A big announcement...

After 2.5 years our time in Korea is coming to an end. It's been a fun adventure and Korea has been a wonderful host country. We will miss it!

 

We've been on a mission to do all our favorite things "one last time". So we went on our last Hash and it turned out to be the exact same Hash as our first one that we did in the middle of winter when we arrived!

We've eaten one last time at our favorite Moroccan and Indian restaurants:

And we headed back to California Beach because Teddy is tall enough to ride it all!

We played in one last soccer game:

And the girls threw me a surprise going-away lunch!

Having "one last play" with really good friends is the hardest part of the whole thing.

Love these boys!

We have made some life-long friends here in Korea and we will miss them all but the upside is that we now have friends in so many different countries that we can couch-surf across the globe. So be warned all you HFC peeps, we may at some point in the future be crashing in your spare bedroom....

So that's it! We are off on our next adventure to Port Elizabeth, South Africa! We don't have a lot of details to share about this new location yet, and we're not exactly sure when we'll get there - in fact as of right now the kids and I have round trip tickets back to Korea at the end of the summer! But something tells me those tickets are going to have to be changed. So we'll update you all with info as we get it and in the mean time we are so excited to come home to the States in 4 more sleeps! WooHoo!!! By the way, this is what $7 of blueberries looks like in Korea. Can't wait to get to North Carolina and eat our fill every day!

Spring in Korea...

What a busy Spring! I've been so busy trying to write about China that I have tons to catch you up on. So this is going to be a whirlwind report! The weekend after we came back from China we had 2 days of races! On Saturday we took park in the yearly Dragon Boat races down on the Tae-hwa river. We had a bunch of great heats but messed up on our last one. We came in 4th out of 15 teams so we just missed the podium.

What a team!

The next day was the Hyundai Climbathon. This is an 11k+ run through the mountains that is pretty darn tough. Cora and I both ran it. I wanted to finish in 1:10 and I did 1:06 so I was pretty stoked. Those hills were tough!

After the race Jeff and I built a tree-fort up at Y-Block:

It's bomber and one of the best things this spring has been being able to hear the voices of all the Y-Block kids playing in the tree-fort just outside our windows. Ok, sometimes the Mom's play up there too..

We brought our kite back from China and thought we would give it a go with Korean wind. It went right up at Ilsan beach and then dove into the sea and snapped in two! We're gonna need a better kite.

And Teddy finally got to celebrate his Birthday with all his friends! We had a bottle-rocket party and we launched a bunch of rockets and ate rocket cake-pops.

His friends all pooled their money and got him the LEGO Star Wars Millennium Falcon. What a gift! He was amazed!!

Next up was Croatian night. We had an incredible evening celebrating the music, customs, and mostly the food of this amazing country. These guys pulled out all the stops!! I am so glad no one is asking us to host an American Night next. This will be a tough act to follow....

And then we had the school talent show. After 2 years I still have 9 fiddlers in the HFS fiddle club. They are all amazing and I love playing with them!

They played a tune together and then the played and danced a very hard tune called Money Musk. I was so proud!

The week after that Cora, Karen and I helped lead a school-wide hiking day. The kids were split into 2 groups and one group went up into the mountains and the other group took a slightly easier path. Both hikes ended at the same place though so we could all hang out and have lunch together. It was  great day!

Then Jeff had to go to Houston for a business trip. So the kids decided to have a big sleep-over night. Kid dinner!

Sasha and the girls. They stayed up waaay too late talking!

Teddy and Raphael on the other hand played so hard that they were out like a light!

Our next big event was the Solar Eclipse. We felt very lucky to be in a place where we got to see it! We made a pin-hole camera and went up early in the morning to the roof of X-block where we had a perfect view.

Eclipse projection:

 

I see it!

Then the compound team got invited to a soccer tournament! I thought they looked quite smart in their uniforms.

Jeff came back from Houston and Karen, Cora, Allison and I took off for a girl's weekend in Seoul. It was very kid-free and VERY relaxing!

We had a party for the Queen's Jubilee. There were lots of scones and biscuits and all things British. It's always so fun when you get to celebrate all your holidays plus everyone else's!

And the girls and I got our Yellow Belts in Tae Kwon Do! Our TKD master was so proud of us that he cooked us all breakfast and then gave us shots of some milky, strange Korean alcohol. Because there's nothing like celebrating athletic achievements with shots (?!?!)

Proud Yellow-Belt masters!

2 Astronomical events in one Month?!? We're gonna need a bigger pin-hole camera. Because to see the transit of Venus you need a pretty big image. We saw it. It ruled.

Teddy is now missing both top front teeth and is going to have one heck of a time eating corn on the cob this summer.

And we had another great international week. The kids did fantastic activities all week long and then on Friday we had Sports Day. Here's all the teams lined up and ready to rumble:

The yellow team does a cool challenge:

And the Green Team gets their whole squad across a "bridge"

The final event of the week was the international food faire. We all dressed up and brought in food from our home countries. The food was AMAZING! We all ate waaay too much. It's always so interesting to see other people's national dress and favorite dishes. Here's me and my girl. I'm just red white and blue but Sasha wanted to dress like a pioneer so that's what she did. WHEW! So that's been May and 1/2 of June in a nutshell.

China Trip Finale: Hong Kong!

 Lots of pictures here. If you're not a Disney fan get over it. PLUS I'm doing a Disney write-up in ONE POST so count your blessings...

We got into Hong Kong and took a 5 minute Taxi ride to the Disneyland Resort. We were just in time for a late dinner at Chef Mickey's! The food here was AMAZING!! WDW quality with all the usual options plus an Indian food section and an Asian section. My fav was the Dim-Sum shaped like Disney characters:

What a meal!

The restaurant was great and had hidden Mickey's everywhere. The only weird thing was that it wasn't character dining. Chef Mickey's with no characters! Bizarre....

Then we headed up to our room. We stayed at the Hollywood Hotel and it was fantastic. The room was really nice and it was all modern in a "Great Gatsby" kind of way. Kids were in heaven and for the first time in China got to share a double bed instead of a single!

The park didn't open until 10:30 so the next morning I went for a run and then we all walked over to the Disneyland Hotel to eat at Walt's Cafe.

They had Mickey Waffles. HEAVEN! People who know what I'm talking about on this back me up... these are the best waffles on the planet. I don't know what they put in them but they are special. And I don't even like waffles...

Who loves Mickey-shaped foods? We do!

After breakfast we still had some time so we went to explore the maze in front of the DL hotel.

Here we go, see you on the other side (or in the middle....)

From there we were able to walk the back way down this great little avenue right to the park!

This fountain was right in front of the entrance. The cool thing was that the water coming out of the whale actually goes up and down so it seems like Mickey is really surfing!

Front of the park:

We went to the central hub and waited for rope-drop. 10 minutes before the
 park opened it started pouring!!! We booked it to Space Mountain and were the first ones there!

First ride of the day, front car. When you're 6 what's better than that??

Me and my girl:

Space Mtn at HK is awesome! The best version I have ever been on. We rode it 3 times with no line, then did Buzz Lightyear and then headed to small world. It was still raining but a rainy day at Disney is still better than a sunny day almost anywhere else!

Next we checked out Festival of the Lion King. It was different from the one in AK. No tumble monkeys but the floor was articulated and did all kinds of cool things. Here you can see it raised up in stages. They had more fire-eaters too and the floats were much better.

It was still raining! We did Pooh,

Then rode the carousel:

All the rides in Toy Story Land were closed all morning because they don't operate in the rain. But after the carousel, we ran over there and the rain let up enough for us to ride everything. The theming in TSL is some of the best Disney theming I've ever seen:

Tinker toys:

Everywhere you looked it was giant toys and games:

And then we saw the Hotwheels RC racer. Teddy freaked out!

All the railings were made of K'nex and the structures were either game boxes or Lincoln Logs!

Check out how the pavement is actually smooshed up where the giant walkie talkie is sitting...

The RC racer in action. It was quite a ride!

Jeff couldn't wait to go on the green army man parachute drop.

It gave us a pretty good view of the whole land:

And it gave me an even better view of my 3 favorite goof-balls!

Whoa!

Next it was the Jungle Cruise. At HKDL you can get in a line for English, Cantonese or Mandarin.

No matter where you ride it my favorite thing about the Jungle Cruise is watching the kids expressions as you go through the ride.

Rain can't ruin our day...

OK, the castle at HK is tiny. I joke and call the one at DL in California the "hotwheels version" of the castle because I think that one is lame... this one is about 1/3 the size of the one in LA! Seriously... Jeff and I could build this castle in our backyard. It's only about 3 people high!

4 castles down, only one to go - Lucky kids!

Next we shopped on Main Street and then it started raining again so we hit one of my favorite attractions: The Animation Academy. It was in Chinese so we just had to watch really closely.

After that we ate a nice dinner in Fantasyland and then it was still raining so we decided to head home. Our room faced the park so we decided that there was no point in waiting in the rain for the fireworks when we could watch them all warm and dry in our PJ's. So that's what we did.

The next morning I got to go for another run. What a perfect place to go running! I did about a 6 mile loop through the hotel grounds, around the lake recreation area, around the park, down the main avenue (who loves running to Disney background music? ME!) and then past the other hotel and then back to ours. It was Saturday and there were big crowds building up in front of the park. I was super glad we choose Friday as our park day.

Then we swam in the pool and relaxed at the hotel and then went over to the Disneyland Hotel to eat lunch with some characters. It was so fun and maybe the best meal we had on the whole trip. It was incredible. Food at HKDL is as good as WDW and I never thought I would say that. It's sure not true in Disneyland, CA or in Tokyo.

Goofy came over and cracked all of us up.

I reminded him that he and I have a hot date next January. He's totally in.

"Teddy, you can't pull on their ears!"

After lunch we took the Disney resort line to the Hong Kong subway and did some shopping downtown. I assure you that the rest of the trains were nowhere NEAR this cool:

There were all these great little statues of all the characters all the way down the train.

What a great way to end the trip.  Every vacation should end with a day at Disney if you ask me. And I have to say that HKDL really surprised me. I have ranted a bunch that it's such a small park that it hardly deserves a visit. But it's magical. It's got that certain something that you can't describe but you know it when you feel it. DL in California is really fun, but it's not magical once you've been to Walt Disney World in Florida, and Tokyo Disney is amazing, cool, and awe-inspiring, but it also just doesn't have that magical feeling that makes you want to hug everyone and burst into song and spin around in the central hub like Julie Andrews on a mountain top. Hong Kong's the tiniest park in the world, but it's got it. Even in the rain. Maybe it's the immersion factor, maybe it's the food. I don't know what it is but it IS worth a visit and I would definitely go back there.