Seoul

So I took the subway down to Seoul yesterday and today, its about a 40 minute ride. Surprisingly, the subway was not all too hard to decipher, and I made it without any hiccups. Plus, it costs about 2 bucks round trip. Awesome. Here's a view of the walk from our apartment to the subway. We're not in the downtown area of Seoul, but it's still pretty bustling. At night, everything lights up.



Need some shoes?!? This store has a plethora, to say the least. Look at the guy squatting in the middle. How does he get out of his shoe haven?



This city is amazing. Huge buildings everywhere, then a quick duck down an alley and you're in shanty-town with millions of people trying to sell you a million and one things. TONS of deep fried everything, all super cheap. I'm in heaven. Here's the view when you get out of the subway:



Then, you take a quick left turn, and this is what you're standing in. In America, this whole place would have been closed for construction for something like 2 years. Not here! We need to shop!



Another quick turn and you're back on the street. They also have tons of underground malls/shops too - which is nice, because it is freaking hot and humid here in the middle of the day. I didn't spend all too much time here today, but I did manage to get some delicious authentic Korean BBQ. Amazing. Puts anything we have in America to shame.



It's so cool. They bring out the raw meat, and a pot with coals in it. Then you cook the meat, and there is a big vacuum above the coals, so it pulls the smoke in. They give you scissors to cut the meat easily. There are no individual plates, just lots of little side dishes. Then everyone eats off of the same plates. Takes a little getting used to, but it's cool. The food is delicious. The meat was AWESOME. It's funny, because as much as I was enjoying it, the Korean guy I was there with kept saying how this place was only subpar, and "wait till you eat the good stuff!" If this place was subpar, I am excited. Delicious to say the least.

More posts coming as I explore and adventure more! So far this country is amazing. Everything I could have hoped for and then some! It will only get better when Marie gets here :)

Finally made it!

I'm here! After an 11 hour flight from LAX into Tokyo (which was a surprisingly pleasant trip,) I flew from Tokyo to Seoul. That trip was less pleasant. Some guy decided it would be cool to board the plane drunk, then just as we're about to takeoff, he also decides it would be cool to throw up everywhere and pass out. Needless to say, we had to taxi back to the gate where they attempted to remove him - that took a while, being that he was entirely unconscious. Then they had to call in hazmat to clean up his mess. Then we had to wait an hour while they tried to find his bag in the belly of the plane. That dude sucked. But I finally made it! The time difference is significant - It's the future here! Here's a video of our place - I'll post more vids/pics as I start exploring!



You can see out the window, we are near a ton of high-rises and shops, restaurants, and bars - should make for some good times! I'll be updating more soon!

We has Visas!

HOORAY! Friday we went back into DC to the Korean Consulate and picked up our passports with our Korean visas in them! Success!

After that we had some time on our hands so we went to the Kenneth Behring Center Museum of American History. It's part of the Smithsonian museums. Kenneth Behring is our friend Brandon's grandfather, so we were amused to see the Behring name on the outside of the building. We enjoyed the transportation exhibits showing off boats and cars and other vehicles that Americans have used over the years, and we also checked out the original Star Spangled Banner, and then an exhibit devoted to Lincoln and then exhibits for the rest of the presidents. It was fun and educational! There were also funny statues in the exhibits, so I took lots of silly pictures with them (as usual).






Then Nick and I went over to see Jackie and her daughters. It was good to see them again - I had gotten the chance to meet Jackie and Hannah when they came out to California to check out Stanford. Jackie is a good friend of Cyndia's (Nick also showed me the house that Cyndia and Bill used to live in down the street from Jackie's) and Nick spent a lot of time in their home growing up. They have a beautiful home and backyard and a playful dog named Chance. Jackie took us to this AWESOME seafood restaurant where we had crab cake sandwiches and shrimp salad and key lime pie...YUM.



Despite some terrible traffic Nick and I made it back to Centreville to see Aunt Brandy and Uncle Ronnie for a bit, we had a nice time catching up and talking. It was good to finally say I've met just about everyone in Nick's family...I know I have a few more people to meet but unfortunately we ran out of time and will have to get to know each other when Nick and I return from Korea. There's always the wedding :)


In the evening Nick and I went with his friend Bucky and Bucky's girlfriend Ashley to the Kennedy Center to see a play, Spring Awakening. We had dinner on the waterfront and then thoroughly enjoyed the play, which was about an old fashioned, conservative German town and the teenagers who lived there as they dealt with parents, discipline, sex, young love, school, suicide, etc...it reminded me of Footloose. It was a musical so there was a lot of rock & roll singing, the actors/singers were VERY talented.




Saturday morning we had to get up SUPER early (4:45 am, ugh) for me to catch my flight back to Los Angeles. I'm in California now and Nick is still in Virginia. He flies out here on Thursday and leaves for Korea this coming Saturday, the 25th. I follow him over there on the 30th...we are so close to leaving!

PS...no jury duty tomorrow, I have to call back tomorrow night to see about Tuesday :/

A Nice Dinner at Home

I made a prime rib roast dinner for the Bencivengas last night :) Grandma Meg and Charlie and Nick's best friend Derek came over too, everyone had a great time. My food was a hit! As you can see, I served prime rib, wilted spinach, corn, garlic bread and scalloped cheesy potatoes. Dessert was the big winner though. I made chocolate panna cotta...everyone was stealing the chocolate as I chopped it up to make the sauce haha, especially Jim and Grandma Meg! I'm in a house of chocolate lovers. Nick caught the picture of Grandma Meg sneaking chocolate, doesn't she look guilty!? haha


We had a really wonderful time sharing dinner together. It was nice to all sit down and talk and laugh and share stories. I'm so happy I got a chance to spend so much time with Nick's family, it's been a fantastic time. Tomorrow we have to go back to DC to pick up our passports and then I return to LA on Saturday. Our cross country trip is complete and my time on the East coast is almost finished...and then our REAL adventure begins!


(PS this is Max sad that he didn't get all the food we did) ;)

More family visits and DC

After Sarah and Adam's wedding we had a few busy days visiting with family members and then it was off to DC to give the Korean Consulate our passports. We go back this Friday to pick them up (hopefully with our visas inside!) and then we are 100% all set to leave for Korea.

We had a lovely lunch with Nick's Uncle Steve and Aunt Gina and his cousins Tessa, Nigel and Jade. Steve is a professional photographer and has an awesome studio in their house. I loved their home, it had a great feel to it, very welcoming and warm. It was so very nice to meet and visit with them :)


Later that same day we were off to dinner with Grandma Meg, what a delightful lady! We went to Ruby Tuesdays...I had never been, which was something Nick was incredulous about. It was good, I had crab cakes with a spicy chipotle sauce. Yum. Grandma Meg is a sweet lady and her boyfriend Charlie was very nice as well. We had a wonderful time talking and joking around. I also got to meet Sheila, Meg's good friend and a close friend of the Bencivenga family. It's been so nice to be welcomed into the family by so many fantastic people.

Tuesday we were in DC, like I previously mentioned, spending some time in the consulate. We had lunch with Carrie, one of Cyndia's dear friends from back when she lived in DC. Carrie had the most amazing home I've seen in a long time. She had loads of eclectic, vibrant art and interesting and wild furniture. Her home has high ceilings (she ripped out the attic to make her rooms even more soaring) and each room has an awesome color and great textures. Her downstairs bathroom was painted with chalkboard paint so you could chalk on the walls. I loved it.

After lunch with Carrie and our boring visit to the consulate (where we met around a dozen other people going to Korea to teach English and learned that our frantic preparations and bumbling experience with leaving the country was typical) Nick and I mosied around the National Zoo. It was sticky and hot and many of the animals were hiding or sleeping.



After the zoo closed we drove over to McLean to have dinner with Bill and his girlfriend Molly at this tasty sushi restaurant. We had jalepeno tuna rolls, shrimp tempura with asparagus and wasabi mayo rolls, hamachi, spicy scallop rolls (mmm my new favorite)...it was really really good. It was a lot of fun meeting Molly as well and seeing Bill again. They are such sweet and kind people.
Tonight I'm whipping up a dinner for the Bencivengas (Grandma Meg is coming too!) so I'll be in the kitchen most of the day. Tomorrow I'll post pictures of my culinary creations...I'm making prime rib roast, scalloped potatoes with gruyere and parmesan cheese, sweet white corn, wilted spinach and then for dessert...chocolate panna cotta with strawberries and a homemade chocolate port sauce. I think they're going to like it! hahaha

Sarah and Adam's Wedding

Hooray! Photos!!!! Adam and Sarah's wedding was wonderful :)


Adam is Nick's college roommate and Sarah is Adam's high school sweetheart. Nick and I were very excited to go to the wedding not only to see them but also to see many of Nick's high school and college friends. I was lucky to meet so many of them in one place!

Also, a FUNNY thing happened to us on the way to the wedding. Nick's friends Johnny and Pat (they and Adam were all college roommates together) were staying at the same hotel we were and we decided to all drive to the chapel together. Johnny has a four door so he offered to drive. We had to drive 30 miles or so to get to the chapel, and along the way Johnny suddenly turned off the music and goes "I think I have a flat!" We laughed him off and told him to keep going until three minutes later when the car beside us rolled down their window and yelled at us that we had a flat. Great. We pulled into a gas station and sure enough it was REALLY flat. The boys are all in their suits and I'm in my dress and we have 15 minutes until the wedding starts. Johnny has a fix-a-flat but it doesn't work and when we tried to pump air into the tire we could hear it just hissing right back out. We were stuck. We had ten minutes at that point and were in a full panic. A couple in a Mazda 6 pulls up and offers us a lift...they had three seats in their back seat, we were four...guess who got to sit on Nick's lap? ;) The woman driving speeds her way down to the military academy where the chapel was. We pulled up to the sign for Bogg's Chapel and she dropped us off. We ran to a building we thought was the chapel only to find it locked...a man in the parking lot asked us if we were looking for the chapel and then points across campus. It was 4:28 and the wedding started at 4:30!! I had to kick off my heels and we sprinted the across campus to get to the chapel in time. We had to sweatily brush past the wedding procession in order to get to our seats, but we were there, haha.

The wedding was very beautiful, Sarah looked amazing in her dress with her hair floating around her in soft curls. Afterwards we had a great dinner and dancing at the Picadilly Pub House. They served us crab stuffed whitefish topped with a lemony wine sauce and lobster and tender roast beef. It was delicious. Nick wore his flapper hat (the pinstripe one with the white silk band and pheasant feathers) and it was the hit of the party. Even the bride's grandfather stole the hat at one point to dance! We all had a great time.

The Big Apple

After a quick visit to Pittsburgh to visit Aunt Thommie we went to New York City, the last leg of our trip across country. Aunt Thommie is well, she took us to "a nice Italian place"...Olive Garden, haha. It was great to see her, she was very happy to meet Nick and see me again.

We stayed with our wonderful friends Monica and Rico again (we visited them in October and had an amazing time so our expectations were high), they live in the Upper East Side and we were not disappointed, they are great company and we had a blast. We arrived Tuesday night and grabbed some great NY pizza then grabbed some necessary rest.


In the morning Nick and I drove upstate to visit my Uncle Chet and Aunt Nancy and my cousins Jason and Amy and her son Kyle. It was really nice to see them, I had not been to their house since I was 12. We had a very tasty lunch at a sweet little cafe (I had a huge turkey and prosciutto panini that was delicious!) and spent some quality time catching up.

We got back Wednesday night and went to a GREAT sushi restaurant with Rico and Monica. I got amazing tuna tartare with a spicy sauce wrapped in crispy wonton cones. I loved it.


Thursday Nick and I walked over five miles exploring the city. We walked from E 82nd to 53rd for amazing Indian food at Tadka Restaurant and then we meandered over to Times Square...Nick and I really enjoyed the fact that they have closed down the streets to cars and it's pedestrian only now. We took some fun pictures there and then headed over to Rockefeller Center. We got some ice cream and took some pictures and then went to the Nintendo store. Nick played some Wii and I got Teenie a Nintendo golf ball hooray :) I also got a cool t-shirt with a green power up mushroom on it, yay!



Then we walked back up to E 82nd through Central Park. It was a gorgeous day and there were a lot of people out, lots of street performers and dancers. We checked out the pond where people rent row boats and also saw a lot of horse carriages and bicycle cabs. Then later that evening we went out with Rico and Monica to a great pub and had good food and great conversation.


Friday we all got in the car and drove down to VA, we all had a wedding to go to. Nick and Rico's old college roommate Adam was getting married to his high school sweetheart, Sarah. I'll post about that soon :)