familyapril08

Family Update - April 2008

So our stay in Seoul has now reached 17 months which is almost half of my 3 year assignment. Wow, was that fast. As I approach the half way point of our time here I find myself amazed at all we have done and seen, and then equally amazed at how much there is left we haven't done yet. Just looking around here in Seoul, there are tons of museums not yet visited, palaces not seen, strange food uneaten (ok, that part's on purpose) and tons of adventures not yet attempted. Expand that thought to Asia as a whole and I realize we've barely scratched the surface on what there is to see and do.

Here's the run down of what we've been up to the last few months. We know we won't ever get to everything over here, but we're determined to try our best.

January

January started off with the return from our previously described trip to beautiful Guam. We arrived back just in time to celebrate Josh's 7th birthday which included a trip to Build-A-Bear as well as a trip to the Lego World exhibit which was in town for a while. Josh also had joint ski trip/birthday party with his friend Tyrone who turned 6 just a couple days after Josh's B'day. About 5 GM families brought their kids to the ski hill that day and we had a fun day of skiing followed by an apres'-ski lunch/birthday tailgate party in the parking lot afterwards.

Other than that, January was pretty calm and normal as the family settled back into our post-Christmas routine of school and work. Nancy now is also room mom for Josh's class which keeps her hopping. In addition to her work at the school, Nancy is also taking 2 Korean language classes and takes a Korean knot tying class with some of the other ladies at our apartment. She is also still very active in exploring the city with her friends and in January visited the baking market and found some great new restaurants including her new favorite, Buddha's Belly, which serves terrific Thai food.

February

In February I celebrated my birthday by sleeping through most of it as I had the unfortunate luck to get Bronchitis. Unfortunately, this would linger for almost 4 weeks because, as my loving wife would like me to remind everyone, I did not follow her advice and go to the doctor when I should have. I would like to point out that this was because I was very busy at work and I felt that my cough was not too bad. Other household opinions might differ significantly with my version of the cough severity (and how much it kept people up at night).

Unfortunately, other than being really busy with work and school, there is not much to share about February other than it was much colder than last year (I think it actually got down to about 18F once). While this was nothing compared to a normal Michigan winter, and certainly milder than the snow globe conditions Michigan experienced this year, Nancy and I are formally requesting that Korea order a February more like 2007 for 2009 - Temps in the 40's and nice sunny days. I'm sure they will get on that right away.

February also was the time to celebrate Lunar New Year. We originally had plans to go to Beijing to welcome in the Year of the Rat but ended up scrapping that plan when friends in China explained their terrible Lunar New Year experiences of having access to the Great Wall and Forbidden City closed without warning. Seems that the Chinese don't adhere to posted schedules much during the multiple day Lunar New Year celebration so in China it can be common during this time to find your hotel with issues due to a lack of staff, restaurants closed or serving limited menus, etc. Anyway, we decided not to risk it and moved on to plan B (see March). Turns out this was a good thing given my "quiet coughing" malady. As it was, our Lunar New Year celebration consisted of lots of napping and lazing about the house instead.

So all in all, February was the month we took off from being busy or at least we didn't accomplish as much as usual. Sooooo....on to....

March

In March we made up for our lazy, sick February. To start, I whisked off to Germany again for another global conference. Germany was cold and wet, and there was no time to sight see in between business. Nuff said about that.

Immediately upon return, things got interesting. First, we attended the opening game of the Incheon United soccer team which GM Daewoo (my company here) is the major sponsor of. GM Daewoo hosted us in a great suite with food and gifts (autographed balls and toy cars) and Incheon won the game which made it an even better day. It was the first professional soccer match any of us had ever attended and was a lot of fun. More of this in a separate link.

The following week Sarah participated in a "Wax Museum" at school. In this event, each of the 6th graders dressed up like a Greek mythology figure and then posed like a wax statue until a visitor to the "museum" came over and said "speak to me". At this point the "statue" would come to life and tell you about their character's life and role in mythology. Sarah was Gaea (Goddess of the Earth) and she was of course superb. The whole thing was well done and very creative. There are more pictures of this on a separate link in the Photos section.

On the same day as Sarah's Wax Museum event, Josh had his Easter party and egg hunt with his grade 1 class. Josh was an expert egg finder and quickly filled his bag. He was so good in fact that he ended up helping 3 or 4 other kids find their eggs too. The day was bright and sunny and while it wasn't quite what you could call warm, we really couldn't have asked for a much better time.

Finally, Easter weekend arrived and after our visit from the Easter Bunny, we set off on our family vacation and the first real chance for all of us to visit some of Asia. First up was a 3 day visit to Hong Kong including a day at Hong Kong Disneyland. Hong Kong was great - easily the most sophisticated Asian city we have seen so far. In addition to HK Disney, we also made 2 trips into the city itself and had lots of fun poking around the little alleys and nooks in this very busy and modern city.

After Hong Kong, things really got rolling as we departed HK on a 5 day Indo China cruise with Royal Caribbean's Rhapsody of the Seas. It would be hard to imagine a better trip and there are full details on this and the stay in Hong Kong on a separate link under Travels. Our ship visited Halong Bay, Vietnam, Hue (pronounced "Whey"), Vietnam and Sanya, China. In spite of so-so weather, this was a great trip and there was something for everyone. As planned, this trip let us see several places we didn't want to spend a whole week at individually and the cruise experience itself was wonderful too. Going to be hard to top this trip anytime soon.

Next up....

Well, on Monday I am off to Sweden for work at our Saab plant in the city of Trollhatten. Should be interesting although cold (boooooo!). Immediately after that, I am off to Shanghai for another business visit to that pearl of the orient. These 2 trips I am sure will place many interesting meals in my future <sigh>.

The other really big event coming up for us is that Nancy's parents and sister arrive in early May for 2 weeks. Don't worry Art, Elaine and Sandy...Josh and Sarah promise not to eat all the silk worm larva, raw squid and fresh eel before you arrive. There will still be plenty around when you get here! Seriously, we have loads of fun activities planned and that should be a fun visit.

We also have plenty of school activities coming up with the 6th grade Olympics, father/son field day and year end parties all just around the corner. We also have Buddha's birthday and potentially a Ball or 2 to visit coming up, plus I return to Thailand for business in June. So have no fear, boredom is not on our horizon.

Finally, in June, Nancy and the kids will fly to the US to visit our "summer home", escape from the Korean monsoon season, and start visiting with lots of you live and in person. We will let everyone know once we have our plans firmed up and start organizing some get-together's so we can catch up with more people than we did last year. Right now it looks like I will be home the last 2 weeks in July although one of those weeks we plan to be in North Carolina with my folks. Then, sometime around August 1st we will all head back to wrap up year 2 and start year 3 of our Asian adventure.

Whew! Lot's to do. Lot's to see. As the saying goes, "We aren't here for a long time, we're here for a good time". I think we are doing ok on that count.

Bye for now...

Ahn Young He Kah Say Oh.

("Go in peace" - Korean Goodbye)