For those who are like, so over the vacation recaps, here’s a blog post chockful of happenings from last week. Tres exciting. Oui oui.

NEIGHBOR “NED”‘S BACK

So my neighbor (“Ned”) who was recently raided in a drug bust (his hearing is next month, we checked lol) and GAVE CHOOCH AND ME A FAKE NAME stopped by last Saturday to get the rest of his stuff (can’t wait to see who my next neighbors will be #help) and I was spying from my window when it occurred to me that I’m always pointing my neighbors out to my friends like “THAT’S THE ONE ON HOUSE ARREST” or “SHE MIGHT RUN A METH LAB” or whatever but I wonder if any of them are like “THAT’S THE PSYCHO WHO IS ALWAYS JOGGING IN PLACE OR DANCING TO WEIRD KOREAN MUSIC IN FRONT OF THE WINDOW.”

But holy shit, Ned came back the next day too to get the rest of his stuff and I was dying to talk to him but I held back. But then I saw him out there taking pictures of the damage that was done to his car and I just couldn’t help myself, I ran out there without any makeup on because I needed him to know what happened to his car. Henry was leaving at the same time to take Chooch to his piano lesson and I could tell he was dismayed that I went out there and involved myself.

Wow, I thought he’d brush me off but NO, he started talking to me ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED THAT DAY!

“You were there when it happened, right?” he asked, and I was like, “Hoooo boy, are we really going to talk about this right now, this is so WISTERIA LANE!” but it turns out he was only asking because he wanted to know if I remembered what time everything happened.

“I think around 6:00am,” I answered thoughtfully.

“Are you sure?” he asked, “because those guys in that house said it was about 5:30.”

As I was mulling this, he told me that the search warrant said the cops couldn’t come in before 6 and he was sure that they did, and he has an investigator on the case, and he’s going to come and talk to the other neighbors, could he come and talk to me too?

“YES, SEND HIM TO ME. I WILL TALK TO HIM,” I said firmly, dying at the chance to bring down the popo, especially after Ned told me about the racist bullshit they said to him that day.

Meanwhile, the broad who was living there with him is in jail! He said something about how she violated her work probation or something, all I know is that I’m sure she framed him and this was all about her all this time so I don’t care that she’s in jail.

After I wished Ned good luck, I came in the house and called Henry.

“No, it was probably around 6,” Henry said, while I was screaming about him about being. “Here, I’ll check my texts and see what time you texted me about it that morning….it was 6:03am.”

“NO, probably that’s just when I woke up and they had already been in the house for QUITE SOME TIME!” I yelled.

Then I asked Chooch when he came home from piano.

“Mmm, it was after si—-”

“NO YOU’RE WRONG, YOU IDIOT, IT WAS LIKE 5:30, GOD!!!” I cried. “I can’t wait to talk to that investigator, I’m on a fucking crusade for Ned’s innocence,” I said.

“Well, if you have to testify, they might as well just put him in jail now. You have NO control over your temper,” Henry sighed.

SPRINGTIME PLAYGROUND TRIPS

Just the other day, we drove past one of the playgrounds in Brookline and I felt kind of sad that Chooch is well past the age of playground trips, but I also felt relieved too because I always hated the inevitable small talk that would happen when a mom would sidle up beside me. UGH.

But then last Sunday, Blake asked if we wanted to walk to the playground with him, Haley, and Calvin. EFF YES WE DID! I needed steps for the walking challenge! And you know, we’re always up for hanging out with fam.

One thing that hasn’t changed — Chooch still sucks at pushing himself on a swing.

And one thing that HAS changed: Calvin can walk now!

We stopped at Las Palmas on the way back and I used this as my opportunity to snap a pic of my longtime taco cart boyfriend. Henry was just like, “Whatever.”

WALKING CHALLENGE UPDATE: WEEK ONE

The results for week one were released and I was pleasantly surprised to see that I made it in fourth place for individual walkers without even really trying, and my team made it in the Top 3! (YOU’RE WELCOME, C.E.W.L. AND THE GANG.) I won a $10 Starbucks gift card for my efforts, but I will likely not win anything in the next mini-challenge, which is “best healthy recipe.” Glenn was like, “Yeah, maybe Henry could win that one for you” but I’M NO CHEATER. So I won’t be submitting anything for that mini-challenge.

“Stop walking so much,” Ethan said to me when I passed him in the hallway, and then Sandy called out, “Professional walker!”

“I’m back!” I laughed, and you know what? IT FELT GOOD. I think sitting out during those last several Walking Challenges was a good thing because I feel less burdened.

We’ll see how I feel when the next week of results are released though, lol.

CHOOCH’S BIRTHDAY WAS THE WORSTDAY

I had the day off on April 25th because it’s my annual “nursing phantom c-section pains” and “wallowing in self-pity for having a [insert age]-year-old.” Did you know that I have horrible luck when it comes to taking off random days in the middle of the week? Well, I do. And this day was no different. I noticed that Drew was acting super weird, walking around the house and then squatting like she had to pee or poop, but nothing was coming out. She never goes to the bathroom outside of her litterbox, so that in and of itself was bizarre. Immediately, I was like DREW IS DYING and was in panic-mode until Henry came home from work and we were able to take her to the vet for an emergency appointment. At first, the vet said that it appeared Drew had a bladder blockage, which I had read on the Internet earlier because YOU CAN’T TELL ME YOU DON’T GOOGLE WORST CASE SCENARIOS TOO, but that this was very rare in a female cat which I had also read earlier, and this was the part where I was waiting for her to basically tell us this was the feline version of the Crying Game but no, Drew is still a girl and the X-rays actually revealed NOTHING, no stones or crystals which meant no surgery, and the vet was able to physically express Drew’s bladder THANK GOD so crisis averted but this still cost us so much that we had to pay out of three different accounts, oh that Paycheck-to-Paycheck lyfe, y’all! Honestly though, we were so grateful and relieved to be bringing home a healed and healthy cat that I would gladly pay that again.

Chooch: Guess I’m not getting a birthday present now.

Me: We just kept your goddamn cat alive – WE GAVE U THE GREATEST GIFT OF ALL.

Ugh! Kids! And pets!!

We weren’t home for more than ten minutes when I stepped on the edge of one of the cats’ scratch pads and rolled my ankle so far that the top of my foot was touching the floor.

WOW THAT FELT GOOD!

I honestly can’t remember the last time I was in so much pain that I was screaming out loud. I fell back onto the chaise, writhing in pain, and screaming WHHHHHHYYYYYYYYYY like the Nancy Kerrigan of the Law Firm Walking Challenge, trying to find a way to blame whoever was in fifth place for Week One.

Somehow, I was able to walk it off, literally, but ended up walking with a slight limp for the rest of the week. That was a close call, C.E.W.L. and the Gang, but don’t worry – I’D WALK ON CRUTCHES IF I HAD TO.

We were both doing much better by the next day.

Honestly though thank god this little nutcase is back to her normal, spring-footed self.

BTS WORLD TOUR

Sometime last week, I started to see rumors that BTS was about to announce a world tour. I got excited for a split second and then felt immediately stressed and hoped that it actually was just a rumor because I wasn’t prepared for this. Not at all. Especially not after just dropping $500 on a vet bill (LOVE YOU, DREW). But then it was announced on Thursday and I was immediately thrown into psychological turmoil, thinking of all the things around the house I can sell. (ANYONE WANT A 12-YEAR-OLD WHO ENJOYS SHOVELING SNOW IN THE WINTER?!) And then the very next day, it was announced that tickets are going on sale NEXT WEEK. NEXT FUCKING WEEK! Like, give some Armys a chance to fucking scrounge up their allowances OK?! (J/K I’m not an Army but I do like BTS a lot.)

Henry jokingly said it was too bad that BTS tickets weren’t one of the Walking Challenge prizes and an image of the bloody stumps I once called “feet” flashed across my vision because bitch you best believe I would walk until I collapsed for a chance to win tickets.

“You’re going to have to start doing odd jobs around town,” I said to Henry, very matter-of-factly. “Like, surely someone needs their chimney swept or something.”

“Yes, because that’s exactly something I know how to do, sweep chimneys,” Henry said with a mouthful of sardonicism. WOW I THOUGHT HENRY COULD DO EVERYTHING. So much for the Mary Poppins role-playing I had in mind for later.

At one point Saturday night, Henry called out from the kitchen, “WHAT are you doing?” Oh, I was just laying upside down on the arm of the couch with my arm splayed across my face, thinking of how impossible my chances of getting tickets are. These fuckers are going to sell out so fast, between Armys, dumb Americans who just jumped on the bandwagon thanks to motherfucking Ellen DeGeneres and that awful Desiigner remix, but most of all THE TICKET RESALE COMPANIES. Oh, I just feel sick.

Add to that the fact that Henry heard one of their songs at the grocery store, and I had no idea they were at “grocery store sound system” levels of fame in the US so RIP any hope I had for getting even a nosebleed seat.

Send me prayers on May 5th, you guys.

UPDATE: Wendy just told me that she would help me get BTS tickets if I paint her house. I don’t think I like BTS that much, though.

IMPORTANT WORK NEWS

The new admin assistant started last week and I really like her! I’m not sure if anyone told her yet that she’s acquiring a new Work Child with her position, but she has several adult children so what’s one more, right? Glenn was like, “Hopefully she knows how to cut apples.” I mean, duh.

(I literally, as I’m writing this, woke up Henry to cut an apple for me and then I didn’t even finish it because it’s NOT SO GREAT.)

I said something to Todd about how hopefully she will start buying me presents too and he was like, “Yeah, I don’t see that happening.”

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.

I mean, we walked out of work together today and I basically saved her from getting hit by a car and by that I mean we were crossing the street and there was a car way at the other end and I was closest to it, so….I pretty much blocked her.

***********************************

Well, that’s all for now. The Korea posts will resume tomorrow, GET SOME SLEEP TONIGHT, lol.

My only plans for this weekend consisted of walking & more walking, but we did sprinkle in some other things too. Nothing too riveting, but here are some pictures anyway while I’m taking a break before my last surge toward 30,000 steps. (I have a sickness. Help me.)

Saturday morning, we went to the gifted center because Chooch has been taking some kind of Lego robotics class there on Saturdays and this was the last class until next fall, so parents got to come in and see what their kids had accomplished. In our case, there wasn’t much to see because, as expected, Chooch spent the year doing more socializing with his partner Jamin than actual coding. Jamin proved this as well when he arrived later and struggled to show his family what he had been working on. It was whatever though because those classes were free for gifted kids and he made a friend out of it, so we can’t complain.

We were one of the first to arrive though and I was in dire need of coffee. There was a Keurig on the snack table with a wide array of K-cups so I waltzed right on over and helped myself because when I need coffee, I am suddenly Miss Independant. I took my coffee and sat down at a table, acutely aware that no one was else was scavenging the snack table but I didn’t care.

Moments later, a small crowd of parents had clustered in front of the Keurig and there was a hushed dialogue of “Are we allowed to use this?”

“I smelled coffee when I walked down the hall and now it’s all I want,” one parent said wistfully as I sat back and openly chugged on the root of the scent they were talking about. LOL just make a fucking cup of coffee you weirdos! Shit.

We came home to two packages from Maya! One of them contained a delicious assortment of K-snacks and it brought a tear to my eye. It was almost like being in South Korea again! I immediately dumped it all out into my Running Man bowl, with Pentagon performance videos playing on the TV in the background. KOREA FOREVER! 감사합니다, Maya!!

Later that afternoon, we went to Tillie’s for Chooch’s belated birthday lunch. It was a wonderful meal as always (Tillie’s is super good Italian, and their homemade gnocchi is the best I’ve had this side of Italy, thanks) and we were so giddy because Christina had made me download some stupid Marco Polo app earlier so we sent her all kinds of dumb videos and the waiter was like THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING every time he rolled up to our table.

I couldn’t leave without taking a post-eggplant romano bathroom selfie. I always laugh when I come in this bathroom because Janna brought  me here several years ago for my birthday and I turned the light on her while she was in this bathroom, lolololol. My whole life has been devoted to punking Janna.

After we left Tillie’s, I made Henry pull over so I could take a picture of this gorgeous Russian Orthodox church and then do the traditional point to the People’s Building while saying, “I used to work there,” as if Henry doesn’t know that by now.

Later that evening, Henry Oppa veered from the traditional fare and instead made Korean BBQ tofu sliders with kimchi slaw, and that slaw was motherfucking Last Supper-levels of divine, my friends. Pass some down to Peter, and don’t forget Mary Magdalene if you know what I’m saying. #BibleStuff

Here are two random pictures of Drew in my room:

We ended Saturday night with a really good hour of kpop dance cardio and I was proud of Henry for putting forth a bit more effort than he normally does. Usually if there is anything involving arm movement, he’ll just keep his arms down at his side, but I caught him putting one of his hands under his chin during one of the routines, JUST LIKE YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO DO!! One day, Henry and I will have our own k-fitness channel, I can’t wait.

Today has been pretty boring and lowkey. I’ve just been walking a lot while watching my k-dramas and panicking about the upcoming kpop concerts that I can’t afford. What a life, right?

I’ve been on a heavy SHINee kick all weekend and have visions of Henry, Chooch, and me arriving places in perfect kpop formation:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Erin Appledale (@ohhonestlyerin)

I don’t think it’s going to come to fruition though.

Then Henry made this wonderful noodle dinner for me :

Long live Henry though for real. He is such a good cook and I appreciate that a year and a half later, he hasn’t tired of cooking Korean meals for me every single day of his life.

After dinner, we went to Crafton Ice Cream Delight and I was so excited when Chooch ordered the apple pie sundae because I wanted to get it too but knew it would make me sick, so now I could just eat some of his and he hates sharing with me so this made it taste even better.

I was bitching about how it better worth it since it cost $6.95 and then the guy slid it out of the pick-up window and I was like, “OH OK HOLY SHIT THAT’S WORTH IT.” It was a large and in charge sundae. I’m glad I didn’t order it for myself because I’d be in the bathroom puking right now instead of writing this worthless blog post.

I just got a small vanilla cone with chocolate peanut butter dip. I originally ordered the cake batter dip BUT IT WAS DISCONTINUED. I have a really great track record of getting screwed at ice cream joints.

I snapped this picture of Henry and was all excited to post it on Instagram because he’s smiling and just I was about to type in some poignant caption about how ice cream brings our family together or whatever the fuck, Henry yelled JUST EAT YOUR ICE CREAM AND SHUT UP to Chooch, who had just mimicked Henry noisily eating his ice cream. Oh god, I love my family, LOL.

And now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and finish walking my way to 30,000 steps. IT’S CRUNCH TIME.

Here’s a live performance of one of my favorite SHINee songs. I just said to Henry, “Onew’s face is so joyful. I wish you would just watch this once” and he snapped, “I’VE ALREADY WATCHED THIS BEFORE.” Wow.

I think this is going to be my official Walking Challenge theme song but instead of “I’m love sick” it’ll be “I’m step sick.” I NEED A DOCTORRRRRRR.

Sometimes I just want to dump a bunch of photos on here and be done with it and BY GEORGE that’s just what I’m going to do today.

The following is a collection of photos that we took with the actual camera (as opposed to my phone which is mainly what I used on this trip because CONVENIENCE) at Gamcheon Culture Village on Thursday, March 29th in Busan, Korea.

Gamcheon is considered to be Korea’s Machu Picchu and Korea’s Santorini. It’s also known as the “Lego Village” because of the brightly-colored block-shaped houses. It went from being one of the poorest areas of Busan to a thriving cultural village brimming with boutiques, cafes, and quirky art installations tucked away in the twisting maze of alleys.

Unbeknownst to us, there was something akin to a scavenger hunt that we found out about in the visitor’s center, so we easily spent the whole freaking day here. I’ll get into that more in the next post, where we will do a more in depth exploration of the village! But for now, please enjoy the beautiful colors of this village, and add this place to your bucket list because it was definitely a sight to behold!

The start of our Gamcheon experience, unless you count the long trek up the mountain.

There were so many photo op areas!

Korea loves their poop-themed food. (Also, because I know he’s going to bitch that I put this picture here, Henry’s not actually pregnant in this picture; his shirt was too big and was blowing in the breeze.)

Randyland vibes (but better, because this is Korea. Sorry, Randy).

Yes, I paid 500 won for this picture even though no one was around to know the difference! #respectforkorea

I had a picture similar to this one as my desktop background at work last year and when I got to look out over all these rooftops in person a year later, it felt so surreal. Fight to make your dreams come true, guys.

Oh, thanks for taking this picture, Henry, so that I can show everyone the BACKPACKS YOU MADE US LUG AROUND. Also, that’s Song Joong Ki in that Hite beer ad on the store window. I get so happy every time I saw his face!

Chooch was in novelty photo-posing heaven.

One of the many break-your-neck alleys. Surprisingly, we only had one close-call with Chooch that day!

Ugh, take me back.

In the next post, I’ll share pictures from my phone and tell you about our stamp-collecting mission and finally eating the one food that I was most anticipating in Busan! I sent some postcards from this town, so if you’re one of the recipients of those ones, just pretend like you don’t already know about all of this for the sake of my blog stats, haha.

Isn’t it crazy when you can not see someone for years and years yet somehow fall right back into a comfortable groove when you do? That’s how it is with my friend Alisha, who I saw for the first time last summer since 2010, and again last Friday when she was in town visiting from Arkansas.

I was so glad that she carved out some time for me on this latest visit, especially when I texted her a picture of a Julian Baker concert flyer and her immediate response was, “YES LET’S GO TO THAT” and within minutes she bought tickets. I forgot what it felt like to have a friend who wants to go to shows!

But first, food. Alisha picked me up from work and we skipped all the frou-frou salutations and went right into our routine of her being annoyed and exasperated and me being totally giddy – ugh, I missed our dysfunctionally perfect yin and yang!

Alisha’s British-voiced GPS led us to Apteka, an Eastern Europe-Yinzer-Vegan joint across from the Allegheny Cemetery that my friend Sarah recommended to me over a year ago and I never made it there because kimchi or GTFO. However, Alisha is vegan so I thought this would be a grand time to check it out and I was happy that it wasn’t crowded yet and the staff wasn’t off-putting as they sometimes can be in a niche vegan eatery, leaving me feeling not inked-up enough and half-assed in my veg-ways. (Which brings us back to kimchi, which I know is made with anchovy paste but I still eat it because I never signed a contract, OK? Korea has changed me!)

Apteka is cafe-style which is kind of annoying when you walk into a place for the first time and they’re like BAM HERE IS THE MENU STAND HERE AT THE COUNTER AND I WILL STARE AT YOU WHILE YOU TRY TO FIGURE OUT OUR WEIRDO MENU GOOD LUCK WITH THE POLISH.

Alisha had a million questions and the Apteka girl very patiently answered her. She asked what the waitress recommended and she blew through the menu so fast I felt like I just been lead through a polka.

Alisha ordered the thing I was going to get so then I had to stand there and stammer, and of course I was unable to pronounce anything on the menu (is it nuts that I was trying to imagine what it would look like in Hangeul to help me sound it out?!) so I just pointed and said, “Lima bean.”

Because the thing I got had a lima bean purée and it was shockingly not phrased more dumb or pretentious than that because you know how nauseating menu descriptions can be in these types of places.  Let me see if I can find a menu…

Kluski Slaskie

baby lima bean + winter bitter leaves + potato dumplings + fried buckwheat + marjoram (GF)

I didn’t even notice that my meal had marjoram on it and I guess it doesn’t matter because I didn’t even notice it while I was eating it to even wonder what even is it. That was a weird sentence.

(GUYS, I LOOKED IT UP. IT’S MINT.)

Alisha also ordered a pot of some kind of tea for us to share. It tasted like ground. Maybe it would have been better with sugar but do vegans eat sugar? I didn’t see any.

Alisha also ordered the Kanapki which was three pieces of small toast, each with a different spread on it. One was for sure carrot and that was the only one I liked.

Guys, that’s my plate at the bottom there and it was so fucking good – those potato dumpling dickheads were so fucking divine and I wanted so much more, and the fried buckwheat was WHAT THE HELL WHY HASN’T HENRY BEEN CRACKLIN’ BUCKWHEAT FOR ME ALL THIS TIME levels of tasty. And that lima bean puree? I didn’t have time to grab my bathing suit before diving into that bitchin’ legume lagoon.

That’s Alisha’s crap at the top.

Boczniaki z kapusta

oyster mushroom + braised cabbage in beer broth + butternut miso + rye crumb

Somehow, my dinner was considered a “large plate” and hers was “small” and cheaper yet seemed so much bigger and she was still working on it a good twenty minutes after I had licked the last lima smear from my plate.

To cap off our meal, I ordered dessert for us to split, and again, I could have eaten 5 plates of these.

Bogate ciasto smietankowe

Rich cream cake + roast pear

My Apteka verdict is that the food was bomb and inventive, and even had a level of comfort to it that vegan joints sometimes lack. But, for the price I paid and the amount of food I ate, I was a little unsatisfied. I was ready for second dinner less than an hour later. Even still, I’ll probably go back again because I liked the atmosphere, the staff was great, and I want to try the other things on the menu — I’ll just be prepared to eat my arm later on.

Afterward, we went to the Carnegie Library lecture hall to see one of my favorite female vocalists, Julien Baker. Ugh, I have been dying to see her live for years now but something always comes up when she’s here. I thought I was going to end up going to see her alone because I don’t know anyone else who likes her and Henry was a hard nope, but it ended up coinciding perfectly with Alisha’s visit. She was my concert buddy when she lived in Pittsburgh back in the day and I was so excited to have another good music night with her!

Alisha was all frenzied because she wasn’t sure if we were allowed to park in the lot she chose, and then she was mad because we walked some totally long-ass way to get to the lecture hall when we could have taken a much shorter route, but I was selfishly happy about this because I needed the steps since it was week one of the Law Firm Walking Challenge (OH, I HAVE AN UPDATE ABOUT THIS TOO, CHECK BACK LATER) and I was kicking myself for planning an evening of DINNER and a SEATED CONCERT. Alisha was miserable because she had a bad cold and here I was, walking her around Oakland on a super chilly April night.

When we arrived, she was immediately annoyed because the young girls checking tickets at the door were all googly-eyed over my knack for accessorizing and then we stood in the bathroom waiting for the two occupied stalls to open up and then the bathroom door slowly started to open on its own and we were like WTF SCOOBY, GHOSTS!? but here it turned out Alisha had leaned on the handicap door opening button.

And then a few minutes later, we realized that only one of the stalls had been occupied that whole time, so that was cool.

“I should have known it was going to be a night full of stupid things,” Alisha sighed, insinuating that my presence draws this stuff out!?

Whatever!

Anyway, we found some good seats nice and close (BUT NOT TOO CLOSE) in the first row off the floor. Alisha was whining about why it hadn’t started yet and I was like, “Because it’s only 7. We have another hour.”

LOL Alisha thought it started at 7 that whole time and was so angry that now we had to sit in this growing-more-stifling-by-the-minute room. She amused herself by spying on a man who apparently looked at me twice after I said “bless you” to Alisha so she was convinced he was obsessed with me but clearly I think she was obsessed with him! He kept pretending like he was waiting for someone but then no one ever came…

Then people attempted to speak to Alisha and I thought she was going to will herself to incinerate into a pile of Arkansas ash.

“Why does this always happen? I was doing so good all these years and then I’m with you for like a minute…”

“And the awkward social situations come back?” I laughed, and she emphatically agreed.

It really was an interesting mesh of people there that night though. Lots of punk rock college lesbians, little girls, and old guys.

And us.

Tancred was the opener and I really don’t have much to say about them because I have tried so hard over the years to like them, especially when I got more into that Bledfest-type of scene, but I just can’t. The singer is fine but her voice doesn’t evoke a single emotion from me and the lyrics are kind of middle school diary.

But Julien though….

She performed mostly alone until closer to the end of her set, when her friend came out to accompany her on violin. I didn’t take any video and this picture is actually Alisha’s, because I kind of felt paralyzed with regurgitating grief and realized at one point that I was barely breathing.

Julien has this poignant and measured way of singing the most delicate, whispered notes and then, before you have time to prepare yourself, she is lurching her head back and full-blown power-vocals are roaring out of her small frame and sucking up all the oxygen in the room. She will leave you fucking breathless.

So, there’s this thing about me that you should know, and it’s that, as much as I love words, the lyrics of songs usually come secondary for me. It’s the music itself that heals me first and foremost, it’s what gets my heart started, the tears flowing. And then it’s the tone of the voice singing against that music. I have to laugh a little bit because when I was super into the post-hardcore and screamo scene, people would ask me how could I tell what they were saying? And I would say, “I can’t, and it doesn’t matter, because it’s still touching me.” And now, I get the same question because 99.9% of what I listen to is in Korean. And again, it’s the same thing. It doesn’t matter to me what they’re saying, because the music, and the sound of their voices singing in that perfect language, fills my heart with joy that I haven’t felt in such a long time.

But yet, Julien is the rare exception for me. Because I AM listening to her words. And they are slicing through my wrists like a rusty razor. To write the songs she writes…and to sing them with such brittle sincerity and honesty…you have to have a lot of pain in your life. I can’t imagine standing there on a stage in front of so many adoring fans, stripping down to your bare, aching soul, letting us all watch you relive whatever you were going through when these songs came to fruition. She gave us a gift that night, and I will forever cherish it!

This is one of my favorite songs. Careful, she might break your heart.

And then we thought we were going to have to live in the parking lot because one of the parking ticket machines wasn’t working right and traffic was all backed up and we blamed Henry for not driving us.

“You never asked?” he replied to my text. WELL, HE SHOULD HAVE JUST KNOWN TO DO IT!

And don’t you worry – I came home at 11pm and still managed to eke out 20,000 steps.

As much as I wanted to spend every waking moment in Seoul, I also wanted to explore other parts of Korea, too. I was torn between Jeju Island and Busan, but then Henry wisely pointed out that traveling to Busan would be easier, probably, for a bunch of dummies like us. And he promised that we could go to Jeju another time and when he was sleeping, I drained him of a small amount of his blood and snipped some of his beard hairs for my YOU PROMISED, MOTHERFUCKER potion.

That being said, Busan won out and I wasn’t mad about it. I got to make the obligatory TRAIN TO BUSAN joke on Instagram which no one got, but that’s OK!

I have to laugh a little because before we left for this trip, several of my friends were like, “Send us your itinerary!” and honestly, aside from our flights and hotel, nothing else was set in stone. Not even this overnighter to Busan! In fact, we didn’t even get our KTX tickets until the day before. We were on our way to Myeongdong, I believe, and got off at Seoul Station first in order to buy the tickets. Seoul Station is not only just a subway station, but also a large bus transfer terminal and major railway station where you can take the KTX to other cities in South Korea. It’s also SUPER EASY to get tickets (there are a ton of self-service ticketing things but we opted to just go right into the KTX office and have someone do it for us because #dumbAmericans).

In hindsight, I can’t believe how flawless this whole process was.

Thursday morning, we threw some clothes into our backpacks and set off for Seoul Station. We bought some snacks at GS25 (one of the amazing convenience stores in Korea and I miss it so much, take me back!) and then went down to our designated platform and waited for the train to arrive, at which point we boarded the train and showed our tickets to literally no one. I was a nervous wreck about this, but I guess that’s just how it is in South Korea! I was watching some broad’s vlog the other day, and she was on a train in China that’s similar to the KTX, but was joking that she had to go through all this security and show her ticket numerous times, unlike in Korea, where you just walk right on and no one bothers checking.

My banana milk (uyoo) and vacation journal which I nearly filled up by the time the trip was over! And you guys, banana milk was one of my favorite things to drink there. I thought, man, there’s no way this will live up to the hype. Especially since, while I love bananas, banana-flavored things aren’t usually my thing. I hate how synthetic it tastes! But these little jugs of banana milk blew my mind. They were sweet, not too sickeningly so, and felt like liquid silk on my tongue. Ugh, so good, and I drank them very slowly to make it last. They’re so popular that there are special straws available in all of the convenience stores, just for them!

The train ride itself was a relatively uneventful 2 and a half hours. Chooch watched YouTube videos the whole time and kept snickering to himself, which was annoying because his big head was blocking the window and I was like, “Thanks for crying over the window seat when you’re not even looking out the window, asshole!” From the glimpses I got, it was lots of countryside, low houses, and mountains.

Meanwhile, Henry befriended an older Korean businessman (I mean, older than me; he was probably the same age as Henry, lol) named Jeno who was actually born in Busan but currently lives in Seattle. He told Henry that he owns a company in Seattle and also has an office in, I believe, Daegu which is where he was taking the KTX that day. They talked for a really long time and I was so mad because of course HENRY would make a friend in Korea. I was furiously scribbling in my vacation journal the pieces of the conversation I could hear and then Henry texted me something about “don’t listen to my conversations” ugh.

I was hoping Henry would have the good sense to ask his new friend for a job (in the Daegu branch, obviously) but no, of course not.

(Although, if he insists on staying in the beverage industry, I think he should aim for a job at Binggrae and sling some banana uyoo on the daily.)

We reached Busan Station around 10:30am and Chooch was excited to mock Henry’s map-reading. Also, Chooch’s backpack is so stuffed to the gills because he insisted on bringing that damn Peachy Boy with him, which took up almost his entire backpack so Henry stuffed most of the clothes into MY backpack, which means that Chooch and I both had overstuffed backpacks.

How stuffed was Henry’s backpack, you ask? N/A. HENRY DIDN’T BRING ONE AND RELIED ON CHOOCH AND ME TO CARRY EVERYTHING!

On the train, Jeno told Henry that Busan is a friendlier city than Seoul, and right off the bat, and elder Subway worker came over to help Henry and another older man use the T-Money card refilling machine. And then he gave us explicitly instructions on how to get Gamcheon Culture Village, which was where we figured we’d start the day since we couldn’t check into the hotel until 4.

Busan’s subway stations are smaller than Seoul’s but still packed with flair! The trains are older and definitely warmer, that’s for sure. We had been spoiled by the sleek and sparkly trains in Seoul! Busan’s had its own personality though and I was happy that we could still get around pretty easily – and our T-Money card was valid in Busan so we didn’t have to buy a new one!

Anyway, we managed to take the subway to the station nearest to Gamcheon Culture Village, at which point we had to embark on our, what, 7th urban hike of the trip in order to reach the entrance of the village, and if you Google “Gamcheon Culture Village,” one of the first things you will see is “STEEP STREETS” and “COASTAL MOUNTAIN.” And what made it even more fun to trudge up that perpendicular pavement was being strapped with backpacks. Honestly, at one point I was climbing that hill bent over at a 90-degree angle and my backpack started to feel like A SADDLE.

Years from now, I imagine all of us gathered around for a Christmas picnic in the cemetery, someone bringing up “that one time we went to Korea” and Chooch is going to flip the fuck out at the memory of walking 35,000 steps uphill for the whole time.

And then Chooch and Henry fought over the map because this was one of the main themes of our Korean Odyssey. Chooch must be earning Boy Scout badges through YouTube or something because I never knew he was so good with directions and using compasses on phones to find North and you know, like basic survival skills that I never learned even after spending my entire elementary career in Girl Scouts.

The fights they had over maps and directions were hilarious, you guys. I laughed myself to pee-drops so many times, all the while thinking, “I CAN’T BELIEVE WE’RE LOST IN KOREA AND THIS IS SO FUNNY TO ME!”

To be fair to Henry though, we didn’t get lost at all going to the Gamcheon Culture Village; however, we did find out after the fact that there was a shuttle bus we could have taken. But hey — what’s 45 minutes out of the day?

There are worse places to be walking, that’s for sure.

The weather was perf that day. Low 60s and sunny. Our first cherry blossom sightings happened on this day, too!

This alley went straight-the-fuck-up.

Same.

Chooch and I had to take a break because being Henry’s pack-mules is hard work. Henry just kept moseying on up the street because all he was carrying was a two pound camera bag. Honestly, some parts of the sidewalk were so steep that I was afraid our backpacks were going to make us fall backward and I didn’t want to fall! I’m scared of falling! Have you ever seen me on a playground? I get stuck on things and I start crying about being afraid to jump down because I don’t want to fall and then Chooch has to be like, “You’re literally two feet from the ground, if that. You can do this.”

Anyway, Henry eventually noticed that we were missing. He turned around and saw us sitting on a bench and made the WHAT THE HELL Dad-hands-to-the-sky and then stormed back down the road to fetch us.

“IT’S SO HEAVY!” I cried, trying to shift the weight of my backpack to no avail. So Henry, ever-so-valiant, grabbed the backpack off my shoulders and thrust the camera bag at me.

WOW! WHAT A FUCKING PRINCE! Nearly an hour into this hike!

Chooch and I were cracking up so bad. Maybe it was the altitude, maybe it was the train to Busan, maybe it was just us being us, but we were so slap-happy.

We made it to the crest of the mountain at the same time a bus was dropping off a handful of tourists.

“THERE WAS A BUS?!” Chooch screeched. And so our Gamcheon Culture Village experience began! (Stay tuned for a million pictures of it, btw. Sorry, but that town is so pretty!)

(See also: That Time I Forgot How To Spell ‘Twelfth’ And Had To Look It Up)

Well, it’s here. Another birthday. The one thing that has always stuck with me from when I was pregnant was someone telling me, “Time moves so much faster when you become a parent.” I thought this was a fucking joke because those nine months of being pregnant moved like sludge. But shit, it really does feel true, maybe because I’m so hyper-aware that he becomes less of a kid as every day passes and I just want to go around curb-stomping clocks and burning calendars.

And now he’s 12.

Just like that.

He was 3, just about to turn 4, when I started working at the Law Firm. It feels like yesterday.

My friend Christina was like, “Wait until next year when you have to start adding a ‘teen’ to his age” and that scares me too, but honestly when I  think about, he’s been acting like a teen for the last 10 years at least, so at least I’m sort of prepared.

Maybe?

He was about 3 months old in the above photo. Maybe 4? I’m a shitty mom, lol.

We had a small little celebration last night at Breakout, the escape room down the street. Chooch is obsessed with escape rooms and he and my mom have gone to three or four of them at this point but have never won because it’s always just the two of them, ha! So this time, we wrangled up a group of 7 (Chooch, his bff Sharyn, me, my mom, Janna, Blake and Haley) and we managed to escape with 4 minutes left! I’m so glad my mom joined us. She is hilarious, especially when we had to be handcuffed and she cried about how whoever found the key had to unlock her cuffs first and then I found the key first and made Haley unlock me and then we unlocked Blake while my mom was like, “HELLO” but then Blake was the hero and unlocked her cuffs since I’m an awful daughter, ha!

I didn’t care if we actually escaped so much as I just wanted to do better than Janna. I think she was low-key afraid to go with us because I hit her once playing Scattergories so she was probably thinking, “God only knows what she’ll do to me in an escape room…”

Afterward, we came back to our house and Henry and Calvin joined us for strawberry cake from the Priory, which was really good thank god because I’m a cake snob and it’s technically my birthday too so people should be glad that I was pleased.

It was nice to not have a full-blown party this year, especially since Korea was so close to his birthday, but I suspect that we’ll be doing something festive next year when he turns 13 because that’s a pretty decent milestone. Sigh. Maybe a recreation of his 1-year monster-themed party!?

For as much as we butt heads, this kid is honestly my best friend in the whole world. Who else would put up with my antics, let me slather make up on them and dress them in my clothes for lame photoshoots, cry actual tears with me when we watch videos of the Seoul subway announcement music, die laughing at random people’s birthday party videos on YouTube, learn all the names of 9-member Kpop groups with me, go on roadtrips for concerts, act as my wingman when we walk past my Mexican taco cart boyfriend, and just be the ultimate partner-in-graying-Henry’s-hair? Chooch is the best kid I ever could have asked for. He is so independent and smart, hilarious and sassy, and compassionate and empathetic. He’s wise beyond his years and can hold his own in conversations with adults (don’t get him started on his thoughts about Trump!). My friends are just as much to credit for him growing into such a cool guy. Henry and I are so lucky to have so many great people in our lives who love our kid, so thank you!

And now I will leave you with the last photoshoot of 11-year-old Chooch, taken last weekend. The theme was “stressed businessman” because he had slept over his neighbor friend’s house the night before which meant he didn’t sleep at all and had huge bags under his eyes in addition to being mad that I was keeping him from playing Fortnight.

With the exception of the small portion of the afternoon we spent in Yeouido earlier in the week, we had been spending all of our time in “old Seoul,” which is north of the Han River, while “new Seoul” is south. I can tell you without any uncertainty that old Seoul was where I would gladly spend most of my time if/when I ever get to return, but I had to cross the Han in order to visit some kpop places of interest, the most important being SMTown.

But first, Henry had to look at a map…

I had just been saying that so far, this day was the best we’d had, what with starting our morning off with a hike up to Namsan Tower, and then eating lunch Myeongdong, and pretty much not having any direction snafus! But then…Gangnam.

But wait, let me back up. So, Gangnam is the ritzy neighborhood of Seoul. You might remember back in 2012 when there was a huge kpop hit that crossed over to American radio: Psy’s “Gangnam Style”? I knew a girl at the time who was so offended that this was being played on the radio because she thought he was saying “condom star.” OK…

So, that kind of put Gangnam on the map for the rest of the world. It literally means “South of the river” and is ridiculously upscale. I mean, as soon as we got off the train in Gangnam Station, the underground shopping went from sock vendors to motherfucking designer brands. It was like being in a completely different country. And then once we emerged from the subway station, even the people were different. The fashion was way more sleek, the men all dressed like they were straight out of k-dramas with their perfectly-fitted pants and pastel shirts and it was pretty hard not to stare in awe because everyone was so beautiful and physically curated.

Of course, Henry took us the wrong way right off the bat and we ended up standing in the middle of a sidewalk next to what appeared to be the main and extremely busy multi-laned street in Gangnam, looking like fucking losers for the millionth time of the trip, when an older man on a scooter rolled up to us on the sidewalk, and in broken English asked us where we were trying to go.

Henry looked at me like, “This is all you, YOU tell him!” so I sheepishly said we were looking for SMTown.

“Oh, idols? Idols!” he said, recognizing immediately what I was looking for because everyone in Korea knows kpop idols. This man was so freaking sweet and tried his very best to help us even with the very strong language barrier. He told us we could walk there, and pointed the way, but made a motion with his hand and sound that I think was implying “walk waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down that street.”

So we set off BACK THE WAY WE CAME because traditionally this is what Henry does to us, and before we made it off that block, the man in the scooter came back to us. He must have thought about it after we left and waved off his original directions. He pulled out a notebook and wrote down the names of subway stations in his best romanized attempt (honestly, romanization of the Korean language sucks. I wish I had the foresight to tell him to write it in hangeul) but we we were able to understand his new directions, and god bless that man because we got off at the subway stop he suggested and literally SMTown was RIGHT THERE when we emerged from the exit.

SMTown is this really cool multi-level building owned by SM Entertainment and full of interactive exhibits, a gift shop, a cafe, and displays of costumes worn and awards won by artists on the SM label. It’s also the collective name that the artists on SM go by.

My second favorite kpop group is on SM—-SHINee. There was no way we were going to leave Seoul without a visit to SMTown. I needed to see all of the SHINee displays!

Close-up of the mirrored facade.

I almost fell off the escalator while drooling over these large SHINee portraits on the wall. I’m notoriously terrible with escalators and generally need to devote every ounce of my attention to gripping the rail and keeping a solid stance on the step. I had one really scary escalator incident when I was around 4-years-old in Atlantic City and my SHOELACE GOT CAUGHT.

Don’t worry — my Pappap was there to rescue me.

I watch all of these different Korean music countdown programs whenever my favorite artists are performing so it was really fun to see some of these awards in real life, and for Red Velvet no less! (Chooch and Henry both really love Red Velvet, FYI.)

Super fun fact about Red Velvet: one of the members (Wendy) is actually from Minnesota. During these past Winter Olympics, one of Amanda Kessel’s (Team USA hockey and also sister to Pittsburgh Penguin’s Phil Kessel) college friends posted a picture of their college golf team group picture for Throwback Thursday and someone noticed that Wendy was also on the team! So random.

BUT TAEMIN, THO.

Chooch and I saw NCT127 at KCON last year and when they performed Cherry Bomb, we thought the bass was going to blow the roof right off the Prudential Center. It was fucking intense.

Also, there are various NCT groups (NCT127, NCT Dream, NCT U, and now NCT 2018) and I just can’t keep them all straight. I remember watching an episode of Weekly Idol were NCT127 was trying to explain all of  the different units, and Dony and Cony (the hosts) were just like, “No, just stop talking. It’s too much.”

Anyway, one of their members, Johnny, is from Chicago I think. I would say their most popular member is Taeyong but he’s my least favorite because he makes me feel uncomfortable. Don’t ask.

Henry was like, “Just take this fucking picture, fast.”

Taeyeon is my favorite member of Girl’s Generation.

More Taemin!

Chooch was annoyed because there were some girls there giggling at him, lol.

Seriously, Henry – why don’t we have full-blown murals of kpop stars in our house?!

He was so over it, hahaha. (OR WAS HE. He loves kpop, don’t let his terrorized gaze fool you. He sends me kpop news articles all the time!)

You guys, Taemin’s hands are slightly smaller than mine and I have pretty small hands! Chooch’s hands looked like ham hocks next to all of the idol hand molds.

Chooch got this picture from one of the photobooths after two girls hogged it forever:

Yes, it’s already framed and hung on the Wall of Chooch.

We almost missed the 4th floor because there was a weird stairwell but thank god we saw it because that’s not only where all of the gorgeous fan art lives (the collection blew my mind), but also the Jonghyun memorial was there as well. I posted about that separately, because it was important and special to me and, well, I just felt that it deserved its own post. So if you feel like it, you can read about that here.

After absorbing all of the SM-goodness, we went to the cafe where Chooch and I each got a plastic collectors bottle of our favorite groups (SHINee for me, and Red Velvet for him). Henry bitched about it because they’re pretty small and once we added our respective beverage selection, they were $9 a piece. God, Henry, just pay the guy!

Random view of Gangnam.

After we left SMTown, Henry took us on a cross-country trudge to the JYP building. Oh my good god, our feet felt crushed and I sincerely thought that I had fractured something just from literally pounding the pavement with shoes that were OK comfort-wise, but not the best for walking 25 miles a day. We just kept walking and walking and getting more and more slap-happy, to the point where Henry quit talking to us altogether, especially since everytime he said something we would repeat it back to him in an Eeyore voice.

We’re such angels!

Every time we would ask him where we were going, he would fly on the defensive about how “ALL THE DIRECTIONS I FIND TO THESE PLACES ARE SHITTY, OK!? I’M DOING THE BEST THAT I CAN!!”

Lol forever.

We did eventually make it to JYP, after feeling like Henry was leading us off the face of the earth. And we knew that we had made it because we rounded a corner and saw a bunch of girls sitting on a curb across the street from it.

Honestly, I just wanted to do a quick walk-by and snap some pics of the building, but Chooch got super comfortable on the curb with the other fangirls, hoping for a chance to see someone from Got7 leap from the front door and disappear into a tinted-windowed car.

Henry was not OK with this, but I bet the Dunkin Donuts across the street is super on board with it, considering their shop was packed full of sasaeng (crazy) fans staking out at their tables with coffee and donuts.

It was Jackson’s birthday so there was a birthday sign up for him. Sadly, he was in Hawaii at the time (I believe) so there was no chance of getting a glimpse of him.

I would have been happy seeing TWICE!! That’s who I was holding out for.

Chooch kept saying, “Just three more minutes.”

“Just six more minutes.”

“We’ll leave at 5:45.”

“Make that 5:50.”

We eventually left at 6:00, after staking out for a half hour. I’m too old for that! (OK, maybe if there was a chance of seeing G-Dragon or Taemin, that would be making a bed under a bush somewhere, but G-Dragon is in the military now and Taemin was actually in LA the week we were in Seoul, because fuck my luck.)

This next part is almost too painful to relive by blogging, but we promised Chooch that we would go to Kakao Friends in Gangnam and Henry took us some convoluted way back to a random subway station and then we got off at what he assured us was the “correct” stop but we still somehow ended up walking over an hour through the now-dark streets of Gangnam, which was getting more and more crowded because people love to freaking shop, and Chooch and I were getting more and more angry and our feet hurt and Henry was trying to win back our hearts by making jokes and we were like, “NOT ON THIS DAY, HANK.”

Long and incredibly miserable story short, we did eventually make it to Kakao Friends and Chooch was so happy, so I guess it was worth it.

We split a strawberry cake at the Ryan Cafe (Ryan is the main Kakao character) and wouldn’t let Henry have any, hahaha. But at least we were all laughing at this point. We kept the cardboard coffee sleeve for our scrapbook about Henry getting us lost. We haven’t started it yet though, because I’m not a scrapbooker by any stretch and when I went to the craft store to get a scrapbook, I felt so overwhelmed and stressed out and then I just got mad because none of those kits are my style. Everything was all jesus-y and corny. Doesn’t anyone make scrapbook shit for Godless people!?

And since we hadn’t eaten a legit dinner, we gorged on street food in a side-street near Kakao Friends, because twigum (fried food) is life.

Here’s a quick compilation of street action from that day in Myeongdong & Gangnam:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Erin Appledale (@ohhonestlyerin)

I kept telling myself, even though Henry’s screwy directions had us walking figure eights all around Korea, at least we were IN KOREA. We were happy by the time we got back to the hotel, and that’s all that matters.

Next post: TRAIN TO BUSAN!

After spending the morning on Namsan, we came back down to Myeongdong for lunch. We tended to avoid most chain restaurants or anything that veered too far away from traditional Korean fare while there, but I wanted nothing more than to eat at YG Republique, a 3-restaurants-in-one establishment owned by YG Entertainment (my favorite kpop agency!). You may have already read the post where we had drinks at 3Birds Cafe in Yeouido, which is part of YG Republique, but on this day I was interested in the KPub.

The staff here in the Myeongdong location was MUCH MORE CHILL than the barista we encountered in Yeouido, that’s for sure. Plus, we got there just before the lunchtime rush and had the place almost nearly to ourselves the whole time, which meant I could take pictures of all the YG memorabilia without looking like an eager tourist.

I had the omurice (literally just an omelette stuffed with rice and smothered in whatever delicious savory sauce that is up there) and it was reallllly nice.

K-Pub was on the second floor so we got to sit by the open windows and people-watch. I had the weirdest people of all to watch sitting right next to me.

Ugh, so much YG beauty!!

We had a really nice experience at K-Pub, and our waitress was super pretty and nice too. Henry made her laugh and then he spent the rest of the day thinking he was so cool after that.

Before heading on to Gangnam, we stayed in Myeongdong for a bit, because there is so much going on there!

Chooch was molested by a foot and then became obsessed with the idea of a foot massage since we were walking so much every day and our feet felt broken. I was like, “Ew, I’m not going to make anyone here touch your gross Barney Rubble feet!” The things Chooch latched on to in Korea, though…so random and hilarious.

I don’t know what the going rate for feet massages is here in America, but $18 for 40 minutes seems like a good deal, right? Shrug.

Henry and I shared a famous strawberry red bean mochi. I have watched so many people eat these on YouTube because this is my sad life, people. I live vicariously through super nerve-grating YouTubers. (Actually, some of them seem like pretty cool people contrary to what Henry thinks.) I didn’t get to take a picture of it because we fucking inhaled that bitch, but the strawberry was huge and incredibly fresh (we were in Korea during strawberry season and every cafe had their seasonal strawberry confections on the menu), coated with a hearty layer of delightful pat (red bean), and then wrapped in a beautiful robe of chewy and sweet mochi. It was one of the best things I ate in Korea. J/K everything was the best.

(People keep asking me what my favorite food was that I ate and I honestly start to panic when I try to answer that! There wasn’t a single thing I tried that I didn’t like. Korean food is so on point, especially their street food. Henry would never have to cook again if we lived there because I’d just be like, “I’mma run outside and grab some pajeon, do you want anything j/k get it yourself.”)

Several days after we came home from Korea, I wistfully said, “You know what else I really miss? Almost getting killed everyday by—-”

“—delivery scooters,” Chooch finished for me, knowingly. Those scooter drivers are RUTHLESS and RECKLESS! It was pretty impressive to watch them plow through the bust streets and sidewalks. Even McDonald’s has scooter delivery service! Korea has it all, truly.

Couldn’t get on the train without Chooch stalking all the underground sock vendors for Bambi socks. He would yell things like, “SERIOUSLY, THEY HAVE CHIP AND DALE AND NOT BAMBI?!”

Ugh, him and this Bambi obsession. It’s so odd. I have no idea where he gets this from.

On the real though, Korea made me feel things about socks that I never felt here in America and I became obsessed with buying them. In fact, one of the few regrets I’ve had since coming back (coming back being the main regret), is that I should have bought more!

OK, wow, this was a nice quick one! I’ll be back with the last part of my WEDNESDAY MARCH 28 recap and then we can finally move on to BUSAN!

In honor of eating at a YG establishment, here’s a super old BIGBANG video, le sigh:

I always say I’m not going to be surprised when the weather goes batshit, because Pittsburghers should be used to it, but good lord this last week has been infuriating. Last Friday, it was starting to finally feel like spring and I even left the house without a jacket when I met Kara for breakfast at Dorstop! And the next day actually felt like July – I went with Henry and Chooch for a walk on some bike trail thing and even though I am a Professional Walker, it was too much too soon and I felt really lethargic and sick for the rest of the day.

And then it snowed three separate days later in the week so I had to go back to wearing my winter coat and scarf. In mid-April.

We took advantage of the warmth on Saturday though and got our first Al’s of the season! I say that like we’re regulars there when I think it was only probably the third time we’ve gone. I was sad though because the only reason I wanted to go was because last time I had this SIMPLY DIVINE (lol) Mexican fried ice cream topping and I needed that so bad on Saturday for some reason.

BUT NOW THEY DON’T HAVE IT ANYMORE.

At least, I don’t think they do. Chooch freaking ordered like it was his last ice cream on earth before Henry and I even made it to the window, so then the lady was looking at all expectantly, order pad in hand (I’ve never seen an ice cream…barista?…write down orders before!) and people were behind us now and we felt RUSHED and OBLIGATED to order immediately.

So we both got twists with crunchies as a topping.

Thanks, Chooch.

I mean, that’s probably what we would have ordered anyway, but still.

THANKS, CHOOCH.

Speaking of Chooch, his cat is a fucking nutcase. She started jumping on him and perching on his shoulders like a parrot several months ago (in fact, moments before I took this picture, she had jumped straight on top of his head and stood there with all four paws touching like an elephant standing on a ball). But now, she does this to Henry and me, too! It stresses me out so much because she only does this when we’re standing, and every morning before work, I stand in front of the TV and jog in place* while watching kpop stuff so I’m a prime piece of furniture for her now, apparently. The other day, I caught her started to pounce and I moved out of the way just in time and thank god because I was wearing a silk shirt! God, that would have hurt.

So that’s a thing that happens in my house now.

*(Side note: Another walking challenge started at work last Monday and I originally wasn’t going to do it but then Carrie asked me to be on a team with her and Lou, and I was like “Ugh, Lou, but OK fine” and then we roped in Wendy, so Lou named our team C.E.W.L. and the Gang even though I think 3 Girls and a Lou-ser is better. I’ve been averaging 22,000 steps a day without trying too hard because my lifestyle is way different now than it was back in the days of the original walking challenges, and I think I have been pretty calm about it. I haven’t berated my teammates and I don’t feel like flagellating myself if I don’t get 71234807230847 steps now. I mean, not like I was super militant about it in the past or anything.)

Oh, you want more work tales? Well, we had a huge cake the other day because two of our peoples are leaving us :( The next day, I was on late shift and was asked to:

1. take some cake home
2. cover the leftovers in plastic wrap and put it back in the fridge

A simple request, you’re thinking. If so, wow, how novel it must be to be so FUNCTIONING!!! Because I, on the other hand, was freaking out. The plastic wrap was so jacked on the roll that I couldn’t pull any out and the sheath of it that was already covering part of the cake from the day before had icing all over it and I didn’t want to touch it, ughhh. So I’m standing there holding this degenerate roll of plastic wrap, staring at this cake that has been butchered by too many cakecutters in the kitchen (Carrie should have just been on stand-by all day with the knife because her cake-cutting skills are legit! My cake-cutting method involves only my hands and zero skill.)

I didn’t feel comfortable asking any of the other people in the office on late shift because I’m not very close to them so they don’t know my neurotic levels of incompetency, so I did what I had to do…..

…..

…..

…..

…..

…..

…..

Yes sir, I texted Henry, who was already on his way to pick me up and said “Sue asked me to put the cake away before she left can you help” and his response was “how much cake is there” so I said “a lot” because I didn’t know how to measure and hahaha he came in to help me and immediately was like, “REALLY ERIN THIS CAKE IS ALREADY MOSTLY COVERED?!” but there were pieces that were already cut and on plates that weren’t covered, and also a peninsula off the east coast of the main cake that wasn’t covered by the original piece of plastic wrap because I didn’t want to touch it long enough to stretch it over.

See also: IT HAD ICING ON IT.

So Henry’s solution was to just take that piece home but that would have been EVEN WORSE FOR ME TO DO ON MY OWN thank god I made him come up. And then he carried the huge box into the kitchen, where I opened the fridge door for him and yelled Team Work which made him glare at me.

Then since he was there and I still had a few more minutes left of work, I gave him a bunch of stuff of Halloween decorations I found while cleaning out my desk for my move and said, “Here take this down to the car with you.”

Get yourself a multi-purpose Henry!

In other weird weather week news, Chooch casually mentioned over the weekend that he missed Korean food and I said, “SON, SPEAK NO LOUDER I HEAR YOU” and that’s how we ended up at Korea Garden on Sunday for lunch and it was grand but not as grand as, you know, actually being in Korea which I still cry about every day. Chooch had bibimbap and I’m so proud that he actually reaches for the gochujang now. People really can change!

Our favorite Korean restaurant in Pgh is Nak Won Garden, but Korea Garden has a nice atmosphere too.

Both of those restaurants are always filled with Korean people every time we go, so that’s how you know a Korean restaurant is legit! I didn’t want to write about this because it still makes me so angry, but the day after we got home from Korea, Chooch went back to school but Henry and I still had one more day off so I suggested that we get Korean food for lunch. We went to this place called the Golden Pig and this review sadly has nothing to do about the people running it or the quality of the food, but moreso the experience we had with the so-called “regulars” who made us feel like shit for being there.

Golden Pig is very, very, very small. It has a counter that seats maybe 5 people, and then two or three (but I think two) tall tables with three chairs each. We arrived right on the heels of two white men who very clearly are regulars of the place, so they sat at the counter and immediately started talking to the, I assume, husband and wife owners who were in the kitchen. As soon as we sat down at a table, I turned and looked out the window just in time to see a literal procession of cars pulling into the parking lot.

Within 5 minutes, every seat was taken and there were groups of people waiting outside.

This isn’t some trendy restaurant in the heart of hipster Pittsburgh, you guys. It’s out kind of far in a place called Cecil and not in an urban setting at all. But it turns out that most of these people were coming from the same company, I guess, because the restaurant was filled with, “HEY FRED I DIDN’T KNOW YOU COME HERE TOO” and things of that cordial work-bro nature. That was mildly uncomfortable only because it made Henry and me feel like outsiders and we were crashing a party, and people definitely kept looking at us.

  I didn’t like it.

All blue-collared white people. This fact is important.

Then these ladies who were sitting at the counter knew the guys at the table next to us so they kept turning around and talking to them about what they liked to order there and THEY WOULDN’T EVEN USE THE PROPER KOREAN NAMES and the one lady was like, “Oh, what are things we like? The sushi roll things” and she was poring over the menu while Henry was mouthing, “DON’T” to me because I was bouncing in my seat in anguish, the pure desire to shout out, “KIMBAP!” made me have actual shakes.

But this isn’t the worst part. It came later, after our food was served, and I had this dolsot pot of bubbling hot kimchi jjigae in front of me which, have you ever had anytime of jjigae / Korean stew? It is SCALDING HOT. You absolutely cannot eat this right away. So I’m sorry, but when I ordered it, I didn’t know that there would be a mass of hungry Cecil-ites congregating inside and outside of this tiny, tiny, tiny restaurant, coveting my table.

Oh, but there was!

Particularly, this one bitch and her husband (I guess? She put her head on his chest at one point). I didn’t see them at first because they were standing inside the doorway out of my view, but Henry said that they were staring at him the whole time, watching him eat. I didn’t notice them until the moved farther into the restaurant to get something to drink out of the cooler behind Henry. Then they just stood there, so now I was the one facing them. I didn’t much much attention to them at first, but after a few minutes I had this paranoid feeling that they were talking about me, and every time I looked up, the bitch was looking right at me.

But it wasn’t until I caught her MOCKING ME BLOWING ON MY SPOON that I went from mild-paranoia to table-flipping urgency within seconds.

“THOSE PEOPLE ARE LITERALLY TALKING ABOUT ME!” I said to Henry, LOUDLY in the tone that he just loves because it means I just stepped into my PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE BITCH jumpsuit and I’m ready to take flight in my rocket TO PETTYVILLE.

“I know,” he said quietly. “They’ve been staring at us since they got here. Fuck them,” and continued to eat his whatever chicken because he has way more patience and integrity than me, who was ready to launch my whole dolsot pot into her face, BE STRONG, ERIN.

As soon as I said that to him, she got all bristled and turned her back toward to me and put her face in her husband’s chest and I gave him a disgusted, “WHY DO YOU SUPPORT HER BEHAVIOR?!” grimace. So then he hurriedly looked away too.

But really? Of all the people there, you need to have OUR TABLE? You can’t wait for your turn like everyone else, or perhaps focus on the two guys who arrived before us and were already finished eating but still sitting at the counter and talking? OR MAYBE GO SOMEWHERE ELSE? I know I can be hateful but I cannot imagine ever walking into a place and being such a cunt to a total stranger. I wish you guys could have seen the way she imitated me, for no reason, just because I was sitting at a table and she wasn’t!?

And then!!! The ladies at the counter were all, “Oh  my god, do you guys want to sit down?” and moved over so they could have room at the counter and I was like, “WHY ARE YOU BEING NICE TO THEM!?” and then they were talking about their favorite dishes there and the CUNT said in her gravelly redneck  Yinzer throat scrape, “My favorite is the sweet potato noodle, I get it all the time.”

WELL THEN CALL IT JAPCHAE, YOU DUMB BITCH!!!!!!!

Anyway, my whole point to this story is that we had just spent 10 days in another country, being the token foreigners in most of the restaurants we ate at, and not once were we EVER made to feel like we didn’t belong  there. In fact, no one ever even gave us a second glance. Yet, here we are back in Trump’s America, getting low-key harassed by some entitled cunt who feels like she belongs in a restaurant more than we do.

Now I’m irate all over again. So many people experience that condescending and denigrating attitude EVERY DAY OF THEIR LIVES in this damn country. So many people. I’m not saying that I felt like a victim by any means here because fuck that white trash bitch, but it was just like a big fat WELCOME HOME slap to the face, you know? The way some people treat each other here is sickening.

AND THAT’S THE END OF THIS DUMB POST.

Me: I just don’t understand why we have to tell them more than once!!!

buy grifulvin online www.mrmcfb.org/employment/html/grifulvin.html no prescription

Henry: …they’re cats?….

Hey peeps, I don’t have much time to post anything substantive today (why do the imaginary groans in my head sound sarcastic?!) but here instead are some photos of my cat Penelope, a/k/a Peen Lop. She’s a real piece.

Here she is the other night when she and Henry were already in bed (she loves him) and I had the audacity to come up an hour later.

She was very mad about this.

And here she is looming over one of my last remaining plants.

I made some snide remark about she was going to destroy it and then guess who knocked it over a few hours later?

Me.

That’s all I’ve got. Have a great weekend!

I have no idea what that title is supposed to mean but it made sense in my stir-fried brain for approximately 4 seconds. But even still, here is another blog post about, what else, KOREA. As if you’re not totally over it by now (see also: 8 posts ago).

We got up nice and early on Wednesday, March 28th to set off for Myeongdong station in order to begin our hike up to Namsan Park / N. Seoul Tower, but first: HOTEL ELEVATOR SELFIE. Henry had grown to abhor Elevator Time because Chooch and I were in this constant vacuum state of giddiness and we were known to lose it and start cracking up in front of other hotel guests several times. I know what you’re thinking and I agree: “WOW THAT SOUNDS SO ADORABLE HENRY IS LUCKY TO BE IN YOUR COMPANY.”

Once we got off at Myeongdong station, we had pretty clear directions (for once) on how to get to the start of the trail. When I say we “hiked,” I hope you guys know that this was 99.9% an urban hike and we didn’t have, like, REI survival packs on our backs or even basic hiking boots on foot or anything like that. It was mostly just very wide steps or steep concrete paths that we were walking on, but shit you guys, there was still a certain degree of effort involved. The tower literally crowns the top of Namsan Mountain, which is also considered the guardian mountain of Seoul. (I just learned this now; thanks, Google.)

The other option is to take the cable cars to the top, but I had read that walking is so much better because 1) nature and 2) exercise and 3) you can feel less slothy later on when you’re downing your third serving of ttkeokbokki and twigum. Every single person we encountered on this trek was over the age of 60 and in fantastic shape. BECAUSE THEY HIKE FREAKING MOUNTAINS ALL THE TIME. Native Koreans cracked the code of eternal youth, you guys. It was inspiring to watch them, especially when we reached one of the level checkpoints that had an area with exercise equipment and every single one was occupied by an ahjummas and ahjussi and they were GETTIN’ IT. I posted about that in more detail here.

I bet this spot looks so dreamy in the summer!

We paused occasionally to take in the view, where I would start to feel mild panic because I’m afraid of heights. I kept feeling like Chooch was going to tumble off the mountain even though there were railings everywhere but I still kept screaming, “GET AWAY FROM THERE. STAND NEXT TO ME. HOLD DADDY’S HAND. BE CAREFULLLLLLLL!!! WHY DID WE STOP USING A STROLLER??”

I’m either NOT A PARENT or SMOTHERINGLY MATERNAL out of nowhere. You never know.

You damn well know Henry had to stop and look at this map.

This isn’t actually fog. The yellow dust levels were really high most of the time we were there, in case you were wondering why you often see photos of people in Korea wearing medical masks. It’s actually not a fashion statement! (Well, it is for some people, probably, and there are certainly really cool mask options out there if you feel the basic white ones are too plain; in fact, all of the kpop shops sell masks with different kpop group logos on them, so if you want to protect your lungs while supporting EXO, you’ve got options.)

There are apps that you can use that will let you know what the air quality is for that day, and there was one day while we were there when we actually received an emergency warning text that was all in Hangul and of course our knee-jerk reaction was “NORTH KOREA” but then Chooch looked it up while we were digging a bomb shelter on the side of the road and said, “Oh, it’s just about the yellow dust, guys.”

It’s bad in Korea, but REALLY BAD in China.

It felt like the tower kept getting farther away, the higher we climbed.

Most of our ascent up Namsan was done on very nice brick paths like the one above. I loved that everytime we turned and looked back behind us, we got a different perspective of Seoul. That city is such a motherlovin’ babe and I could stare at it all the livelong day, for serious.

If you squint, maybe you can see my HEART DOWN THERE BECAUSE I LEFT IT IN SEOUL, WAHHH.

A rare picture of Henry and me. Chooch also have a version where he zoomed in on Henry’s face and cropped it and we kept laughing at that during the rest of the trip and Henry was like, “IT’S NOT FUNNY” and then Chooch did it again to another picture but on that one he added green snot dripping out of Henry’s nose and we were peeing ourselves over it and Henry really hated that one the best. Why was everything so funny!?

MAYBE IT WAS THE YELLOW DUST.

Anyway, this day was monumental because it was the first day of the trip that Henry wore a shirt with a pattern on it.

“How many more of these mountain-things do we have to climb?” I told him none, but hahaha just wait until Busan!

We finally made it to the top after maybe an hour, a little less even, and Henry bought our tickets for the tower. We got there at a great time (I think it was still sometime before 11am) because we went up in the elevator alone and barely anyone was in the observation area. It’s weird, but I felt like I had been there before since there was an episode of, wait for it, Running Man which took place there.

Oh yeah! Before we took the elevator up, there was a photo zone which Henry tried to bypass but I was like “YOLO, Henry” so we allowed the Namsan girl to take our photos and even obliged when she told us to make finger-hearts which Henry probably taught himself how to do while watching Twice videos in the bathroom at work, and Henry claims his jutting middle finger “wasn’t on purpose” which is what I’m going to say after I sprinkle his stew with hemlock tonight.

Meanwhile, Chooch was like, “Don’t tell me what to do.”

I was excited because the gift shop had post cards with stamps that you could buy and mail straight from the tower!!

Writing about Henry in our postcards, probably, lol.

We could have stayed up there all morning, but about 30 minutes after we got into the tower, the crowds started to file in. We made it to the cafe before it got packed though and it was really fun to sit by the window and write our postcards. Sending postcards is a dying form of communication, and I get so happy when our friends Chronica and Alyson Hell send us postcards from their travels! DONT EVER STOP.

This is the postcard Chooch wrote to our friends Jessi and Bill. <3 (Yes, he signs off as Douchecup, but only to Bill & Jessi. My favorite “douchecup” moment was at his 5th birthday party when he was running around calling Bill a douchecup and one of the preschool kids’ moms was like, “Wow, sounds like he really wants a juice cup!” YES, THAT’S IT EXACTLY.

OMG as I’m writing this, the mail room lady that I thought was a high school kid here for an internship thing when she first started (it’s a long story so the tl;dr version is that my eyesight is pathetic) just delivered the post card I sent from Seoul Tower to my co-workers! Glenn just read it and tried not to smile but then he smiled and immediately tried to disparage the situation by criticizing me for writing too much but that is just how I do postcards, OK?

Here’s a fun fact about the tower, thanks to the postcard that just arrived at work: It was designed to offer a full 360 degree view of Seoul and it was also Korea’s first radio tower delivering radio and TV signals since 1969!

This is the mail box I dropped the post cards into at my own risk.

View from 236m up, whatever that means.

View while peeing, taken after I peed—I wasn’t peeing on the floor.

There was this one activity where you could stand in front of a screen and connect to Busan Tower! However, at the moment Chooch and I did it, there was no one in Busan Tower waiting to connect, so that was sad. (We visited Busan Tower while there, but didn’t actually go up inside that one. More on that in a few posts!)

After hanging out in the cafe for a while, we left the tower and milled about the area at its base, which is filled with various shops (yes, you can buy your skin care even at Namsan Tower!) and a million places to attach a love lock if you feel so inclined to purchase one from the gift. We made Chooch use his own money to buy one because Henry was running low on cash and needed to find a bank. I can’t believe Chooch actually did it; he’s such a fucking tightwad with his own money.

“I bought a stupid marker, too,” he snottily spat when he returned from the gift shop.

This where I sat and painted my nails with $2 bottles of nail polish (hot pink and fluorescent orange) that I bought that morning at Daiso because my current nail polish was looking haggard. This is also where Chooch realized that he lost his subway card, so that was cool and not really a big deal because there was only like enough fare for one trip left on it I think and it only costs around $4 to get a new card to load, but we still made him feel like the most irresponsible child on the face of the earth because we’ve earned that right as parents.

LOL back off, CPS whistleblowers. We only harped on him for like 5 minutes and then moved on with our day.

The area around the tower is really beautiful, with lots of overlooks and colorful love locks to snoop on.

It was really nice to slow our pace a bit and just enjoy the mindblowing view. I know it’s a super touristy thing to do and Henry was kind of like, “merp merp” about it but then we made it to the top and he was like, “Fine. This is fine.” But probably had it been crowded, he’d have had a different, more sad tuba-y tune.

Chronica got Chooch this shirt for Christmas.

And then we began our walk back down the mountain to Myeongdong, where we had lunch before going to Gangnam! STAY TUNED LOLOLOL.

If you watch any Seoul travel videos on YouTube, or if you’re into kpop even a little, you know all about Hongdae. It’s like THE hotspot for cool college kids, artists, fashion trendsetters, and underground culture. This is where you want to go if you’re into clubbing (I’m not, but there are some YG-owned hip hop clubs in Hongdae that are supposed to be legendary), quirky street fashion, cafes from the weirdly themed to the high-brow hipster, and watching 5 different street performances at once. I was so excited to explore it, but also nervous because I wasn’t sure if I was cool enough to hang there; luckily the vibe was super laid back and just touristy enough that even Henry was like, “No, this is fine. I like it.”

You guys, I’m crying again, lol. This whole trip made me feel like Heidi after leaving Grandfather’s mountaintop cabin and all her goatherd friends for the BIG CITY. Except for the homesick part. I didn’t miss home ONE SINGLE BIT.

Um…sorry. I get dramatic sometimes. Anyway, Hongdae is named after the nearby Hongik University which I currently have listed as #1 choice on Chooch’s list of colleges. He doesn’t know this yet, but he’ll find out once the acceptance letter comes in the mail or by hologram, however things are being delivered in 2024.

Hongdae also is home to one of the restaurants owned by Haha and Jong Kook of Running Man!

“I don’t watch Running Man, but sure – take your damn picture” – Chooch.

Another notable thing about Hongdae is that the YG Entertainment building is there, and some people apparently call the whole area YG Town because of all of the YG-owned businesses around. And on that same note, my friend Veronica sent me a message on Instagram because apparently Ikon, a YG kpop group, was walking around Hongdae AT THAT SAME TIME giving out HUGS, whaaat. I got her message right after we were waiting to cross the street and saw people taking pictures of this guy in black:

I don’t know much about Ikon so I wasn’t sure who this was, but MAYBE?! He was definitely someone.

Aren’t we all.

Hongdae wasn’t overwhelmingly crowded when we were there on a Tuesday afternoon, but we did go back on a Saturday night and it was packed, but the crowds didn’t have that pushy, suffocating feel to it. It was way more of a party atmosphere and I had The Heart Eyes for it. More on that in a separate post though, because today we’re going to focus on some of the unique, totally extra shopping options.

One Piece was one of many novelty cafes that Chooch wanted to go to but I was like WE CAN’T DO EVERYTHING OK PICK ONE but now I’m like, “WHY COULDN’T WE DO EVERYTHING, WAHHHH.”

Speaking of Chooch, I asked him his review of Hongdae and apparently he will forever associate it with nearly breaking his ankle, cry much?

OK, right, this post is supposed to be all short and sweet, and just focused on shops of Hongdae. SORRY. You know me and all my words. We’ll get this post officially started with Chuu, which I couldn’t wait to see Henry inside of because it’s SO PINK AND GIRLY.

It didn’t faze Chooch one single bit, but Henry grumbled through the whole place. I told him to sit in the hallway with the other forlorn man hating his life, but he opted to stay inside because OBVIOUSLY HE LIKED IT. Come on, Henry, it’s 2018 – buck those gender norms! Embrace the pink! Wear some lace panties! YOU CAN BUY THEM IN CHUU’S BASEMENT!

The Chuu Strawberry Milk collection kills me dead.

Directly across from Chuu was the Stylenanda flagship store, which I thought I would like more than I did, but the clothes were less eye-catching to me.

Chooch really loved this chair, although this was about 45 minutes after he “broke” his ankle so he probably would have made that face sitting in a hard church pew, too. Chooch’s main goal everywhere we went that day was finding somewhere to pop a squat, and I want to take a moment to say that I never heard of the expression “pop a squat” until MTV had that reality game show called The 70s House back in the early oo’s and the host of the show said that in the first episode and I was like, “IS SHE TELLING THEM TO PEE” and Henry was like, “NO, THAT IS WHAT WE SAID WHEN WE WANTED SOMEONE TO SIT DOWN IN  THE 70S” and I still think that sounds like you’re telling someone to go out back and piss in a ditch.

Maybe that’s just me.

Wait, is this a travel blog about Seoul or camping in West Virginia? I keep forgetting.

This is Henry’s “EITHER HURRY UP AND BUY SOMETHING OR LET’S LEAVE” face.

He was looking up pictures of fourth of July hamburger-loaded grills and oil rigs to trick his weener into coming back out from hiding. Mmm, juicy masculinity.

I feel like we had a huge fight somewhere in between leaving Stylenanda and after discovering the Hongdae location of Gentle Monster was closed while the concept was changing because Henry thought he knew exactly where Ader Error was and led us down 87 incorrect streets to the point where I called a moratorium on the Ader Error JUST AS WE RAN RIGHT INTO IT.

You guys. Even if you don’t give a shit about clothes, if you are ever in Seoul, please don’t pass up Ader Error. It is an experience. First, we had to walk through a room that had nothing but mattresses in it, and then we had to enter the actual store by walking THROUGH one of the mattresses and Henry was like, “What kind of store did you say this was again?”

And I told him it was a clothes store, but then after a few more seconds, he mumbled, “But…where are the clothes?

Oh they keep those stashed away upstairs, while the first floor is an indulgent art installation where all of the fitting rooms are re-imagined bathrooms. I didn’t take pictures of anything down there because the guy working seemed like he was against this and quickly told us that the clothes were upstairs.

But the guy upstairs was much friendlier and was worried that we were going to miss one of the curious displays of branding and made sure to usher us through a doorway that seemed more like if I took an axe and attempted to make my own door after watching 2 minutes of This Old House.

I have to say that I wasn’t loving the clothes all  that much (until after we came home and they released a new kitsune line which includes this sweater FML:

I mean, it costs like $800 though.

Chooch really liked this ugly sweater that looked shrunken but the price certainly didn’t reflect the lack of material, let me tell you. He was mad for a second that we wouldnt buy it for him but I think he only wanted to buy something to watch them drop it down this weird iridescent tube to the downstairs check-out. Meanwhile, though, the guy who was on patrol upstairs latched onto us but not in a I’M HERE TO SELL YOU THINGS type of way. He seemed genuinely interested in where we were from and how we heard of Ader Error.

(“uh, YouTube vlogs,” I mumbled in embarrassment while Henry sighed.)

He encouraged us to take it all in because it really is just as much as of a contemporary art installation as it is a clothing store, and then he excitedly led us down another set of steps into a small basement soap shop.

Yes, soap.

It’s called Day After Day and whoever would have thought a bar of soap could be so hipster?

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Erin Appledale (@ohhonestlyerin)

If you know me, or if you have read this blog over the years, you know that I lovelovelove a local Pittsburgh art museum called The Mattress Factory which is always chockful of super contemporary, modern avant garde art. Ader Error (and also Gentle Monster, but  I will get to that later, I promise) reminded me of that and I loved it just like I knew I would. I mean, a soap-stuffed commode — sure, why not! #art

This room made me feel like a futuristic Alice in Wonderland.

I just realized you can see our friend in the mirror! He was so great! Henry liked him a lot too which is why I think he didn’t flinch or bitch while paying $40 for a giftset of soap, lol.

This was in a narrow dead-end hallway of Ader Error, because sure.

Man, I fell HARD for Ader Error. I fell hard for Hongdae in general.

***************

Not Hongdae-related, but we had our hearts set on bingsu after we ate at Aori Ramen, and we were struggling to find a place in Hongdae — there was one place that we saw that apparently it changed into a different restaurant a year ago but the sign was never taken down. In an effort to keep us from shambling around like zombies, I made the executive decision that we would go back to Insadong because there was FOR SURE a bingsu place there, actually it’s a franchise called Sulbing.

So that was how we capped off an extraordinary day in Hongdae, sharing bingsu in Insadong. I felt like I was dreaming because REAL bingu was something that I wasn’t leaving Seoul without trying. There is a Korean bakery in Pittsburgh that has it on the menu but I knew when I tried it that it wasn’t right, that real bingu in Korea had to be better.

And shit goddamn motherfucker, was it ever!

I was going to do with classic patbingsu (red bean) but I always gravitate toward matcha. Also, Henry doesn’t care for green tea so I knew he would eat more of Chooch’s than mine AND I WAS RIGHT. IT WAS SO GOOD.

Bingsu is a popular Korean shaved ice dessert but don’t get it twisted, it’s not like a snow cone – this ice is sooooo soft and pillowy and then there is some type of velvety cream poured over it and a scoop of ice cream and little chappsaldduk (korean mochi) surrounding it like a royal crown and just please have some if you ever have an opportunity. It’s like a sundae but one that’s made for legit angels to eat while swinging their dangling legs off a fluffy cloud bed. It’s delicate, you guys. Eat it gently.

At the rate I’m going, I’ll be back in Korea before I finish recapping this trip, so let’s break down Everland using my everfavorite everbullets. It’s everefficient.

• We noticed that nearly none of the Everland characters were Korean…? This is good to know for when I move there and need to find a job. What?
• There wasn’t as much “weirdness” to the park food-wise as I guess I thought there would be, but there was a stand slinging peanut-buttered roasted squid. I wanted so badly for Henry to get some but he hold on tightly to his hard no all day long.

• This tree played a big part in an episode of Running Man, too. LE SIGH.
• The ride attendants were amazingly energetic and in it to win it. I expected to go on rides and have kpop blasted at us (would not have complained) but on this one particular ride that was kiiiiiinda similar to the Music Express, at least in the same family tree, there were three people running it and they freaking SANG AND DANCED for us the entire time. It was so surreal and probably my favorite part of the entire day, you guys. I felt so pumped! CHAMPIONSHIP RODEO ALL FUCKING DAY LONG, OPPPPPA!!!!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Erin Appledale (@ohhonestlyerin)

• Hands down the best ride at Everland is the T-Express. We got in line as soon as it opened and by we I mean Chooch and me because again, Henry was all, “I DON’T WANT TO RIDE WITH A STRANGER” because he’s so fucking weird but guess what, he wouldn’t have had to! There were tons of single riders! Henry is so dumb. Anyway, if you’re a coaster enthusiast, you can read up on T-Express here  and possibly develop a healthy crush like I did. I enjoy wooden coasters so much more than the fancy-pants high-tech steel ones, I just need to lay that out there. I just love the nostalgic feeling to it, and I think it’s a greater accomplishment when a coaster can be the most fucking thrilling without sending you upside down or having your feet dangling through the whole ride. This was just pure wooden adrenaline, man, and it was fast as fuuuuuck. Also, there’s no creaking slowly up that starter hill, either – this thing yanks you up with no dawdling and it was so exciting!
  buy singulair online singulair online no prescription

  Chooch and I rode this only three times throughout the day (and we got that one nighttime ride in there too!) and now I regret not riding it more. So I’m going to be super cheesy here for a second but it was a really cool feeling to be the only two foreigners on a roller coaster and realizing that there is only one language for AMUSEMENT PARK FUN TIME and we were all speaking that together in the form of throat-scraping screams! How bonding! Maybe all the world leaders should spend a day together at Universal Studios, giggling on spinny rides and shrieking on roller coasters and eating the fuck out of some fried food.

  • Here’s a video of two of my favorite Korean TV personalities, Ha-Ha and Yoo Jae-Suk, on the T-Express for their other show Infinite Challenge:

• This was the biggest pirate ship ride I’ve ever seen and no, I didn’t go on it because even the puny one at Kennywood makes me vomit-prone these days.

• Line Friends is everywhere in Korea so of course there would be one in Everland too. They also had legit clothing stores too, like boutique shit and not, I don’t know, Beer Tees or something equally as tacky as you’d probably find in America.

• Henry only rode the carousel, one of the 4D rides, and the safari rides. He’s such a grandpa. In fact, toward the end of the day we were all three going to ride the T-Express but GUESS WHO LOST THEIR TICKET oh this dumb broad typing in a blog right now. I can’t even believe I lost my stupid ticket. So Henry saw this as his way out and happily said, “OH WELL. HERE, JUST USE MY TICKET” and then took that opportunity to sit on a bench and stare at all the chaebols (HEIRS). He was obsessed with this one group of young people who were wearing trench coats and acting like they were cooler than everyone else and I didn’t see them but I can already verify that they were cooler than us. Fact.
  • I feel like Henry and I probably argued a lot too but I likely blocked it out in order to preserve the Perfect Memory. I just asked him if there’s anything he wants to say about Everland and he said no. Hold on, Chooch is coming downstairs to take out the garbage so I’ll ask him.
    • “fun time dancing boys” – Chooch’s garage-bagged review.

• I mentioned this in my k-observation post but I was in love with all of the couples at the park that day. Granted, Chooch and I felt like third and fourth wheels in line for most of the rides, but it was still super adorable. I don’t want to give off the impression that these people were like, making out and dry-humping in front of us—it was way more sweet and innocent than that! A lot of the couples were matching outfits, tons of selfies were taken and just really cute affectations were going on, like nose-taps and things like that. Then we would get off the ride and I’d run over to Henry and remember that we’re in one of those good old hateful American relationships. J/K we’re not always hateful but I actually hate PDA, if we’re being honest here.

• Chooch and Henry had an argument at one point over military time. Chooch kept arguing that you would say “One thousand three hundred o’clock” for example, and kept pushing back every time Henry corrected him, until finally Henry yelled, “I THINK I WOULD KNOW, I WAS IN THE GODDAMN SERVICE.” Whoa, it’s always newsworthy when Henry plays the SERVICE card!
  buy albuterol online albuterol online no prescription

  I would have tweeted it at that exact moment but I didn’t have wifi.

• So you know how the Chinese food we eat in America is like, not what actual food is like in China? Well, in Korea, there is this noodle dish that people love called jjajangmyeon (짜장면) a/k/a black bean noodles, which is considered a “Chinese dish” but is actually a Koreanized form of a similar Chinese noodle dish. I thought that was pretty interesting, but more importantly is that I think these noodles are freaking amazing so when we saw that one of the park restaurants offered that as a main dish, we were in. (Actually, I think Henry got something else but I couldn’t remember because I was too busy bathing in thick black bean sauce. Not sure what Chooch’s face means in that picture, but he fucking inhaled his noodles too. Also, unlimited daikon radish! Alsox2 – this was way cheaper than probably any amusement park meal we’ve ever had in our lives. Except Henry because he was born in the 60s and probably ate sardines out of a can for 15 cents at amusement parks back then. Right? Hardboiled eggs straight out of a hobos sock?

• There are two different safari rides you can go on at Everland and both were incredibly entertaining even though we didn’t know what was being said by the guides, lol. But each guide we had was so incredibly enthusiastic that it didn’t really feel like we were missing out. Chooch said he liked the guide on the second safari ride better; no shit, because she was a cute girl! When the second safari ride (Lost Valley) came to an end, all the Lost Safari people gathered around and sang a farewell song to us and even low-key chased us as we exited. It was so exciting! In the gift shop right after, Chooch was told by yet another Korean guy that he was handsome, this time it was a young Lost Safari attendant. “Big eyes!” he said to Chooch, and I responded, “Yeah, big mouth too.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Erin Appledale (@ohhonestlyerin)

• I THINK THIS ELEPHANT WAS ON RUNNING MAN?!

• Guys, I for sure can walk around with a caterpillar torso on my head all day.

• The Spooky Fun House wasn’t too spooky but it was definitely fun, because hello IT WAS MY FIRST “DARK RIDE” IN KOREA! Ironically, after we came home, there was a letter from DAFE (Darkride and Funhouse Enthusiasts) asking us if we wanted to renew our membership ALMOST LIKE THEY KNEW WE WERE RECENTLY DOING DARKRIDE THINGS IN ANOTHER COUNTRY!
  • Not my first foreign country darkride rodeo though — my aunt Sharon and I went to some  super rickety and shady pop-up carnival thing one time in Paris. It was one of those rare times when we had some free time away from the tour group so Sharon was like, “THIS LOOKS FUN AND NOT LIKE A REALLY BAD IDEA AT ALL.” I can’t remember a single fucking thing about this place except for the fun house we went into that knocked us all around and then the hamster wheel at the exit was spinning SO FAST that I kept falling and Sharon was screaming, “TURN IT THE FUCK OFF!!!” and this fat French bitch manning the gate was laughing her mole-dotted face off at us and I just remember sobbing and feeling so violated, and then having bruises and brushburn on my my legs and arms the next day. Fun times in France!
    • Actually, I think we also went into a haunted house where we were borderline assaulted by the “monsters” inside.
    • Now I want to dig out my old vaca-journals but the Walking Challenge just started at work and I can’t be sitting for that long so maybe sometime in June we’ll revisit this topic.

• The park wasn’t too crowded, being a weekday in March, but there was one area where you could be sure to find a crowd, and that was the garden section. There was a tulip festival thing happened and if there is one thing people LOVE to do in Korea, it is have their picture taken copious times. Nearly everyone came equipped with either selfie sticks or actual freaking tri-pods — FOR THEIR PHONES! It was nuts, and made it impossible to stroll through that area leisurely because we were constantly photobombing adorable couples or besties dressed in matching school uniforms. This was fine though because it just meant that the lines for the rides weren’t too terrible!

• Oh shit in the forefront of this picture you can see the tracks for the Dragon Coaster, a kid coaster that came super close to rivaling THE WACKY WORM. Chooch and I were huge fans and Henry didn’t even pay attention to us when we were on it. :(

• I still don’t understand how this ride works but it’s called Flash Pang Pang and it inspired a SPIRITED debate, Henry and Chooch vs. me, later on when they insisted that it was called Flash Pong Pong and I countered, in a very calm and collected way, that no, it’s Pang Pang and they both flew off the handle and started slinging slurs at me and accused me of drinking nail polish remover, all sorts of terrible things! I continued being the mature one though, and politely pointed out that I had read the sign in hangeul and it was, in fact, a longer “a.” They continued to diss me and I said, “That is OK. I still love you both very much even if you disagree with me.” But then I smugly pointed out later on the map that I WAS RIGHT, MOTHERFUCKERRRRRRRRS.
  • If you’re wondering about the whereabouts of our headbands, Trudy the Mannequin is wearing them both.

Oh man, I feel like I’m missing so much here, but those are most of the highlights off the top of my head. Around 9, we went out the parking lot and panicked for a good 5 minutes because the bus wasn’t there and there was definitely a moment when we thought we had been left behind and would have to find our way back to Seoul, but then ALVIN *HEARTEYES* appeared on a cloud dropped straight from Heaven and showed us to the bus. THANK YOU ALVINNNNN.

Is it weird that I spent most of the day being hyper-aware that I was walking around a place that Running Man has filmed? I know that I’ve mentioned it a million times on here, but just in case someone is reading this and imaging a bunch of people doing the Running Man dance in an amusement park while being recorded, Running Man is a Korean variety show that Henry and I love so much. They have their permanent cast but there are also usually guests on each episode, from kpop idols to actors. I only started watching it because BIGBANG had appeared several times and even with subtitles, I had no idea what was going on at first, but the cast is so charismatic and hilarious, that I was hooked and found myself YouTubing more and more episodes until finally I said “fuck it” and started watching from the first episode on Drama Fever. I’m not allowed to watch it without Henry so that’s how he knows I must be mad at him, when he walks in the house and catches me in the act of cracking up while watching grown adults essentially playing tag.

That show has also helped me learn a lot about Korean culture too, like kai bai bo (the Korean version of rock paper scissors which is wildly popular for Koreans to play when in the need of breaking a tie, deciding who’s going to pay, etc), the honorific system/formal speak, and certain titles that people use on each other based on age. It’s fascinating and something that has changed my life, and now there I was, in a place where some of my favorite people have run around, tearing off each other’s name tags. #shook

So whenever I’m asked what my favorite thing was that I did in Korea, I can’t say one specific thing because the simple fact that I was there AT ALL was my favorite thing. How can I possibly choose one moment?!

First ones on the bus this time! I think that the next time we go to Korea (because I’m not through with Korea yet!!), we will probably use this tour company again for another day trip. It was reasonably-priced and definitely worth the price to have non-stop transportation provided.

We ended up getting pretty comfortable with the subway system but I don’t think we could have handled making multiple transfers via subway and bus and shuttle with very much panache. I mean, I know Henry probably feels like he could conquered that but um…Chooch and I have seen him squint at maps enough to know that at some point, he’d have us going the wrong direction.

I miss Alvin.

*******************************

Post-Everland notes:

It was 10:30 by the time we arrived back at Dongdaemun and you would never know it was a Monday night because that place was poppin’ off. All the department stores were still open, the street food was still being churned out with a vengeance, and people of all ages were milling about like it was a Friday night. Seoul, you truly are the city that never sleeps.

OMG we of course feasted on street food on our walk back to the hotel and it was the perfect ending. I miss these nights so much.

The next post will be all about Hongdae shopping!

At approx 7pm Sunday night, I was just sitting on the couch, minding my own, drooling over watching The Bride of the Water God….

…when I heard a series of otherworldly, apocalyptic BOOMS.

My first inclination was to think that a plane crashed in my front yard and was now milliseconds away from sliding into my house. Chooch thought our neighbor who is always working on his car dropped something because yes, the last time I checked, a wrench hitting the ground of a garage sounds exactly like 7349823 tons of metal being crushed and accordioned in our front yard.

But no – just some broad who totaled not one but FIVE cars parked along our street before coming to a stop right next to “Ned’s” abandoned car.

Henry, with his constant need to insert himself into everyone’s 911 narrative, practically swan dove out the front door mid-dinner prep, Ziploc bag of chicken still in hand, and was FIRST ON SCENE THANK THE FUCKING LORD. You know what you have, you fucking Cub Scout? A goddamn hero complex. Don’t deny it, Hank.

(Actually, Chooch and I didn’t know that Henry was out there, chicken-in-hand, until 30 minutes later when he finally left things in the hands of the TRAINED PROFESSIONALS, and he was heroically marching to the house, bag of marinated chicken swinging joyfully at his side.

“OMG YOU HAD THAT IN YOUR HAND THAT WHOLE TIME YOU ARE SO EMBARRASING!” I screamed, while Chooch was on the phone with his friend from down the street saying “YEAH SHE HIT LIKE FIVE CARS DIDNT YOU HEAR IT?!” There was a lot going on.)

HNC’s wife was second on scene, tied with some other lady down the street who was all concerned about the well-being of whoever was behind the wheel because she didn’t know yet that her BRAND NEW BMW was one of the victims of the side-swiping. Anyway, HNC’s wife called 911 while Henry and the Italian guy in the next house over talked to the broad-perp, convincing her to stay in the car.  Henry, who knows everything, wrote in his (I Wish I Was The) police report that her side airbags went off but not the drivers one. Fascinating.

Eventually, a healthy crowd had congregated. The Italian guy’s daughter at some point realized that her car was also victimized and she was out there crying (apparently it was her birthday too which I deduced from the 6 times her dad sarcastically said “Happy Birthday” to her) then Chooch’s nemesis Larry came out with his dog and he was HAMMERED (Larry, maybe the dog too) and Chooch’s other nemesis The Witch emerged at some point because we live on a street of fucking vigilantes.

I guess the lady is ok, or as ok as one can be after annihilating a block of cars. She didn’t leave with the ambulance.

Now they’re looking for “Ned” and I’m like “oh hello his house was raided last month and he moved out and left his car. Don’t think he’ll mind that one whole entire side has even ripped off, probably the least of his concerns right now.” It’s kind of ironic though because every day since we’ve been home from My Kingdom a/k/a Korea, I’ve been mindlessly asking no one in particular, “What’s going to happen to ‘Ned’s’ car?”

The tow truck guy came over and was talking to me and Henry almost booted me backward into the basement so he could do the talking but the tow truck driver wasn’t interested in talking to Henry because he doesn’t have boobs.

“Why didn’t you tell the cops about ‘Ned’ when they were knocking on his door?” Henry asked.

“Because they didn’t ask me and I hate cops and won’t initiate conversation with them,” I said haughtily because how does he not know this? I’ll talk to the cute tow truck driver though. HE ASKED ME IF I WAS OK what a Prince!!!

Look at her car! The one front wheel is UNDERNEATH IT. She is so lucky that she is ok and that the only damage that incurred was to a bunch of parked cars and no human beings or worse — ANIMALS. Our sidewalk is heavy with pedestrian traffic and dog walkers so thank god no one was out there at that exact moment.

[Chooch’s review: It was spooky.]

When I first moved to the street in 1999 (ugh, I’m a townie at this point), the people living next door at the time gave me the sagest advice ever: DO NOT PARK ON THE STREET. The amount of accidents we’ve seen is super disturbing (like the hit & literal run from a few summers ago when Henry got to put on his cape once again). The first rule of living on Pioneer Ave is don’t park on Pioneer Ave, guys.

UPDATE: It’s been two hours since the commotion and everyone has long since cleared out, but now there is an ambulance that just arrived and I’m like, “Are they late!?” but they’re here for something else because why not.

I feel like my epitaph should include something about amusement parks, because I have been known to plan vacations around them. You will never catch me going to a beach that doesn’t have a boardwalk theme park. So do you really think we could go to Korea and NOT go to an amusement park? We are freaking theme park enthusiasts and Everland has been on my list ever since I saw an episode of Running Man that was filmed there. (It’s one of my favorite episodes, too!) Plus, they have this famous wooden coaster called the T-Express which has also been featured on numerous variety shows, so sign me the fuck up.

The thing with Everland, though, is that it’s about an hour outside of Seoul, which is fine if you either have rented a car (we didn’t apply for an international license) or are more savvy with public transportation than we are. You can GET there using pub-trans, but it involves transfers and buses, and god only knows the things that could go awry with us idiot foreigners. Plus, I read that it can take around 3 hours to get there this way.

Luckily, Henry noticed that our hotel has some partnership with a company that provides not only discounted rates, but transportation on a chartered tour bus as well! So he did his thing through the website on our first day in Seoul, and then decided to also go down to the front desk and ask some follow-up questions, at which point he was told that they knew nothing about what he was telling him, so we thought for awhile that we had been scammed.

Early Monday morning, Henry stopped by the front desk on the way back from what was soon to become his traditional “before sunrise” convenience store breakfast run, and had the nice guy call the tour agency for him, at which point we learned that the bus was picking us up at 9am at some subway exit in Dongdaemun, so Henry was like, “Wow, good thing I didn’t wait until 9 to go down and ask” which is what he was originally going to do!

Anyway, long story short, we walked around for what seemed like an hour because Henry “wasn’t sure” and I was like, “If they said Exit 10, shouldn’t we just, you know, wait by Exit 10?” which is what Chooch and I did while Henry used my phone to call the travel company, who was like, “Well, we don’t have you on the list because you did this over the weekend while we were closed” so then there was this long moment of uncertainty where we thought we couldn’t go, but then they found our order and it was still an issue because the tour guide who was going to be on the bus didn’t know we were supposed to be there, so they were like, “You have to show him your receipt on your phone” and  thank god there was another family of three waiting there with us because who even knows if the bus would have stopped it was only us!

So the bus got there, and that’s when we met ALVIN with whom I imprinted almost immediately because when he was wearing his medical mask, he looked kind of like Song Joonki, but there was more back and forth with Alvin because he had to examine the receipt on Henry’s phone and take a picture of it with his phone and then text it to the office and wait for them to confirm, and meanwhile, there was a legit busload of people waiting on us and I gulped so many times.

But then, yay, our reservation was confirmed and we were allowed to board the bus! We were the last stop too, and there were JUST ENOUGH seats. It reminded me of when the bus I sometimes took in high school would get to my street and my neighbor Lindsay and I were the last ones to get on and the bus was always packed to capacity and it was so uncomfortable having to squeeze into a seat that already held two people. Oh, anxiety! But Chooch and I got to sit together, so it wasn’t too bad. Henry had to sit with the dad of the family we were waiting with, lol.

So everyone on the bus was either English- or Chinese-speakers, which meant that Alvin had to go over everything in both languages and that made me love him even more because not only is he Korean, but he also speaks English and Chinese!? Yes, please. Chooch was like, “Get a life, you’re so embarrassing” because he saw me scribbling in my vacation journal about my wedding plans.

It turns out that Henry went through K-Tour Story, which I had come across numerous times while planning our trip because they offer other day tours, as well, like ones to Nami Island and the palaces. So I felt better knowing that this was a legit thing Henry purchased, it just got a little messed up since he went about this on the weekend.

When we arrived, Alvin gave us explicit instructions on when and where to meet later that night at 9, and then made us pose for a group photo, which was later posted on their Instagram along with other recent tours they led. THAT IS ALVIN ON THE FAR RIGHT, but in this picture his true Song Joonki-ness isn’t shining through.

Henry was just like, “What is happening, what have I done?”

And then Alvin handed everyone their tickets and said, “MAKE SURE YOU KEEP THESE WITH YOU AT ALL TIMES” in the  most foreshadowing tone possible, and we all ran to the entrance where we were greeted with glorious amusement park music.

“GIVE ME THOSE,” Henry barked, snatching our tickets from us so we wouldn’t lose them.

Henry disappeared immediately and we thought he was pooping somewhere because that’s always our first suspicion, but then it turns out he was exchanging money or something non-bathroom related. So he says.

Since the park had just opened, none of the rides were running yet so we used this opportunity to go see the pandas before it got insanely crowded.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever seen pandas in real life before,” I mused out loud.

“WELL UNLESS YOU’VE BEEN TO CHINA OR THE SAN DIEGO ZOO I’M GOING TO GUESS THAT YOU HAVEN’T,” Henry scoffed haughtily, because if there is one thing for you to learn about Henry from this blog post, it’s that he sometimes acts like he is a fucking zoologist who was first in his class.

For instance, one time we were driving past Columbus, Ohio and this is an actual conversation we had and I know it’s verbatim because I literally just copied and pasted this from the liveblog I was writing when it happened:

Henry: I’d like to go to the Columbus zoo someday.
Me: Why.
Henry: Because they have a nice zoo.
Me: How do you know?
Henry: Because they have a nice zoo, OK?
Me: Yeah but how do you know if you’ve never been there?
Henry: Because…THEY JUST HAVE A NICE ZOO.
Me: BUT HOW DO YOU KNOW?????
Henry: *mumbled something about Jack Hanna*

Henry and zoos, man.

Anyway, we got to enjoy some glorious time with pandas with only a handful of other people and it was really something special.

Especially when this guy was rubbing his butt on a rock.

Getting to see pandas in an Asian country was something that I never thought I’d do in this lifetime. It was beyond amazing.

I’m going to try and get Chooch to write a guest post about Everland because he took a shit-ton of videos, but he is L-Z when it comes to writing.

Right after this, we got in line for a small steel coaster called the Rolling X-Train. Henry was all clenched because he thought he’d have to ride with a stranger which is his least favorite thing to do especially after he had to ride with some 13-year-old girl on one of the Harry Potter coasters at Universal and Chooch and I spent the next two months talking about “that time Henry had a date with a teenager,” so he opted out.

The line wasn’t too terribly long, maybe about a 15 minute wait, but as we got closer to the top, I started noticing that everyone was flashing something at the ride attendants.

“Oh fuck, do we need our tickets?!” I whispered to Chooch, Alvin’s warning playing back in my head in slo-mo.

And sure enough, when we got to the front of the line, the ride attendant asked to see our tickets and I was so flustered. I told him that we left our tickets “with some guy” and it was so embarrassing because here we are, Korea! Dumb Americans who can’t follow instructions! Anyway, he was super nice and told us to go and get our tickets and then come back through the exit so we wouldn’t have to wait in line again.

HOW FUCKING NICE IS THAT?! That never would have happened here in Pittsburgh. (But then again, Kennywood doesn’t even issue tickets anymore, so…) So we angrily held out our hands for Henry to give us back our tickets because this was all his fault, and then we guiltily and shamefully re-entered through the exit ramp, where we waited on the other side of the concourse. The girl on that side was like, “Hello who are you?!” but our friend jumped over the tracks and explained to her what happened, so she was like, “OK OK you can go on the next one.” I love you, Korea.

Meanwhile, two girls joined us.

“Did you guys forget your tickets too?” I asked.

“Yes!” the one said dramatically, and we bonded over how embarrassed we felt. Turns out they were from the Philippines, which is only a 4 hour flight to Korea so if moving to Korea doesn’t pan out for me, perhaps I’ll consider the Philippines?

Anyway, those girls were nice and Chooch and I were excited to have made “friends.” Especially friends who also failed to follow directions.

And then it was our turn to ride and all I could think was, “I AM ON A ROLLER COASTER IN KOREA! LIFE IS FUCKING AMAZING!” And as the coaster started to leave the platform, the ride attendants all yelled, “화이팅!” (hwaiting) and I was like, “HOW IS THIS REAL LIFE?!!?!?” because I have heard this so many times on all of the Korean shows I watch but NEVER IN REAL LIFE.

Gah, now I’m over here crying about it! I will be back with more Everland pictures and recaps once I compose myself. My state is fragile right now.