September 17, 2025
Even with the weather prediction as rain for our whole time here it was mostly a sunny day today. Happy to not be on another excursion that required time in a car we got back to our “normal” routine. I headed to the gym in the morning and then we all went to breakfast together before heading back to the room for home school. The two rooms definitely help the kids focus better by keeping them separated. Ollie wrote a letter to his friend from home Harper, confirming he had seen, and had fun with, her mom and dad, Wendy & Nolan, in Hong Kong.
After school Kayleen took her turn at the gym and I ventured to the kid’s club with the boys to shoot blowguns. The setup was pretty cool with balloons on a string for them to aim at. I even took a turn after Lenny offered me one of his balloon targets.
We did a little swimming in the pool before the inflatable slide came to life for one of it’s four daily two hour cycles of operation. The resorts clientele seems to be mostly Korean families, the breakfast options are equally split between Western and Korean. Most of the Korean families have no interest in the sun touching any part of their skin so the pool outfits have been very different from Europe.
Almost everyone is in long sleeves and pants but a few people look like they are going scuba diving with the full hood over their head and head. One grown man was in the pool in one of the scuba outfits also wearing a lifejacket and goggles! The pool was waist deep on me when standing… I messaged a Korean friend from home because I had to know if there was something I was missing. He told me the long sleeves were just because it’s not a good symbol of status to be tan in Korea, like in most Asian countries, but the lifejacket/goggle guy he had no idea and recommended I stay away from him…
The boys headed to the slide and I got out to watch from land. Ollie opted for no lifejacket this time as he thought it would help him get more speed on the way down and let him swim faster back to the ladder to go again. He was correct on both accounts. With his new lifejacket free speed I noticed he would wait for Lenny at the top of the slide most times. I asked him, “Ollie, why do you wait at the top of the slide for Lenny?” Expecting a nice answer I got, “To let him catch up so I’ll always be in front of him…”
I took the kids for lunch at a little restaurant near the pool and kid’s club to be close for the cookie baking. When I went to ask about the activity they told me it was one of the only ones that required a sign up ahead of time. This was not good news as Lenny was dying to bake some cookies. He produced a massive tear when I told him the bad news.
Fortunately, a promise to visit the dunk tank after lunch and a strawberry smoothie with lunch calmed him down. The strawberry smoothie was more of an ice cream shake overflowing with whip cream. Ollie turned it down but once he saw it quickly asked for one for himself, but they ended up sharing. I took down 12 kebabs (double order) of chicken satay for lunch, a new record and likely one that won’t be repeated.
After the dunk tank it was time for another round of Water Wars! This time another boy and his sister were playing when we arrived. The people running the kid’s club asked us to wait for them to finish and then take our turn but all the kids were keen to play together. The boy and his sister offered our kids some of the balloons to shoot so we knew it was game on!
It was hard for the kids to pull the sling shot back far enough to launch the balloons all the way to the other base so the kids would stand closer, out in the open, and dance to allow for a better chance of being hit. The other kids did not speak english but they understood the act of dancing and playful taunting. Each group of kids took turns dancing and there were no balloon direct hits, just some splashed feet.
We went to the nice restaurant in our hotel for dinner. Fortunately we were one of the only ones there and got a table by the window overlooking the water. We played the state game on Kayleen’s phone and Ollie threw out a guess for Alabama yelling “Alazonia!!” They also asked more about godparents. Driven mainly by Ollie from listening to Harry Potter where Sirius Black is introduced as his godfather. He asked, “Can I have a godfather?” We said, “Sure, who do you want?” Ollie picked Uncle AJ and Lenny picked Papa.
The kids behaved mostly well for the rest of dinner, but were tired from a full day of playing outside. By the end of dinner Lenny was falling off his chair and then they were climbing on the window like Spider-Man. Kayleen and I finished our bottle of wine laughing at them before we all headed back to bed.
