Little Lees Diary: Sleepless in Seoul

Dae and I mimicking the statues at the Shilla Millenium Park in Gyeongju

No carseats the entire trip...

Day 4 in Seoul! I'd like to say it has been a relaxing vacation thus far but that would be a little bit of a stretch! It's just before 6am Seoul time and Christian is finally asleep after an epic evening of throwing up and lack of sleep. More on that later. Our flight was delayed out of Portland, so we were told by the gate attendant we would not make the Seoul flight and would have to come back the next day. We decided to chance it with a 45 minute connection (including customs in Vancouver, B.C.) so I dashed out of the plane, ran the entire way to customs and held a spot in the (nonexistent) line for Dae, who had Christian in the carrier, a backpack on his back, and the stroller. We made it! Sweating profusely, but we made it with time to spare.

The flight over was pretty good. Christian did great, and I think we actually prepared pretty well with new little toys and gadgets (like velcro'd items) for him to play with as well as treats galore. When we arrived in Korea, Dae's parents met us at the airport and Dae and I rode the shuttle back to our hotel. We had literally about 5 minutes to drop our stuff off and get ready for dinner with Dae's parents and parent's friends, who were waiting at the restaurant. Seeing as it was about 3am our time, our appetites weren't quite up to par. All we could think about was bed! So we got back to our hotel and crashed, hoping for a good night's rest, but a good night's rest was not in the cards. Christian got up every hour or so and had had enough around midnight. Dae and I strolled with him for a couple hours to try to get him back to sleep. He finally fell back asleep and was up for good around 5am. Big yawn!

The next morning, Dae's dad had told us they were coming to get us at 9am, but in typical fashion, they arrived at 7:40 am ready to go. We were told we were driving to a town called Taejon to visit his aunt and uncle, so we rode by car for about 3 hours to Taejon and arrived at their place. His aunt was soooo nice. She prepared a full spread for breakfast, lunch and dinner, with no fewer than about 8 different dishes at each meal. Every meal she also pulled out these tables and cleaned them off and after every meal she thoroughly cleaned the kitchen and mopped the floors! (I felt ashamed about my housekeeping duties back in the good old U.S.) Anyway, we had been told that we were spending the night there, then we weren't, then we were. So needless to say, there was no crib for Leelee, but it actually worked out pretty well because they all sleep on these hard mats on the floor, some with about an inch of padding. So Leelee and my mat had about an inch of padding, and my pillow was made of rocks! It was a pillowcase filled with about 1cm diameter rocks from what we could tell, and was surprisingly comfortable! Anyway, Leelee rolled around on the mat/floor all through the night and did fairly well considering the lack of physical borders.

The next day we thought we were heading back to Seoul but had another surprise coming our way when Dae's dad announced his friend was putting us up in a hotel in yet another city called Gyeongju, otherwise known as the capital of the Shilla dynasty. At this point, I realized that as long as I expected to have no control whatsoever and no idea whatsoever in what we were doing, we were going to be fine and I wouldn't be disappointed! haha! So we drove a half hour to the train station, took a 50 minute bullet train ride (awesome!) to a town called Taegu and were met by Dae's parent's friend for another 1 1/2 hour car ride to Gyoengju. This guy (don't remember his name) was so nice, buying a little Korea soccer jersey for Christian as well as diapers ($2.50 for 3 diapers - highway robbery - but as mentioned before we thought we were only staying one night and were therefore poorly packed. I'm pretty sure we all stunk when we got back home). So we toured around Gyoengju and met up for dinner with yet another set of friends at one of the most interesting and delicious restaurants I've been to. It was set in the middle of all these rice paddies, with one-lane roads leading up to it. These roads were sooo narrow - one wrong swerve and you would fall off into a water-filled rice paddy. We drove along the road, then took a turn into what looked like a series of houses and then drove behind a house into a small parking lot which led to the courtyard and restaurant. It didn't even seem like a restaurant, more like a house with a room that housed one group of guests per evening (this evening it was apparently us). We sat on the floor for dinner (by the way, every meal we had had on this trip was on the floor) and had a delicious series of dishes for dinner. I took some pictures that I will load when we get back.

Dinner place in the rice paddies

The dinner group

Sitting on the tatami mats for dinner. I don't know how they do it, my knees were hurting!

First course. The colorful platter are little burritoes you make with the 'tortilla' in the center and various stuffing on the perimeter. The yellow was thinly sliced egg yolks and the whites were thinly sliced egg whites.

Rice patties and beef patties and kimchi

Fish and various assorted dishes

So that evening we got our first semi-good night's rest at yet another hotel. The next morning we were again unsure of our plans until we actually arrived at the bus station for a 4 hour bus ride back to Seoul. Yikes. The bullet train hadn't panned out for our return, as Gyoengju does not have a bullet train station. And so began Christian's episodes of nausea and vomiting. We are thinking it had to do with the rest-stop corn on the cob, mandu (dumplings) and red bean buns, but whatever it was had Christian vomiting all throughout the bus ride and 4 times last night. I feel so badly for him. He can't even keep water down. And to make matters worse, he fell and gashed his forehead on the hard coffee table yesterday evening so he's got this blood-stained bandaid smack in the middle of his forehead. That poor little guy. Luckily, in between throwing up, his spirits still seem good.

SO...that's our trip thus far in a nutshell! (As I type at the hotel business center, scents of bile stuck to my pajamas waft up my nose.) But to end on a better note, here are a few cute things Christian has been up to:

1) He just loves climbing up stairs. If he spots a set of stairs he will whine and whimper until we bring him over so he can climb up them, be assisted down, and climb up again, bruising his knees all the while.

2) He has discovered this new little banana drink that they sell in every store here. I have to admit, they are delicious, and Christian loves them.

3) We taught him to say "harboji" and "harmony" for grandpa and grandma in Korean, but he can't say the first part very well so he ends up saying "boji" for grandpa and what sounds like "money" for grandma! hehe

4) Random Seoul observation: Their subway stations are also the local malls. There are tons of shops and you will see businessmen meeting for dinner and girls trying on shoes right in the middle of the subway station. There are also cheap iPhone covers galore...heaven! I will try to contain myself...

5) Seoul has major World Cup Fever! And last night Korea won against Greece 2-0. Hooray!