Pasta, the fish. LE brought home a little fish from school today, aptly named for his desire to find a place to get decent pasta in this country. I hope LE doesn’t want to eat him by the end of our trip. 

I mean, really., 

I don’t even know what Koreans really look like anymore because I haven’t run into a single person that looks like they didn’t get some work done.

That’s how long it takes for clothes to dry in the washing machine that also operates as a dryer. I was surprised to learn before arriving in Seoul that while all Koreans have a washing machine in their home, they don’t own dryers. Apparently it’s bad for the environment, consumes an enormous amount of energy and is bad for the clothes? I will take my two washers and two dryers any day, thank you very much. 

LE is starting to make friends at school and has already bonded with one boy in particular. His name is “Namu” which literally means “wood”. Koreans have started naming their children for the “sound” and “object” of the name in the last decade rather than the traditional  approach of taking Chinese characters and family names to create names with depth and meaning.

For example, there are children among us named “Purple”, “Strawberry” and “Love”.

His class has 8 boys and one girl who visits Korea twice a year with her mother from London for a few months at a time. 

Not how I remember it as a child, but interesting nonetheless. They’ve spruced up the place since my last visit more than two decades ago, complete with changing of the guards.  

Why didn’t I think of this? 

View from COEX, the largest underground mall in Asia.

Found on every street corner, swag and smoke.