Bau House

There are so many specialty cafes in this country that we could go to one a week for the next 3 years and not even come close to scratching the surface.  I'm always reading other people's blogs and trying to find new places for us to try.  When I read about this cafe I immediately knew we had to check it out.  As a mother there are a lot of things I do for/with my girls that I would never do if I were by myself.  This adventure definitely falls into that category.

This cafe was called the Bau House, but when spoken sounds like Bow House.  Bow as in bow-wow, like a dog.  It was a cafe where there were tons of dogs running around in it for you to pet and give treats to.  If you know my girls at all you know they LOVE, LOVE, LOVE dogs.  Any dog we ever come across they immediately run up and start to pet it and talk to it.  They love dogs.  And if you know me at all you know (how do I put this...) I'm not such a big fan of dogs.  In fact I'm pretty sure I have some sort of force field around me that as a dog is approaching me they hit the force field, bounce off it and walk the other way.  But I knew my girls would just love this place, so one Saturday we set out on this adventure.  (Since it was a Saturday Russ got to join in on the fun.)

My directions were pretty good, but as happens so often in Korea that once we found the place it had moved.  It took us a while to find it and we were all disappointed it wasn't where we thought it was going to be so we stopped for a little bit of a pit stop.

Drinking some Gatorade at a 7-11.

We passed this awesome looking old church that they had turned into a restaurant while we were out exploring.

Unfortunately, the picture doesn't do it justice, it was so big that this was all I could get to fit in my camera screen.

It took us a really long time to find the correct location.  But when we did the girls were very excited.  (Because things change so fast in this country, I never tell them where we are going until we actually arrive at the location.  This saves me lots of questions about it and it also lessens the disappointment if we can't find it or if it is not in business anymore.) 

There were dogs EVERYWHERE in this place.  You could bring your own dog to play with the other dogs, or the owner of the place has like 15 (or maybe more) dogs of his own that are there for you to play with.  Most of the owners dogs are rescue dogs.

The first section of the cafe was for little, "lap" dogs.  And the whole back of the place was for the bigger dogs.

Within 10 seconds of us entering this was how I found Lucy.

You don't have to pay to play with the dogs, but if you want to feed them treats you have to buy the treats from the place and you have to order one drink per person.  So we ordered 4 lemonades (it just didn't seem like a sit and sip coffee type of place).

It was so loud in there that not a lot of conversation was happening...unless you were talking to the dogs.

There were probably 15 dogs in the big dog section and they had completely free rein of the cafe and definitely took advantage of it.

Yes, this dog is drinking straight out of the water drain.  I did not drink any water after I saw this.

The girls (and Russ) had so much fun petting, feeding and playing with the dogs.  The girls picked their favorites and gave them extra treats and attention.

I just sat and watched.

My force field was at full strength that day.  Thankfully, most of the dogs were pretty smart and only tried to approach me one time then realized it wasn't worth it.  That lady behind me looks like she might have a force field too.

There was one dog that broke the barrier though.

This was the closest I got to a dog the whole time we were there...in my defense, I'm also allergic to dogs so I was trying not to rub my eyes most of the time we were there. 

This place would never, ever fly in America, but over here no one seemed to think anything was out of the ordinary.  I will say that the employees did an excellent job keeping the place clean.  Someone was walking around the entire time we were there using the swifter and cleaning up dog fur.  And every time there was a doggie accident, an employee was cleaning it up within seconds.  I was very surprised that while the place did smell like dog, it didn't stink. 

While it may be a while until we go back again, it was a fun adventure for all of us.

I'm not a huge germ freak, but we all pretty much bathed in hand sanitizer when we were done.  After we left we went out to a Mexican restaurant (which was delicious) and headed home.

Hula Hoopin' Lucy

This child does not get her hip shaking abilities from her mother, that is for sure!

I really hope this video works for you and you can view it, but if you can't I'm sorry I can't help you.  I'm technology inept.  It took me a few hours (and some very frustrated words) working off and on to get this thing to work and I never did get it.  I finally asked Russ and he helped me.  He is much better with this stuff then I am. 

Open House

This past week we had open house at the girls school.  For those of you that don't have children in elementary school or it has been a long time, let me give you a brief description about what open house is and is not.  It is not a time to discuss in-depth issues with the teacher about your child.  It is a time to look at your child's classroom and usually some work that they have done.

Lucy's teacher made a check list of all the things she wanted Lucy to show me.  Lucy had to carry around the clipboard and check list and check the items off after she had explained them to me.  She showed me various art projects they had done...

She showed me the flags, the calendar they go over every day, the computers, her seat and the work that she has to finish each morning before the day starts, the textbooks they use in class...

...and many other things.  This was a great idea her teacher had.  The teacher just stood there and welcomed the parents while the children took great pride in showing off the work and  classroom.  Lucy had a lot of fun walking me around her classroom showing me everything.  I quick snapped a picture of her and her teacher (Mrs. Ro, who has been teaching in this school for over 15 years) before we headed out to Taylor's classroom.

Now, by the time you get to 5th grade things are much different.  There was no cute little clipboard and classroom tour.  And by the time you are in 5th grade you are too cool to get your picture taken at your desk or with your teacher.  :)
Taylor's teacher is also an awesome teacher.  Her name is Ms. Anthony and she won teacher of the year last year.  She is already working very hard to prepare her students for jr. high.  One of Taylor's first projects was to write a paper about a civilization that she had made up.  The civilization had to have a plant that had a special power.  The plant's power had to fit within Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.  (Is this confusing you all yet?...Yes, it was incredibly confusing to me as well at first.  Thankfully, the paper was based off of a book they had read in class and her teacher had given very detailed instructions of what she was looking for.)  Taylor decided her plant was going to have the ability to make people fly.  This was the first paper Taylor had ever written and while there was a very steep learning curve for her she did a great job on it. (It ended up being almost 4 pages single spaced!)
The second part of the project was she had to build a replica of the plant. She wasn't into getting her picture taken in her classroom, but she did want a picture of her plant.  She was very proud of it.

It was a great open house for both girls.  Before school starts each year, we begin to pray for each of their teachers.  God has blessed our prayers above and beyond what we could have imagined.  We are so very thankful for His provision to us each school year.

Flower Market

This past summer we had the opportunity to do a little bit of sightseeing in Seattle before we flew out to Korea.  We visited Pike's Market and walked past numerous stalls filled with flowers.  At the time, I didn't think I would ever see more flowers, in one place, that were so beautiful and CHEAP!!   Unfortunately, because we were flying out the next day, I couldn't buy any.
Well, I stand corrected...I now think the flower market in Korea is the most flowers I will ever see in one place.  They were just as beautiful and CHEAPER!!

A few of my new friends and I ventured out one morning to the flower market that is just over the river from the base.  The market is set up to sell wholesale flowers more then individual sales, and so it actually opens around 1 am and by about noon they are starting to shut things down.  We arrived a little before 11, so things were pretty slow while we were there.  But there were still plenty of flowers for us to look at and purchase.

All these flowers are real.

There were 2 sides of the flower market, the right side was all real flowers and greenery.

Check out all the greenery and for the most part, it is all real.

On the left side were fake flowers (not the dollar store kind, but ones that looked real), glass vases and decorations.

We took this picture next to some fake flowers.

To be honest, it was all a little overwhelming.  I ended up just purchasing each of the girls some pretty roses for their bedrooms and a vase to go with each.  There were very excited with my purchase.  (They each got 10 roses and a glass vase and it cost me less then $18.00 total)

Yellow for Taylor and pink for Lucy.

But don't feel bad for me, I am very sure I will go back again to buy some flowers for myself.  :)

Musical Water Fountains

One weekend we decided to head out towards a musical water fountain show that we had heard about.  We didn't really know very much about it, besides it was water fountains that were programmed to "dance" to music.
Here we are heading out on our adventure...

Obviously the subway has lost some of it's newness to Lucy.  She isn't impressed anymore.

The fountain show was inside of the Seoul Arts Center.

The Seoul Arts Center is a huge complex with a few museums, concert halls and restaurants.  It is free to go into the center but then you pay for the individual activities/events you attend.  We were really excited to find out the fountain show was free.

We got there a few minutes early and the girls had fun playing on these little statues.

When we first got there we were the only ones there.  We started to think we had gotten incorrect information.  But, once the fountains and music started people quickly began to gather around to watch and take pictures.

Even the Korean Nuns stopped to take some pictures.

The girls watching the fountains.

It was pretty cool how they had choreographed the music and the water.

It was extremely hot outside and if you stood at this end of the fountain every once in a while there was a slight breeze and the mist from the water would hit you.  It felt wonderful. 

We really enjoyed watching the fountains dance to the music but quickly realized it would be much better to come back at night when they not only do the fountains and music but they light up the water as well.

 After the show we spent a few minutes exploring the Arts Center.  We didn't do any of the museums that day but decided we would probably come back to check them out another time.

We took this picture of our reflection in a mirrored  building.  As a fun side note...when Russ and I were in Korea, pre-kids back in 2000, we took this exact same photo.  We had forgotten where we took the photo until we were walking around the Arts Center and saw this building.  It was fun to re-create the picture with the girls.  Unfortunately, I didn't bring my old photos with me so I don't have a copy of the first picture to post on here.

As we were leaving the Arts Center we found this awesome water fall and bridge.  We all walked across the bridge and took a few pictures.

It was massive.

Russ took this self-portrait and made it look like the fountain was his hat. 

 

That evening we didn't have any plans and so we decided to make another trip back to the fountain to see an evening show.  It was much less humid and so the crowd was much larger.  The lights made the show quite a bit more entertaining.  We enjoyed the show a lot more in the evening and will definitely be taking family members and friends to see it when they come visit us.