Happy belated Thanksgiving everyone! I’ve been running 3 days behind on blog posts because I was cramming for my a Japanese chapter test on Tuesday that was really stressing me out. Literally just got my grade in and scored 87% which is acceptable as it’s really easy to get overwhelmed with the sheer amount of learning so I’m trying to stay in the mindset that any progress is good progress.
This is the first Thanksgiving in 23 years that I have not cooked for my family or that I was away from home. Even during covid, I made everything at my house and delivered a full turkey dinner to my parents. While the timing was so nice to be able to bundle the trip with the extra 2 days of PTO we get, I feel bad for not being at home as I’m the one responsible for putting a majority of the meal together ever since I was 11 years old and we moved into our new house. My parents asked if I wanted to try out a new tradition of cooking Thanksgiving dinner and it only gets better every year.
Even though we did not have turkey dinner available in Hong Kong, does not mean we didn’t feast. This entire week we’ve been here has been a non stop frenzy of delicious food. We celebrated Thanksgiving with Tim, Jer, and John. They asked us what we wanted to have and immediately my answer was KBBQ!!! They separately asked Joanna and she had the same answer (I love my wife). Dinner was so much fun hanging out with them. An added bonus was that the South Korea v Uruguay game was going on at the same time. There were a bunch of Koreans yelling and just generally having a good time. Was fun having that as part of the atmosphere in the restaurant.
We also went out to seek our own eating adventures too. I’m confident that I had the best ramen of my life at Zaru Soba. The broth was creamy without being overly fatty, noodles were chewy, egg was gooey and flavorful, and the meat was so tender and juicy (my mouth is watering just thinking about it). Kimberly got a haircut and then we got foot massages because apparently that’s a thing we do on vacation now. The massages were really good, they give you heated slippers when you arrive, soak your feet, then you’re lead into a dim area in cushy seats for foot massages, and then they finish it off with some refreshing tea.
The massage parlor was so good, we decided to go back a second time but also get the dead skin on our feet scraped off. Also we went back to get ramen again because I can’t imagine going home and eating the garbage they call ramen there, however I hear we’re getting new ramen restaurants.
The time we’ve been spending with Popo has not been taken for granted. Kimberly’s been doing most of the heavy lifting of getting to her place in the morning with breakfast while I was doing tai chi. I’ve just been showing up and Popo spends the time shoving food my way as her way of showing that she cares, just like any grandma does. I had her watch our wedding video since she wasn’t there for that 3 years ago and I showed her my tai chi classes. She gave me a thumbs up and said I should keep doing it because it’s good for your body.
My cousin Calvin is 3 years older than me and Popo has been saying that she wants us all to get together for dinner as we haven’t done that since he got married 8 years ago. This was the first time I met his wife Irene and his 8 year old son Damian who is now my new bestie. He’s at the age where trains make up 90 percent of his personality. During dinner he wanted to sit next to me to tell me he wanted to be a gaming youtuber when he grows up (kids these days!). He also went into deep detail about BNSF trains and now it makes me want to come back and get him all the train stuff before he moves to the next thing and trains aren’t cool anymore.
Uncle William (Calvin’s dad) invited us to dinner at a restaurant that specializes in Beijing food. Holy crap it was good. I’ve never had such thin wrappers for Peking duck before either. Joanna said they’re like sheet masks. Kimberly successfully slipped her credit card to the waiter when we first arrived to dinner to cover the check but Uncle William got so upset, he forced the waiter to void the transaction so that he treat us to dinner.
I asked both my uncle and Sincha how my grandma has been this week. They both said she’s been so happy and more energetic than she usually is. I’m really glad that we were able to make the trip out here and that everything went so smoothly as I was so anxious about following the covid protocols. When we had to say our goodbyes and head to the airport. Popo apologized for being in bad health where she couldn’t stand and give us a hug. She also asked if next time we come, we would buy her a ticket to bring her to Minnesota with us. 😭 We’re not sure how much time we have left with her but this trip was definitely worth making to create new memories and meet new family members.
The last time Kimberly and I were here was in 2012 when she wrapped up her study abroad where we celebrated new years and we went to Macau, Beijing, Shanghai and Seoul. While we were sight seeing this week, I wanted to head to the harbor to recreate one of the pictures we took together.
Crazy how quickly time flies doesn’t it? Now we have a new photo with Joanna in it so hopefully 10 years doesn’t go by for us to take the next one.
Delta contacted us this morning saying that our flight has been delayed to the following day and we will not be flying out of Seoul at 7pm to arrive back in Minneapolis at 5pm Sunday afternoon. We were scrambling to figure out different options as we could fly into Seattle, Boston, Atlanta, and LAX to get home in time before work on Monday. I then had a sudden realization that I always talk about wanting to travel and this is a missed opportunity if I don’t take it. Amex also has a program where if you’re delayed over 6 hours, they reimburse you up to $500 costs relating to food, transportation, and hotel. Unfortunately, Joanna and Kimberly need to be at work on Monday but I’m thankful that my team is flexible and is allowing me to spend an extra day in Seoul so at least for me, the adventure continues!
It will never cease to amaze me that you started making Thanksgiving dinner at ELEVEN!!
That pic of Kimberly adoringly looking at your grandma ❤