Boy 2 and Girl did a photo shoot this past weekend.  It was with a company called Commencer, they were modeling winter clothes.  They took the kids (and parents) all over the city taking pictures...inside a cafe, on the street, in a park; they even brought in a tiny car and took pictures in it.  The kids had a great time & this time the company gave them each an outfit to take home! 

Ok, I am not a pro on Chuseok, but I will tell you what I know.  This past Sunday, 14 September was Chuseok.  Chuseok is to Koreans as Thanksgiving is to Americans, from what I understand.  Everyone leaves town in masses to go see family in other parts of the country.  The children love eating ddok pronounced duck, Korean rice cakes made several different ways.  On Chuseok Koreans dress in han-boks, traditional Koean clothing.   They set a place at the table for their ancestors and they go visit the graves of their ancestors.   The definition from Wikipedia is as follows.....

Chuseok, originally known as Hangawi (한가위) is a major harvest festival and a three-day holiday in Korea celebrated on the 15th day of the 8th month of the lunar Korean Calendar. As a celebration of the good harvest, Koreans visit their ancestral hometowns and share a feast of Korean traditional food.

It goes on to say….

In modern South Korean, on Chuseok there is a mass exodus of Koreans returning to their hometowns to pay respects to the spirits of one's ancestors. People perform ancestral worship rituals early in the morning. They often visit the tombs of their immediate ancestors to trim plants and clean the area around the tomb, and offer food, drink, and crops to their ancestors. Harvest crops are attributed to the blessing of ancestors.

So there you have it Chuseok.  The pictures below are from Boy 2's Chuseok party at school, the first is of the table full of food you eat at Chuseok (with a little American twist) and the second is of a little girl dress in a han-bok.
 

In Korea the traffic laws are much different than in the US, the driving is pretty much fend for yourself, watch out for motorcycles, bikes and pedestrians, do not make a left turn, and understand that no rules apply to cabs, motorcycles and mopeds.  Once you get that down and figure out the traffic lights, you are good to drive here.  You will also need to know that all red lights do not mean stop, sometimes they are warning lights, letting you know a red light is coming.  I made the mistake of stopping at these red lights (early on when I started driving here) and people not only honked at me, they BLEW THEIR HORNS at me. 

It is hard to believe just three short years ago this little man was born.  I was watching him ride his new bike and thought to myself how quickly the time has flown by, even though during some of that time, time seemed to stand still. Three years old.  He is so independent for three; none of my others were so independent.  He likes dress himself, clear his own plate from the table, wipe his own face and brush his own teeth.  I ask him if he is still a baby & he told me “NO, I BIG now!”  This is a big step for him, as he has always called himself baby, even though he acts like he is ten.

Happy Birthday Baby!

Grammy's last 2 days are upon us. Day 11 we took pretty easy, we just visited the fish market, but if you live here, or you have ever visited the fish market, you know it is not just any fish market.  Grammy just kept saying "this is so overwhelming", and she is right it is.  We ended up buying shrimp, mussels and crab for dinner this night.  Yummy!  Grammy brought so RAO's Arrabbaita sauce to me from the states, which I used in the mussels, and they were heavenly.  (PS...my mussels cost 2,000 won, or approximately $2 for a Kilo, just over 3 pounds thank you very much- the pasta sauce was much more!!)

The next day, Friday, Grammy's last full day here, we spent it packaging boxes...............

Friday night we took one last trip out to Insadong, as there were a few things Grammy still needed to buy, if you can believe that, and we had one last Korean meal together....

Where Grammy ordered bibimbap once again, and she goofed it up once again.  This time she put the WRONG sauce on it.

Grammy, thanks for visiting!  We will miss you, but I am going to take a nap now!

Still day 10: Wednesday evening we headed up to North Seoul Tower for dinner to celebrate Hubby's birthday. (We had originally planned to do this on his birthday Monday, but it was raining and the view would have been terrible.)  We ate on the top floor, at n.Grill, a western restaurant, and it was fabulous!  We arrived right around sunset.

The picture above:  they had these wire guys hanging all over the place.  I thought they were cool.

The view was amazing: at n.Grill, the floor rotates slowly around the tower so you can have a view of the entire city (like Reunion Tower in Dallas, or The Space Needle). The view was amazing.  At n.Grill, the floor rotates slowly around the tower so you can have a view of the entire city (like Reunion Tower in Dallas, or The Space Needle).  The view from here really puts it into perspective on how large this city really is.  If you ever have a chance you should visit Seoul Tower.  There are many different levels as well, there is a floor with a coffee bar & a gift shop, a floor that has a traditional Korean buffet, and observation deck, and more.

The pictures below:

1.  The four of us
2.   Me & Hubby
3.   One of my scallops with risotto
4.   Smoked salmon
5.   This picture is crazy…on one of the floors; they have all these locks all over the place.  The locks are put on by lovers, they lock their love here.  The man telling me about it says it doesn’t work though, because most people that put them here never marry.  They are just lovers.

Day 10 of Grammy's visit:  Our days are starting to blur together as we have been so busy!  I never thought I would hear myself say this, but Grammy is outlasting me. All I want to do is stay home and take a nap, but no, she only has 3 more full days left here so we must see and do more!! 

Hubby had to go back to work today, L so Grammy, Boy 3 and I headed out to see the sock man! Now I know many of you are thinking…”the sock man?  You took her to see the sock man?”  Yes, I did. The sock man rocks, and when you come to visit, I will take you to see the sock man too. But don’t worry, Grammy was thinking the same thing, “you are making me go to the sock man, why on earth would I need to go see the sock man?”   Well, an hour later and something like 50 pair of sock Grammy now knows why she had to visit the sock man.  

After the sock man we went to toy alley where Boy 3 was in HEAVEN!  He was so happy and wanted to go in every single store. (There are over 150 stores in toy alley)  He found gifts for his birthday…Thomas bowling game, Thomas umbrella, Thomas, Thomas and more Thomas.  After toy alley we ducked into a little place for lunch where I was terrified, no one was eating here, and there were no pictures and no one spoke English.  I ask the lady working to recommend something, afraid I was going to get spam or hotdogs.  As it turns out lunch was pretty good, just some sort of very greasy fried rice.  It was a very pleasant ending to something that could have been disastrous.  There is no way I could have relived the spam/hotdog episode.

After dropping Boy 2 off at Kindergarten, we headed for another adventure with Grammy.  We went to the Inwangsan Shamanist village, we saw Seoul’s most famous shamanist shrine,visited small Buddhist temples and hiked along part of Seoul’s fortress wall.   This tour is a “do it yourself” type tour, we only had our Lonely Planet Seoul guide book to help us along this journey.   It took us a little while to find where we were going, and along the way we met a great lady from New York who was trying to find the same area.  She ended up hanging out with us all day.   This was one of my favorite days while Grammy was here. (Come to think of it, I could say that about all the days)

At the Entrance......

This bronze bell, which was very unique, marked the entrance to Bongwonsa, the largest of the temples.

This paintings on the entrance gate doors depict the guardian kings of heaven who protect Buddhists from evil and harm. 

This next picture is of Guksadang, Seoul's most famous shamanist shrine.  The shrine is small, but many of the paintings inside are historic and valuable.  

 The alter is often loaded with offerings of food for the spirits - rice cakes, fresh fruit, meat and a pig's head.  Shamanists believe that the dead still need food and drink.  The picture below is the best I could get of the alter, however it does not do it justice.  The alter lined the room, and was overflowing with the most colorful assortment of delicious looking foods. 

 I could not get a good picture because they were having a traditional Shamanist ceremony and I did not want to interrupt the ceremony. The ceremony, which is called a gut, is done by a female shamanist priest, she dances herself into a frenzied state which allows her to communicate with the spirits and be possessed by them.   We watched and listened to part of this dance, and I must say it made me quite uncomfortable, one for looking in on such a sacred event, and two, because the female priest was very scary, she was dancing around with a huge knife and pitch fork and I wasn’t too sure she wasn’t aiming for me!  I got out of dodge soon after she made eye contact with me.

After gawking at this interesting ceremony for a while, we headed up higher to find the Zen rocks (Seonbawi) which are supposed to look like a Salvador Dali painting. The Zen rocks are 2 rocks that have been so eroded that they look like two robed monks.  (I didn’t see that)  At the alter in front of the rocks, women still come here to pray for a son

As we continued our hike, we ran into an exercise park.  Remember I told you about these in a previous post.  Hubby and I "worked out" for a little while, while Grammy was having a cow about there being a workout park half way up the hike.  She thought the hike was enough of a work out.   J

Once we made it to the top, the view was absolutely amazing!  Here are a few shots of Seoul from the top of Inwangsan. 

In the first picture below you can see the fortress wall, which we hiked  beside on our way down.

In the second picture you can see one of the palaces we toured if you look closely. (The low buildings with the dark roofs)

Eventually we started our decent.  We did not go down the way the guide recommended.  Hubby always likes to go off on his own and find different ways to torcher us, so he took us off the beaten path.  We didn’t always have a very clear path on the way down.
The poor New Yorker that went with us was wearing flip flops, although they were comfortable looking flip flops, they were still flip flops. 

The picture below is of Hubby and Grammy comming down the hill.

After our hike we stopped in a traditional Korean restaurant where Grammy ordered bibimbap.  Now when you have bibimbap, they give you a side of red spicy sauce that you mix in your dish to add a little heat (there is usually already some in it).  This red spicy sauce is just that, VERY SPICY.  Well, Grammy dumped almost the entire bowl of red spicy sauce in her bibimbap.  When the lady that works at the restaurant saw this she came running over and started scooping the sauce out talking in very fast Korean shaking her head no the entire time.   (Just for the record, Hubby and I did not see Grammy do this or we would have stopped her)  The lady did her best trying to scoop out the red sauce, and then finished mixing Grammy’s dish for her.  Grammy tried to be the trooper and eat the bibimbap, but it was very spicy and Grammy was soon sweating bullets.  After a few minutes the lady brought Grammy a new bowl of bibimbap and mixed the entire thing for her.

On Tuesday, September 2nd Boy 2 started Kindergarten.  Here, the Kindergarteners start school a week later than the rest of the grades. Boy 2 was very excited about the first day of school, and he was ready to go!  He marched right into his class room put his backpack and lunch box away and picked a seat to sit in.  He was ready for us to go.  Hubby and I hung out for just a little while, and to my surprise, I got a little teary eyed.  I think it was more because he went in so easily and went straight to work.  He seems like such a big boy now, and doesn’t need his mommy as much as he did just months ago.  Hubby and I were the first parents to leave, and we skipped the Boo-hoo breakfast put on by the school.  We had things to do & places to go!