Tidbits...

We thought we'd add some little bits of information that we've left out along the way...

On the food tour, the only eating utensils were chopsticks.  Kurt is pretty good with them, but I just can't manage to get enough of a pinching action to pick anything up with them.  Our food tour guide (whose name was Daniel) asked if anyone needed a fork.  Two of us asked to use forks.  At one of the restaurants, they only had one fork... in the whole restaurant!  We ended up using the spoons that were meant for the soup.  I know that they have training chopsticks here for kids.  I wish I had a pair!

Cindi asked if I drank the rice beer.  Yes!  It is gluten-free and delicious.  It has a very mild flavor.  I like it better than wine too.  If I had grown up in Korea, I may have had a rice beer-drinking habit. 

You rarely see women here wearing sunglasses.  They tend to carry sun umbrellas that are made from a lightweight cloth.  They look like something you would have seen long ago in the U.S.  They are very protective of their skin and it shows.  It is hard to tell the age of the people here because their skin looks so fabulous.

The people here are dressed so nicely.  The young women are wearing the cutest little summer dresses and skirts and the men are often in suits. The women are wearing all kinds of amazingly high heels and walking all over the city in them.  There are people in jeans, shorts, and t-shirts too, but they still always look so put-together and fashionable.  Americans are very casual in comparison.

In Insadong last night, we had a little boy who looked to be about 9 or 10 years old come up to us.  He said, "Hi, I speak English.  Nice to meet you."  He asked if we were friends.  We tried to explain that we were married but he didn't understand.  So we told him we were "Mom and Dad".  He looked around for our child.  We said we had a little boy who is Korean.  His face lit up and he said, "Really?"  Then his mom came looking for him and he said, "Thank you.  Bye-bye" and off he went.  He was much more brave about trying out his English than we have been with trying out our Korean!

On one of our sight-seeing trips, we stopped to sit down and rest a bit.  Kurt started to snap some photos of the motorcycles that would go by loaded up with huge piles of boxes and he took one of me, too.  An older Korean man stopped to jump into the photo with me.  He couldn't speak any English, but he mimed that I should get rid of Kurt and go with him.  Then he laughed and laughed at his own joke.

While we were at the palace (on a Saturday) there were crowds of children on field trips.  They all carried around papers that looked like school work that had to be done while they were there.  There was a small group of very young children (maybe 6 or 7 years old) who looked like they were there with their mom and a hired tutor.  We bumped into them all over the palace grounds and whenever we did, they were being questioned by the tutor and taking notes in their notebooks.  We know that the Koreans highly value education.  Daniel (the food tour guide) told us that Koreans spend 20-30% of their salaries on education throughout their lives.  That is why so many of them have learned a foreign language.  English and German used to be the most popular languages and now many of them are learning Chinese and Japanese as well. 

Korea is not a very diverse country.  I think the only non-Korean people who we see here are stationed here in the military, are here for business, or are tourists. For the most part, no one has seemed particulary intereseted in a couple of white people wandering around their city.  However, for some reason, yesterday we felt a little like celebrities.  We drew a lot more stares wherever we went.  We had a high school aged girl ask to have our photo taken with her and a sign that said (in English) something like "The Beautiful Island of De-do".  She and her group of friends jumped into the photo with us.  We have no idea if we were apart of some kind of scavenger hunt or school project or just a joke.  We wondered if we were ending up on a Facebook page somewhere.

Three of the five babies we got to meet went home and the other two go home tomorrow.  It's been fun to watch them begin to recognize their parents as their best source of comfort.  The two babies that were having the most difficult time with the transition on their first day with their parents are so giggly and happy now.  They are sleeping well and tears are rare.  We are hoping Max does as well as all of these boys have.  This is Louie.  He is a big flirt and is the comic of the group.

Yes, Amy.  I did buy those cute little high-top tennies.  I couldn't resist!

That's it for today.  Two days to getting Max!  We're trying to switch from tourist to parent-mode and rest up for the days ahead.

Dede (and Kurt)