Family

What a beautiful day

Happy New Year!  Last night I stayed up long enough to witness the New Year, and then I headed for bed.  No big parties for me.  I watched a bit of TV, but otherwise I celebrated quietly.  This is the first year in ages that Dick Clark did not usher in the new year on ABC’s “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve”, a New Year’s staple.  Regis Philbin sat in for him.  The show was pretty much dedicated to Dick this year.  I only watched for about 10 minutes.  When I was young I remember faithfully watching the ABC, NBC and CBS New Year’s Eve TV celebrations every year.  Now I have very little interest in watching network television.  I must be getting old.  At 12:00 a.m. some people set off some firecrackers near our apartment building.  At first I wondered whether I heard gunfire (you never know in a big city!) but then I realized the calendar had turned to 2005 and people were celebrating outside.  Welcome to the New Year!

This break has done wonders for me.  Life slowed down tremendously during the time between Christmas and New Year.  I needed that.  Even though I went in to work to study Korean each day, it still felt like a vacation to me.  I was able to spend the day with my wife and son.  The weather was gorgeous.  It is January 1st, but today felt like mid-September just before fall hits.  It was clear and sunny but not cold at all.  I heard that it may have hit 60+ degrees today.  I’m glad…although I grew up in cold climates I don’t really like snow.  People do crazy things in the snow, and it makes life a lot more inconvenient.  I do enjoy winter sports like skiing, but as long as the snow stays in the mountains I’m happy.  Today we headed to the mall to do a little New Year’s shopping.  The mall was packed with shoppers.  We ate at a little hole-in-the-wall Philly-style Greek-Italian restaurant.  It was greasy but delicious.  I doubt we’ll have many of those in Korea.  American restaurants abound–so I hear–but there aren’t too many mom-and-pop American style restaurants in Seoul.  We’ll see.

The break is over soon, and I am sad.  I really enjoy having time to work and study and play at my leisure.  On Monday the grind will start again.

A New Chapter

My in-laws left yesterday and returned to their home in China.  They have lived with us for over two years.  Before they arrived in 2002, I mentioned to my wife that it was the start of a new chapter in our lives.  Now the page has turned and yet another new chapter has started for us.  They lived with us since our son was born–they have always been a part of his life.  Now as we prepare to head to Korea, we are again a family of three.  Life has been very hectic for us with our impending move, but I can already tell that life feels a bit more settled now that we’re together as a smaller family.  My in-laws were a big help to us.  They were always around to help take care of our son, and for that I am very grateful.  I know that my son already misses them very much because he’s old enough to be aware of their move, but he has been very well behaved the past couple of days.  I hope it continues until we finally arrive in Seoul.  Living together as an extended family has brought blessing, tension, happiness, and frustration–all the human emotions that rise up with family members living together.  I will look back at the last two years fondly and wax nostalgic, but at present I am happy that a new chapter has started.  For me this is the start of our transition to Korea.  We have been in limbo here in the Washington, D.C. area since we arrived in early 2004, and now within 2 months we will be in Korea, our new home for years.  Korea is yet another chapter to be experienced, and this is page one.

The death toll from the tsunamis in southeast Asia and eastern Africa has risen to 77,000+.  What a tragedy.  I am happy that the U.S. and other nations have pledged millions of dollars and logistical aid to combat the ensuing humanitarian crisis.  The tragedy seems so distant to many of us, but it has touched us nevertheless.  Out of this tragedy comes the opportunity for the world to come together to show support just as it did when the Twin Towers were attacked in 2001.  I’m planning to contact World Vision to see what I can do.

I downloaded and tried the new Mozilla Firefox browser.  It’s the new open source browser that is competing with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.  Over 12 million copies have been downloaded.  Most people download it because they either don’t like IE or are concerned about security issues with Microsoft’s browser.  Hackers and virus makers have designed nasties around the IE browser because over 90% of Internet users use IE to access the Web (mass audience).  I had to check it out for myself.  I have tested the Firefox browser, and so far I have not been very impressed.  If it will boost my PC’s security I will use it, but I may have to sacrifice some speed and functionality.  Pages appear to load more slowly in Firefox, and you have to manually load some add-ins such as Flash that boost the Web’s functionality.  Still, I will continue to test Firefox and use it for the time being.  I was happy to see that Google is Firefox’ default search engine.  Google appears on the Firefox home page and as a built-in browser toolbar.  If Firefox takes off in 2005, then the Firefox-Google alliance bodes well for Google.  Google impresses more every day.

Our Christmas

We had a wonderful Christmas.  We were very busy, and the time passed by too quickly, as you  can probably tell from the delay in blog postings.  My cousin Wade came for a visit, so I didn’t have much time to spend on the computer.  He’s a saint for helping me rebuilding my computer.  I upgraded the hard drive, RAM, and the power supply, so it now performs as it should have all along.  It turns out that the culprit was the power supply.  When I last updated about 3 years ago I did not change the power supply.  I upgraded from a 550MB Duron microprocessor to a 2.4GHz P4 chip, but I didn’t change out the power supply.  It never did run right.  Now it does, thanks to cuz’.

While Wade was here we visited the Smithsonian Udvar-Hazy Center located next to Dulles International Airport.  It’s an extension of the Air & Space Museum located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.  We also went down to the National Mall and visited the Museum of American History, the National Archives, and the Air & Space Museum.  I had never visited the first two museums, so it was a treat for me to see them for the first time (I never tour the Mall anymore).  We also did a “Lord of the Rings” marathon, watching most of the extended versions of all three LOTR movies.  It’s absolutely mind numbing after about 8 hours.  If you sit and watch all three movies, it will take you about 12 hours to do it.  Definitely not for the faint of heart.  I thoroughly enjoyed it though because I consider the trilogy three of the finest movies ever produced.  They are masterpieces.

On Christmas Eve we searched frantically for dinner.  We arrived home too late to cook and decided to order take-out food.  I contacted at least 5 restaurants until I found a Thai restaurant open.  Lesson learned–don’t try to go out to eat after 8 p.m. on Christmas Eve!  The selection is grim.  We spent Christmas day with Wade’s Aunt Joann, whom I’ve also adopted as my aunt.  She prepared a delicious Christmas dinner and decorated her home for the holidays, putting us all in a festive mood.  Our son was the hit of the party though as we spent much of the time following him around, making sure that he didn’t break anything or fall down the stairs.  We usually spend Christmas with my parents, but because our short time in the Washington, D.C. area we weren’t able to make it home for the holidays.  We have no Christmas or decorations at home other than a single stocking that holds the Christmas cards we receive.  Not too festive, methinks.  Still, it’s nice to have a chance to take a break from the rigamarole of Korean class and briefly enjoy the holidays.