Technology Hos

i will have a few more pictures soon, but i had to mention something that happened at the yi household today. so i am "temporarily" living at my parents' house, which is a two story place. my cousin lives with us and he occupies a room on the first floor, right below my bedroom. we do not have an intercom system, but since it's a small house, we're gotten really good at yelling, "telephone!" or "dinner!" over the years.

but even the yis have joined the 21st century. so, my cousin picks up a phone call on our house line, which was for me. even though he knew i was in the house, i guess he didn't want to yell, so...he picks up his cellphone to call my cellphone to tell me to pick up the house phone!

later, i applaud my cuz for his genius and lazy move and i guess my dad overheard our conversation. next thing i know, while i'm putzing around in my room, i get a call on my cellphone from my dad on his cellphone: "saujin, come downstairs for dinner."

Casual Wear For Men

maybe this is only funny to me. someone in college told me once that only west coasters call wedgies "murf". oh well.

Whiskey

if you ever visit the jameson distillery in dublin, you should never do this "compare and contrast" irish whiskey tasting at 2 pm. my lesson learned.

Belly Funk Train Evidence

classic picture. this is nora sitting on the floor...on her backpack...at the end of the train...by the bathroom door...for 4.5 hours...on 2 hours of sleep...because of the stupid stanky belly man. doesn't she just look so happy?

Mmm Beer

our guinness dude decorated the foam. impressive irish.

Ceiling Head

this ceiling was in one room of the dublin castle. i was weirdly obsessed with the random head sticking out and it turned out to be apollo...



on a side note, it really bothers me that the word "vacuum" has two u's. steph agrees.

The Micra

i figure i'll post a "picture of the day" from the trip for a few days. of course, i had to start with our little fugly micra.

Good Ol' LA

though our bodies are thoroughly confused, we are back in LA. i'm sure i'll have more stories soon, but for now, a little tribute to our livers.

Guest Blog by the Travel Partner

Nora:
so for those of you that haven´t met me, i would like to start out by saying that despite my portrayal in this blog i don´t act like a drunken beavis ALL of the time. i mean, yes i did spend most of our visit to the prado museum pointing out the size of the wee wees in all the naked jesus paintings….but really, you would have too.

few days ago, we decided to go to an arab bath to take a vacation from our vacation. the baths are very spa like. The baths are all Moorish looking (see, we learned something on this trip!), with low ceilings, fancy tiling and random arabic writing on the walls although it probably just says “we built this in 1987, you stupid tourist.” everyone hangs out in these pools for 1.5 hours practically meditating. that is, everyone except for saujin yi, who is doing weird acrobatic synchronized swimming in the middle of the pool because she is so bored. she also chased a couple around with her head underwater and her hands above like fins pretending to be jaws. they were not amused.

we are leaving for london in couple of hours and heading home tomorrow. so today we decided to make up for 39 days of non-present buying with a gift shopping spree. i don´t mean a tshirt here, a trinket there kind of spree. i mean a saujin on the last day of an adidas sale kind of spree. oh, and our sauj finally had a breakthrough…she discovered skirts! i´m so proud that my girliness rubbed off on her…

Plea to All Cats

dear all cats of the world,

why do you hate me so? why do you make me feel so crappy in your presence? why do you have potent fur that make my eyes water, my skin itch, and my nose run? why do you glare at me with your itty-bitty eyes and meow at me like you are ready to pounce? what did i ever do to you?!?!?! i never skinned you. i never cooked you. what´s up with that?

please, dear cats, if you´re listening, let´s be friends. i truly believe the world is big enough for both of our species.

your soon-to-be-bff,
sauj

Sign Language

we´re on our way to the eastern coast of spain, the last leg of our trip. i can´t believe we have less than a week left. though i´m having a fantastic time, i can´t wait to dig into some mama yi´s korean cooking when i get back to LA. oh, kimchi, don´t worry, mama´s comin´home soon.

random story of the day:
on a stroll through the park few days ago, a brit chick darted towards me with a broken flipflop in her left hand. in broken, slow, retarded english, she says: ¨do you know...these shoes...where...NEW ONES????¨ with this big wax-on-wax-off hand motion. i stare at her for a split second and say, ¨there were a few shoe stores on the street behind us.¨ she responds quietly: ¨oh, you speak english. thanks.¨ and she walked away.

so, i can give her credit for thinking that i was some asian tourist who spoke a little english (i mean, i was wearing my fobby visor). okay, fine. but how is that stupid hand gesture the universal sign language for anything?

The Don

we´re in hot and dry madrid, but what´s new, i love it here too. last night, i got a chance to meet up with a friend from my little league / high school days. annie moved here about five years ago, and it´s really neat to see how assimilated she is to this country (her spanish is so fluent...our high school teachers would be very proud.). it had been literally nine years since i last saw her. on our way out to the bars, she said to me: ¨wait, do you drink?¨ i think nora snorted. i guess we all have changed a lot since our dorky high school days.

on another side note, mr. clean is ¨don limpio¨on spanish tv. it sounds like he needs a little dose of viagra. nora laughed at this for about 10 minutes.

Restaurant Hos

we have safely arrived in granada, after a few days in sevilla and cordoba. this whole southern spain region is great. unfortunately, our laziness is starting to take over our touristiness. common phrases in our daily conversation include: ¨hey look! big stick.¨ or ¨dude, that looks like something.¨ we´re definitely taking less pictures and more siestas.

the one thing that is good about our laziness is that we are spending more time at restaurants and bars and ¨meeting the locals.¨ in sevilla, we managed to have a 40-year-old restaurant owner and his 20-year-old waiter take us to a local flemenco dive. we never figured out which of these dudes was playing spanish wingman and which one of us was the target, but it turned out to be a fun night anyway.

on a random note, i´ve been called chinese way more than japanese on this trip (whereas in italy, i only heard ¨are you yaponase???¨). just in case you were wondering.