Sadie just celebrated turning one in Korea with a pizza party and Hello Kitty ice cream cake. Our new friends the Hamiltons and Sadie's new nanny, Silver helped us celebrate!
Monday, 21 July 2008
Sadie's 1st Birthday
Sadie just celebrated turning one in Korea with a pizza party and Hello Kitty ice cream cake. Our new friends the Hamiltons and Sadie's new nanny, Silver helped us celebrate!
Tuesday, 15 July 2008
I'm trapped in the Land of Telletubbies and I just keep hearing the "Tinky Winky" song repeat in my head. If you have kids you know what that sounds like. You hear that annoying techno chipmunk sound everywhere you go. We've already discovered three indoor play areas. These are our playgrounds because there are no public playgrounds outdoors and it's great during this rainy season. You pay a couple thousand won and let the kids play. I can sit and read my book. Some moms drop off their kids. They are really cool. Benjamin loves the ones that have the train ride. He asks the Korean woman, is it time to ride the train? like every 15 minutes. Now we just learned the word for train. Kicha.
Back to the land of telletubbies. Sometimes you see men driving pink motorcycles with Hello Kitty on it or Tweetybird car seat covers. Interesting. And it's very hard to distinguish between the men and women's clothing in the dept stores. I'm very confused and sometimes when I think I'm picking up a pair of what I think are women's capri pants the sales clerk will say "mens". The men also carry handbags or you could say a murse. All of the younger adults and kids wear t-shirts with American sayings and writing on them and I mean every single t-shirt. They love the look and the design of it but the hilarious thing is that most of the t-shirts make no sense. They are nonsensical phrases and I guess since most of them don't know English they don't care. But we get a good chuckle reading them.
I have to get a better handle on this beef situation and I will report back soon. All I know is that it is an extremely big deal here. All of the restaurants have signs that say Australian Beef, clean and safe. At our hotel dinner buffet the servers even wore t-shirts exemplifying that, and Australian flags were raised.
Wednesday, 9 July 2008
Tuesday, 1 July 2008
Ugly Koreans, Ugly Americans
By the way, that is the title of the book we received in the welcome packet at the army base. It describes cultural differences between Koreans and Americans alongside cartoon pictures. For example it explains that in Korea people of the same sex hold hands while walking as a sign of good friendship. Obviously American men mostly would find this extremely uncomfortable. It's true, when we take walks down the boardwalk at night, all of the girls are arm in arm. It's really charming to see the friendships. You always see two women walking together laughing and talking. I wish I knew what they were talking about and I'm envious of the friendships, but it really warms your heart. The men you don't see so much arm in arm but you do see a closeness in a different way than we are used to. It's very endearing and almost as if you skipped back in time.
The Korean Paparazzi persists. Here's where I'm not sure how to handle the situation. Every day that we venture out of the hotel we are stopped by what I call the paparazzi for my starlet, Sadie. There is something about American babies here that the Koreans, men, women, and children find so fascinating. They think she is so cute and pretty, but I don't understand the need to document it in their photo taking. No matter where we go there is someone who takes her picture. Now obviously in the states if a male stranger came up to your daughter and started snapping shots of her, you would call the police, but you know here there is no harm intended. I talked to my new American friend Kris about this. She has three young beautiful daughters all with long blond hair so you can imagine how many photos of her children have been taken. We wonder what they do with these pictures. Do they show them to friends and family, put them up on the Internet for people to see, put them in frames, what??? I just don't know if I should put my hand up and tell them no or just kind of ignore it like I have been? Anyhow, if anyone has any input, please let me know. After all it is my child and something I'm not accustomed to. It does make me feel a little uncomfortable. Any comments are appreciated.
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