whole menagerie at one time. This makes it hard to plan wardrobes, outings, and a myriad of other things that would help my days pass in a waft of splendid organization. Despite this, March has flown by with nary a moment to reflect - so I am stealing away this cold Sunday morning while the kids run amok, skipping naps and maybe meals, to spend some time with you.In our first photo you will find the family at the Korean Folk Village in Gyeonggi-do. In this outdoor museum are 260 historical homes from the late Josean Period. You can watch a traditional wedding (complete with live Chicken in a bag that squirms around during the bowing), enjoy tight-rope acrobatics, and clap (if you are one) along with cartwheeling, tambourine-playing folk dancers. If you are so inclined you can stretch out on the punishment bench in front of government house and your friends can practice administering corporal punishment with various whips and
heavy clubs. We enjoyed the handicraft-demonstrations. Jamie dyed some cloth along with a tangible-human-traditional-cultural-asset (the lady talking to Iris middle-right). Iris kicked a cow. Brian attempted threshing. I ate bulgogi. The babies were photographed by many strangers.Photo number two depict
s Iris and her new friend V. at music class and in front of their brothers' classroom (on Wednesdays Mommies can actually go inside now - it is very exciting). This picture serves as an introduction to my Spring schedule. On Mondays I now have a nanny. Iris and V. share her, leaving me one day to explore. So far we have had three Mondays: the first I hid in the office the whole time listening for tears, the second I snuck home and napped, but the third I actually went out as you will see in a moment. Tuesdays I have my maedup class, and I try to catch up on those three hours of paid work I should do weekly. Wednesday is Jamie's short day so, due to non-stop-snow we alternate house-playdates with some of his friends. Thursdays we have baby playgroup in the morning, and then I nap. Fridays the babies have music class and Jamie gets out early so there is no time for anything else. Fascinating no?
I also somehow manage to cram in other things: in picture three I had 18 moms and their babies (SIWA mom's group) over for lunch (potluck) and in picture four I went (with my supper club) to see our friend Lucia Kye, noted clarinetist, give a "house concert." We were seated on the floor directly behind the pianist, facing the audience. Clearly it was not enough to be the only four foreigners in the room, but we also had to be on stage. That is my friend L
ucy top right. Although my legs kept going to sleep, we really enjoyed the concert. Lucy was amazing and it was the first time I have been out doing something that attracted actual Seoulites. It felt more like participating in real city-life rather than being a tourist. Photo five was my Monday outing. I went to Myeong-dong, famed shopping district, to look about (I was actually looking for a new H&M, but although I found the billboard and pointed at it while squawking at some businessmen, I never got there). What impressed me, however, was the various layered life of Seoul. In the same streetscape you will find giant gla
ss hotels and shopping malls, hand-drawn food or waste carts, tent-alley-street-cafes, and tiny crowded shops crammed into whatever open space is left. Travelling without baby and boy is very liberating and I had a brief taste of why some find the city so full of energy and adventure. My adventure was mostly having lunch with Brian. Baby-free, we managed floor-seated-table-cooking and an encounter with the Korean take on American donut chains (we didn't have garlic glazed). I like tables full of suit-clad-shoeless businessmen kneeling before steaming pots of egg, and the fact that Korean restaurants are not afraid to display their insect-repellent along with their carts of side-dishes. Seoul is still crammed with cute mascots, strange English slogans (why is everything a story - does that mean something different in Korean?), and enough coffee shops and bakeries to meet my 
weekly sugar and caffeine requirements with some to spare. My afternoon ended with a freak snowstorm and a mad taxi-dash to catch Jamie at school pick-up, but Monday comes every week.
In photo six you can see some rice cakes that a trio of upstairs neighbours dropped off at my door one morning. I think they were either apologizing for three months of home-renovation or telling me they had just moved in. I didn't know the proper gift-accepting etiquette, but I think grabbing for the cake with one hand while trying to balance a nearly-naked baby in need of a diaper change with the other was not correct. As you can also see, on my main street soon will be "comeing" "an Oak a wood bumer." I can hardly wait. I will enjoy it after a visit to the nearby "beer pup." Here are some coffee cups inviting us to make gorgeously our lives. This is good advice, though the seasonal change is making it difficult. Along with the continually changing weather, Spring also brings carcinogen-bearing yellow dust. Here are Iris and Brian in Itaewan during the worst "Asian dust" storm in a decade. It is the middle of the afternoon and we were wondering what the st
range light was. Luckily, according to the headlines, I am happy here - so that's fine.
ss hotels and shopping malls, hand-drawn food or waste carts, tent-alley-street-cafes, and tiny crowded shops crammed into whatever open space is left. Travelling without baby and boy is very liberating and I had a brief taste of why some find the city so full of energy and adventure. My adventure was mostly having lunch with Brian. Baby-free, we managed floor-seated-table-cooking and an encounter with the Korean take on American donut chains (we didn't have garlic glazed). I like tables full of suit-clad-shoeless businessmen kneeling before steaming pots of egg, and the fact that Korean restaurants are not afraid to display their insect-repellent along with their carts of side-dishes. Seoul is still crammed with cute mascots, strange English slogans (why is everything a story - does that mean something different in Korean?), and enough coffee shops and bakeries to meet my 
weekly sugar and caffeine requirements with some to spare. My afternoon ended with a freak snowstorm and a mad taxi-dash to catch Jamie at school pick-up, but Monday comes every week.In photo six you can see some rice cakes that a trio of upstairs neighbours dropped off at my door one morning. I think they were either apologizing for three months of home-renovation or telling me they had just moved in. I didn't know the proper gift-accepting etiquette, but I think grabbing for the cake with one hand while trying to balance a nearly-naked baby in need of a diaper change with the other was not correct. As you can also see, on my main street soon will be "comeing" "an Oak a wood bumer." I can hardly wait. I will enjoy it after a visit to the nearby "beer pup." Here are some coffee cups inviting us to make gorgeously our lives. This is good advice, though the seasonal change is making it difficult. Along with the continually changing weather, Spring also brings carcinogen-bearing yellow dust. Here are Iris and Brian in Itaewan during the worst "Asian dust" storm in a decade. It is the middle of the afternoon and we were wondering what the st
range light was. Luckily, according to the headlines, I am happy here - so that's fine.Photos seven and eight are Kid's Cafes here in Seoul. One is nearby (Monkey Banana) and more modest (Jamie was invited to a birthday party there). The other is in the new shopping mall Times Square and has many larger jumping apparatus (including a giant bouncy bear) and a train ride (where "kids go by themselveses"). Kids
Cafes are places that attract many Korean
families on cold snowy Spring days. For a small fortune you can enjoy a "free" drink as you watch your little ones risk their necks and immune systems on various equipment which probably wouldn't pass Canadian safety standards. They are also very noisy and offer few places to tie up your baby. We will probably see very very many of these establishments over the next two and a half years.
Cafes are places that attract many Korean
families on cold snowy Spring days. For a small fortune you can enjoy a "free" drink as you watch your little ones risk their necks and immune systems on various equipment which probably wouldn't pass Canadian safety standards. They are also very noisy and offer few places to tie up your baby. We will probably see very very many of these establishments over the next two and a half years.That brings us to yesterday and our final photo. We tried to find a Museum of Modern Art just outside of Seoul in Ansan (Bravo Ansan!
). It took us almost two hours to locate. Maps here are notoriously non-specific, and English-language road signage sporadic at best. For some reason city-signers were sure English speaking tourists would want to know where the juvenile detention center and the "drivers lice office" were, but not the newly built Art gallery. We finally made it and spent an hour exploring the small collection, admiring ourselves in a reflective eyeball, and trying to make out why only one kid was allowed in the children's play space at a time, and only if they produced a drawing of an airplane whilst in there. Jamie was confused by the photos of gun-wielding Lego men lying in pools of red paper blood, though it might help curb his mother-wearying enthusiasm for playing at pistolet. Iris, it seems, would rather run like a madwoman directly at artwork than be carried around having it explained to her. Instead Brian and I carried around cups of oddly flavored latte that encouraged us to make gorgeously our lives, and felt pleased that it was only snowing chogum, un petit peu, a very little bit. However, soon will come April's sweet (though dusty) showers that will drive away the March madness, and perhaps induce us to pilgrimages - but that will be another tale.
). It took us almost two hours to locate. Maps here are notoriously non-specific, and English-language road signage sporadic at best. For some reason city-signers were sure English speaking tourists would want to know where the juvenile detention center and the "drivers lice office" were, but not the newly built Art gallery. We finally made it and spent an hour exploring the small collection, admiring ourselves in a reflective eyeball, and trying to make out why only one kid was allowed in the children's play space at a time, and only if they produced a drawing of an airplane whilst in there. Jamie was confused by the photos of gun-wielding Lego men lying in pools of red paper blood, though it might help curb his mother-wearying enthusiasm for playing at pistolet. Iris, it seems, would rather run like a madwoman directly at artwork than be carried around having it explained to her. Instead Brian and I carried around cups of oddly flavored latte that encouraged us to make gorgeously our lives, and felt pleased that it was only snowing chogum, un petit peu, a very little bit. However, soon will come April's sweet (though dusty) showers that will drive away the March madness, and perhaps induce us to pilgrimages - but that will be another tale.
