We spent the last four days of our trip exploring Seoul. I had seen plenty of travel tips and vlogs on social media, so I was worried that the city had become too hip for us.

And in some ways, it has gotten very cool (but maybe it always has been!). We stayed in Seongsu-dong, which is known for being a very hip area, especially among people who are much younger than we are. One hot item these days is 소금빵 or salt bread. It’s very buttery bread with a healthy sprinkle of salt. We didn’t get ours from the most famous bakery because they only sold packs of four, but we were able tog et the idea from another bakery down the street.

But in a city as big as a Seoul (and this feels so obvious to say), you can find the things that you like, and for us, those things are: wandering around, pointing out amusing things, sitting in shady parks (and using the exercise machines), and getting afternoon caffeine.

There were plenty of new experiences, including seeing 성북동 for the first time. We went to check out a little store selling postcards and had a quick wander around. For lunch, we found a place with a grilled pork wrap lunch special. After watching us eat for awhile, the employees appeared to deem us worthy and presented us with a small dish of sauced garlic cloves. When I went to pay, they expressed surprise that Harrison could eat “really spicy food,” though he says that particular meal did not rank in the top ten spiciest things he had on the trip.

We also visited 서촌 village for the first time. Another adoptee friend Sarah lives there, and she and her kids took us on a tour of their very cute neighborhood, including this discount ice cream store. It’s basically one room with coolers full of packaged ice cream bars and other convenience store-type snacks. There’s no employee or cashier; you pay on an honor system (although as the picture shows, there’s CCTV).

Another first: visiting Lotte World for the first time. We had walked around it but never actually paid the entrance fee. It was much bigger than I thought: there’s an inside roller coaster, as well as a bridge connecting you to a full theme park inside the city. The lines for rides were long because we visited after school on a Thursday, so we only wandered around and rode the Monorail, but it was fun to just observe.

This isn’t even the park, but I remembered the miniature Trevi Fountain at the Jamsil Lotte World subway stop.

I had to take advantage of the cheap and good Korean haircuts. For about £20, I got a wash-and-dry cut, which also included a head massage and a little crescent-shaped pillow to rest my hands on during the cut. The stylist 가을 was so cute, and she gave me a little packet of cookies afterwards.

(Your hair never looks as good as the professional blow-dry. Mine now looks particularly bad because we’re back in the rock-hard water of London.)

I was proud at what a good job we did eating a bunch of different Korean dishes. We tried new things (eel aspic, intestines, and blood sausage) but plenty of staples, like 찜닭 and 순두부찌개.

(I kept doing the conversion to GBP, and it was nearly half. I challenge someone to find an equivalently filling and healthy meal for £6 in London!)

On our last day, we took the subway out to the shiny and new neighborhood of Hannam-dong where my friend SunJoo lives.

I’ve been to Seoul numerous times, and I still am surprised by the size and number of the high-rise apartment buildings. It’s such a different look from places I’ve lived, and I was shocked to hear SunJoo say that there are no empty units in most of the buildings. The size of Asian mega-cities always blows me away.

Outside of Hannam-dong, we went to 두물머리 park, which is an area that is largely visited by tourists. It was a weekday, so it wasn’t super crowded, but SunJoo said it’s very popular with Koreans.

It’s an “eco-tourism” spot in Yangpyeong County, so the area is protected from development and pollution. (You can’t swim or boat in the water.) In the spring, there are plenty of blooming lotus flowers, but during our visit, it was mostly large leaves and dried out seed pods. We did see a turtle though!

This area is also famous for corn dogs, which Korean call “hot dogs” (핫도그), in a lotus-flour coating. SunJoo assured us that these are the most Instagrammed hot dogs in all of Korea.

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We had a blast in Korea. I went in with such high expectations, especially as this was my first trip outside of the US or Europe, since pre-2020. It was a fun and rewarding challenge to speak Korean every day, and I was so happy to spend time with friends, even doing chill activities like running errands together.

Since moving to London and doing more traveling in Europe, I’ve noticed what an aberration London’s size is. Many of the cities we’ve visited are small enough to visit for less than a week (though I understand that living and visiting are different wants to experience and know somewhere), but Seoul is so big that it feels like even after so many visits, I haven’t really scratched the surface or gotten my head around it. Oh well, more reasons to go back!

(But that flight though…it’s so long.)

On Friday, we said goodbye to Busan and headed towards Gwangju, where my friend Narae and her family live. There is no good way to get between the two cities by train, so we took an Express Bus, which took about three and a half hours.

Recently, they have released a new “premium” class of service, which includes fancy screens, wireless charging at the folding tables, and comfortable lie-flat seats. It was very comfortable, and I was able to take a much-needed nap. (The jet lag has not been kind to me on this trip!)

We originally were planning to stay in Busan an extra night, but we went to Gwangju early because Narae was able to book tickets for us to see a baseball game, one of the things I most wanted but hadn’t yet done in Korea. It was the home time, the Kia Tigers, against the Doosan Bears (based in Seoul). The Gwangju stadium is relatively small, so it felt more like an intimate local game, even though the Kia Tigers are currently #1 in the KBO.

I had heard that Korean baseball games were super fun, and they did not disappoint! Each player has their own special song and dance, and when they come up to bat, a cheer team leads the audience in the chant and hand motions. I found that this made the whole game more engaging, and I really enjoyed cheering.

(Narae’s husband Donghyun and two daughters joined us!)

There are also all the goofy things in between innings to keep people engaged, such as staring contests with one of the cheering squad and rock-paper-scissors with one of the mascots. You can also bring in your food; we enjoyed fried chicken with chopsticks.

Kia lost the game, but in the 8th inning, they pulled ahead with a home run, and the crowd went absolutely bonkers. Harrison and Narae were on their feet screaming and high-five-ing, and everyone was clapping and cheering. Even though Doosan ended up winning in the 9th inning, it was worth it to see the crowd’s enthusiasm.

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Gwangju is not a “normal” tourist destination for Korea, and Narae was surprised that we made the journey to see her. She worked hard to show us her home town, and her pride for the city is evident. We learned about the Gwangju Democratic Uprising, when students protested the martial law and military regime from General Chun Doo-hwan in 1980. Tragically, a violent military response resulted in the deaths of hundreds peaceful protestors, and it is still a raw and painful memory for Gwangju residents. (Narae said her mom heard gunshots and hid her baby brother at home with blankets over the windows.)

We were staying next to the Jeonil Building, which in 1980, was the tallest building in Gwangju. We visited an exhibit about the ongoing investigation to prove that the military fired from a helicopter into the Jeonil building.

I am embarrassed to say that I knew basically nothing about this, so I was so grateful that Narae took the time to show us this part of Gwangju’s history. I feel really lucky to have visited during May because the city remembers the uprising and has signs and events to commemorate it, including a student’s street festival right outside our building on Saturday. There were booths where we could learn about different aspects of the Uprising, as well as various social and community programs (experiencing the world with a white cane for Blindness, polls to vote on social assistance for orphaned Koreans, etc.).

Narae took us to a local market, that has started a “Night Market” with live music vendors, and places to eat and drink during the summer months. Narae said the night market is an attempt to revitalize the market (Gwangju’s population is shrinking.), but it was well-attended on Saturday!

This was the first event of the year, and it was crowded. We ended up taking our food back to their home.

This was my first time trying 육전(egg-dipped thinly sliced beef), 순대 (blood sausage), and 곱장 (stir-fried beef small intestines). Harrison and I found the latter to be totally inoffensive because they were cooked with spicy sauce and fragrant perilla leaves, but Narae said that they had a lingering smell and weren’t really good quality. We are not intestines connoisseurs.

Gwangju doesn’t have a lot of notable landmarks, so it has a lot of art installations and a very impressive Asian Cultural Center — a sprawling complex with museums, a theater, and a very good coffee shop.

It also has a “K-Pop street,” which as far as I can tell, is just a street with idol hand prints and this fun art installation. There’s a question scrawling across the screen, and the painted lanes have sensors under them, so you can vote by walking over a certain part of the road. The current question was Have you ever dreamed of being a k-pop star?

On our last night in Gwangju (after an errand detour to Lotte department store to acquire a swim suit for her daughter), Narae cooked us a huge feast at her house. She would say that it was nothing, but we had pork belly, rice, homemade pickles and kimchi, sautéed mushrooms, sauteed beef, salad, and soup.

Harrison and I were on “babysitting” duties with the girls while Narae and Donghyun prepared dinner. The girls are 9 and 11, and while they’ve been studying English for awhile, they’re pretty shy. Playing games was a good way to get them to open up. Older 지우 showed us her jump rope routine and played some songs on the piano for us too; younger 하린 played a game not unlike Operation that made us all shriek with surprise. I think we also got some points for telling them to pick what they wanted for dessert: a huge “family” pack of ice cream with four flavors.

Narae and Donghyun asked if we were okay not seeing more exciting tourist sights, but we had a such a fun and memorable visit, getting to spend time with our friends from grad school and experiencing more day-to-day Korean life.

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After our fun weekend, we boarded the KTX and were pulling into Seoul station in two hours.

This time, we’re staying in Seongsu-dong, which my friend SunJoo said is one of Seoul’s hippest neighborhoods. And you can tell. Right around the station, there are about five million cafés, but not the chain ones–the hip ones. We also happened open a restaurant selling fried chicken; Harrison declared it to be a better fried chicken sandwich than any he has had in the UK.

There are not as many green spaces in Seoul as in London, so Seoul Forest Park is a beautiful and refreshing aberration. When we came previously, nothing was blooming or leafing, so it seemed more like a flat expanse of grass. In late May though, it is lush and refreshing, with blooming flowers and fun playgrounds and “vignettes” for relaxing.

After dinner, we also visited 뚝섬 park, right on the Han river. On a Monday, at 10pm, there were people sitting on blankets and benches, enjoying the view, drinking and eating snacks. It’s so wholesome and safe.

What’s that gleaming light? A beacon in the distance? It’s one of three convenience stores that we passed in the park. Many people, even “late” at night, were using the hot water dispensers outside of the stores to make ramen. (I pointed out how they handle the waste disposal: there are separate receptacles for the leftover liquid and noodly bits, instead of dumping everything into one bag.)

Since we last visited Seoul, its official symbol Haechi got a makeover. He is now pink and enormous. (He used to be orange.)

I was a little sad because the Seoul subway song (that plays at transfer stops) has also changed in the last few years. That kind of nostalgia always feels sad, but I am accepting that it’s just part of life in such an enormous and vibrant city.

On Monday, we took the fast KTX from Seoul to Busan, which seemed incredibly fast — partially because Korea just isn’t that big, and partially because everything seems more functional than the UK trains these days. (But really, anything is better than the nearly non-existent US rail network.)

After Seoul, Busan feels small, and by comparison, it is! But with 3.4M people, it’s still enormous and sprawling, and there are so many things to do and see. I also love the slightly more moderate temperatures and breeze off the water.

Having been to Korea a few times, it’s hard not to just revisit all our previous favorites, like 광안리 beach, which is actually where we’re staying. It’s one of the most touristy places in Busan, but it’s also just really…pleasant? There are tons of restaurants and shops with open-air eating right on the beach, and no one counters my request to eat with “Do you have a booking?”

On our first night, we walked into this seafood restaurant that served three things: two kinds of clam soup and a seafood pancake. I’m trying to take advantage of the fresh seafood while on this trip, and this did not disappoint. The soup was accurately described as a “mountain of clams.”

I’ve been calling these new structures “charging palapas,” and they are a new addition to the beach since our last visit. Not only do they provide shade and some protection from rain, they are also wireless charging ports to use for free while you admire the beautiful Diamond Bridge. The Bridge itself puts on a charming and ridiculous light show until midnight, featuring wave graphics and scrolling quotes about love.

Another new-to-me: 돼지국밥. This is a Busan specialty, and to be honest, I didn’t really try it before because it sounded kind of bland: long-simmered pork and rice soup. But I didn’t realize that you got a bunch of salty, spicy condiments to add to it. Harrison ordered the spicy one, and it smoked him out by the end!

The weather continues to be sunny and warm, with just enough chill in the evening to require a sweatshirt (convenient when you’re eating a cauldron of hot broth). I’m glad we’re here now and not in the absolutely sweltering summer months.

(I also hunted down a modern 한복 shop to find an outfit for an upcoming wedding. No pictures though because I have to go pick it up before we head out on Friday for Gwangju!)

Well, we’re here four years later than planned (May 2020 was not a time to travel…), but we’ve made it back to Seoul for what is already shaping to be a very fun visit.

I’ve been trying to reduce and “save up” my big flights for important trips like this. (A shout-out to everyone but the passengers who were late boarding and made us lose our place in take-off line.) Since we left from London, we flew across Europe and Asia, and the land-mass was quite bumpy. I am delighted to report that though I was a little nervous about my first long flight in over four years, I barely batted an eye at the turbulence and barely had to do any conscious mental tactics to combat anxious feelings. That being said, it was a long 13 hours, and with the timing (leaving Friday at 9pm, arriving Saturday at 5:30pm.), my eating and caffeine schedules were so disrupted that I felt nauseated.

But once we got into our accommodations near Myeongdong (a trip staple), we enjoyed a Saturday evening street food dinner, supplemented with snacks from the convenient store.

When I started thinking about a trip to Korea last year, I wanted to plan a time that would maximize our enjoyment while still largely respecting my low risk tolerance. So the bitterly cold Korean winter months were out. Late May has proven, in our first 36 hours, to be the right decision. It is warm–but not yet sweltering monsoon season–with comfortabl evenings for walking.

That being said, Saturday was very sunny, and we’re at a lower latitude than solar-deprived London. Look at how this intersection provided shade: a giant umbrella and leafy trellis.

One of my favorite parts of visiting Korea is noticing all the ways that the country accommodates its people, from these types of shades to the subway jingles that differ based on the direction of the arriving train.

Tomorrow, we take a train to Busan (hoho, I bet no one has made that joke before!). We “shelled out” for the fast KTX, so the journey will last less than three hours, and then we’ll be at the beach!

In October, my favorite pair of hemp/cotton pants ripped to an unwearable degree, so I immediately started looking for a replacement. I found a pair that I liked from a Los Angeles-based company, and they ticked a lot of boxes:

• hemp-cotton blend
• sturdy weight fabric
• an array of colors
• elastic waist
• a comfortable, but practical silhouette (roomy, but not in a way that screams “FASHION!”)

They did not, however, tick the box on price. $211 is already very expensive for pants, but the shipping and import taxes would have pushed the cost up much higher. So I said, “I bet I can make those for cheaper!”

“Sure, make them yourself.”

I found a sewing pattern that looked similar and made a toile to check the shape and fit. I signed up for a lesson at the local sewing and alterations store and took my toile to get help with fitting adjustments. I lucked out that the pattern fit pretty well as-written, but at the store, Anna, a no-nonsense but sweet Latvian woman, guided me through some major (for me!) alterations of the pattern.

The pattern (“The Free Range Slacks”) has a side panel running down the outside leg, but this didn’t work out great with my shape. The seams curved around the back of my calf, which looked okay to me, but Anna was like, “No, this is wrong!” and pulled out a French curve ruler and was doing calculations to remove seam allowances while drawing out new pattern pieces on different paper. I barely kept up, but it was a good introduction to pants construction.

(After that I did another toile to confirm that the alterations resulted in something wearable. They did.)

For the REAL pair, I had found a UK supplier of a hemp-cotton twill in the same percentage (55% hemp, 45% cotton) and weight (330gsm) as my inspiration pants. I dyed the fabric a practical gray in our washing machine, which took approximately ten-thousand hours but that couldn’t be helped because that appliance is made to be deficient energy-efficient.

The sewing wasn’t too onerous because I had practiced on two toiles already. That being said, when you make a toile, you skip a lot of the extra stuff, like seam finishes and back pockets, so I had to figure all that out on the fly. I made it through with the help of a few online tutorials, and I was able to reach out to my sewing friends back in California for advice.

Thrillingly, I had forgotten that I bought some colorful “handmade” labels last year, so I sewed one of those into the waistband. It’s such a small but really delightful touch that brings me a lot of joy.

I spent two weekends working on the final product, trying to do be careful with my stitching. It will definitely go faster in the future because I’ll won’t have to spend time experimenting with seam finishes and figuring out how to adjust the pocket construction without the side panel.

(I started this project back in November though, so these took awhile.)

“It’s not perfect, but I’m happy with it.”

– Everyone who fishes for compliments in an Internet crafting forum

So how did they turn out? Well, I put them on immediately, and unlike other clothes I’ve made, they feel natural and easy to wear! Before I sewed them up, I worried that the fabric would be too stiff, but they are the exact weight that I want for a cold-weather pant. And because the twill is so densely woven, they are surprisingly warm, especially compared to my normal uniform of synthetic leggings.

I’m also delighted that these pants fit me. (They have an elastic waist though, so they’d probably fit you too!) The expensive inspiration pants had a weird sizing chart, and the only pictures were on thin, tall women, so I had no idea if I’d even get the right size for $350+. Plus, my me-made pair also has a more tapered leg, which I think looks better with my shape anyway.

Was it actually cheaper?

I kept track of my expenses for this project, and it came out as follows with some rounding and some conversion from USD to GBP.

Note: This calculation does not include my time spent because this project was a fun activity, not my job. If I included the hours worked multiplied by cost of skilled labor, making my own pants would immediately become prohibitively expensive. As it is, I realize that I have the privilege of both time and money to invest in a hobby like sewing.

Item	Cost
Digital Pattern	£13
Fabric (2m)	£34
Dye (2)	£14
Shipping and tax for fabric and dye	£9
Tailor’s Ham*	£12
Calico for Toile 1	£18
Safety Pins*	£2
Calico for Toile 2	£10
Elastic for waistband*	£2
1-hour sewing lesson	£35
Thread and pack of jeans needles*	£7
More thread	£5
Total	£161 ($204)

So yeah, it was cheaper to make my own pants than to ship them from the US, but still very expensive! There was also (I hope!) a smaller carbon footprint by sourcing my materials from the UK, though the fabric did come from around the world.

But there are additional benefits to having made my own pants, rather than buying:

• They fit me exactly how I want, no hemming required.
• I sourced materials for independent small businesses.
• I made them in a color I like.
• I learned new skills, like how to fake a flat-fell seam on a home sewing machine.
• I can re-use the pattern and make more pairs in different colors and lighter weights (summer pant!)
• I’ve become a hemp evangelist!

Festive Food

We spent Christmas this year in London, and it was a relatively sedate affair (though three calls made for a very chatty day). To celebrate, I tried to cram in a lot of special meals, starting with French toast casserole (a Harrison family tradition) in the morning.

We punted cheese biscuits to today, New Year’s Day, but unfortunately, my baking powder was very old, and they came out flat. Old yeast was also a problem last night when I made pretzel rolls for dinner. Apparently, I haven’t done much baking recently because all of my leaveners are in a sad state.

We went for a mid-day Christmas walk to avoid the rain. (It has rained every day for what feels like forever, and it’s cold, inconvenient precipitation that you don’t want to be stuck outside in.) Londoners are famously closed off, but we confirmed what Ashley had told us: the cold façade is broken once a year, and strangers that you pass on the street wish you “Merry Christmas.”

(It’s January 1st, and no one made eye contact or wished me “Happy New Year” today, so it really is just a Christmas thing.)

For “Christmas lunch,” we had a fancy beef Wellington. I did not even want to attempt making my own, so we ordered an apparently award-winning one from a London butcher and “bunged it the oven” for the stated amount of time. Sides included steamed broccolini and sour cream mashed potatoes.

My verdict: Good but extremely rich. I could only eat one slice. Also, cutting it while keeping the beef wrapped in pastry is basically impossible.

[Dinner was boil-and-eat tortellini, our go-to lazy meal.]

But that’s not all! For dessert, I made this chocolate cake with peppermint frosting (NYT recipe here). I have learned this holiday season that peppermint is a much more American than British flavor. In fact, the extract that I found at the store was labeled “American peppermint extract.”

The cake was moist and rich in a way that I usually don’t find in cakes here, and I even liked the peppermint frosting, despite claiming to be “not much of a mint person.” However, I wasn’t good at this modern cake decorating style; a friend thought I had sent him a picture of a shepherd’s pie.

I made this cake primarily because my friend SunJoo said that it’s a tradition for Korean couples to eat “Christmas cake” together. And since we were basically having a couple’s Christmas, we should eat cake! In Korea, the cakes are more of the fancy, decorative side than my easy pan-cake, but I was not about to make a buttercream bear with tiny holiday bunting or whatever.

Oxford

After Christmas (and a Boxing Day walk with Ashley and Kyle), we took the train to Oxford for a few days. Oxford is surprisingly close to London, about 70 minutes by train — faster than getting some places within London.

We had visited Cambridge over the summer, during which time it rained heavily. And fittingly, it rained a lot during our visit to Oxford. I’m perversely glad of the rain — that way, we had an even experience at both schools and weren’t swayed one way by better weather.

During our visit, we mostly walked around and saw some of the (outsides of) the different colleges. (The “college” system at UK universities continues to baffle me. I need to find someone with an ambitious high school student to walk me through how the system works and which schools are “the best.”) I found a self-guided scavenger hunt that gave us an overview of the town, and the rest of time, we went hunting for food and sights (including the enormous Blackwell’s book store).

[Honestly, it’s quite challenging to travel in the winter when we’re still not going inside places unmasked. It makes eating especially difficult.]

We went for a walk in University Parks and marveled at how full the rivers/streams were. I asked a security guard (who was politely but firmly guiding us towards the exit because the park closed at 3:30pm) if they were normally this high, and he said the water level had actually gone down that day!

I feel weird that I don’t have more “exciting” things to say about Oxford, but I came to the realization that I don’t find just going to elite universities that exciting. The best part of a university is, in my opinion, the experience of studying there, and I can’t get that pumped about seeing the façade of the “best” colleges. (Most of them were closed for the holidays anyway.) Also, the short, cold, wet days didn’t help; I imagine it’d be more fun in the gloriously long summer days with warmer weather. That being said, I’m glad we visited both schools this year.

Looking ahead at 2024

I still haven’t gotten into a groove with regards to starting a New Year. Am I a resolutions person? Not really! And I tend to get bored with and abandon long-term goals. So this year, I’ve set a very do-able challenge for myself: read every book (34) on my [major online commerce site] wishlist. There’s a mix of non-fiction and fiction and mostly mysteries.

I read for fun, so I’m not going to hold myself to finishing any book that ends up feeling like a slog. The idea is to clear out the list, and that allows for removing a book because I finished it, or because it sucked.

I’m taking advantage of a week off while Harrison is still working to surf, relax, and enjoy Newquay. Just like last time, it has been an absolute delight so far (probably boring by many people’s standards). Apparently, I have enough hobbies to temporarily live the life of an introvert.

Just like the last Surf & Soup, getting down here by train was harrowing. Due to signal failures (at the same spot I got stuck last time!), we ran so far behind schedule that I missed my connection. Fortunately (?), the railway company knows how to handle this and got me across the peninsula in a taxi van. An adventure!

Other adventures include accidentally exposing myself when I was getting out of my wetsuit and the next day, punching myself in the nose while I was trying to get into my wetsuit. Surfing is so glamorous!

The surfing conditions have been good (the previous two days) and bad (today!), but I’m getting in good practice and enjoying the efforts of the instructors to help me improve each time. It’s validating to realize all the progress I’ve made this year.

Also, an inquisitive seal came near us today to see what we were doing. (We were flailing around against gusts of wind.) I love seeing their round heads poking out of the water.

When I’m not in the water, I’m walking around town (buffeted by coastal gusts of wind), reading a Christmas cozy mystery, knitting, studying languages, and working on my programming side project.

And because it’s December, there are signs of Christmas everywhere, including a town tree. I think its decorations need some work, but I appreciated the appeal for donations. (Yep, I made one.)

Back to my mystery!

I love this time of year, but I want to enjoy it without having to buy (and then store) a lot of festive stuff. And in a big city like London, there are lights, trees, and other decorations to enjoy for free. This tree down at Morden Station was one of the better local trees I’ve seen — all the ornaments were transit-themed

On Sunday, we went in search of Christmas lights. Apparently lower Morden lane is the famous “tacky lights”-esque destination of London. It was pretty subdued by our maximalist US standards, but it was still fun to see all of the decorated houses. I appreciated the effort that the homeowners had put in, and it was a new part of the city (well, the ‘burbs) that I hadn’t visited before. Also, the sun set at at ~3:50pm, so at 4:30pm, we were able to enjoy the lights in the dark!

When we got home, I tried a new-to-me recipe for chewy gingerbread cookies. Things started out a little dicey when I mixed the large volume of spices into browned butter–which made browner butter. But it all came together in the end, and they were perfect; crispy and chewy but very spicy from all the freshly grated ginger. (Tip for anyone who doesn’t know: store your ginger in the freezer and grate it straight from frozen.)

These are apparently best day-of, so I rolled the rest of the dough and froze it for fresh cookies whenever I want.

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Other non-accumulating ways that I’m enjoying the holiday season:

• listening to lots of Christmas music
• catching up with some friends
• enjoying holiday cards that arrive by mail
• watching cheesy Christmas rom-coms and yelling about the silly plot lines and inexplicable character decisions
• reading Christmas murder mysteries, currently Murder at Maybridge Castle by Ada Moncrieff

Having not gotten in the water much this fall, I planned a quick trip to Scarborough, aiming for two surfs.

It was not easy to get here. A week of rolling train strikes and track work at King’s Cross station meant that I had to make a roundabout journey to get to Scarborough, instead of the usual two-leg train trip. Also, one of the trains was cancelled last minute.

But miraculously, I made it to Scarborough on Sunday evening and was ready for a Monday surf.

The weather had other plans though.

I was planning to rent a board and gear from a local surf shop, but they messaged me mid-day to say that they were closing early and that the conditions were not really worth the trek down to the beach.

So instead, right before the 3:40pm (!!!) sunset, I forced myself to go out for a walk. I wore my Dry Robe, which has actually turned out to be a better outer layer than changing garment. It kept me dry as I was waiting at Scarborough’s longest intersection light and as a bus drove past and splashed my with a big puddle.

Not only that! I went for a brisk and refreshing walk in the rain, but I noticed that the back of my heel was rubbing annoyingly against my damp sneakers. When I got home, I realized that both heels had been rubbed raw — one so much so that my sock and shoe were stained with blood.

From the outside, this looked like the low point in a romcom where the heroine is about to blow all of her savings on a wild, life-affirming adventure.

But it’s actually fine. I’m lucky to be able to take quick trips to surf (and I got in the next day), and I always carry bandages and antibacterial cream for just such unexpected First-Aid needs.

Winter in the UK! It’s the penance for such long, glorious summer days.

Less than three weeks until Christmas, and it is definitely Christmassy, if not yet officially winter, in the UK. I’m trying to enjoy the season by taking pictures of every “business” Christmas tree I see — in train stations, in pharmacies, etc. This one was in Westminster Hall, before we went on a tour of the Elizabeth Tower to see Big Ben. (We had to wear ear plugs so that we were not bing-bong-ed to death.)

I think the tree is not quite dead yet, but you could say that it was lying in state in Westminster Hall, right??!

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Ashley and Kyle late brought us mince pies to try because I had (to my knowledge) not eaten one. I definitely hadn’t had once since moving to the UK.

There were two types: one with a thinner, buttery crust, and one with a thicker crust, more like what you’d find on a savo[u]ry pie. I have to be careful with those. I think the fat (lard?) that they use doesn’t sit well with me. I tend to get a debilitating stomach ache after eating them, so I mostly ate the filling.

I’m not a huge fan of spiced fruit and nut fillings, so I didn’t love these. And because they were not a tradition growing up, I don’t feel any nostalgic compulsion to eat them.

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But it is the holidays, which means it’s time to start baking again. I made a batch of this recipe for double chocolate chip cookies, and they were so fudgy and delicious. I love that I can freeze the dough balls and then bake a couple frozen ones to have fresh, hot cookies whenever we want.

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Most of hobbies tend to go through cycles, or at least, ebbs and flows. Now that it’s colder, I feel a lot more drawn to knitting and sewing. I’m still working on my Portuguese-knitting sweater, and it’s coming along. It’s being a “top-down” knit, so I’m working on the part below the sleeves now; the sleeves are the last part I knit.

I’ll gather my thoughts on this pattern and process for later, but so far, I’ve gotten into a groove with it. (And thanks, Mom, for the kit as a birthday gift. ❤️ 🧶)