It's good to be back. Sort of. Mostly.

We were so happy to come home to sleep in our own soft, supportive bed. The bed in our hotel in Korea was like a slab of cement. It was killing my hips to sleep on it.

It's nice to get away from the cold and sweaters that don't fit me. And every place being super overheated. Koreans think the heat is good for you so they keep everything really warm. I was hot the whole time we were inside anywhere.

We defintely, DEFINITELY are happy to get back to American food. Korean food is terrible. I am not even exaggerating. We only ate it a couple of times and then sought out non-Korean restaurants. Everything cooking smells bad... like boiling gym socks and rotten veggies. The two meals I ate Korean were served to us by our ROK hosts for the conference I attended. I had bulgogi and bim bim bap.

Ah, bim bim bap. I didn't starve the day they served us this because it came with some beef side dish and a fried shrimp that were pretty good. Every Korean meal comes with dozens of little side dishes of rotting vegetables and other curiosities that everyone just eats out of communally (eh, not me). Yes, that's an uncooked egg yolk sitting there. You are supposed to scoop a whole big pile of rice in that bowl and mix it all up. Yeuk.

Bulgogi smells terrible. The beef itself wasn't actually too bad, but everything served with it was not good. Halfway through our meal a waitress came by our table where a little cauldron of the stuff was simmering over a burner and poured in more broth, which looked like dirty laundry water. I was done eating at that point.

I have more pictures of the food, when I post our pics you will see. Half the time we were just like... what IS that?

We were happy to escape the horrible pollution. Hawaii's air is so clean compared to most places because the trade winds blow any pollution right out to sea. Seoul was so polluted you couldn't see buildings that were two football fields away on a bad day. As soon as we got into the outskirts of the city there was this acrid stench that actually burned my throat. Going along with that are the many other smells that Korea is famous for. Before I went several people told me that the whole city smells funny. I can assure you it is true. I think it's mainly kimchee? But also sewage, pollution, fish, boiling gym socks, etc.

However.

I was not pleased to see that while we were away, the bugs and geckos were getting quite comfortable in our house. I can tell this because I found many poops and this grainy dirt that the geckos and bugs leave behind on the counters. There were three poops smeared on the bathroom counter and one ON THE TOILET PAPER ROLL. Smeared on there.
I'm in ur bafroom, poopin on ur toilet papers.

One poor gecko found his way into the kitchen sink and we finally figured out that he could not get out of there. Adam kept trying to catch him but he kept running into the drain and hiding out. Then one day he was sitting on our soap wand and didn't move at all... Adam says he had given up on life. He didn't try to get away when Adam got him out and put him in the little patch of ground cover in our front yard we call the Lizard Kingdom because so many of the buggers live in there. He's lucky he didn't get snarled up in the disposal.

And the bugs! The first night we were back, I got up to pee in the middle of the night, like I usually do these days now that my bladder can apparently only contain a tablespoon of liquid, and I was sitting there in the dark when I felt this PLOP on my head. MY HEAD! I about jumped through the ceiling, probably sprayed pee on myself, and started pawing at myself to get the thing off. I turned on the light to discover it was a giant cockroach. I didn't have anything to kill it with so I sprayed it with 409 and found it dead on the stairs the next morning.

And work. Work, work, work. I was not really happy to come back to work. Things are really busy right now for some reason. Almost a whole year goes by with me complaining that I'm too bored at work and now that I'm pregnant, suddenly it's like a firehose.

Still, we are glad to be home! It's Christmas time! My mom is coming in, and my dad will be here next week. Plus only a few more days until our next ultrasound and we get to see the little butter bean again!