Friday: Seoul Trail – Section 4, day 1

He was up about 6. He was watching symphony videos, then playing Discovery Music when I got up. Carly made him a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast, and he started doing cake math (which has come up several times): “What happens if there’s 15 people and 17 pieces of cake?” When asked what happens to the extra he said “Bob” gets it. He then had 16 people and 100 pieces of cake. When Bob got 10 of them, Carly said that maybe it was vegetable cake. August thought about it and ran across the room saying “Vegetable cake doesn’t make sense!” He then said “I winned.” He’s said that a couple times. Not sure where it came from, but maybe just our discussions of checkers and go. Then more general math with blueberries as he kept adding more. He joked about calling 13 “threeteen” again, which he came up with yesterday.

We played mandolin and did chords, then did a little of the snake game. He was playing the xylophone and I would ask for him to make songs with names like “Please don’t eat my cheese”. I had cereal and strawberries for breakfast, but he didn’t want any. Exercised, then we played the “I lost my spaceship” game with the Teuni alien. We got ready to go, and were shooting for 9, but he really got into DragonBox Big Numbers, so we played that together and left 9:30.

Took line 7 south, and transferred at Gangnam-gu Office. We had talked about getting a stamp and that we were going on a hike, but I’m pretty sure I hadn’t mentioned Seoul Trail today. But as we got on the second train and he was looking at the maps and talking about directions, he said we were “Seoul Trail bound”.

We got walking at 10:40. He saw the number ‘119’ on something and I told him it was the number to call for an emergency in Korea. He asked “What’s the number for United States?”

We got to where the trail headed into the hills. He looked up and said “That’s a lot of stairs.” Thanks for pointing that out. We got going up. He was fine, but bothered by the bumps of the stairs. We took a break at 11:25 and had a little snack. When we got going again at 11:40 he wanted to walk, so walked a way. Got him in the backpack at another bench area, but he would complain about bumps. Got to a nice viewpoint, then we were singing London Bridge, and I made a mistake where I skip the “We must build it up again” verse (as we learned it without first). He said “Why you do that every time?” He said “I’m tired.” And I replied “No I’m tired” It turned into the Bugs Bunny game, where you say “You’re tired.” etc.

He was complaining about bumps some more and talked about wanting down. So we stopped at a bench/water area at 12:15 and ate most of our lunch and had some fresh water. We started with one of the little snickers that he had gotten the other day. He liked that. We ate more of our little cheese and tuna round things. We had stopped in the subway station and got a bag of cheese ones and a bag of tuna ones. We had also gotten a roll of kimbap. I didn’t realize it had kimchi in it, so at first I thought he wouldn’t eat it. But it was barely spicy at all, so I encouraged him to try it, and said something like “Just one bite”. He said “Green Eggs and Ham”, as that was a line from the book. And he did like it, and ate much of it. After all that he said he was “Very, very, very, very, very, very hungry.” and ate a bunch of strawberries.

A big lunch in his stomach, we got walking again at 12:45. He was happier now, and I was doing a better job of being light on the steps and he didn’t complain about the bumps much more, and in fact said he wanted more bumps later on. We saw a little squirrel and watched it, then heard a woodpecker. Tried to track it down, but couldn’t spot. Also, we saw a lot of helicopters through the day. He spotted a couple on his own and was excited about that.

At the 4 kilometer mark we came to a Buddhist temple and looked around there and watched them hanging lanterns for the upcoming Buddha’s Birthday. Just past that was a a park/forest and it had a playground. We stayed there for a half hour, from 1:10 to 1:40.

He started by climbing down a very flat climbing wall, but aborted because of an insect. But when I went to get rid of it for him it turned out to be a fuzzy seed pod thing from a tree. It looked like a caterpillar. He thought that was pretty funny. I paused at one point to plug in my phone to the battery pack and I thought it wasn’t working. He was really interested in that, and kept asking “Why’s it not working?” We went down the metal slide together, and then he found that he could climb up it. So we went up and down and around several times, and walked up the climbing wall together several times.

We went over to the bathroom, then came back and got in the backpack. He wanted a song and I made up a slither song. He seemed to like it, but then said “I want a real song”. We walked past a set of tree trunks that were cut so you could see the inside of them. He. Asked “Those are urinals?” They were, indeed, sort of shaped like urinals.

We got walking again, moving along well now. We stopped one more time, when we saw some exercise equipment and he said he wanted to get down and play on it. We played there from 2:25 to 3:10. He found a big stick and was playing with it like you would expect a three year old to do – mainly swinging it around and hitting things. He spotted a helicopter and pointed at it with the stick, then was using it to touch things that he couldn’t reach, and talking about that. He then said “this is an ax”. He then was hitting a metal bar and said “…meditate…rest…This instrument helps you rest.” At the temple we had visited he had spotted a couple different instruments – a big drum and a couple of the smaller things they use. Then “I’m back to axing.” I took Smokey out of the backpack and we took a couple photos of him sitting on a bench. I had Smokey sit on the back of the bench and August was a bit concerned that he’d blow away.

Finally, he was putting his hands over his head in a circle and said “is it sunny?” That was from a song in his Poli class.

We got walking again. After that first temple I had thought we were going to see another temple. He had said “where you want to meditate?” We didn’t see a second temple, but he was thinking about the meditating. He asked “Why birds don’t meditate?” I told him he would have to ask the birds. He wasn’t happy I didn’t know.

I knew the last couple of kilometers were flat, along a stream. We were quite high up, so knew the downhill was coming. The trail fooled me twice, as after going down I twice had to climb up big sets of stairs. At one of them August said “I want to do it…I want to go up,” I told him that was easy for him to say. But soon we were on the last bit of hill and it headed down. It was smooth sailing from there. We got down to the streets, then the stream. Along the stream we went through a few tunnels. August counted the lights using funny numbers again, and sang loudly to make an echo.

We got to Yangjae Citizens’ Forest 양재시민의숲, at the end of our trip, and stopped at bathrooms, then found the stamp box and let him do the stamp in our stamp booklet. Along the way we looked at flowers in a couple of spots. We headed to the subway station, then made our way home. We transferred to line 7 at the Bus Terminal stop, but couldn’t get a seat. So he played DragonBox Big Numbers while standing, with the iPad on the backpack. That went fine until around Sangbong when I looked down and saw liquid on the floor. I said “Did you pee?” He looked up, said “Yeah” and broke out crying. We jumped off the train at Junghwa, changed him on the empty platform, then jumped on the next train. He was pretty sad about it, and took a good amount of comforting.

He was fine by the time we left Hagye though. At Brownstone we stopped to get a box that had come. Carly had ordered something. I said maybe it was socks for her. He
said “maybe Zinnie socks.” Wee were home at 6:17. Carly was home just after 6:30. They were nursing and I was telling Carly about our day and he turned to me and said “Stop talking.” Carly asked him, and it seemed like he didn’t want me talking about him. But hard to tell. After that I was asking him questions about our day to get him to tell her.

Carly lured him to his bath with the idea of eating dinner while in the bath. But he didn’t eat much. He watched Beethoven’s Ninth, and was asleep about 7:30.

Lunch stop: