One of our stops on this tour of Korea has been the DMZ.
One of our stops on this tour of Korea has been the DMZ.

Hi all, I know I promised to post during our homeland visit/vacation to Korea and China, but this is honestly the first time I’ve had a chance.

This is our second visit to Korea in three years, so it felt very different for DD#1 and DD#2 and for me. First, it is only the girls and me, rather than the whole family.  Second, we have been here before, so the girls knew what they wanted to do and what they didn’t want to do. Turns out, they did not particularly want to go back to the orphanage, but absolutely did want  to go to a “Cat Cafe”.  This is especially true of DD2, who said in no uncertain terms “Babies are OK, but kittens are much better.”  I want credit on the parental perfection  checklist, that I did not try to dissuade her.  (For the record, I don’t consider asking her twice if she was “sure”, and mentioning that we could do both kittens and babies, or even dropping hints as to how cute babies areas actual attempts at dissuasion.)

Despite my lack of contact with babies, Korea was wonderful.  My eldest daughter is living there and teaching English this year, so we got the ” insiders tour” to Korea.  This means that we had fish eat the callouses off our feet, we made silly and potentially embarrassing pictures in a photo booth, we ate Italian food (DD#1 was craving something other than Korean food), we sang Karaoke, and we did little in the way of typical tourist sightseeing.

We did go on the SOS DMZ Tour. I thought it would be eerie, given the current tensions between North and South Korea, but it was surprisingly low key. In fact, the news in the US before we left was much more excited about the situation between North Korea and  South Korea and the US.  I was a little nervous before we left about what to expect, but over here, everyone seems totally nonplus.

We are off to China tomorrow.

 

Image credit: Wilson Loo