Visiting family

On Saturday mamma and I travelled south of the river to spend time with her two sisters, one of their daughters, and one of their daughters, making for a big girly family reunion.

My cousin’s daughter (if you work out all the family relationships) has been going to an English hagwon since she was essentially two years old (four in Korean age), so two years on she speaks pretty good broken English. She enjoyed showing me all her English books and showing off her knowledge by answering my stock “What colour is it?” and “How many are there?” questions. As entertaining as this was, if I were after some more sophisticated banter, I was unsurprisingly out of luck. Since my Korean is just a smidge less than fluent, trying to tune into a bunch of Korean women nattering about the latest beauty trick (or whatever I imagined they were talking about) got a tad dull.

Today my mum and I were meeting my uncle and his family (who fortunately for me speak good English even if they choose to speak in their native tongue) for lunch at the COEX Mall in downtown Seoul. While we were there we took the opportunity to stroll around the neighbouring Bongeunsa Temple.





Like many of Seoul’s ancient sites, Bongeunsa is just plonked in the middle of the high rise apartments of the area (well, I’m sure the temple probably came first), but surprisingly made for a peaceful retreat from the buzzing of the nearby traffic. Buddhist monks led mass praying while others went to bow on the large marble floor in front of the 23-meter high Buddha statue that over-towers the local high school. Red paper lanterns have been put up around the temple complex in preparation for Buddha’s birthday in May – May! The year is whizzing by – while posters commented on the changing beliefs of Buddhists in the 21^st century.

The lunch was good too.