Rong-Rong

One of the favorite parts of this trip for K-bao, besides all the attention she received as she walked down the aisle in her pretty Flower Girl dress, was of course the opportunity to hang out with Cousin Elizabeth, a.k.a. Rong-Rong.

Here she sits down to a 1:1 meal to have deep conversations with her intellectual cousin. Notice the thoughtful expressions, witty banter and sophisticated thinking clearly going on.



Here the cousins get up to introduce themselves before showing off their expert dance moves.

At the end of the trip, K-bao was highly reluctant to part with her cousin. On one of the last nights, knowing Rong-Rong was leaving the following morning at 4:30 a.m. for the airport, she tried to extract a promise from K-Pop that he would wake her up exactly at 4:00 a.m. to knock on the hotel door and say her last goodbyes.

When this demand was wisely refused, given the reception night bedtime of 11:00 p.m., she woke herself up anyway in the wee hours, in the dark, and tapped on K-bao's sleepy head in another effort to see her cousin one last time. "What time is it, Daddy? Can we go say goodbye now?" she whispered urgently.  Unfortunately, she was an hour late...and was ushered unhappily back into bed. "We'll Skype her soon!" promised K-Pop in a failing effort to console the little one.

R&R

K-bao has been spending her summer with her friends the L's. The L sisters, DL and NL (along with little brother EL) share K-bao's love of swimming, princesses and all things Frozen (and yes, this includes little EL, who will tag along and be into whatever his sisters are into). 

What does this mean for K-bao? Tons of hanging out around the pool, an abundance of of outrageous princess costumes, and plenty of "Let it Go" sing-alongs. (By way of reference, K-bao was introduced to DL some 5 years ago, as profiled in this post.)

Wait - where's my hat, mommy? 

And what does all this mean for K-Pop and K-Mum? Why, "Christian fellowship" of course...also known as "Rest and Relaxation."

Commercial Instincts

K-Pop found out recently that K-bao had declared K-Mum recently her "bestie" (her "best friend," alongside her other faves at school such as Atenea, Milagros, Sienna, Alexandra etc.). K-Pop, while normally not so forward, felt he perhaps had rights to this exclusive club, and made a discreet inquiry about it this past weekend.

Sensing an opportunity, K-bao decided that this high end club clearly needed an entry price given the demand for admission. She ran off with a marker, a piece of paper towel and a head full of sparkly ideas. The below is what she came back with.

Yes, you saw correctly. The first paper reads: "Gold coins and stars and gold. Thank you." As I said, sparkly ideas. At least she had the manners to write Thank You at the end.

Then feeling she was perhaps set the price too low, she added a second piece of paper towel, which reads: "Pink and blue dress. A kitten. Love Kayla." The Love, Kayla perhaps was meant to soften the blow of a hard message.

Shocked and outraged by this act of pure commercialism, K-Pop launched into an extensive diatribe about how some of the best things in life cannot be bought or sold, and furthermore how one should think about things such as love and friendship. He then wrote the following list to drive home the message.

Of course, the numbers were just meant to be illustrative, because in reality they are so much more (even on a single semester basis!).