In April, I headed back to Australia with the kids. Hugh couldn’t come because of work, but I was determined to give the kids a good holiday. While living in Korea, the kids tv show Bluey has been a vital connection to Australian English and culture for us.

For those that don’t know, Bluey is a wonderful Australian cartoon that has gained popularity worldwide. It’s heartfelt, funny and quintessentially Australian. Especially during the pandemic it was wonderful for Yul to watch something Australian and hear real Australian kids’ voices. It helped his English a lot.

Even though the characters are dogs in Bluey, the world feels very real and very Australian. There were elements of the show that I wanted my kids to experience. So while filming a bit of what we did in Australia, I tried to match up some experiences to actual Bluey episodes.

One of the reasons why we went back to Australia was for my brother’s wedding. Yul was a page boy! It was also his first Australian wedding and he enjoyed himself immensely. Australian weddings are much longer, and bigger events, than Korean weddings so it went for many hours. Modern Korean weddings don’t usually have a wedding reception with speeches and dancing like weddings in western countries. We did wonder how Yul would cope with all the people and long hours and noise. But he did really well! Having a flexible lifestyle with him does really help in these situations as he adapts well.

He also did such a good job of walking down the aisle with his second cousins. I wasn’t sure if he’d be able to, but since he’d had some practice he knew exactly what to do on the day. Even though there was a heat wave, the wedding was beautiful and we are so happy to welcome my brother’s wife into our family. She is Chinese Malaysian, so they also had a ceremony in Malaysia and celebrated lunar new year there. My parents and my other brother also went to Malaysia for those celebrations too. We had to head back to Korea for lunar new year here though.

If you watch the video to the very end you can see Yul in his hanbok in the car (that Hugh is controlling). We didn’t buy him that car! Friends bought it for him, but he really does love it.

This happened while in Australia. Yul would play in water almost every single day and he particularly liked played with the garden hose. Hugh discovered the parenting secret of just hosing your kid down in the backyard instead of going to the trouble of giving them a proper bath.

Yul didn’t mind.

Here is a montage of our Christmas holiday. Christmas is in summer in Australia so there can be different traditions to those in the northern hemisphere. My family rents a holiday house in a small coastal town. For Christmas day we also had some Korean friends who work in Sydney come down the coast to join us. At first they were worried that they were invading the privacy of our Christmas but we assured them that Christmas is the time for sharing and every year we always have extra people for Christmas. Hugh absolutely loves Christmas in Australia, especially because Christmas in Korea is pretty much a nonevent and just for couples. We still have some northern hemisphere traditions like a baked ham, Christmas crackers and a Christmas tree, but Australian Christmases can also involve seafood, cherries, water fights and swimming.

We didn’t plan to do much for New Year’s Eve but we ended up at a cool apartment and then close to the fireworks! We were really lucky.

It’s rare for all of us to be together. Han and Sophie (and Alice) live in Australia, but Daniel and Chloe and us live in Korea. Daniel and Han are both sometimes in our Ask Korean Guys videos with Hugh. While the three wives (me, Sophie and Chloe) are all close friends. It was great to all be together.

Make sure you watch to the end to see the BIGBANG dancing and singing!

Yes there can actually be kangaroos jumping down the street in Australia! Just not everywhere though. Kangaroos aren’t usually as tame as the ones here either. Where we go for holidays is a small coastal town that is very quiet and over the years the local kangaroos have become very used to people. They used to just come and graze on people’s lawns in the evening but now they seem to be comfortable to stay in town during the day as well. When the sun gets too hot you can find them sleeping in the shade in people’s backyards. Some, especially the females, will let you pat them a bit as well.

Of course kangaroos can be dangerous, but there are many different species in Australia and in all different places. There are vast differences between a big aggressive Red Kangaroo in the outback and a smaller tame Grey kangaroo in a coastal town.

Because we have such limited internet in Australia, we are just going to make very short videos like this while here.

We are in Australia! We flew Japan airlines first to Japan, and then down to Australia. We had a great experience with them so we will definitely fly with them again. We arrived in Sydney a few days ago and have just been catching up with friends before we go down the coast to the holiday house where we will have Christmas with my family.

I’m really unsure if I’ll have internet access while we are there for a week, but we’ll see.

I am loving the summer heat! I know people are already sick of it, but compared to horrible humidity in the Korean summer, this feels so much better to me. I can handle the drier heat. I can’t wait to go to the beach too!

We are in Australia for 6 weeks, so we’ll spend a lot of time in my hometown as well.

Han demonstrates the Aussie way of carrying babies…