Friday, April 26, 2013

(Hey Mom, I meant to do this for you after our Skype the other day, but then the mouse on my computer stopped working and rendered my computer unpredictably useless, but I am doing it now, on my birthday, as a gift to you, which makes more sense than giving a gift to me because you did all the work those 30 years ago on that best day of your life.)

We went to Mongolia. We saw. We conquered like Chinggis Khan (you've been saying it wrong, and you didn't even know it!). Actually, mostly Dan did lots of work, and Joash and I hung out with a bounty of fun kids and their bounty of toy vehicles. I will post the pictures quickly before my computer stops working again. A couple days ago the mouse was clicking itself. I think there was a ghost nestled briefly in its microchippery. It seems to have gone on by now.

Friday, April 12, 2013

We're here in Mongolia, and I can't believe we've already been here almost a week. Joash and I are settling in to life at the living complex for Dan's company. There are so many kids here, and he loves to chase them around until he gets overwhelmed and starts yelling at everybody. They have been too kind to us here, refilling our stores of candy and soda (liquid candy), somehow secretly when we even briefly leave our room.  Tomorrow we are going sight-seeing, and then we've been invited for a Mongolian dinner at the home of Dan's co-worker's sister. Joash has been subsisting on peanut butter and honey sandwiches for most meals of the day. I'm glad we thought to bring his green veggie muffins or I'm afraid his insides would melt into pureed peanuts.

Anyhow, I have two videos for the grandmoms that I forgot to post before we left. They are a little boring, but grandmoms don't seem to mind any of that.



Day to Day from serenity johnson on Vimeo.
I was trying to get him to throw the ball because he has an exceptional (and comical) wind up, but he was vocally disinterested.

 
Waterless Fountain from serenity johnson on Vimeo.
Playing on the waterless fountain, wishing water would come out.

Monday, April 1, 2013

You could guess why I'm writing. Dan's in Japan this week, but, honestly, I am getting so much better about it. I actually really appreciate all the singular attention I get from Joash, and good days are easy. So far, we've had two good days in a row, great days, really. Yesterday we celebrated Easter with a date at Lotteria for burgers and chicken nuggets (also, we celebrated Passover last week when Dan was here). Then we ran a couple shopping errands and played for a fantastically long time on the (currently) inert fountains outside of E-Mart. It was our warmest day yet, and Joash found a couple friends to squawk and squeal at. He is used to being chased down and tickled by the older girls at church, and I think he thinks that everyone's out to engage him. He's not entirely wrong, but only almost right.

Today we dug in the sand and watched a tractor tear apart one of the playgrounds by our house. The nice thing about Korea is that they do these things completely in the open without even any protective barriers, so we got to see it up close. And then we marveled as the guy magicked his way onto the truck bed by rotating the bucket front to back and doing alternating push ups. There was no ramp. Is that normal? It was amazing either way.