all things must pass

even though it may seem like we were gone forever, i probably spent more time writing about what we did than i actually spent doing it and it was over far too fast. more than anything, we miss our friends and family. i'm sure we'd see a lot more of each other if we weren't separated by busy life schedules, a language barrier and 12 1/2 hours of united airlines' crappy service, but then again, if it were a perfect world, "independence day" would have never had a theatrical release, and they would make pez the size of snickers bars. here's to hoping that next time we see each other, our kids have learned to babysit themselves...

fish funeral

the entire time we spent at the beach, eli kept talking about how he wanted to catch a fish. i told him i'd look around, but in the absence of nets, poles, spears, masks, sonar, traps, or dynamite, i didn't feel our chances were very good. but like a page out of rhonda byrne's "the secret", eli was able to will this small fish up on the shore, which fully occupied his attention for the rest of the day. (the fish, by the way, was "napping" the entire day we spent with him.) it being our lsat day on the beach, i began to realize that i needed to lay the ground work for the fish not accompanying us on the flight home, or be prepared for a seven hour stratospheric temper tantrum. after some heated deliberation on the matter, we consented to bury our aquatic associate in the sand, so that we could continue to play with him  the next time we returned. 

so next time you're in waikiki, just keep clear of 21° 16' 48.36" x -157° 50' 12.12" - we're coming back.

polynesian pastries

since penny's 3rd birthday was lost somewhere in the stratosphere above the international date line, kelley wanted to throw her a proper party in hawaii- she balked at my suggestion that her party might be a trip to korea and hawaii. it did, however, provide us with the perfect opportunity to get malasadas at leonard's famous waikiki bakery. ever the entrepreneur, five year old scott's mother had forbad him sell anything to family relatives during the course of the trip. he did however, set up a complimentary pearl harbor information booth for guests of the party. the information booth was running quite well until it surfaced that he had actual uss arizona artifacts such as rocks and plastic cutlery recovered from the historic wreckage. the gift shop side of the business was promptly shut down, but at $1.25 a fork, how could you go wrong? even if you're not a history enthusiast or can't turn a profit through a third party buyer, you've still got a perfectly usable fork for $1.25. (yes, the forks were in surprisingly good condition for having been recovered from beneath the sea.)

scott nearly injured himself diving for the most heavily sugared donut at the top left. (i would say he was peeing his pants waiting for it, but we've already established that scott and i do that in the ocean only.) he waited, as instructed for the birthday girl to chose first, but when she made a less sweet selection, he certainly didn't give her any window to reconsider.

an-yeong and aloha...

i've always said, "if on your way home from the orient, you happen to overfly a small tropical island where half your family is gathered, including a sister who can get you a smokin' military discount at a beachfront hotel via a deployed husband; you might as well stop in for a couple of days." i've always said that- ask anyone. and so it was in the name of integrity that we stopped off in honolulu for a little beach play and time zone depressurization- above all else, i have to be true to myself.
if korea was a complicated trip, we oversimplified this one to the extreme. for three days, our movements were confined entirely to an area so small it would have driven a common housepet crazy. our activities consisted entirely of playing at the same beach, and we had bames ship all of our food in. (mostly gyros, which to my shock, mom ate with much enthusiasm- i have been trying to get her to taste a gyro for the better part of 15 years, and she fought it the whole way.) any reference to our "back to basics" schedule, however, should not be interpreted as meaning that there were not a fair share of complications. a walk to the beach which could reasonably be accomplished by a semi-healthy geriatric in under three minutes took an average of just over an hour for our group, as the path calculatingly lead by the hotel snack shack. penelope also insisted on "washing" her feet at the courtesy spigot until i was sure the o'ahu coastline was going to meet up with neighboring molokai. satisfying repeated supplications for refreshment detours gave us little respite. while scotty (who subsisted primarily on nachos) censured grandma's "unhealthy" election to drink soda, penelope cried as her ice cream dripped down the cone, wailed as it began to tip, bawled if anyone tried to lick it for her, and otherwise absolutely dissolved in tears when she was encouraged to eat it for herself. eli on the other hand enthusiastically consumed his chocolate cone, sobbing only afterwards, because he had wanted "swirl".
the sun was unforgiving (i was severely disappointed to learn that the human leg was not designed with built-in ultraviolet protection) although the water was perfect for multiple group swims to a 100 meter buoy, and water football with a serendipitously happened upon rubber frog which we had planned to return to the universe upon leaving, but became so popular that it now makes its domicile somewhere in bames' limited storage space. overall, the combination of sun, water and gyros made waikiki a comparable, if not slightly better family reunion locale than vernal, utah- and i gained tremendous clout with my nephew scott when i admitted to methodically relieving myself in the ocean.

scott's sand-crafted lounge chair.

sand in the mouth.

eli holds the aligator we found along with its amphibious cousin. the frog we held hostage- the aligator somehow managed to return to the universe on its own.

big obba is watching you...

jet lag had the kids waking up each day before the army. coupled with the fact that kelley's family sleeps in until around 1pm, this severely complicated the logistics of keeping the house quiet in the morning. so, i made daily use of a playground on the apartment property. at the first peep i heard at dawn, i rolled out of bed and marshaled the kids up to the park. at the early hour of our arrival, we often had the park to ourselves- or so i thought. on the last full day of our trip, i returned from our morning outing, and my brother in law, jeong seok informed me that he had been watching us. he turned the tv to a closed circuit channel live video feed of the playground. if you spent a weeks worth of mornings thinking you were all alone, how much of your conduct would, in retrospect, still be appropriate? i think i ran about 25%. things i will not be doing on my next trip to the playground include:

• throwing rocks at cats
• cleaning my ears with my finger 
• eating m&m's off the ground
• two-handed nose picking
• directing my son to urinate in the bushes
• manual ear and nose hair extraction
• personally urinating in the bushes
• scratching, adjusting, and generally inappropriate prodding of the "bathing suit" area

come to think of it, i might not be going back to the park at all...

children's day

celebrated on may 5th in korea, it is, for all i can tell, a mid to lower echelon holiday, similar to our columbus or flag day- a once larger event now tantamount to a day off for a few government employees, but not quite diminished to the obscurity of an arbor day. the idea is that kids get presents and basically get to do whatever they want. the irony of this being set aside as some sort of unique or uncommon circumstance will not be lost on most parents, particularly parents who have visited the "kid's rule" culture of south korea. (see my earlier posts on ice cream and treat milk.) for our part, we spent the day on one of the popular beaches at haeudae bay. the weather was nice, even if the water was too cold for swimming. the kids feigned a fear of sand for all of about seven seconds- by the end of the day, they were so covered in the stuff that the customs department had to send out a representative from the busan chapter to stop us from moving such a volume across international borders.

the slide going down to the beach.

making butt trails in the sand.

eli poses in front of soju, the amazing aqua-dog.

(    .    .    .    ?    ?    ?    .    .    .    )

burning the midnight toljabi

the traditional korean first birthday includes a custom which is said to give indicators of the child's adult life. the table is spread with items which represent certain attributes or aspects of a happy future. for example, money to symbolize wealth; string symbolizes long life; rice, prosperity. there is, apparently, some leniency for adding your own items- lucia's toljabi included one of eli's toy airplanes, and a computer mouse, suggesting, perhaps sparse muscle mass and poor social skills. lucia suited up in her crisp new hambok for the event.





one of the complications of limited communication is that our schedule was, to some extent, dependent on the whims of our hosts. case in point, lucia's birthday party, which was held one night at 11pm, after a full day of playing at the beach. to say the children were tired would be like saying nicholas cage has made a couple of bad movies. unable to work schedules out at any other hour, we woke the baby up once the cake and toljabi table was all in place, letting the other kids sleep through the festivity in its entirety. as you can see from the film, she was a little on edge. from the point the video ends, she was passed out in bed in about ten seconds.

as far as the meaning of the airplane, she may have been attracted to the taegeuk, the korean yin and yang symbolizing the harmony of heaven and earth painted on the tail, maybe the airplane means she will travel the world.

i think she just saw a once in a lifetime opportunity to actually hold one of eli's toys without fear of reprisal.

dino-mite!

when we heard about the world dino-expo in goseong, we were all very enthused. a triassic exhibit in the heart of a local dino-dig seemed right up our alley. but if we expected a cerebral safari, what we got leaned more towards a prehistoric version of "hello kitty". trying to recount this experience feels somewhat like trying to verbalize the events of a puzzling dream- though it may be possible to provide an accurate narrative of what took place, the resulting account seems flat and lack-luster for the inability to convey the associated senses of confusion and disorientation.

we walked in on a parade in progress, which i can only describe as "it's a small world" on ritalin and pseudoephedrine. the dinosaur theme was largely prevalent, although i can't explain the eastern european girls carting the rickshaw, the green chick, or why the dinosaur emerging from his egg is holding a diploma. i will warn you now to turn your computer's sound off- a month later, this song is still stuck in my head...

since we arrived at lunchtime, we headed for the concessions. to appease the kids' domesticated pallets, we chose the "international" food station, looking for a hamburger or some chicken fingers. apparently, we were looking for a "global" food station- the "international" featured the far reaching cuisines of korea, japan, and china. while there were limited fossils to be seen, the dinosaurs at the park were largely animatronic or fiberglass- and many of those, florescent.

i must also share a bootlegged clip from the orientation video to one of the animatronic exhibits- i have no idea what is going on here, but i think the idea is to so completely befuddle your sense of reality to the point you believe the moving dino-puppets are actually alive.

then, it started to get weird.

we took a ride on the roller slide...

...all the way down a mountain...
...and were deposited for all we could tell in the middle of nowhere. we were in a field with no designating signage, no park employees, no signs of dinosaurs anywhere, and thankfully, no more music. the field we found ourselves in lead down to the coast, so we took a walkout to a sandy beach where we found to our great surprise, a decommissioned korean war era u.s. battleship.

perhaps the naval distraction was meant to bring park visitors down slowly from the dino-high they encountered at the expo, maybe we were supposed to imagine that the craft was an aquatic super-fortress built for safe neanderthal passage across icthyosaur-infested waters. maybe like the avant-garde art of christo and jeanne-claude, the true focus of the exhibit was in its human interface, as each individual looked within to find meaning to the stark juxtaposition of such contrasting worlds.

personally, i just didn't get it.

i walked away from the expo feeling puzzled, unsettled and slightly nauseous. amongst such personal turmoil, i was, however, able to glean one important piece of information from the outing- when navigating the south end of the korean peninsula, no matter how many times the dash-mounted gps belittles your personal decision making like an east asian hal-9000 trying so desperately to fulfill what it believes its mission to be, take the west road around masan. you'll kill yourself in traffic just to save a couple of miles in that town.