) have no idea what we are going to pack in our luggage, we also are trying to figure out what to pack in our minds. As mentioned, we have been studying the language for about 2 years, but we need to pick up conversational language. We have found some good little Korean phrase/travel books, which we have been pouring over for the last month or so, trying to learn some essential phrases to help us get around, not look completely lost, and know most of the time what we are eating.
The books are broken down into different situations, which is nice. Hotel, Taxi, Subway, Shopping, and of course, a big section on Eating and Drinking. (Unfortunately, no section titled 'Losing it in Korea'. I might have found that helpful.)
Here are some phrases we have memorized and intend on using:

What is this? I-go-shi mwo-ye-yo?

What time is it? Myot-shi-ye-yo?

Where is the bathroom? Hwa-jang-shil-i oh-di iss-oh-yo?

I don't understand. Mo-ru-geh-sso-yo. (Because we speak Korean like 5 year olds, these will probably be used a lot!)

I would like coffee, please. Ko-pi ju-say-yo.

I would like wine, please. Wi-ine ju say-yo. (I have priorities.)

I would like to go shopping. Shyo-ping ka-go ship-oh-yo.
How much does it cost? Ohl-ma yeh-yo?
That is a little expensive. Cho-kum pi-ssah-yo.
Can you sell it cheaper? Chohm Kka-kka chu-say-yo. (Bargaining? Is a must.)

I really like it here. Ah-ju ma-um-eh duh-ru-yo.
It was really delicious. Mah-sheet-geh moh-go-so-yo. 
Please give me more kimchee. Kim-chee johm-toh ju-say-yo. (Just keepin' it positive!)

What is 'catnip' in Korean?

So, it's a start. Any suggestions for us? What do we need to know how to say?