Memorial Day Weekend

We were busy little bees this weekend. The water park opened this weekend so that was our first stop.

Last year, Maddie was a little baby who just laid in the stroller under a big umbrella. This year she's pushin' it up like a big girl:

Her favorites: this dragon slide and anything else with a stair or ramp to climb (read: more work for Mommy and Daddy.)

100th Post: Paying it Forward

My little blog is growing up! This is my 100th post! Apparently, when you reach your 100th post, you are supposed to do something special: have a contest and give something away, list 100 things about yourself. None of those really appealed to me. But then I saw a "Pay It Forward" contest on a friend's blog and knew that would be the perfect thing.

If you've seen the movie "Pay It Forward," then you get the general idea. You do someone a favor without expecting anything in return. They return the favor and "pay it forward" by doing something nice for someone else. The way it works on a blog is the first three people who leave a comment and decide to Pay it Forward to three people in their own way will get a prize.

Here are the rules: I will send a gift (a special Korean one, of course) to the first 3 people who leave a comment on my blog requesting to join this "Pay It Forward" exchange, and who make the same pledge on their own blog. The only thing you have to do in return is PAY IT FORWARD on your own blog.

(If don't have a blog but still want to participate, then you have to be one of the first three people to leave a comment describing what random act of kindness you did for someone since reading this post. For example, did you pay for the person behind you in the drive thru line? Did you let the person behind you in line at the grocery store go first? Did you babysit a couple's three adorable children so they could have their first date in a year? You get the idea...)

So, if you want to get Korean goodies, let me know!

Black Market

Korea is the land of knock-offs. Everything from Coach purses to Disneyland, this place is making a killing with all their 'not quite right' replicas.

You can get bootlegged DVDs for $5. This was a Seinfeld episode, but there are people that take their video cameras to movies, record them and then sell the DVDs for $5. Does it matter that people in the audience sometimes stand up and walk in front of the camera to go get popcorn? Of course not.

There are your basic assortment of clothes like Ambercrombie and Fitch, Victoria's Secret Pink collection, and professional sports jerseys and hats.

Then there are the purses. Louis Vuitton, Coach, Kate Spade, the list goes on. The way it works: You go to a purse store and the lady asks you what you want. You tell her and then she locks the door, moves some shelves aside and presto, a secret door in the wall! Down some creepy steps into a basement, where there is yet ANOTHER secret door. Through the wall again and into a storeroom of sorts that looks like it's been used for many, many illegal things. And there you will find purses galore. It's bizarre as it sounds. And lots of fun, too!

When you have Big Brothers...

they teach you how to make funny faces:

Korean Lifestyle News

I am conflicted about posting this at all, because you can't believe everything you read and I don't know anything about these websites so you can decide for yourself. Recently there were new outbreaks of bird flu nearby so I went to a couple of online Korean newspapers and found some interesting stories.

One was about how a lot of Korean men are going abroad to places like Vietnam to find women to marry because there aren't enough Korean women to go around. Interesting.

But, what caught my eye after that was disturbing. Before you continue, let me warn you that you won't like what you are about to read and you REALLY don't want to see the picture if you are an animal lover. So, consider yourself warned. It appears as though the "Dog Days of Summer" refers to something very different here in Korea. I tried to confirm this in another paper to make sure it was true and I did read elsewhere that summer is the most popular time for "boshintang" (traditional dog meat soup).

Here Comes Trouble

Move over Andrew, there's a new deputy in town:

I caught Madeline in her room playing with the electrical outlets. She was trying to plug in the space heater!

Party with the Koreans

This is the one thing I will miss about Korea: the people. They have shown the Americans here some amazing hospitality. A couple of weeks ago, the Koreans working with Ainsley's division hosted an afternoon at the Korean Folk Village. They took them on a tour, gave them LOTS to drink and took them out to eat Korean food. Their tour bus even dropped off an intoxicated Ainsley right in front of our apartment building.

So, Saturday was our turn to return the favor and host a little party in their honor. The afternoon started off with bowling. We LOVE to bowl. We really suck at it, but we love it. The kids enjoy it and the bowling alley is loud enough that it drowns out the din of our unruly children. The Korean families were pretty good at it, too. Here is a super fun lady helping Andrew with the ramp. (I couldn't pronounce their names and they couldn't pronounce ours, so we're even.)

And, I have mentioned before that they LOVE kids, especially babies. These people were ALL over Madeline, in a good way. They fed her when she was hungry, took her out of her stroller to play with her when she was bored and gave her LOTS of hugs and kisses. This poor girl won't know what to do when we get back to America and no one gives her any attention!

Here the Korean kids are teaching the boys how to play pool.

Later, we went to Ainsley's commander's house for a little dinner. It was a Mexican food theme, so we had a taco bar and margaritas. Watching the Koreans try margaritas for the first time was HILARIOUS. I'm pretty sure they didn't like it by the faces they made. Too sour maybe? It was so fun.

Ainsley particularly enjoyed watching them at the taco bar. One guy was looking at the beans like it was a pile of you know what which is usually the face Ainsley tries not to make when he has to eat Korean food.

We made lots of broken conversation. Koreans love to ask you your age, which offends a lot of Americans, but I don't care. This guy, can't pronounce his name but he was 41, was trying to tell me about meeting Ainsley. One time, this guy told Ainsley that he was very handsome and should be a movie star! But all I could gather from him was that Ainsley is very tall and childlike. I really don't know if that's what he meant, but not too far off the mark, huh? And, he was also commenting on the beautiful view from the deck. "It is original." I still have no idea what he really meant, but there you go!