Answer: Boseot Bulgogi; Nanta; Hwaseong; Kamja Tang
Question: What are things my dad and I have done thus far?

Yay for my dad being here! So I picked him up at the airport on Thursday evening. Because Friday was a national holiday, the traffic was really bad on the way home and took forever. Boo. upon arrival to my apartment, I got to see all the "goodies" that my dad/mom brought me from home. Very exciting. Lots of good food and summer clothes...because I don't fit into Korean clothing.

On Friday we didn't do much. It was both Buddha's Birthday and Children's Day. Both are national holidays. Usually you get both days off from school, but this year they happened to fall on the same day (because Buddha's Birthday is based on the lunar calendar). That kind of sucked. We just walked around Pyeongtaek. I saw some of my students who looked really confused that I was walking around with another white guy. "My dad!" "Oh!" Later that night they set off some fireworks that we tried to watch from my balcony, but most of them were blocked by high-rise apartment buildings.

We had planned on going into Seoul on Saturday with Charlie and taking a tour of a palace and its Secret Garden, but it was raining. So we didn't go to the palace, but we still went into Seoul because Charlie needed to go shopping and I had bought tickets for my dad and I to go to a performance called Nanta (in the US it's known as Cookin'). For lunch we had Boseot Bulgogi (beef and mushrooms that you roll in lettuce leaves with some rice and various other items). See picture. You're supposed to shove the entire role into your mouth, not take bites.

We then went to Nanta. 'Nanta' apparently means "crazy beat." It's kind of like Stomp, but the setting is a kitchen. There are chefs whose boss makes them prepare a really hard menu in a short period of time. He makes his nephew help them, and they initially don't like him. There's a girl and a guy chef who have a small romance. So it's mostly nonverbal with them making "crazy beats" with kitchen supplies, most notably with their knives. It's quite entertaining. After the show it was still raining, so we went home.

Today was sunny and nice. We went to Suwon and hiked around Hwaseong Fortress. I've included some pictures.

Apparently, within the last couple of months a drunken Korean burned down one the temple things at the highest peak of the fortress. Bummer, man. Koreans probably stoned him, seeing as he burned down part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site...aka something they can brag about. And, you know, it's a part of their culture and all. And he burned it down. Here's a before picture (taken when I went there with Joleen in February) and an after picture (taken today when I was there with my dad):

Then we went back to Pyeongtaek and went to a restaurant and had some kamja tang (which translates into potato stew). But there's not a lot of potatoes, so it's kind of a misnomer. It's beef ribs in a spicy stew liquid with mushrooms, some potatoes, a few noodles, and bean sprouts. It's very good. Probably one of my favorite Koreans foods.

Tomorrow I have to go into school. Boo. My dad keeps falling asleep at like 8:30-9. Either he stilll has jet-lag or he's just kinda lazy. I don't know. :)