The 4th of July ~ Korean Style

This Fourth of July was a bit askew for us. Seeing as we had only been here a few days we really had no major plans for the day, so we made some! We decided to join the Crane's once again and go to the 4th of July Festival on post. Now may I point out that this celebration was actually on the 2nd of July which for those of you on the North American side of the world was actually the 1st, but who is counting. So anyway we went and enjoyed some kid rides, games, entertainment and food. After a while we were all hot and tired so we went back to The Dragon Hill Lodge and cooled off. We had an early dinner and then went and saw Cars 2. The most ironic thing about that was all the cars go to Asia, and there is even a familiar landmark here in Korea in one scene. Hopefully we will get to visit that landmark at some later point. Unfortunately we left before the fireworks because we were all jet lagging a bit and the kids couldn't take any more, and only got to hear them as we headed back to our apartment. It was a great day, with great friends. Happy Birthday America!

The day after it did nothing but rain.... so we just got to hang out, and then we went grocery shopping. Here is a cool picture of the tower all fogged in from the rain.

On Monday we had a bright sunny day for what was actually the 4th of July. We decided to walk down the "hill" of our apartment and do some local shopping in the Itaewon strip. Basically its like Main Street. We didn't buy much, just a Hello Kitty Necklace for Giulianna and some hand made Korean Dolls for our house. We did have a great lunch at a noodle house. And we learned that nothing here has a fixed price, NOTHING!!! So always bargain, and if your really interested walk away or really go somewhere else it may be cheaper! LOL. So far this has been quite an interesting experience.

This was a seafood flour pancake, it had shrimp and octopus in it. Yum!!!

This is Mandu, a Korean Dumpling.

Check out our American influence!

On the way back up our "hill" we stopped at a playground. Did I mention how much Korean people love American kids?! There was this cute little lady there who spoke no English at all and she loved our kids. She reached out her hands to hold Rhyon. He loved the attention even if he didn't know what she was saying. We had some ice cream from the corner store while at the playground, and just had a few minutes to relax before the rest of the journey up the "hill". These are pictures of the play ground and one of an Embassy house. Our apartment is just up the road from some of the world embassy houses. They are really nice. The interesting thing about it here is despite the steepness of the roads you never feel as though you might "fall off" because there are buildings on each side that take up every inch. You could never drive off the mountain. I guess that's a bonus. The other thing I must point out is there are no side walks on most roads. Basically you have a yellow dotted line on the road that pedestrians are supposed to stay inside, but they don't. If the space is 2 feet wide that's a lot. Walking is quite an experience, I am not looking forward to driving....