Foster Mom and Other Asian Things

So far, my brother and I have spent around 30 000 Won on candy and other junk food (that's 30 dollars). I would say that about half of the stuff we have bought has turned out to be either completely disgusting or something that we didn't know we were buying. For example, my dad and I were at the grocery store looking for laundry detergent and a woman was freaking out at what we were holding. It turned out we were about to buy bleach and that all of our clothes would have been hipster-ified had the nice woman not set us on the right path. I also accidentally bought a big bag of cough drops because they looked like pear candy. oops.

Though we have been struggling knowing what says what, I have been trying to figure out the alphabet and how to read Korean. I have been learning firsthand why Korean people pronounce certain English sounds a certain way and that Korean has an equivalent to Denglish (Deutsch-English). I find it funny that my parents have been to Korea six times now and they never bothered to learn Hangul (the Korean alphabet) and here I am after two days, reading street signs and asking people what things mean. My tip: you have to take things for yourself and not expect that they will come to you.

Back to yesterday.

Yesterday we met up with Yoon and Young Seo who go to my high school! It was really fun to see some friends in a completely different place and to get led around by someone who knew what they were doing. We met them quite late in the morning at Gyeongbokgung Palace which is right next to the center of Seoul.

Yoon, Josh, Bethany, Moi

Then we went to an expensive traditional house that apparently cost the government $10 million to rebuild and got some lunch. Luckily, Young knew just where the best place to get noodles was and led us right there.

Then we went to Insadong which is an art/shopping district where Young also knew the best place to get some dessert.

Josh, Bethany, Mango Sunday, Melon Sunday

Next, we headed to Namsan Seoul Tower to get the best view of the city. Sadly, it was very humid, but I swear the sky was blue the day before.

Then my dad and I split up from the rest of the family because we wanted to walk down the mountain and get some fresh air. We accidentally ended up in Itaewon (another shopping district, of course) here we saw a few fellow Amis as there is a military base nearby. By then it was getting dark so we headed to a Homeplus grocery store to load up on supplies (and candy) and called it a night.

Today was one of the more important days of our trip as it was the day we met Lily's foster mom. I can't speak for Lily, but I think that seeing Lily happy and with our family gave Lily's foster mom a lot of closure and joy to see that her gift of love was paying off. She also showed her love to our whole family by beating my mom to the cash register at lunch by excusing herself to the "bathroom" in the middle of the meal. Josh and I found this funny because when my family visits my uncle in Texas, him, my grandpa, and my mom all race to the cash register at the end of every meal because they all want to be the cool guy who pays for everyone. Nonetheless, Lily's foster mom also insisted on buying us all ice cream and snacks for the rest of the day. All of the love that she showed to us makes me feel quite honored that she was the woman who took care of my sister.

Also, shout-out to our awesome translator, Sunwoo :)

After an emotional lunch, we headed to Ilson which is where Holt Ilsan Center is located and Ji-eun is buried. Before my parents adopted Lily, they were in the process of adopting a baby girl named Ji-eun who died from a seizure while my parents were there. They buried her on a hill behind the center and we went to visit it. We also got to talk to Molly Holt who is an amazing woman (definitely worth googling) that has so much love in her to give and is in the perfect position to do so. It also turns out that they are constantly in need of volunteers and Josh and I are both in need of an excuse to come back to Korea in the near future. So we'll see what happens.

After another forty minute bus ride, we met up with one of my mom and dad's old friends for dinner at a chicken place. Let me just say that we are doing quite a few things wrong in America when it comes to eating chicken wings and that Nat Werth is going to be coming back with some tips. For one, we used a plastic glove to hold the chicken so we didn't have to sacrifice our hand to the sticky greasy gooey sauce. I almost cried. AND there were lovely little buckets to put the bones so our plates didn't fill up with them while we were eating.

Since my dad talks a lot, Bethany and Lily went out to buy makeup while me and Josh went to raid the grocery store. I almost cried again when I discovered that there was a whole aisle dedicated to ramen noodles.

It's almost midnight now and tomorrow we're leaving at 7 to visit the famous DMZ (Demilitarized Zone). I'm curious to see how demilitarized it really is.

Nat