winter in korea

Happy almost New Years...after planning for our Christmas trip to Japan, New Years sort of slipped under the radar for both S. and I.  Combined with the fact that my phone couldn't even take photos in Japan (I shut it off after getting like 20 text messages in Korean that I couldn't read and there was always a picture of a plane circling the Earth instead of my usual wallpaper) I was afraid that I didn't have much to show you.  

Then I realized that since I'm such a bad blogger, I actually had lots of pics from our recent snowy days.  So, without further ado, here's what we've been up to in the snow...

 

Snow after bowling, what could be better?

 

 

We were going to stop for winter street food for dinner...hodduk (little pancakes filled with brown sugar and walnuts), odeng (pressed fish cakes in a seafood broth), pajeon (green onion pancakes), roasted sweet potatoes...but decided to have some snowflakes instead.  (Actually we ended up at a restaurant called All That BBQ which has awesome pasta carbonara - or mac and cheese pasta as O. knows it - and caesar salad.  Sorry grammy and grampy, if we had known about it when you were here, we would have so taken you there!)

 

At the restaurant, he got to try on our waitress's antlers...gee, I wonder why he thinks the universe revolves around him.  :)

Sledding Korean style....

 

 

The night before we left for Japan, it snowed the most...here's O. with the guy that we bought wood roasted sweet potatoes from...yummy and warm!

The street at the entrance to our apartment complex. 

The light display at the entrance of our apartment complex.  

It snowed so much that night, we had snow ice cream along with our sweet potatoes and juk (rice porridge).  Maple for S. and vanilla/chocolate/rainbow sprinkle for O. 

Happy New Years again - hope that 2010 (!) is healthy and happy...we are thinking of all of you and wishing you the best.  Love, S., O., and me.  ^-^

    

 
  
 

Christmas Fried Chicken

Merry Christmas to all of you out there from Japan!!  It was amazing to be on a plane for less than two hours and arrive here...

We are staying with friends - one of whom S. used to teach with back in the states.  He now teaches history and Japanese on a military base outside of Tokyo.  We arrived on Sunday morning, and then went on a three day ski trip with them...which with an almost three year old means that we rented all sorts of equipment, dressed in twenty layers, stuffed our pockets with all manner of outer wear, took two vans, got skis on, shuffled over to the baby slopes, put outerwear on, took a tentative slide down said baby slope, and then decided that was enough skiing and what the three year old really wanted to do was try that fun skateboarding thing that everyone else was doing but if he wasn't old enough to do that, he would just build some pins and a bowling ball out of snow and do some snow bowling.  S. went skiing though and assures me that the view from the top was absolutely breathtaking.  

We drove home today, Christmas eve, and went out for dinner.  KFC pulled a brilliant marketing stunt where they convinced the Japanese that it is an American custom to have fried chicken for Christmas.  Various restaurants now serve fried chicken as a Christmas special, and you can pre-order fried chickens at KFC.  Of course then for dinner, I had the Merry Christmas fried chicken special.  Hope that all of you out there are having as lovely a meal as we were able to have - and having a happy, healthy holiday.  Merry Christmas from all of us!!