Mom's visit, Thursday and Friday

This is finally being finished on test day, Friday June 8, 2007. The kids are studying, and soon I will hand out the tests. I love giving them study time. It just means less time I have to come up with stuff to do after the test. hahaha, I am a lazy bastard.
So we arrived in Seoul in the late afternoon, and it was just starting to rain. However, by the time we got to the Hotel Rainbow (my Seoul hotel of choice!) it was really starting to come down. We headed back tot he hotel, and we agreed to head to Outback, conveniently right across the street for dinner that night. The original plan had called for Outback on Saturday for my usual birthday dinner of "Prime Minister's Prime Rib" (A tradition I hoped to extend to a second year) with cheesy fries. But we decided that it would be better to do foreign (Thai or Middle Eastern) while Carol was there, so Outback got bumped up.
On the way, we bought umbrellas at the 7-11 store near the hotel, which mom really got a kick out of. I guess they don't have umbrellas at convenience stores at home. I never really noticed, I drive everywhere at home.
Outback was good as ever, but there was some disappointment when I couldn't find the "Prime Minister's Prime Rib" anywhere on the menu. I settled on the equally body-damaging "Huge hunk of meat with mushroom crust on top". Apparently crusts now include almost exclusively BUTTER. Didn't know. Anyway, I ordered it medium, and it came back blue. I mean, literally, definitively blue. The meat hadn't even gone grainy yet from heat. It was cool in the middle. You know what I mean? I sent it back, and it came back very rare, again. So rare that it still spilled blood all over my plate. Gah! Anger!
Sent it back again, but it worked out all right. I had wolfed down some cheesy fries, and was actually full. So the break that sending my food back allowed me was actually a very good thing. haha. By the time the steak came back for the third time, it was done enough (still not medium) and I had made some room for it. Mom and Mel polished off a few drinks, and then we headed back to the hotel.
Mom was still jet-laggy (and maybe a little tipsy) so she turned in for a rest. THREE HOURS LATER, Mel and I decided it was probably a good time to go and wake up mom. So, around 9:30 or so, we headed out, and we walked around downtown Seoul together.
I can't remember the order of things anymore, but we wound up walking through Namdaemun area, but unfortunately the market was closed. We walked through to city hall (the sense of direction was working well that night) and by the nearby old palace and down the street that leads to the NANTA theatre, which is charmingly lit with lights embedded in the ground and stone ladybugs that keep cars from careening onto the sidewalks. After that we just kept walking, we wound up walking right by GyeongBeokGung palace, by the Korean Government buildings and to a new area I had never been before, where they have a large "Sejong Culture Complex" or something by a similar name. It looked really good, and I made a note of it so that we could return to it later, because I saw a sign for a gallery, and it seemed interesting.
We got into a nearby subway stop and took the train back home, just barely making it on one of the last available trains for the night. Mom headed to bed, Mel and I stayed up and chatted for a bit, and then we too turned in, exhausted after our over two-hours long walk.
We left around ten the next day for the COEX aquarium, the next stop on our whirlwind tour of Seoul. We filled up on energy juice at the Dunkin' Donuts conveniently located across the street from our hotel, then got onto the subway. COEX was good, but not quite as amazing as I had remembered, perhaps because many of my aquarium memories (including those of penguins), came from Busan. It was nice though, and it was followed by my first burger in months at the COEX food court. Highlights!
After the aquarium, we headed out to GyeongBeokgung palace. We arrived just in time to see the changing of the guards, so we all got to check "See gross taped-on beards" off of our to-do lists for that day. It was good timing though, because it was a really good thing for mom to see. It was also good, because it led to one of those random trip inside jokes between Mel and I where a pigeon wandering around in front of these very serious-looking guards was hearing that British comedy chase music as he mosied. We spent the next few hours (most of the afternoon) wandering around inside the palace. It's a really beautiful place. It was such a nice day too, the sun was shining, and it was hot, but not too hot. Mom was impressed, I think. We took in the whole place, and then we headed to Insadong (on foot, thank you sense of direction) and we grabbed a coffee and hung out while we waited for Carol.
We popped into a lot of different shops, saw the same art again and again, and mom wound up deciding that her souvenir would be a couple of scrolls to hang on the stairs up to her bedroom. She bought one that said love, and we looked around for different ones that might complement it. I wound up buying one that had a mantra on it, something about keeping your mind on things that are not of this world (this was communicated with my limited Korean and grunts and handclaps). We met up with Carol around 8 or so, and we headed to Itaewon for some Thai food. We arrived pretty late, because you know... travel. We were lucky though that that didn't seem to be a problem.
I forgot to mention something earlier, and I don't feel like scrolling back up. While we were on the subway either coming back from or going to COEX, we were waiting in a station and my cell rang. It was Stu, my Australian friend, calling to see if I was home. Stu's been arranging these photography road trips, and I guess he wanted to free up some room in his car, because he wanted to know if he could leave his guitar with me for the day. I said "No can do, mon ami, I am in Seoul in a subway station."
He said "Oh bummer (or some equivalent Aussie thing)! What about Ryan? Is he home?"
I said "No, he's in Tokyo for the weekend."
And THAT was the coolest conversation I had ever had.
We had some other very cool conversations at the restaurant, Thai Orchid, that ran in a similar vein. At one point, we made spur of the moment plans to go to Busan the next weekend, and that was so cool that I had to slap my forehead in amazement. Of course, the plans fell through, because having mom here was EXPENSIVE! Anyways, we all ordered our own dishes, and then we shared with eachother, and in the end we wound up ordering another dish, and I ate so much that it hurt a little bit.
Then we all headed home, and had weird Thai-food related dreams.