Seoul Tower

We went over to Seoul Tower, a landmark on Sannam which is one of the largest mountains in the city center the day before Valentine's  Took the tram up the side of the hill which is a must unless of course you want to really work the calves and thighs.

Air quality was not the best in terms of visibility, but the scenery was still striking in terms of expanse. In the photo to the belo, after the first set of low lying hills, you might just be able to make out a larger, haze ridden line of taller mountains.

Those mountains are some 30 km to the northeast, and beyond that there is still the city of Seoul. New York just doesn't compare, and Los Angeles, despite it's sprawl, seems almost parochial in comparison while Honolulu, our home, seems nothing more than a large town.

Now, if you ever make the trip to the tower (and we plan to do it  right the next time around) be sure to take a padlock with you.  Uniquely Korean, taking a perfectly good padlock (with or without a plastic heart or equally durable substrate that you can personalize) and chaining it to the observation

guard fence at the top of the observatory on Seoul Tower is a must! It's like spelling out your name with coral on lava rock (Big Island of Hawaii) or carving your name on the leaf of an Autograph Tree (most Pacific islands).  And the best part is if you return, in say ten years or so, your lock will still be there: we were told that some of the locks had been there since the late eighties!

A nice way to secure a memory in the Heart of Asia.

Korean Take Away: Bathrooms

Some Asian countries like Japan and Taiwan have a better handle on bathrooms than America and most European countries, but neither holds a candle to what I have seen here in Korea.

Koreans really know how to do a bathroom right!

Take the place we’re renting as an example, it has in the master bathroom, a Jacuzzi with a shower attachment for rinsing down after relaxing in addition to a separate shower stall that is 3’ x 4’. The entire bathroom is 8’ x 10’, tiled to within a couple of feet of the ceiling, and has two stainless 48” x 4” floor drains that run the length of the room.

Cleaning redefines “spray and wash.” Just shoot the whole place down including the toilet and sink with your favorite cleaner, have at the tough spots with a pair of scrub brushes, ( I favor a large area and a smaller detail brush) then grab one of the showers and open ‘er up full blast. All the crud goes down into the floor drains which get a dose of cleaner too. Of course you do have to move the toilet paper and anything else like towels out of the way, but the whole process can take less than 15 minutes, and the bathroom is spotless when you’re finished, and there is a mischievous fun to hose down things you would normally use a sponge on your knees to clean.

Everyone enjoys the Jacuzzi, but especially Winter who has found a whole new use for shampoo, which he has explained to me that professional bubble blowers prefer for bubble blowing.

The Korean style bathroom is decidedly a “take away” to Hawaii when we return: never again will I bathe or clean a bathroom like a heathen.

Schooling in Korea

Well before we left, I was convinced that the last place I would want Winter going to school was the Department of Defense (DoD) run Seoul Elementary School on Yongsan Garrison. I figured that it would be full of Army, Navy, Air and Marine brats that "couldn't wait to get home." The last thing Jae or I wanted was to insulate the lad from the Korean Culture, one of our reasons for being here, and the feeling was that placing him in a DoD school would isolate him from the bi-cultural exposure we feel is important.


I couldn't have been more wrong.

Second week we were here, after we secured the villa (read flat) we put all our attention into the school side of the relocation. We wanted to find a school that would encourage bi-lingual speech, foster an interest and appreciation of Korean culture, and keep him up to speed with things a third grader should have under his belt, like multiplication tables, and writing a book report in more than three sentences about a book that was several hundred pages.

We targeted three schools in proximity to the house, all of which make Punahou or Iolani back home look "economic" in terms of tuition,* Seoul Foreign School, Yongsan International School of Seoul and Centennial Christian School. In short all three were unsuitable, but the common thread was that in each case, Korean language was not allowed to be used during school! And in two of the three, Koreans were by far the majority of kids (so much for the "International Flavor")

So there we were at the beginning of the third week of January, with Winter already on an extended vacation with no school. Reluctantly, I trundled over to the DoD Superintendent's office, and what a surprise. Besides having and encouraging Korean on the playground, and when teacher isn't addressing the class. There are Korean Studies classes third graders must take. Hell, if you want, you can specify a Korean teacher, space allowing, of which the school hires a fair number who teach the span from First to Fifth grade (it is one of the largest DoD schools in the entire military system as it turns out.) Best part is, he takes the bus every morning and afternoon a short ride which he enjoys and it is free!

So once again, it has been made plain to me as it has before, the best solution is not only closer, it is often the one of which I have the strongest presumptions: clearly I till have some more learning to do!


*No school out here at the elementary level is under $20,000 per year when all is said and done and the DoD school is the most expensive, but the most bi-cultural, which is priceless.