On Christmas Eve, we went to lunch with a bunch of my girlfriends from college — we went to Bon Chon Chicken in Centreville. I’d heard of how great Bon Chon was from all my friends in Virginia and had to try it! True to its reputation, the chicken wings were some of the best I ever had! Great flavor but not too greasy! (I ate mostly the soy garlic flavor ones because the hot ones were too spicy for me… although Dan was all about the spicy ones!) It was great catching up with familiar friends… felt like I got transported back to the good old college days! π
Delicious ddukbokki! (The chicken was so good, I forgot to take a picture of it...)
Mio is all smiles!
The girls surprised me with a birthday cake! Red velvet… so delicious!
Mio is dying to dig her hands into the cake...
It was great seeing everyone and catching up! Thank you everyone for the delicious birthday cake!
Later in the afternoon, Miyoung and Mike came by to visit us at my parents’ house. Miyoung and I had a great time having a couple hours of girl talk while our hubbies played video games together and Mio napped.
Miyoung brought by these lovely macarons… they were almost too pretty to eat!
Look at all the colors!
I love macarons!
They were so delicious... between me, Dan, and my sister, we killed them all before the day was over.
Some more random pre-Christmas photos…
Mio playing with a magnifying glass. This just might be my favorite picture of the year.
Huge box of chocolates from a family friend to our family. The box is bigger than Mio.
Mio gets to spend her first Christmas in Virginia! What will Santa bring...?
The weather has been amazing for the last week here, and this past weekend was no exception. It’s regularly been sunny and 70 degrees, and it really feels like spring has finally arrived. I am not a huge fan of rain, so I couldn’t wait for the rainy season to be over. (The weather in the Bay Area is pretty nice all year round, with the exception of about eleven straight weeks of rain, during which I am miserable.)
Dan and I decided to spend Saturday in San Francisco, since we had tickets to go see the Tutankhamun exhibit at de Young museum in the evening. I’d been wanting to see the exhibit since it came to San Francisco in June of last year, and it happens to be ending next weekend. (Talk about waiting until the last minute, huh?) We spent the afternoon walking around Baker Beach, which sparkled under the California sunshine. The beach also has a great view of the Golden Gate Bridge.
After the beach, we drove through Golden Gate Park and headed over to dinner, past the rolling hills of San Francisco…
…and arrived at San Tung! The dry-fried chicken wings here are out of this world! I’m usually not that crazy about wings because they are so messy to eat, but these are the best I have ever had. Ever!
The shrimp and leek dumplings are pretty yummy, too…
Plus the seafood noodle soup! Yes, we ate all of this between the two of us.
Full and content, we headed over to de Young Museum to see the exhibit “Tutankhamun and The Golden Age of The Pharoahs.”
I realize that my blog post title is a little misleading, because we didn’t actually see any mummies. King Tut’s mummy and his three nested coffins and stone sarcophagus have actually never left Egypt, and he continues to rest in the Valley of the Kings. I wanted to see the gold mask of King Tut (which apparently travelled around the world for different exhibits back in the ’70s), but the Egyptian government no longer lets it travel outside of Egypt, as it has been declared a national treasure (and rightly so). Still, theΓΒ exhibition at de Young was very impressive, showcasing over 130 outstanding works from King Tut’s tomb, as well as those of his royal predecessors, family, and court officials. It’s incredible how intricately and artfully crafted those pieces were, when they were created over 3,200 years ago. During my four years of taking art history courses in college, I remember studying some of those works in my archaeology course with Profess or Knoblauch so it was sort of surreal to see them in person. I feel really fortunate to have been able to catch the exhibit in its last week. Although Tutankhamun is leaving San Francisco at the end of the month, it’ll be making its way over to New York, Toronto and Denver in the coming months, so I definitely recommend it for anyone who is interested and lives near one of those cities!
