Week 8 Korea (Sept 18-24, 2023)

 

This week was much more social for me than I am used to when school is in session! Friends know that I am often hunkered down and working nonstop from one school break to the next. This week was a new experience for me. 

First, Nimmi and I went looking for a post office on Tuesday night (we found it!) and we had dinner near the post office at an Indian Restaurant called Diwali. I wanted to love it. I was excited for Nimmi to eat food she did not have to make. But the food was sweet! Things like chicken tikka masala and palak paneer were so sweet we had to ask for salt and dash it liberally over everything. Also, the palak paneer (which is a spinach dish) was orange in color. I know you won't believe this so I am including a photo. There 
are three dishes on the table between me and Nimmi...the first one is aloo gobi. The second is palak paneer. And the chicken tikka is the third one by the garlic naan. 

Palak paneer that tastes like a sweet pumpkin dish was kind of a disappointment. The family that runs the place is from Nepal. I am not sure what the selection pressure is that causes sweet Indian food rather than rich and savory, but it was pretty disappointing. 

The company was great though. Nimmi is such a good adventure partner. She always makes the best of everything!

On Wednesday afternoon I went with Hailie to a music school (for college students) and we listened to about a half dozen performances of their Freshman Concert series. We did this because Hailie has a friend whose sister was performing! We missed seeing the sister. But we really enjoyed the concert and I took video clips of a bunch of the performances. I was unsure of the protocol for this at first. My clips are short and poorly filmed because of where I was sitting. But after a few minutes I realized that everyone was filming these performances. They were quite good. I really enjoyed seeing some live music. And afterwards Hailie and I had shabu shabu at a nearby restaurant. 

On Friday I walked with 4 women (all of us Gen Xers) to Wyrie to eat at a really excellent Italian restaurant, La Bussola. We had a nice (early) dinner, then wandered around the neighborhood and took some photos. It was pleasant to enjoy an evening walk. The weather really cooled down this past week. The top photo in this post is also from the neighborhood walk in Wyrie. 

The photo of the dancheong on the building above is from a structure in the park area in Wyrie. I was enchanted by all of the lovely elements along the walk. 

We also (on Friday) had a big event at school called the Terry Fox run to raise money for cancer research. Terry Fox was a young man in Canada in the 1980s. He lost his leg to bone cancer and then ran about halfway across Canada (on a prosthetic device) to raise money for research. He did not make it all the way across the country, but he inspired a legacy of running to raise money. Our kids did a great job of participating and it was an all-hands-on-deck kind of day. We raised about 9 million won (something like $7000 in US money) for the cause.  



I stayed home most of the weekend and rested after all of the excitement of the week. But on Sunday, another friend took me to dinner at a nice mall called Garden 5 (just a few km up the road from our neighborhood). There are photos at the end of the video. 

And here is the link to this week's video with about 6 minutes of music clips from those freshmen concerts!

I hope you will also feel inspired to find some live music to listen to!






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 58: Jeju Island for Chuseok Break Sept 2024

Image
  Jeju is a Volcanic Island off the southern coast of South Korea. I have been wanting to go visit for several years but it can be challenging to get tickets during our regular school breaks. I booked these tickets last April knowing that things would be booked up for Chuseok if I waited too long.  I flew down on my own on Saturday evening, Sept 14th, but Sarah and her mother picked me up at the airport and we spent two days together, exploring the island. Sarah had been there a few times before but this was her mother's first trip out. Sarah rented a car and found the AirBnB. This was a nice change for me! I am usually the one doing the planning and making the reservations. This time I just had to get myself there and help to pay for things.  We spent the first day visiting a waterfall and this volcano, Seongsan Ichulbong, which is an extinct tuff volcano on the northeastern shore of the island. It was a pretty day but very hot outside. There are stairs and trails going ...
Read more

Week 35: Sakura Season in Seoul (April 1-7, 2025)

Image
  The cherry blossom season has been unfolding gently in Seoul. There were some rainy days when it was too cold to enjoy a hanami stroll (hanami is the Japanese word for flower viewing). But by the middle of the week this week, the flowers were just everywhere, and the sun was spending more time pouring through clouds than being hidden by them. Consequently, I got out and took a lot of photos.  Two places where I spent a happy time in the blossoms were Seokchon Lake near Lotte Tower, and the river walk in Wyrie, near where Hailie lives.      Seokchon lake is a manmade lake and a popular walking destination for people in the area. The ornamental cherry trees are beautiful in the spring covered with blossoms, but also fantastic in the fall when their leaves turn the color of fire.    You can see the other side of the lake in these photos and the way the trees on the other side look like a pink cloud along the water. It was a lovely Tuesday (April 2) when...
Read more

Week 31: Hanoi, Vietnam

Image
  The Citadel in Hanoi, March 6, 2024 On March 5, I flew to Hanoi with 16 students in the Model United Nations Club and another advisor (Mr. Kowalski). We were attending the United Nations International School MUN conference at UNIS (a rather large international school near West Lake). I had been planning this trip since November and since it was my first international field trip, I was more than a bit anxious about it. But, it essentially went off without a hitch. The flights were smooth, no one got lost or lost their bags, everyone's visa arrived in time, and the conference was a pretty good success story for our students. I actually enjoyed myself. I would definitely do this one again.  We arrived in Hanoi in the late afternoon on the 5th and went straight to our hotel, a big Korean one right across the street from the school where the conference was being held. The L7 Westlake is a Lotte Hotel, and it is attached to a big Lotte mall, so the kids were comfortable amid famil...
Read more