Throwback Thursday

Today I'm going back to the time when Noah was two years old, and his 14-year-old foster sister came to live with us for a month. 

January 19, 2004 On Saturday, Ji-Young and I made a Korean meal. It took us over 2 hours! She said her mother makes it in 30 minutes. She called her mother at 5 a.m. Korean time and told her about our cooking experience, and her mother said, “2 hours! Did you grow the flour and harvest it, and did you raise a chicken to lay the egg? What took you so long? Tell them that when they come to Korea, I will cook them a good Korean meal.” Mike and I liked the food, but Ji-Young said it was not good. We spent a couple hours making the grocery list before we went to the Asian market. One of the things on the list was “green pumpkin”. I had no idea what it was, and we didn’t find it at the Asian market. When we were in Kroger, she pointed to a zucchini and said, “Green pumpkin!” Yesterday she asked me for some “acetone” and I didn’t know what she meant. Turns out she wanted nail polish remover. She told us that in Korean “Jello” is called “jelly”. In Korea, when taking a picture, the subjects say “kimchee” instead of “cheese”. These are just a few of the little things we’ve learned. We bought Noah his first pet tonight: an 18-cent goldfish named Flipper from Walmart. Noah is a proud and attentive pet owner. Mike gives the fish 3 days to live; I say 4 days, and Ji-Young guesses 5 days. When he passes on, we’ll have to get a quick replacement before Noah notices. One of our favorite things that Noah has been saying lately is, “Dada do, don’t know”, which means “What is Daddy doing?” If he wants to ask a question about anything, he just attaches “don’t know” to the end of his statement.