One of the great experiences about living abroad is meeting people of other cultures. Our congregation at church is the biggest melting pot of people and it gives you a great appreciation for having the same beliefs as the brother or sister next to you from Africa, Malaysia, or even from Korea. One of Cade's church teachers is Bora Lim, a sister who is born and raised in Seoul, but did not convert to the LDS church until the past few years. She studied English in school and when she went on a trip to Malaysia she met the missionaries and learned all about our church in English. Apparently when she came back to Korea and joined her local Korean congregation all of the terms of the church were very hard to understand and she didn't feel comfortable there. So she attends our English speaking branch and our kids fell in love with her (and I think she fell in love with our kiddos too!)

Here's Bora and Cade

We mostly saw Bora at church, but we've had a few occasions to get together. Since we were moving soon and Cade was out of school we decided to all hang out at the COEX aquarium. Bora was such a trooper since she wasn't feeling well, but had my kids plastered all over her, pulling her over to see sharks and seahorses.

These are all pictures from Bora's phone :)






After the aquarium the kids stopped in this toy store, and Cade wanted a picture with every angry bird. Apparently by the last bird the workers weren't very happy with us... oops!








We will miss you Bora, and never say never. We will meet again!

I'm sure each birthday feels this way, but I just can't believe Alex is 4. That's how old Cade was when we moved here! Crazy..

We celebrated most of Alex's birthday on Saturday with a party that he got to invite 4 friends to (since he was turning 4!)  Well it kind of backfired when only one showed up and the other 3 were running extremely late. It was just a crazy mix of unforseen circumstances on each of the kids' parts and we are just thankful that Alex didn't notice. By the end he got to celebrate with everyone and I know Alex had fun.

At first Alex wanted a Mickey party, and then he developed a love for Yoshi, and wanted a yoshi party. With limited means and time I decided to make it more of a summer party with some yoshi elements like green decorations and a yoshi egg cake.

Pizza, cheetos, capri suns and cake! Can't go wrong there!

Here's Alex and Eden, the one who came on time. He had so much fun playing with her that he didn't notice no on else had shown up.

Bring on the cake!


Look at cade in this picture, hahaha
After cake we went outside and had some summer fun. Each kid got a summer survival kit that included sunglasses, sidewalk chalk, squirt guns, paper airplanes and bubbles!
And more friends made it! Here's Isaac, Alex's friend from the hours and hours we spend at taekwondo.





Daddy was a big hit with the squirt guns, literally!
And lastly is Alex's crush Addy. Alex is such a lover, in fact he has been coached by his church teachers to keep his hands to himself because he just loves to hug and kiss everyone!
Happy 4th Birthday Alex! 

This may have been my last Seoul Searchers adventure. We had been talking about going to this train museum for awhile, but since it is a little further away we weren't sure we'd make it back in time to pick up kids from school, plus a lot of our older kids would love this place. So the day after school let out we made the trip to Uiwang Railroad Museum

There is a lot for the kids to see and do here, and like a lot of museums in Seoul it was only 500 won for each person, which is like 50 cents!

The grounds were littered with trains, many of which the kids could go inside and explore.

I had to snap this picture of the kids playing on these toys instead of looking at the myriads of trains around them!




Cade seemed to enjoy it the most of my two kiddos. Alex spent the entire time whining that he was hungry even though they'd had snacks in the car on the way there and we packed lunches to eat a little later. I think Alex is truly a homebody, he acts like he wants to go places but a lot of times when we get there he is asking when we're going to go back home.

This is Cade with his friend Kyler who moves in a few days. There has been a mass exodus of families we know (with us to follow shortly) and Cade says he has no friends left. At least we're leaving too and he can make all new friends. I guess I have to do that too, dang it!
Kyler, Alex and Tristan
 This machine helps build train tracks!
And all the kids enjoyed climbing onto and inside this!


 How often can you stand between a coal car and a freight car?
The museum also had an indoor part with lots of trains on display. Check out this model!



Different conductor's hats. Not sure what the tiny ones are for. If only I read Korean...
For an extra 300 won we could go see the train panorama. There was no more description than that so we figured, what the heck, let's do it! Here's the kids waiting for their turn to see it. Alex was mad that I hadn't fed him yet.
Inside, behind glass windows, was a giant train track display to mimic (loosely) the city of Seoul. The presentation was narrated in Korean of course, but from what I could gather it was about how trains have evolved over the years. 
Did you know that the Seoul Tower and the 63 building were this close to eachother? Me either! (sarcasm)
In the middle of the presentation the the lights went off and all the trains started glowing along with the city lights. All the kids loved it! I know these are blurry, but you get the idea.

After the panorama we checked out the upstairs of the museum which had a section where you could interact with a lot of things. Here  you could turn on different train track signals.
This one brought the arm down to block traffic from crossing and made a loud clanging sound to signal that trains were coming. Cool!

A video about trains around the world.
 And lastly a section of train tracks to run on, safely! You can see the hand cart at the end there and I was kind of hoping the kids could actually make it go, but it was just a display.

It was fun, worth the 1 hour drive, and a great place to explore!