A week with 할머니

Last week we visited my mother-in-law after church. When it came time to leave, C said she wanted to stay with 할머니. Though my first thought was, "But she doesn't have any other clothes, any toys, or anything," 할머니 said she would take care of that.

Plus, with my brother-in-law's new apartment pending some paperwork hiccups, there would be no shortage of baby sitters -- our two teenage nieces would be there, too.

Well, OK, then. We left our daughter up in Seoul with her grandmother for a week.

Things went well. My mother-in-law was surprised at how well C ate while she was there, and there was no shortage of things to do. The only times she said she missed us was when we'd call to check in. It was really strange.

Two interesting things came out of it. First was C's language development. Because of the "immersion" environment, C became more comfortable speaking Korean. Yet she would speak Korean only with her grandmother, aunt, and elder cousin. With her younger cousin, she stuck with English.

In this, she's like her brother. P is more comfortable with English, but can switch when he senses a person can only speak Korean.

Second was an incident where she locked the door to the second room and then closed it from the outside (she wasn't stuck in the room, but neither could they get in). After the search for the key failed and the building manager couldn't open it, they eventually called a locksmith to open the door, which 한머니 had to pay for.

C sensed that all the trouble was her fault, so she went up to her grandmother and said, "할머니, 제송해요." (Grandmom, I'm sorry.) It just about made 할머니 cry.