He was sleeping in, so Carly woke him up at 6:30. After nursing he lay on the reading area for several minutes. Carly felt well enough to head to work. I made toast for us, and we did math with the quarters of the two pieces, doing fractions. I had the Formula 1 race on and he watched a little of that. I then cut up banana and strawberries, and we did math with that. When he went to the bathroom, he asked math questions about cake slices while on the toilet. Most were small, but then he asked “What if there were 1 nonillion people and a hundred pieces of cake?” He requested typing in Skype. He sent emojis to gramma and grampa, typed a big number to Vivian – unvigintillion – and sent her “snake voices” (nonsense), then sent Carly a video where he had taken his shirt off so he could see his bones using the black and white effect. Cassie called on skype, and they were in the bath, so August and Vivian sent messages back and forth. Vivian wrote ‘I love you’. August started to type it back, but hit send before he was done and it autocorrected to ‘I log’. He then joked that Vivian was a log, and further joked that she just looked like a log (“Optical illusion”).
After that he did some more typing, then we exercised, and he played Dragonbox Big Numbers
Shower while I showered. He was hungry so I got some pizza. I made the first piece hot, so he wanted a second piece. I put the second in and barely warmed it. He ate a bite, but then said “cold” and reached into the container and grabbed a piece of cold pepperoni pizza and proceeded to eat the whole thing. We were listening to Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger album, and he was liking that, talking about hard rock guitar.
We got ready to go and left at 11:45. We sang “Rock Me Mama” on the way to the train, with him doing instruments and me making up words so it would go on and on, like he wanted. On the train he sat next to a woman who had different color stripes of polish on each finger, and really big costume jewelry bracelets, etc. August was fascinated by her fingernails, and was asking what the colors mixed would make. He then played her bracelet like an instrument. She got out a bottle of vitamin or supplements of some sort and gave August one. I felt very Korean letting him have it. It was too hard and big for him and he wanted it broken up. I had to use my teeth. It was basically like an Altoid, I think. Anyway, he liked it, at least.
He then wanted to extend the ‘How Many?’ song from YouTube. We used Wikipedia to figure out that there are 11 players on a soccer team, 12 is a dozen, 13 a baker’s dozen, 14 is days in a fortnight, and 15 is the number of minutes in a quarter hour.
We got to Ttukseom Resort and August wanted to go straight to the J-Bug building. As we went, I remembered there is a piano at the other end. We headed over there to find a few guys playing the piano. August listened for awhile (the guy playing literally played Chopsticks and that other horrible song that everyone here plays on piano) and we sat and ate our sandwich. He also really liked the sculpture of metal butterflies snaking up the wall and across the ceiling. I looked out at the round garden area, which is now ripped out. August said “They undoed it?” We then discussed the various forms of ‘do’, ‘undo’, and ‘redo’ and what they mean.
We then we went to ride the elevator up to the third floor. We looked around, but there are less and less animals up there every time. When we came back down the piano was free, so we played it for a good twenty minutes. We made a list of the songs he can play:
– Are You Sleeping
– Yankee Doodle
– Itsy Bitsy Spider
– Old MacDonald
– Ants Go Marching
– When Johnny Comes Marching Home
– Mary Had a Little Lamb
– London Bridge
I think he also knows Hot Crossed Buns. Not sure about Baa Baa Black Sheep, Twinkle Twinkle, and ABC… Anyway, I asked what song he wants to learn next, and he said “I don’t know. There’s thousands and millions.” Then decided “It’s O.K.” His first punk song, it will be.
He had a ton of fun, and when two women came, one with a violin, to play he was reluctant to give it up. I tried to have us sit and watch for awhile, but he was a little too frustrated for that, although I could tell he was excited by the sight of the violin.
So we went and used the bathroom, then headed outside. Oh, and on the way in he had thought that the big wooden bench, made up of dozens of vertical wooden pieces, looked like an instrument. We went to the big playground area to the east of the station. Along the way he stopped to smell and count petals on flowers.
At the playground he directed me to the sand. I swept to get down to the wetter sand for writing purposes, but he kept erasing what he would write, saying it was too chunky. He had been wearing his hat while in the sun, but then took it off as we went to the play structure. We played there for a long time. He was telling other kids “I’m bigger than you.” or “We’re the same size.” And then saying they were the same age or he was older. Which seems kind of rude from an American standpoint, but is SOP for Korean culture. He also did a lot of climbing and we went down the metal slide a few times. Up in the sine waves, I reminded him of resting in there and being (I think) Spikey from Puffin Rock. I mentioned we had also played a game, but that I didn’t remember what it was. He did. He remembered the flying snake game and we played that. At some point today I had said something that made him think my voice sounded like Kipper. He then invented a game that played on both his fear of our food being blown away and his favorite Kipper TV show episode, the one in which he and Tiger have an ill-fated picnic: the chips blowing away game. Basically, I would tell a story of Kipper and Tiger having a picnic and their chips would blow away. He would then want this again, but I’d change it up a bit.
He needed a little coaching to climb the big climbing wall and the big rope ladder parts the first time, but then climbed each on his own. Back under the structure, there was a mom with a smaller boy. August had to go investigate, because he heard music. She had Korean kids music playing from her phone in her back pocket. August went and listened, then when she climbed out, he followed the music and just hung around next to her, listening. Pretty funny.
When we were on top we had seen some helicopters, and August had spotted kites flying in the sky. So when we were ready to go we planned to find the source of the kites and to go over to the flower garden area to the east to check it out. On the way back across the playground we found a small abandoned sand shovel. I suggested we take it with us. He said no, but went and played with it for a couple minutes before leaving it in the sand area.
We went to the drinking fountain to fill his water and get a drink, and ended up playing with it (it kind of makes a waterfall down the side) for several minutes. Drinking fountains are one of many things where I’ve been thinking about how poorly they are designed. This was a perfect example, as one side had a step for kids. But it was a little step and a tall drinking fountain, meaning you still had to be 8 or 9 to reach the water. Why design something that can’t be reached by people until they are 8 and that aren’t accessible to people in wheelchairs at all?
We went to the bathroom and got in the backpack and walked down the steps and found the boy and mom flying a kite. We then walked over the the flower garden. It’s a rose garden, but given Korea’s love of changing flowers with the seasons I expected other flowers. There weren’t any, but we did see other flowers along the way. We walked back to the station, and headed home. He stood up and played Dragonbox Big Numbers again.
We were home at 5:20. They nursed, then I got him some dinner. He said he didn’t like the spaghetti sauce though, so I cut up a tortilla and gave him a bowl with
olives, sour cream, beans, and cheese in it, and we used a spoon to put the stuff on the tortilla pieces. Carly gave him a bath – think there was more Pirates of the Caribbean – and I did dishes and she took him to bed early, at 6:40.
Photos:
Ttukseom. Watching piano:
Flowers:
Sand:
Play structure:
Ready for a walk:
Drinking fountain:
More flowers: than
