This is the Samsung Children's Museum. It was, as is usual here in Seoul, very tricky to get to, especially when travelling with four children. Although the displays were entirely in Korean, thus making it difficult to figure out how our kids were supposed to interact with the exhibits, there were many activities for them: a giant house that you could enhance with roof tiles, extra bricks and new rafters, complete with building cranes to help you get your gear to the top floor; a room where, it seemed, you could administer several intelligence tests to your young to find out which of the 8 types of IQ they had, enabling prediction of their future profession (allowing you to put them in their proper hagwans now); a room of machines that shot foam balls through a variety of tubes; a room full of water tables; a mock kitchen where you were encouraged to drum on the pots and pans and garbage cans etc.; a room in which you could video your kids playing musical instruments and performing well known songs (expertly, if you were Korean); a room of the future where you could wear metal hats that claimed to be able to read your brain waves (see Jamie, top-centre); a room that taught you the science of life and had a model of a pregnant woman you could ultrasound and puzzles of key life passages including the peeing boy bottom right (potty-training?). There was also a baby-play-room full of toy cars, and sadly, that's where all four children preferred to hang out.
Look, I made kim-bap. It only costs 3$ for 2 rolls and is available in every second shop here in Seoul, but I thought I would spend an afternoon learning to do it myself.
Yesterday I went as the parent helper on Jamie's school trip. We took about 40 kids 5 and under on a 2 hour and 45 minute bus ride (the driver got lost) to a kid's farm outside of Seoul. They made ice-cream, milked a cow (well, they lined up to individually squeeze the teat of a 8-month pregnant cow, who may have wanted to spend her last trimester otherwise), fed some calves, took a tractor ride and had a picnic. They admired the tank-loads of armed soldiers who clearly thought a children's activity farm was the best place to practice maneuvers. They glanced nervously at the videographer who, despite the teacher telling him not to film our children, followed them around filming them. They were loaded on a giant swing, and told it was for "photo only," and would break if they tried to swing on it. They were invited to feed the animals from the pile of hay and grasses provided for that purpose, but were told that the animals would likely bite - especially the ostrich who was notorious for biting children. They listened to long Korean explanations for things that by the time they were translated into English, and then French, were no longer remotely interesting to them. They were shepherded back and forth to various washrooms to wash various parts of them by their helpful parent volunteer, and then they got to get on the bus for the 2 hour ride home. I guess they had fun.
For Chuseok week, I went with the children (and some friends) to Busan for the week. There I lost my camera. Otherwise you could see photos of the darling children playing on the beautiful sandy beach, the seaside temple with the stunning views, the aquarium with its school of sharks swimming along with their tiny babies riding under their fins, and the giant house that was built for an APEC conference. Sadly, you can not. September is apparently the only time that it is possible to travel to Busan beaches while the sea is still swimmable to be able to glimpse the ocean through the crowds. The sun was (mostly) shining the water was (nearly) warm, the children were grubby (read happy). I was given chocolates, songpyeon (Chuseok rice cakes), glittery nail-polish and lip-gloss (?) and free tickets to Spa-topia in Asia's largest shopping mall (not for those under 12). I ate the chocolates. The hotel lacked beach facilities (eg. an outside shower to remove sand before traipsing it through the posh lobby - apparently mine were the only kids who required such amenities). The holiday-makers swarmed my children, making it hard for them to relax on the beach. My friend's kids spent the final two days vomiting. Everything was closed for two days because of the holiday, which corresponded to the only days too rainy to play outside. When I taxied my kids to the seaside Temple (Haedong Yonggungsa) it turned out to be far away from everything else. Unable to call for a new taxi, I had to make the taxi driver wait and thus had only a very quick visit. I promised Jamie a boat ride, but boat tours were apparently not running and operators kept telling me the weather (hot and sunny) was not suitable. Instead we spent an afternoon sitting on a rock and watching the boat tours (that we, for some reason, were not on) speed past the shore. But Jamie enjoyed the train ride, he got to visit many new kid's cafes, jump on hotel beds, and spend time with his friend. I got away from Seoul, which I had quite throughly explored over the summer, and finally saw those beaches that everyone is on about. Iris got to sleep with Mommy for 4 nights, and "run around, run around, run around." Brian got to work long days in Seoul and have a lie-in on his day off. So, apart from the tragic camera loss, we are glad we went on holiday.
Look - it was Brian's birthday. He ate steak and salmon, cake and ice-cream, played with his kids and built some Lego. I'm sure he has never been happier.
Look - it was Brian's birthday. He ate steak and salmon, cake and ice-cream, played with his kids and built some Lego. I'm sure he has never been happier.
Here is the boy in a bubble. Properly, I guess this should be paired with photos of our children surrounded by Koreans remarking on their features, praising their antics, and trying to film them thus providing a montage that underlines the whole hamster-in-a-cage phenomenon that is their lives, but instead it is just Jamie enjoying rolling around on the surface of water in a giant ball. Also metaphorical I think.
