Day 158: Family Matters

After work today I headed straight for the subway and rode the train to Insadong to meet up with some friends for dinner.  Michael's brother Chris was in town visiting from Iowa and Mikey was having a little dinner with him, Eric, and myself.  We all met up in Insadong and then went and had a delicious chicken dinner at a Korean restaurant.  I don't remember what the dish was called, but it's a special dish that Koreans traditionally have on the first day of summer, which is today, July 20th. 

It was really cool to chat up Chris and hear all about his first impressions of Korea.  Korea is almost always a bit of a shock for those new to Asia, or those new to anything outside North America, really!  To hear about all the things that a weguk who's Fresh Off The Boat notices first is always fascinating, and it's cool to be able to compare it all to your own first impressions when you arrive.  The size of the city, the endless rows of high-rise apartments, the crowds, the traffic, the dirtiness, the Korean language and writing...those are most commonly the first things someone who's new notices.  Chris is in town for a week or so before him and Michael fly off to Cambodia to check out the sites there.  It's gonna be a great trip for both those boys.

It totally made me wish that I had some of my family come visit!  I'm such a long ways from home and I would absolutely love to have my parents or sister in town and be able to show them around and introduce them to life here in Asia.  I know that it would be a HUGE SHOCK to their system but that it would also be a really educational, eye-opening experience for them.  It would give them an appreciation for all the challenges that I deal with here, and it would also allow me the chance to show off all the wonderful things that Korea has to offer.  I know that a lot of the times they'd be overwhelmed, mostly with the crowds, the heat, and the traffic, but I think it would be a great visit nonetheless.  Too bad that it costs a fortune to fly to Korea from North America!  Even for my sister, who's already much closer by living in Vancouver, it would still cost a lot of money for her to visit.  I wish that I was rich and could fly them all over and give them a fabulous tour.  Plus the fact that by the time I come home it will have been two full years since I had seen my family last really makes me wish that we had the means to visit.  Even just one visit between now and then would be nice to have some family time together.  Ahhh well, looks like we'll just have to stick with the ol' blog and phone to stay in touch!

After dinner we were all feeling kinda mellow so instead of going out for drinks or whatever we decided to take Chris to our favourite board game cafe to play Risk.  Yeah yeah yeah, we've been over the whole Geek thing already - enough with that!  ;-)  We ordered pizza and played Risk for a while and had a really good time.  After that I went and crashed at Michael's so that I could have breakfast with them the next day before heading off to work.  It was going to be a special breakfast and I was quite excited about it.  Excited enough that I was willing to sleep on a couch and then wake up at 6:30am all to have this breakfast...  And what breakfast would that be?  You'll have to read about it tomorrow!  hehe!