A trip to Korea and more foster kittens

(Mark said my lazy person's description of the Seoul trip was pretty brief and if Mark thinks that, it must be way to too lazy so I'm adding a bit more)

Korea with Bill and Hyoeun
We spent last weekend in Seoul, Korea with Mark's old friend Bill Elliott, his wife Hyoeun and their 2 kids Naomi and Abigail. Bill has lived in Korea for 15 years and finally after living in Hong Kong for 1.5 years, we went to visit them.

We thoroughly enjoyed the city and couldn't believe how spread out and huge it was and my first impression riding the bus out to Bill's neighborhood was amazement at how many American food chains there were. The size of the city reminds me a little of Los Angeles.

We arrived Friday evening which was the start of Spring Break for Bill (who is a teacher on the U.S. Army Base) and Hyoeun (who is a nurse for the High School on the base) and we left Monday morning. Even though it was a short trip, we packed in lots of sightseeing and lots of eating. Friday night, we met up with Bill and Hyoeun at one of their favorite bars and they had been celebrating Spring Break with some other teacher friends since about 4:30. Poor Hyoeun got talked into taking 2 shots of Kamikaze's and she was feeling it later that night.

I wish I could describe all the places we saw but since we enjoyed the luxury of having Bill and Hyoeun show us around and since all the places had long, hard to pronounce Korean names, I never really learned the names of where we went. I'd need to study up and I'm too lazy for that. So, here's the lazy person's guide through Seoul.

We saw a few markets with names that sounded like "D-something-moon" and "N-something-moon" and they all were very cool. However, I didn't get any pictures.



This is the big palace which is in the heart of the city. Very impressive and I think even bigger and prettier than the Forbidden City in Beijing.

While we visited, we only wanted to eat local Korean style food and we stuck to our goal except for the last night when we broke down and ordered Papa John's pizza. (That alone was a thrill since there is no Papa John's in HK)

I'm happy to report the food wasn't too spicy and the Korean BBQ variations were delicious. This was one of many BBQ styles which of course, I can't remember the name. Very tasty though and I liked every bit of Kimchi I tried.

For snacks one day, Bill ordered us some dried squid to wrap up in peanuts and dip in mayo. A menu choice which proves Bill has definitely become a local.

Hong Kong vs Seoul
While on the trip, I kept noticing Mark and I were saying, "In Hong Kong....." and comparing just about everything to Hong Kong. Well, I'm doing it again. In Hong Kong, there are over 7 million people, but we're all crammed in a small area and everything is built toward the sky instead of spread out. In Seoul everything was much more spread out. If you take a look at the subway map in Seoul compared to the subway map in Hong Kong, it'll make you dizzy. HK has a few simple color coded subway lines to take you to all the major spots. Just looking at the Seoul subway map made me think, "In Hong Kong, it's so much easier to take public transportation".





More Foster Kittens
The other big thing in our life is we have 3 more foster kittens from the Hong Kong SPCA.

The Tortoise shell colored one is named Elly in honor of my neice Elly who just had her 7th birthday and because Elly the kitty is not shy about telling us exactly what she wants, just like my darling human Elly. They both are great talkers.

While we are at work, the kittens stay in their own room. When we are at home, we let Bailey and the cats intermingle.

Bailey loves to go straight to their room and hunt up smells. It's like a blind man's game of hide and seek since Bailey never lifts her nose from the ground to notice there is a tiny kitty staring at her 1 foot away.

We have these cats until the end of April and then they go back to the shelter to be adopted.