Yesterday we did a bunch of shopping for Autumn before she heads home with Chris in a couple of days.  In Korea, there are underground malls built around subway stations. Lilly, upon being introduced to this, said "it's like a subway station that turned into a mall!  Who wouldn't love this???" Daegu also has a large amount of specialty streets.  Jewelry alley.  Cosmetic alley. Second hand shops alley. Fusion food alley.  Dukbeoggi alley. It's pretty amazing.  Our plan was to start at the second hand alley and then head to the underground shopping area but the insane amount of rain shortened our thrifting experience.  Their thrift stores are cheap and full of adorable clothes as Koreans generally have a really cute style.  Autumn found plenty tshirts with badly translated English on them, which are hilarious but not really something I want to spend money on. Sorry, Autumn.  There are now more Kangs that have fanny packs (agh!!) although they wear them a little differently here. They wear them as cross body bags with the bag right up front. It's a little cuter and makes everything easy to access.  We loaded Autumn up with the best writing utensil on the face of this earth. Mitsubishi gel pen, we honor you.  Adorable socks? We're on it.  I have a theory that school uniforms drive their cute sock industry.  There are cute socks everywhere, folks.  Everywhere.

         

While we were out shopping, Lilly and Elise were finishing up their sleepover with Yeju, which involved a trip to a Jimjilbang.  (Korean bath house and sauna, which I'm absolutely terrified of)  I think I'll have Lilly blog about the bath house as she had a great time and is young enough to not be phased by it.  Yeju's mom then started messaging me (her English skills are pretty minimal so we're all in Korean now) to arrange a meet up.  Here is how I roll: I read their message and decide what I think it means.  I then copy and paste into naver (a much more accurate version of google translate) to see how close I was.  Then I type up my reply, copy it back into naver to check it and then send it off if it makes sense. Where it gets tricky is if Chris' uncle also starts messaging me in the middle of it OR if they call me. Calling is so much harder.  A. It's loud everywhere so it's just hard to hear. B. I can't copy and paste our phone call in naver!  After lots of messaging and a rough phone call with Halmoni that ended much better than it started (she used some words I've NEVER heard before!), we were able to plan a meeting to go to the local science museum.  And I was able to arrange to have them pick up Chris and Hannah.  Success. I've found that I'm much more brave with my Korean without Chris there.  I have a hard time even mustering up the courage to try with him there.   So my Korean skillz should improve more after Chris flies home.  Theoretically.  We shall see.  But let me say this.  Korean is a hard language.  Learning to read it is the easy part. Between all of the many different levels of politeness and a sentence structure that is opposite ours, it can be hard to twist your brain around.

And today I gained back all of that weight. ;) It is Chuseok in Korea, which means three days off of work and school. It also means extensive eating with family.  Like a whole ton of eating.  Today we went over to uncle's house and helped cook. (Sort of.  We weren't great help but we did try.  And I now know how to fry lotus roots and make egg battered meatballs that aren't balls.) It was all delicious. Everyone was stuffed.  Que the next course.  We ate japchae (stir fried sweet potato noodles; one of my first Korean foods that I liked 20 years ago), chicken, rice, and panchans a plenty. The kids were looking sick yet family was still encouraging them to eat more.  I kind of "wink, wink, nodded" to Chris to explain to them that the kids were done or throwing up soon.  So much good food.  Wonderful company as Chris uncle's family is the bomb diggity.  Kind to each other, fun to hang out with, they put away their phone and are great with the girls...oh, we just love them!  So great day.  We are heading home, feeling royally stuffed when they started talking about breakfast tomorrow.  Apparently today was kind of a warm up. Tomorrow is an all day affair, folks.  Oh. My. Dear.  We start at 9 am so I'm going running at 6:30. It's the only way to survive the feast.  The good side of it? At least it is food we love! Imagine if they were giving us gross food.  It could be worse.

We are now back in Daegu and ready to experience our first Korean holiday. You'll get to hear about Chuseok for a few days (apparently, Thanksgiving in Korea involves three days of eating. Beat that, America!) so I will stick to blogging about Busan today.

All of the rain was gone today so we tromped around Haeundae today.  There is a great trail that goes along the coast that provided shade, a nice breeze, an epic view AND a visit with the mermaid/queen statue.  Lilly was a little disturbed by her lack of sea shells. There were lots of stairs but I only managed 28 flights of stairs today so it wasn't too bad.   We did some more culinary touring with some kimchi mandu (dumplings), shrimp mandu, squid tempura and lots of sikhye (a sweet Korean rice drink). I found another place that sold Misugaru smoothies and this one was even better than last night.  My rules for Korea? If there is a western toilet, you at least try. If a cafe makes Misugaru smoothies, you always order at least one.  This time the girls had snow ice while I ate my smoothie so I was safe from having to share too much. 

                                  

We let the kids play very briefly at the beach because the sun was out in full force and we didn't have any sunscreen.  The water was refreshing but not freezing. The ocean breeze was gentle enough to cool you down without throwing sand in your eyes. It was perfect but I did manage to swing a sunburn in that 15 minutes.  Darn!

We came home to a sweet Halmoni that had slaved away making us dinner.  Fish pancakes, green onion pancakes and soup.  I'm telling you, you cannot keep this 97 year old woman down.  Dinner hit the spot after two days of street food!   She chastised me before she left for the night because we aren't eating enough rice.   Bonus: she called when we were at the train station and I told her where we were! (And I understood what she was asking ...which is way better than my conversation with the taxi driver. Don't ask.)

good news minute: we finally found a scale today at emart.  We casually pulled it down to try it out and...I've some how managed to lose weight while eating like a queen.  Yes, the scale could be off but I'm not going there. It was also night time and I was fully clothed. (Phew!) The stairs, kimchi and Misugaru are working. Go team!

This morning we had the kids each grab an outfit as we ran out the door for a hiking adventure in Juwangsan National Park. It's doughnut day in Daegu because there is a shijang/시장 (open air market) outside of Halmoni's apartment that grows substantially on Mondays, which includes the addition of a doughnut lady. She has become Hannah's favorite Korean with her rice cake doughnuts and red bean filled doughnuts.  Back to the hike.  It was sprinkling as we left for our hike so we decided to stop for doughnuts. They weren't ready so we headed for the bank and then proceeded to wait in a heavier rain for doughnuts.  By the time we had our doughnuts, we were going to Busan for the night instead of going hiking.  Rain. Hiking.  Nah.  

We had the shortest wait for a train ever as we had to run to hop on our train.  In Busan, were staying in our second guesthouse.  We've found them to be a great solution for big families. We basically rent a dorm for just our family and it's a great fit. Everyone gets a twin bed, they have breakfast and it's pretty cheap. Hotel rooms here tend to be for 2 people, which would cost us a fortune. The guest houses are everywhere and are full of cute little touches. I love them! 

We went to Jagalchi today, which is Busan's notorious fish market.  They had a rich abundance of all things seafood. Live, freshly killed and dried of everything you could imagine.  We even saw some turtles waiting for some sort of future on a kitchen table. (Cover your ears, Leo!)  Chris was in heaven and ended up eating sea squirt and eel with the more adventurous Kanglings. Everyone at least tried it except for Hannah and Lilly, who are notorious for their picky eating.  Can you really call any Kang a picky eater? Probably not, but in comparison with their siblings...yeah, they're picky. We then wandered through the market that had more than just seafood. The biggest find? My drink that I've been searching for all throughout the past two weeks. There is a grain drink mix called Misugaru that I love to mix with a little bit of honey in the morning. Sometimes people make smoothies with it and I wanted to try it so badly but Halmoni doesn't have a blender and nobody else seems to sell the darn thing. I even had a barista tell me that I should just make it at home.  I got it tonight!  And the kids watched in horror as I ordered this healthy brown smoothie. And then they tried it.  Everyone wanted a little bit more. And a little bit more.  I got enough but next time I'm lucky enough

To find a Misugaru smoothie, I'm getting two of them. 

In other big news, the Kang girls felt their first earthquake today.  The epicenter was actually close to Daegu so I imagine it was felt stronger there.  After sitting in a delayed subway (never happens here!), Autumn got an emergency text telling us that there was an earthquake.  Our subway carried on.  We were walking back to our guest house via a food market (do you see a pattern?  We are culinary travelers!) when things started shaking. It wasn't enough to knock anyone over but Lilly was so terrified! She ran to me just in time for it to stop and we had a lesson about aftershocks.  It wasn't until 2 hours later that we found out it was not an aftershock but a stronger earthquake.   Nothing tragic or horrible but I bet the girls will always remember the earthquake they felt while hunting for some good steamed buns and hotteok.  All in all, a good day.  

Ooh...small world story. We got off the bus right after getting to Busan and started wandering around to find a guesthouse. Across the street was a flock of p-daying missionaries and, of course, one of them had just been transferred from our branch last week. What are the odds? 

Today:

It is so hard to sit through three hours of church when you understand so little. There were two new American missionaries so I DID understand their introductions. For the most part, that is.  Elder Finch talked about how when life is hard for everyone, Jesus Chris helps us...do something.  He has 12 siblings and is from Alaska? Nope. I guess he's from Utah.  Then the Koreans start talking and it gets so much harder. In my defense, Daegu is known for having a bit of a southern drawl. I'd like to blame all of my inadequacies on their drawl.  It was fun having Chris at church today. He learned a lot of new words. Baptism. Sunday School. Branch President. Things he didn't say as an 11 year old in Korea.  He also was able to tell the branch more about our family, including that we met on the Internet.   A member of the branch presidency asked if we'd like a Korean Book of Mormon.  I thought he was going to hand us a missionary copy and was super excited.  He proceeds to give us a nice triple combination!  I told Chris we should give it back and Chris simply said "you do NOT return gifts."  So kind of him!  The sisters are meeting me on Wednesday to give us a Korean lesson. I'm hoping to learn how to pray and bear my testimony before going home.  Or maybe just pray.  Did I tell you how much my Korean stinks?

After church we ate dinner with Chris' uncle. He opened up his restaurant just to make us dinner so I'm counting that as Sunday appropriate.  I am this close to installing a grill into my table when we return home. At his restaurant, you grill these thick slabs of pork until they are carmelizing, cut them into smaller pieces and then dip them in a delicious sauce. You can put it in a lettuce leaf or eat it plain. It is pretty amazing either way.  As it grills, you also throw some garlic, onions and duk (rice cakes) on the grill. The rice cakes come off tasting like toasted bread.  My favorite new food.  The garlic is yummy to add into the lettuce wraps with the meat.  The whole meal was amazing.  Dae bak.  대박! (Awesome!)  And the bonus was that since I got us lost on the way there, we were extra hungry and had burned off extra calories as we wandered around a neighborhood on the other side of the river.  Yep. More calories to eat!  Afterwards, us adults talked for a while. Ok, I mainly listened. I understood so much of what was being said until Yeju's dad would turn to me to tell me something specific. Why only then could he not use one single word that I knew?  The problem with adult conversations? I don't have an adult vocabulary. I want to say all of these things and...I can't.  They asked me if it is hard homeschooling. I wanted to tell them why I think it isn't any harder and what the benefits are.  Ugh.  I hate not being able to say what I want to say!

Next time your teenager complains about their homework or school load, ask me about Dong Bin. She is Chris' cousin and is a senior this year. We ran into her right by the subway last night at 10 pm.  (We almost didn't recognize her because she was wearing a mask!)  Guess where she was heading at 10 pm on a Saturday night? Yep. School. She had already gone to school and her after school academy. This was another class that she was off to.  On Saturday.  Today, I walked Elise over to their house to spend the night.  I asked where Dong Bin was. She was at school so I asked when she was coming home from school. 1 am.  On Sunday.  And then I told him that I'd pick up Elise at 7 but he said Dong Bin could bring her home on her way to school. At 7 am.  I obviously think Koreans are insane when it comes to this. And most Koreans would agree.  It is a vicious cycle as they have to study this much to keep up academically with the other people who study this much. And after college, they have to continue this to be competitive in their career.  They study like crazy and work crazy long hours.  I'm just amazed that their brains don't all explode from the pressure.   So next time you feel like your child has too much homework...

Today we decided to spend another day in Yeosu instead of heading over to Busan. It allowed us time to wander the island of Olongdo (do is island in Korean so that sounds a little silly. The island of Olong?) and to get a very inexpensive meal full of seafood.

After dropping all of our bags off at the the train station for storage (the best 4,000 won we've spent on the trip), we walked to Olongdo.  It has a little man made land bridge that allows you to stroll to the island. Olongdo is full of paths that lead to different view points along the island. Although it is not super natural (there is music softly playing as you walk the trails), it was still pretty woodsy, relaxing and full of beautiful scenery. (And stairs. Lots of stairs).  The only bummer of the morning? There was a lot of fog so there wasn't the same visibility we had yesterday.  Another cool part of Olongdo? There was this foot health trail where they encourage you to shed your shoes and walk along their trail full of different textures.  It hurt like heck to walk on but afterwards, my feet felt so fantastic!  At the end of our walk, we found a cool musical fountain that was a smaller version of he Bellagio fountain but still pretty neat. It helped that it was choreographed to "Under the Sea".

Next was our seafood lunch, which ended up full of seafood delicacies that I can't tell you about because I...don't like seafood.  I know! I was a wasted spot at the table but the kids and Chris enjoyed it enough to make up for me. I stuck to rice and vegetable panchans, which filled me up just fine. I don't know the details, but I know there were plenty of sea squirt, cockles, crab and abalone at the table.  It only cost us 52,000 won, which isn't bad for 7 of us!
 
The weird part of the day? After our long train ride home, we finally made it back to Halmoni's house.  As we got out of the subway station and were right around the corner from her house, I had that feeling that you have after coming off of a long trip. That feeling of coming home and home just feeling so darn good? I felt that for a place that I've just been visiting for 2 weeks and I must say, it felt good.

Something new I changed today: the kids get a 10,000 won weekly allowance here for souvenirs, kimbap and the like. Today I made it a rule that I have to hear them speak Korean to two people each day to earn the full amount. Lilly immediately starting telling Halmoni that her throat still hurts.  In Korean.  Bribes are good sometimes, right?  I hope this is one of those times. Autumn has picked up quite a bit of Korean considering the fact that she only knew how to say hello, goodbye and thank you before our trip. The funny part? Despite her having the smallest Korean vocabulary, Halmoni treats her like she's fluent. Why? Because she fakes comprehension the best.  It's kind of funny to watch.  She does understand "your hair is pretty" because everyone seems to say it to her.

After a nice bowl of bibimbap, we said farewell to Jeonju.  Apparently, bibimbap started in Jeonju so it's a little different (and more expensive) there. It has more of a variety of vegetables which give it a complex taste. At least that is what Chris said.  I love bibimbap but this one had seaweed mixed in it so I stuck to the bulgogi.  I really do wish I could like seaweed. I've tried. And tried.  We just weren't meant to be.  It just keeps me from eating Kimbap mainly, which is sold in every other store here.

We hopped a train to Yeosu, which was a 2 hour train trip.  We took the cheap train and found it to be plenty comfortable and clean.  It only cost 55,000 won for all seven of us, which is about $50.  Not bad for a two hour trip.  The train had a little snack car that, of course, had mini karaoke rooms for you to rent out. Why wouldn't you have karaoke rooms on a train, right??

In Yeosu, we hopped a bus to go straight to the Buddhist hermitage that Chris wanted to see.  Instead we got distracted by a replica of the turtle boats, a statue of our dear admiral Yi (Hannah is his biggest fan since she watched an episode of a Korean drama about him) and a cool pagoda of sorts that overlooks the city and the bay.  THEN we headed to the hermitage via an hour long bus ride through small villages that either were rice farmers, fishermen or kimchi experts.  I just can't get over the beauty of their countryside. I feel like Korea's cities are really big and their villages are really small.  They seem to squish everyone into the city to keep the villages small. I love it! If I moved to Korea, I'd take up residence in a village.  We knew we were in for it when we had to walk up these steep city streets (Lombard road minus the switchbacks) just to get to the hermitage gate. We then climbed up, up, up these beautiful and steep granite stairs (more than 300 of them) to the tippy tippy top. It made for a spectacular view and was completely worth the whining we had to listen to.  (Which, in all honesty, wasn't that bad. It was playful whining.) While explaining that this was a sacred place for Buddhist folks to visit, the girls all decided that they were grateful that they don't have to climb so many stairs to get to the temple.  Figurative stairs, ladies.  Figurative. With super sweaty backs (we all had our backpacks with all of our stuff for the trip), we reluctantly headed back into town on the bus.

There were minbaks and pensions (rooms for rent) a plenty in these tiny towns and of we hadn't already made our reservations in town, I think we would have stayed the night! We then had a very kind bus driver that saved us from ourselves as we got off at the wrong place and he waited for us while helping us figure out our junk.  I kind of wanted to hug him but settled for a few "kamsamnida"-s.   Yeosu is a nice town as it isn't overwhelmingly huge but has the markets and what not of a big city. They have less cross walks so you just have to be gutsy and trust that the oncoming traffic values human life as much as you do.  There are plenty of Korean women out selling their fruits and veggies on the street. The buses got us where we needed to go and seemed to come often.  And all of that was complete with a nice view of the ocean.  Ooh...their ocean seems so calm.  Almost like a bay with no waves crashing up on the rocks.  You rarely have a place where you look out and don't see oyster farms everywhere.  It looked a lot like Oregon's coast but different.