Mama's here!

Well, I know I'm still in the doghouse, so to speak, with some of you from my last post (heehee), so here's a new one to take away the memory. (Pun intended)
My mother's here with her friend Sandy this week! They were supposed to arrive on Friday night, so we could spend the weekend together. I had all of these plans for us to go to the coast and stay over night away from the city (since my mom isn't much of a city person), but of course, their flight had some "mechanical difficulties" (always fun to think about) and they ended up having to stay Friday night in Tokyo. Oh well, at least they got to see a little bit of Japan. So anyway, they didn't arrive here until mid-afternoon on Saturday, foiling my plans.
Sunday we got out of the city, but it was a closer location. We went to Nami island. It's a famous island in the middle of a river about an hour away from Seoul. We took a train there, and were unable to get seating tickets, so we had to stand on the train the whole way. The island was beautiful with a lot of cherry blossoms and other sorts of trees and wildlife. They also had the weirdest squirrels I've ever seen. They have tallish, pointy ears. They look like devil squirrels. Strange!
I've had my mom and Sandy try some very traditional food (of course) and wine. Yesterday we went to the most famous palace in Seoul, Gyeongbukgong (the "Palace of Shining Happiness"). It was beautiful with all the trees in bloom. Mom and Sandy are on the DMZ tour today, so they are really packing their days full. We have plans to eat dinner with some of my coworkers tonight.
Here are some pictures. The one with the metasequoias (really tall, thin trees) is from Nami Island, and the ones of the palace are pretty obvious.