Gettin' busy!

This past few weeks, we have been BUSY! I signed Abby up for swim lessons and wanted to sign Ava up too, but they had to be six. They're Mondays and Wednesday on post. It was so funny...Abby told me she needed to take the advanced class because she took lessons last year and knew how to swim. However, when she got in the water, it became quickly obvious, to even her, that she was right where she needed to be-beginner's class. There is one other kid in her class and the teacher is Korean.
This week, Abby started day camp. Again, I wanted to sign Ava up, they had to have finished Kindergarten, which I think is really unfair! She went M-F from 7:45 until 5pm. It's been great, because busy Abby was getting a little bored and driving me up a crazy wall! Monsoon season has officially started here and it's been pretty rainy. We get a few sunny days here and there, but they've been a little far in between. So, needless to say, I needed to get rid of one of them!!:) On Thursday, I was allowed to tag along on their trip to the aquarium in Seoul. It was...fun, but if I were to do it again, I wouldn't have went. I had to hold Libby on the bus, which was 1.5-2 hours each way...and she didn't want to SIT. And then, the aquarium wasn't stroller friendly...at all. I had to leave the stroller at the entrance and then let her walk or carry her. Not fun. She and Ava loved it, but it was a pretty small aquarium and only took us a half hour to walk through. Ava's favorite part was the gift shop, where she got a penguin in an igloo carrier. The FUN part was that the aquarium is in a mall...a HUGE 'western' mall and we had 1.5 hours to kill before we had to meet up with our ride. They have a McDonald's, TGIFs, and several other American restaurants! It was so perfect because we have a trip planned to Seoul this weekend and I KNOW we'll be going back to get a taste of some of our favorite American foods.:)
Today was Dan's birthday! He's been having a rough time at work with the new job and, I guess, today kind of sucked. To top it off, while I was doing laundry, the hose that connects to the faucet in the wall came loose. Water was spraying all over the laundry room and Dan was unable to get it back on. They put some kind of adapter from our American hose to their Korean faucet and it just wasn't working. Hopefully, the dude that charged us $110 to hook it up will come tomorrow morning to fix it...he didn't do it right, so he had better NOT charge us to fix it!!!
That's it for now...we're leaving tomorrow (probably afternoon now) for Yongsan (Seoul) until Monday morning. I'm pretty excited to be able to walk around and see things...and SHOP!!:) There's a shopping district right outside of Yongsan that is supposedly really nice and it has an Outback, McDonald's, Cold Stone Creamery, etc....I shouldn't have had that second piece of birthday cake! Hopefully, I'll walk it off.
Some pictures from the past few weeks:

Libby on playground at Camp Casey. She LOVES the swings. Her face is red because it is HOT here. We left shortly after this picture...

I should have cropped this so you could see it more closely, but when the Korean children go on field trips here...they all wear the EXACT same outfit with identical backpacks. It's too adorable!

I LOVE this idea! Do you know how, in America, when you go to an aquarium, all the children stand in the same spot and won't move...so your child has NO chance of seeing the shark, etc? Here...in this big tank, there is a people mover RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE GLASS. It doesn't go fast, but it doesn't give the children a chance to stand in one spot. Another thing I noticed...when they have the field trip kids entering the aquarium, we had to wait like 15 minutes after the group in front of us, so hopefully, we weren't all crowded in the same spot. It seemed to work! It didn't seem too crowded at all.


Ok...I need to get more bold about taking these kinds of pictures, because the uniforms the young workers have to wear are hilarious! The girls who sell things in the stores are super funny. I don't know if it's to get your attention or what, but these girls were too cute. They were at the entrance. I don't know what their exact job was, but they got me my stroller back. That's another picture I wish I'd taken...at the entrance, there's a spot for everyone to leave their big bags and all the children's backpacks....they were all lined up so neatly, and of course, all matched. Super cute!


I have no clue why Abby's group (from her camp) are taking a picture with the Korean kids' group, but this is how I found them. They all seemed excited to be taking their picture with a bunch of American kids. The Korean man taking THEIR picture was so giddy...kinda weird, kinda funny. (Is Abby giving her counselor bunny ears?)