Happy Daniel with his braces off. Backup choreography happily provided by Robert and Mary.
Earlier this week Daniel had his braces removed. He seems a bit shy about his face full of straight teeth, but hopefully Susan can get a picture of the metal free new smile (see above). We celebrated by taking the family out to lunch after the orthodontist visit. Another professor had introduced me to a Korean BBQ buffet up a steep staircase on what we call "fun street". It has the BBQ style grill at every table and delicious marinated pork steaks, octopus and assorted other goodies to cook at your table. Susan especially liked the thin Korean style unsalted bacon that you wrap in lettuce and mint leaves after grilling. There was even a dish for Robert who is our picky eater. Robert found that he could eat endless bowls of chocolate cereal with milk. The best part was the price, which came to under $10 a person - really inexpensive by Korean standards for a BBQ restaurant.
While we are on the subject of Daniel, I should mention that he is turning into a computer geek - not unusual for his generation. He runs circles around us on the computer and handles all things having to do with technology at his ripe old age of 13. The current project is building a computer. Surprisingly, computer parts are much cheaper when purchased in the US even though most all are manufactured here in Asia. The McCormicks are coming for a visit in about 10 days, and Aunt Mary back in Anaheim has been busy assembling the parts Daniel will need for them to carry here for their visit. This is one of the down sides to visiting the Chinns in Korea. We actually had a family bring us cans of Bush's Grillin Beans cause I like them and they aren't available in Korea. That goes for pudding, bulk bags of M&Ms, and lots of other tasty items. So, if you're planning on a visit to Korea, expect a laundry list of items to bring.
I mentioned in an earlier blog that Daniel was going to audit a class on beginning Korean at the university. He wasn't enthused about attending a class with much older students, but agreed to go if I would tag along at the beginning. The professor is a vivacious young lady who made the first day fun by using some games to introduce the international students to the Korean language. The students are a melting pot from around the world and Daniel fit right in. By the end of the second class (which I also attended) they had started to memorize all the sounds of the Korean vowels, consonants and combinations of the two. Notice I say "they", for I was hopelessly confused. The students would run through a whole series of sounds from the combinations of vowels and consonants and they all basically sounded the same to me. Daniel, on the other hand, had no difficulty at all since he'd already mastered this part of Korean with his tutor last semester. Thankfully I wasn't added to the class roll sheet, so my future transcripts won't reflect me dropping out of an introduction to Korean language class. Daniel, on the other hand, is still faithfully attending and building his language skills. Mary and Robert will have tutors this semester since they are a bit young still for the university class.
While on the subject of the Korean language, we now have a GPS device for the car which is entirely in Korean. Pretty soon I will be the only one in the family not able to use the GPS system for our car, a bit of a humbling experience. Thankfully, I've had plenty of experience in in the area of humility over the course of a life time. That just may be my spiritual gift.
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