Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Weekends 50-52 of 52.



America and all of its yummy foods

Part of taking up temporary residence in a foreign country includes going back to visit your sending country. For us that meant a two-week trip to Ohio to see parents and friends, nephews and cousins, dogs. It also meant eating American food and eating a lot of it, because what else do you do on vacation but actively ward off potential hunger with lots of communal eating. It was a wonderful, wonderful trip.

Korea made the return a welcome one by offering two weekends of amazing weather. Turns out, I'm one of those people who get (and remain) grumpy during the winter. At least while living in a city that requires a minimum ten minutes of frozen walking time for any activity outside the apartment. Last Saturday, though, I could have walked around Dongdaemun for hours, so that is promising for the future of this blog.



We flew from Incheon to Detroit, fortifying ourselves first with friendly fruit that gave us the mouthwatering taste of juice.


Planes in Korea.


Detroit's Light Tunnel.


Ceilings and polka-dotted windows.


Dan discovering that America is not yet as free as Seoul with its wi-fi.


This is our dog! We missed him so, and we brought him a dobok so he could be a Taekwondog. It's Korean size XXL, and obviously too small for our size M American dog.


Trees, the moon, and the glow from a setting sun.


We had a family meal with Dan's dad and siblings at Golden Corral.


That meant we got to hang out with our nephew Abraham, here having a chat with his mom.


He wore the shirt we bought him at Home Plus.


Dan and Abraham.


Dan's sisters and brother with their dad.


We shuffled around a bit until we landed at our friend Lacy's house, where we stayed for the majority of our trip. We brought Tater with us for quality time. Unfortunately, he found outside some other dog's tennis ball and laid for extended periods of time guarding and gazing at it.


My parents and brother made the drive up from Florida to see me and visit my grandma. She lives in a town in which Frostie is pretty much the only restaurant. Just so happens it's right near her house. We went and got sandwiches and successfully and thoroughly confused the waitress during their three customer lunch rush.


We played lots of Rummikub at my grandma's house. My dad elected instead to play online Mahjong. How Joy Luck Club of him.


Dinner at Dewey's Pizza with Lacy, both of us working to record it.


After-dinner treats at Graeter's.


We don't know why Dan's hair looks like that. I think a trip to Blue Club is in order.


They had cupcakes for sampling.


Dan got some ice cream in a pretzel cone.


I got strawberry sorbet.


Ye olde ceiling.


So, somewhere Lacy has a collection of ridiculous self-timed shots of the three of us from this night. This is what happened when we tried to look through them.


Trying to get a nice friend photo.


Being alternately bad at straight faces.


A brief walk across the street to Hyde Park Square.


Though our first week in Ohio boasted sunny skies and temperatures in the upper 60s, the second week was back to frost.


Dan and Russ with some KSocks we brought him.


Getting a family shot can sometimes be difficult...


...especially if your big brother (though I don't remember him being so tall) is a bit of a cut-up.


We rounded things out by visiting again with our nephew (and his parents).


Tater got to hang out with and get walked by his cousin Curbie.


On our last night, Dan and his mom told me I should take more pictures of the pup. So I did, and he obliged quite amicably.


Sleeping on the couch during the Oscars.


And then, just as quickly as we came, we flew away.


Kid shoes.


The calmness of the skies reminded me of the calm in the middle of the sea when we took a cruise several years ago.


And then we hit some turbulence flying over these mountains, which I think might be Montana, because the pilot mentioned there'd be turbulence over Montana's mountains. Actually, I've never been on a flight that was so regularly interrupted to point out that we were (obviously) experiencing turbulence. It really put a damper on my movie watching.


Clouds above and below.


Somewhere near Seattle.

I think we did enough on our to do list to hold us over for another year, though we immediately regretted not having gone to Chipotle that one last time.

-Serenity

1 comment:

  1. I'm so glad you guys had a lovely American time and got to see your furry and not-so-furry friends :)

    Also, that picture of Seattle is heavenly.

    ReplyDelete