Snow?!

Well, I spoke too soon about the mildness of our winter here in Seoul this year. The temperature dropped into the 20s last night and this morning there were teeny tiny flakes of snow coming down. I think it is supposed to stay cold all week. Poor Charley. We got all his hair shaved off yesterday. He absolutely hates to be brushed and once it gets to a certain length it will start getting matted, so we get it all cut off. We like our room to be cool while we sleep so we normally leave the door leading out to the patio open and the patio window open a little as well so it was pretty chilly last night. We put one of those little dog shirts on Charley to help keep him warm, but I think he was still cold because he kept scratching at the bed which he usually doesn't do. I think he was trying to fluff up the blankets so he'd be warmer. I ended up getting up and putting a throw blanket around him, but early this morning I could feel him shivering against my back. I made him get under the blankets with me and curled myself around him. I felt so bad for him! He must have been really cold because he stayed there and he usually doesn't like to sleep under the blankets. I shut the patio doors and turned the floor heat on before I left so the house will be warm for him. We don't turn it on very often because it heats things up so well that it's usually too hot for us even at the lowest setting. If the apartments above and below us have their heat on, it's usually warm enough for us in our apartment.

I finally got to see my friend Hak Sun yesterday. It has been over a year since I last saw her. Every time we have made plans to get together something has always come up. She's busy with school and I am busy with work so it is hard to come up with a time that is good for both of us. Anyway, we were going to have lunch and then see a movie, but then she suggested an art exhibit at the Kukje Gallery so we did that instead. Allissa went with us and we all had a really great time. There was a restaurant at the Gallery called "The Restaurant" which we both found amusing. We had lunch there. It was really good and looking at the menu I thought the prices were lower than I had expected for a rather upscale restaurant. We discovered why once we were served. The portions were tiny! Allissa had pasta, so her meal was normal sized, but Hak Sun and I shared a scallop salad appetizer and a sirloin meal. There were only two slices of steak with some salad. It was pretty artistic though. There was a toadstool made out of a cherry tomato half dotted with a cream sauce on an asparagus stalk. It was glued to the plate with a bit of mashed potato. It was really cute! I should have taken a photo of it, but we had already started eating before I thought of it. The scallops on the salad were excellent. Everything was really good - there just wasn't much of it. We did get a nice, crusty dinner roll so that helped fill us up a little. There was also a starter of a bit of seared tuna with a sprig of frisee lettuce. That should have clued us in that the meal was going to be small because the tuna was about an inch square. We were going to order something else to eat such as the pasta Allissa had but by then the kitchen was closed except for desserts so we decided we would wait until we got to the cafe later. The exhibit was pretty good. There were four artists exhibited there. I think my favorite one was the first one whose work we saw. When you first look at it it looks like a bunch of cute Korean kids floating around and it has mainly pastel colors so it looks like a nice sweet piece. When you get close and look at all the figures individually though it is really rather violent with them stabbing each other and cutting heads off and things like that. I didn't like the violence of it so much, but I liked that exhibit the best because of the way it changed depending on your perspective. I also really liked the exhibit by Hye Rim Lee which was a computerized animation type artwork. After we went through the exhibits we went to the cafe and hung out there and had coffee and talked for a while. It was a really nice time. We had the waitress take a photo of us. Allissa and I held our hands the way a lot of young Koreans do when they take photos. We tried to anyway. The palm is supposed to be facing out, not in. By then, it was getting late so we walked to the subway and took the train home. Hopefully, we will be able to get together again soon.