This is the Gwacheon Science museum, located just outside of Seoul Grand Park (home of the Seoul Zoo, the Contemporary Art Gallery, the Children's Zoo, and Seoul Land). The Science museum is itself a giant complex containing 6 galleries, a planetarium, several outdoor ecological experiences, some trains and a rocket, and a life-scale dinosaur walking trail. In one of the galleries you can see some of the prehistoric sea creatures first discovered by Mary Anning, heroine of two of the novels I just finished reading. We saw very little of the museum on our first visit, but we did go to the special exhibition of kinetic sculptures by Theo Janson. These wood and sail monsters could move with the help of compressed air tubing and a skilled operator, and the demonstration, though long-winded and in Korean, was pretty cool. We could pose beside cut-outs of Mr. Janson (they really love the 2-D photo-op here), and there was an entire tent filled with building tubes and blocks where we spent a happy few hours seeking shelter from a deluge and building towers.
Ah birthday parties. With two children, we seem to be attending them fairly regularly. I finally went to a real Korean 1st birthday complete with baby boy twins, matching family outfits, a ballroom full of people and food to feed them, door prizes, video presentations, speeches, and fortune telling. I think they picked a car and money - but it was a little hard to follow. Also Jamie's favorite friend turned 4 and the kids had a ball at their own Banyan Tree gazebo bash. It was a nice way to end the long summer.
When not invited to the pools of elite private clubs, the likes of us go to the public pools that line the Han River here in Seoul. Public pools are remarkable here. Amazingly crowded (but clean), they usually are a sea of tents and picnic blankets surrounding pools (generally 4: toddler, kids, lane-swim, play) that are chock full of floaters, pool rings, barbie-boats and the like. Families wear matching swim wear, order fried chicken to be delivered to their tent, and spend the day munching kimbap and taking turns pulling the young on inflated toys. The secret is not to resist. We bought many pool toys, erected our tent (useful when seeking shelter from the monsoons that hit every day of the summer), ordered our chicken and rode with the crowds.
Playgrounds: kids love them. Amusing the very young is not that tricky if you can bear the heat and the fact that kids get amazingly dirty and wet whenever left unattended for more than five minutes.
Many Seoulites go to beaches in the summer months. We only did this once, on a rainy day early in the season. Even to drive to Incheon beach is fairly far for a day trip given Seoul traffic, and on sunny days they are reportedly wall-to-wall beach umbrellas. The season is short. Beaches close here on August 31, which I think simply means that the restaurants (mostly live-fish BBQ) and other services (inner-tube and beach-umbrella rentals) that line the beaches shut-down. We have noticed that Koreans like very much to do things that other Koreans are doing (preferably many other Koreans). When the services go, so too do the people; empty beaches might as well be closed because no one would want to be there on their own. Koreans like crowds, so we have different ideas of a good beach day. The day we went, however, was perhaps too deserted, cold and drizzly even for us. The children were chased by a group of walking ajummas who wanted to hug them while having their photos taken. The children were not on board and ran away. Children can run quite far on a beach. I burned myself while trying to BBQ prawns, and Iris broke her shovel. We did not repeat the experiment, but there are many summers ahead and many nearby beaches to explore.
And so I will leave you here with a photo from the last day of school in June, and the first day back in September. The time in between I had little opportunity to draw a breath, let alone a word-picture describing our life. It is enough that we saw, explored, and experienced more of this vibrant and vibrating city and kept our growing glowing brains alight. Jamie is now in Moyenne Section (bilingual), and Iris has a new nanny 2-days a week - so you may be hearing more from me.
