I need a blog hub.

I don't know why. I don't think I have enough regular readers, and the ones I have probably have no interest in crossing the subject lines of my blogs, but I feel like I need a place that ties all three of my blogs together. The reason I say this is that I have two specific interests that have led to the birth and development of two additional blogs, and although I haven't updated this one too much recently it's not because I haven't been blogging. One is photography, specifically crap photography taken with my iPod when I leave the house. This is a no-text blog that should, in theory, tell a story about what kind of stuff I see day to day. I call this one Hipstamatic Errands.

The other, and more significant one is about the project I started on my birthday, you know, the one where I planned to learn French and increase my ability level with German before my 31st birthday. The project has been underway for about a month and I recently started a blog about it. Since I feel a bit like a culture whore, I named this one Kultur Putain.

I've been writing, just not all about my daily life.

A visitor from home!

The past week and a half was great in every way. On Friday, the last day of September, I took a vacation day and woke up early to go over to the Daegu International Airport to pick up my Mom! The airport isn't hard to get to, but it's a bit of a haul at about a 10 minute walk to the subway station, 40 minute or so ride over to Ayyangyo station, then about a 10 minute cab ride to the airport from there. I picked mom up and shuttled her home, and our visit began (on a very tired note for her...it's a 24 hour trip to get here, long haul no doubt.)

We had an easy dinner at Bae Yun Bak, the "happy cow" next door for a welcome to Korea meal of galbi, then crashed pretty early. The next morning we woke up and headed to Costco so we could get a floor mattress and our month's supply of chicken breasts. We turned around and went downtown for Jjimdak, which was well received.

Mom in the melee of Myeong-dong

The next morning we woke up early and caught the 8am KTX to Seoul. We shopped in Myeong-dong and Hongdae, stayed at the Savoy hotel overnight, and then visited Gyeongbokgung Palace and Insadong before taking the an evening train home.

Me and Mom in front of Gyeongbokgung

I lucked out and had half-days at work on Tuesday and Wednesday because of midterm exams, so I got a bit of extra hangout time with mom. Thursday and Friday were full days and we stayed home for dinner. We ordered a pizza and I made curry rice.

Saturday we headed out to Palgongsan, because Mom wanted to see some temples, and hell, we could use the exercise anyway. It was a PERFECTLY beautiful day with gorgeous clear blue skies and a temperature that was not too hot, too cold, but just right.

Sunday was Mom's last day in town, and it included a lot of hanging out, talking, television, and last minute shopping for gifts "from Korea" for the nieces, nephews, sisters, aunties, and the family in general. It was a great visit with Mom, and a great reminder of all of the good things we have waiting for us to come back home when we finally make the move back.

I wish I had more words for this particular post, but I keep getting caught up on "great, awesome, wonderful, fantastic" and other superlatives that describe how happy I was just to have a few days with my mom in this land far from home...so bear with the bad writing, and the next post will be better.