I think when people visit Seoul they can make the mistake of doing a lot of wandering around but missing all the good points. We recently did this video for Seoul Guided Walking Tour, which is a free government program for tourists (or residents) that offers many walking tours.
For example, a lot of people go to Gyeongbokgung palace and aimlessly walk around. While there are some signs with history points, it is actually hard to get a good sense of the cultural and historical context. There are tours that the palace provides but I was way more impressed with our guide who is from the Seoul Guided Walking Tour program. He also showed us the best way to get around, particularly as we had a stroller. The course we did is designed for those with wheelchairs, strollers, or those who have less mobility.
Our son really liked the palace because of the space and the sand for playing in with his dinosaurs. Our tour guide was also understanding how difficult it can be with a toddler too.
We also had a famous friend do the course with us! Check out the video to see who it is.
There are many different types of tours provided and our friends have tried out some of the others. Even living in Seoul, they did not know so much of what their tour guide told them. There are many hidden gems in Seoul. It’s a lot harder finding these places yourself, and even if you do, you may not have the information and context about it. If you are planning a trip to Seoul, check out some walking tours.
Our son gets a little bit of attention from fashion brands on Instagram and occasionally gets sent some clothes. This brand, Urban Edition, has sent him clothes before and they also invited him to a Fashion Week runway show. Yes, a toddler was invited. We of course, went with him but even the seats said his name plus guests! We were right at the front row. A friend has also given him a birthday present of dinosaurs right before, so he was pretty occupied with the dinosaurs rather than looking at fashion.
After the show he met the designer and showed her his new dinosaurs too. To a two-year-old it was very important to show his dinosaurs! Luckily he does well at events for a toddler so we can take him to things like this.
Hugh also got some footage of the Saturday of Seoul Fashion week. This is usually when most people go and it gets very busy. We didn’t take our son Yul to Fashion Week on Saturday because so many people would be taking photos of him and it could get pretty overwhelming. Now that he is older and more aware we are selective about what we expose him to.
Seoul Fashion Week is certainly very interesting though and Hugh tried to capture a lot of the fashion on the Saturday. You may recognise some of our friends there too.
We didn’t film anything specific for his birthday but Hugh put together this little video of home movies to share.
It seems like yesterday but also such a long time ago that Yul came into our lives. The first month of his life while he was in the NICU was extremely difficult, but now he is a happy and healthy toddler.
I realised we didn’t share much of his first birthday, even though we have footage, because we didn’t have much time to put anything together a year ago. Also, we are not family vloggers so we don’t share a lot of our lives on a day to day basis. We started YouTube a long time before we had Yul and we will continue to make videos without him. When we do have him in videos it’s usually about a specific event or activities, not daily vlogs. We are careful about what we do show online and that he will be able to watch all these videos when he is older.
It’s not secret that he loves dinosaurs though! Most of his presents from us, and from others, were all dinosaur related. He was very happy!
Over the next few months we are going to show some of the amazing restaurants in the Mangwon area. Mangwon is known for having many small but amazing food places. We want to share some of our favourites. Lao Piak is a place we eat at regularly and it’s one of the only Lao food places in Korea.
The owners and chefs are two Korean women who fell in love with Laos on a trip. They learned how to make Lao food from Lao people in the Laos countryside and then came back to Korea to open their restaurant.
A lot of people assume they have never eaten Lao food before. But a lot of Thai food, especially the types of Thai food that has been exported to the west, is actually Lao food. There has been a real problem of Thaification of Lao food and Lao people have faced discrimination in Thailand for a long time. Also since Thai food is known in western countries more than other countries from region, many Lao people will call their restaurant Thai, even though it’s really Lao food.
These days there is a movement for Lao people, whether they are living in Laos, Thailand or other countries to be proud of their culture and food. If you do see a restaurant openly serving Lao food, please go and support it so that Lao people don’t have to pretend the food is Thai to attract customers.
I think it’s great that the owners of Lao Piak have such respect for Laos and want to show what Lao food is. They could have easily said the food is Thai, as there are many Thai restaurants in Seoul and Thai food is popular, but instead they want to educate people about Lao food.
If you have trouble finding places from the Korean address, the closest big landmark is the newish IPark apartments which have a park in front of them. Lao Piak is in one of the nearby backstreets, across the road from the apartments and the park.
It’s been years since we’ve done one of these videos! Let’s check out what Korean convenience stores have to offer when you are looking for a whole meal.
It’s been a while since I’ve made a comic! Besides from just being a busy mother, my laptop is quite slow these days, so it makes comic drawing not as enjoyable.
We will be moving into a new apartment at start of next year, so I’m hoping I will have a proper office area again, and a better computer.
Always so many projects and things I want to do and never enough time.
And yes… Hugh really did get a photo of himself (topless) on a phone case. Thankfully the one he actually uses is the one with photos of Yul.
Usually people chat about comics over on Instagram, so make sure you follow the blog insta there.
How to foster an environment that encourage your children to be artistic and creative:
I have a regular segment on radio here in Seoul. TBS efm on Real Mom Real Talk. Recently I talked about how to encourage kids to be creative. I realised this was something I could make a video about.
Also many of you would have seen my videos here where
my toddler paints something and I finish the painting, so it’s a nice painting
collaboration together.
I am an artist, so I encourage my child to paint and
draw. My parents are not traditional artists though, but they raised my
siblings and I in a very creative home. They are creative in other ways.
I realised after doing the radio segment that many parents do want to encourage creativity but don’t know how. So I thought I could do a video with some real strategies for parents, even if the parent doesn’t feel like they are creative themselves. I want to stress that it’s never to late to learn how to be creative and giving your kids the right environment will allow them to develop life long skills.
So firstly, creativity is really important! Encouraging your child to draw and paint doesn’t mean that they have to be an artist later in life, but these skills can be transferred to many lines of work. Helping them be creative is a good base to help them later in life. But also, regardless of thoughts of worry about what jobs your kid will have later, being creative in itself is stress relieving: so many kids are stressed out these days so proving a good environment for creativity is going to help.
I think many parents feel overwhelmed about how to
provide the best creative environment for their kids.
Many parents try once a week, they get some paints out, or get some arts and crafts stuff out hoping it’s going to be a great lovely experience for their kids. The kids mix all the paints together, make a big brown mess and spill over the water. Or they get frustrated with the craft activity and it all becomes a stressful event for everyone.
Also many parents are stressed about the mess that
comes with art and that stress is projected onto the kids.
I do have some real tips about this.
Kids should have access to some art supplies at all times. I don’t mean access to paints all the time if they are young. Just at least crayons, and as they get older allow them access to paints at all time. And just crayons or pencils from a very young age. My son is almost two and at any time he can draw while at home. I know parents worry about them drawing on walls and furniture, I try to limit this by having so many big sketchbooks for him to draw in. Art should be part of life, not just a thing you do once every few weeks.
When doing something like painting. Don’t be stressed about the mess. Hovering over them cleaning up every spill is giving them the idea that they are doing something wrong. It is also devaluing art. Just try to prepare for mess, put down plastic or newspaper, have them wear old clothes. Don’t freak out about mess.
Don’t buy the cheapest art supplies when you can afford better ones. This is a mistake I have seen many many times. Now, I don’t mean parents who are in a very difficult financial situation and can only afford that. I mean parents who clearly spend money on other things like expensive toys, but when it comes to art they will only spend a few dollars on the worst type of watercolour paints. You’ve probably seen the one: there is so little paint, it’s so low quality and comes with one terrible brush. The child will paint for a bit, but it’s so hard to use and get discouraged. The other big problem is the message it’s giving to the child. The message is: art is not something important. And: “We as a family don’t spend money on this”. That is not encouraging to a child at all… yes they have the latest expensive toy, but it’s not worth paying a little bit more for some nice art supplies? It doesn’t mean you should buy professional level paints for a kid (you can if you want), but there is a lot of middle ground of reasonably priced art supplies. More than just one brush please!
How to stop your child from making a big brown mess? It’s good for this to happen at least once. Kids think, “If I mix all these colours together I will make the best colour ever! Oops it’s brown”. But to really encourage them to make amazing artwork I do have some suggestions. For young kids, put out colours that work well together. Just a few, so even if they are all mixed together it won’t just be brown. The other thing is so switch the paper or canvases regularly. I think a lot of the time kids keep painting because they aren’t given new paper, they want to keep painting but it just turns all brown as they overwork the picture.
Tell
them how wonderful their artwork is! Display it proudly. Maybe even do a collab
painting together. The paintings I have with my son is something really cool and
it’s a record of our creativity. It doesn’t mean you should keep every single
artwork your kid does forever if you don’t want to, but display them for long
periods of time.
Encourage other activities besides just drawing and painting. Rather than a bought structured art kit for an activity. Have a bunch of material so they can create whatever they want. We want to encourage unstructured play. Growing up we had what was called “the useful box” which was an idea we took from the kids tv show Playschool. Have a box with a lid where you have a combination of bought art supplies and then recycled containers and odds and ends. Things like construction paper, pipe cleaners, googly eyes, but also boxes and ribbons and paper that would otherwise be thrown out. Also provide scissors and glue. Allow them to use a hot glue gun as soon as they are old enough.
I have heard some concerns from parents about how their child loved drawing but then other kids in school were better than them at drawing. It became a competition and they felt bad about their drawings and just gave it up. This happens a lot because some kids are just naturally gifted at drawing and can be miles ahead of other kids their age. Don’t let your child give up. Talk to them about how sometimes we have to try really hard at something and keep practicing before we get better. Kids tend to focus on just drawing because that’s what is available to them: paper and pencils. By giving your kid paints and other crafty materials they may find that they can paint awesome paintings or make something amazing out of cardboard. There are lots of people who can draw very meticulously but have trouble putting colour onto a canvas. Don’t let your child feel discouraged. Also take them to art galleries where they can see all kinds of different art.
Understand that in order to have a creative environment things do need to get a bit messy. We live in a small apartment in Seoul and things get really really messy. But it’s worth it when I see how much my son loves drawing and painting.
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