Life in the ROK

West goes East: The lives and adventures of a Californian couple living in Seoul

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Jay had a four day weekend for the Memorial Day Holiday so we decided to take Max out on some adventures. First we went to an art exhibition of a Korean photographer, Atta Kim. He does time lapse photographs like 10 hours in Time Square or watching an ice sculpture of Mao melt. We really like his work, apparently Max thought it was a snoozer.
This rose bush has been blooming in front of our building for the last few weeks, beautiful.
Max sleeps as we leave our apt to walk around our neighborhood.
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We love our Ichon-dong neighborhood, the trees are nice and green this time of year and there are so many places to walk to.
After picking up sandwiches at our local Paris Croissant, we saw some people filming across the street and decided to take a look. I was so focused on trying to keep Max happy that I did not even notice that Max has become the local star.

I still did not notice all of the guys behind me....I just thought Jay was taking a picture of me with the stroller....
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Tuesday, May 27, 2008

The Han river park is great and the city is always making improvements and adding things like flower gardens, shady tents, basketball courts. Many Koreans walk, run, ride bikes, and do crazy stretches along it day and night. We found a shady spot under a tree. Although it was pretty bright for Max even with his driving cap so we tried his other new hat....
I guess it is a little big for him, but it did keep the sun out of his eyes.
Right behind us there was a couple picnicking/making out so Jay got a undercover photo of them. PDA's (Public Displays of Affection for anyone who is not familiar with this term) are not very common in Korea. When we fist arrived here Jay was reprimanded by a cab driver who saw us kiss goodbye before Jay hopped into the cab.
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Jay decided after our trip to the park that it was time to introduce Max to the pool, luckily his bathing suit had just arrived in the mail. Apparently Jay knows about the official pose for first trips to the pool, I was not familiar with this, good thing I am the photographer.
Max was not so sure about the whole thing even in the kiddie pool.
Jay tries to console him.
Then Max spit up all over himself and we decided he had enough for his first trip to the pool. There are sure to be many more to come.
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Yay Max can finally hold his head up!!! Now tummy time is not so torturous. Doesn't he look so proud of himself?
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Monday, May 26, 2008


This week Max and I made the cover of the sensational new magazine, Hot Styles.
OK, not really. It's one of those silly frames from our Skype conversation yesterday with Bob, who captured it in a screen shot and emailed it to us. You can see he thought we were really tough too. Aarrgh!!!!!!

Saturday, May 17, 2008

Max is beginning to develop intellectual interests...

...of all kinds, including special appreciation of his mother's art.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008


Max is beat after a stroll around Ichondong.
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Max enjoys his lounger while we eat dinner. This is not neccesarily normal dinner behavior.
Weekend nap time.
Max loves this toy from his play mat. He stares at in for stretches of 5 to 10 minutes, which in baby time is hours considering their attention span is supposed to be about 2 minutes.
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Saturday, May 03, 2008

Today I finally was able to catch some of Max's smiles on film...or in pixels really. He loves watching his butterfly mobile that my Aunt Liz gave to him. We have it hanging over his changing table which you can see in the last photo, it is a great distraction while changing diapers:)


Max is wearing some of his sneaker socks...too cute.
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Max shows off his fashion prowess in his jeans and "give peas a chance" shirt.
Grandma Lee shows off a clean Max after his bath:)
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Thursday, May 01, 2008

My Emergency Department took our group photo on Tuesday. There are 7 doctors, 8 nurses, 14 Medics, 2 Katusas (Korean Augmentee to US Army), and 18 Korean nationals working for me. The Army picks you early for leadership positions and if you try hard, by the time your assignment ends you are finally ready to do it right. With a year under my belt and one to go, I get it 1/2 right these days.

Here are 5 of us docs: me, Jim Hill, Inai Shin, Adam Ash, and Tom Zickgraf. Adam did a civilian residency like me. We're still working on teaching him the military pose.

We're still working on teaching him the military pose.

Colleen took the photos while Grandma Baker babysat. Thanks both!

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